南水陸= Southern Liberation Rite of Water and Land; 北水陸=Northern Liberation Rite of Water and Land; 水陸儀文=Liberation Rite of Water and Land Procedure; 水陸文本=Liberation Rite of Water and Land Tex; 內壇=Inner Altar
Liberation Rite of Water and Land is the most important ritual in modern Chinese Buddhism. In general, this ritual lasts 7 consecutive days. From a Buddhist perspective, this ritual is the most powerful, most grandiose, as well as creates the most merits. The most characteristic element of this ritual is the paintings hung on the altar for the purpose of inviting all deities from ten directions, which are called paintings for Liberation Rite of Water and Land. Over centuries, with different textual editions, different paintings were created for the rituals. Modern Chinese Liberation Rite of Water and Land ritual follows the southern tradition employing texts written by Zhipan 志磐 of the Song Dynasty, Zhuhong 祩宏 of the Ming Dynasty, Runyi 潤儀 and Zhiguan 咫觀 of the Qing Dynasty, and Fayu法裕 of the Republic Era. This paper will discuss the following questions: What is the relationship between the development of the paintings and their textual context? What are the symbolic meanings of the paintings in the ritual? What are the issues between modern paintings for this ritual and the texts? Several different systems of the texts for the said ritual emerged during the Song, Liao, and Jin Dynasties. But it wasn’t until the late Ming Dynasty that the monastics started to divide the ritual into the northern and southern schools. Different texts in different schools derive different paintings for the ritual. However, since the Ming Dynasty, the paintings exclusively for the ritual did no t really correspond to the texts. This reflects the decline of Buddhist iconography in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Therefore, how to construct modern paintings that correspond to the texts is an important issue
