Rethinking the Religious Elements in the Tombs of Early Medieval China

Lin Sheng-chih (Associate Research Fellow, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2019-20)
Chair/discussant: Eugene Wang (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University)

Co-sponsored with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

This talk examines religious elements in the tombs of early medieval China (220–589), in an effort to gain new perspectives into the art of tombs from this period. To achieve this goal, this project conceptually refers to recent scholarship on the very idea of religion. In terms of materials, the project covers sources from Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Zoroastrianism, as well as local cults of nomadic tribes. In its central argument, this project aims to elucidate the religious elements in tombs of the Northern dynasties (386–581) by considering the local cults of nomadic tribes.