The Amitabha faith, or the worship of A-mi-t'o fo, is a vital element in Chinese Buddhism. Most Buddhist schools, especially the pure Land and the T'ien-t'ai Buddhism, promoted the worship of the Buddha Amitabha. It appealed to both the elite and lay Buddhists from the Eastern Chin to the T'ang and became very popular with a wider group of people during the Sung. The growth of its popularity in pre-Sung time seems obvious: Pure Land masters such as Tao-chu (526-645) and Shan-tao (613-681) and T'ien-t'ai patriarchs such as Chih-i (538-597) had laid the groundwork. Its evolution into a main-stream religious faith in the Sung, however, has received little attention. This article examines the growth of the Amitabha faith in the Sung. It argues that, from the outset of the Sung, the monks and the elite in the Two-Che area made a collective and conscious effort to promote this faith. They did so vigorously in both theory and practice, helping expand the scale and magnitude of its influences. The article consists of five sections in addition to the introduction out-lined above. The second section begings with a survey of the Amitabha faith before the Sung. Evidences of pre-Sung worship indicate that the clerics, patrons, and devotees practicing this faith were scattered about a few cities in the present-day Shansi and Chekiang. Their practice varied according to place and the individual involved, with some focusing on the worship and making of images and others concentrating on the wor recitation of the Amitabha sutra or Amitabha's name, especially when death approached. The lack or uniformity in practice may have been a result of varied cultural traditions in different locales, which was coupled with the not-too-well developed soteriolongical system of the faith. Regardless, this section tries to link the ramifications of the faith to show a more composite form of practice, which was to appear in the Sung. The third section of this article discusses in detail the Amitabha faith in the Sung. It tabulates a score of Buddhist masters, largely from the T'ien-t'ai School in the Two-Che area, and delineates their practices and the scale of their influences. It calls attention to the collective and conscious effort they made to promote the faith. It also shows that the majority of these masters followed a new and more coherent pattern of practice. In the early Sung, T'ien-t'ai monks, suchas Chih-li (960-1028) , Tsun-shih (964-1032), their disciples, and Pure Land monks were among the most active practitioners of the faity. As times went on, some Ch'an and Vinaya (Lu) monks followed suit. However, toward the end of Northern Sung, T'ien-t'ai monks, as represented by Chung-li (1014-1146) and his disciples, played the leading role in enhancing and spreading the faith. The fourth section of this article takes into account the elite involvement in the Buddhist communities and treats it as an important factor that facilitated the popularization of the Amitabha faith. It identifies Sung scholar officials who wittingly or unwittingly promoted the faith. It outlines how their official functions in the Two-Che areas helped the clergy to further spread the faith. Noted elites were mostly the prefects of Hangchou, Mingchou, and T'aichou. Outstanding examples were Wang Ch'in-jo (962-1025), Hu Su (996-1067), Chang Te-hsiang, (978-1048), Shen Kou, Chao Pien, Ch'ao Yueh-chih (
