1. Author Affiliation: Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
2. Religions 2022, 13(4), 317.
關鍵詞
Three Kings; Dizang; hell; bureaucratic system; Three Departments system; Tang Dynasty
摘要
The Buddhist ideas and practices of hell were bureaucratized in medieval China. The cult of Dizang and the Ten Kings of Hell was popular from the late Tang Dynasty onward. However, the concept of the Three Kings of Hell (King Yama 閻羅王, the Magistrate of Mount Tai 泰山府君, and the Great Spirit of the Five Paths 五道大神) appeared before that of the Ten Kings and has long been ignored. This article aimed to make a textual comparison of the descriptions of Dizang and the Three Kings in the literature with the bureaucratic system of the Three Departments (sansheng zhi 三省制), which was the central government system during the Tang Dynasty, where the Three Departments performed their respective functions. There are several structural and functional parallels between the underworldly afterlife and the political bureaucracies of the world. The workings of the system in hell changed in texts from different periods, showing the evolution of the Three Departments system during the Tang Dynasty. This case study demonstrated that the system of Dizang and the Three Kings of Hell were constructed based on the official system used in human society and that the underworld was reinterpreted as a bureaucratic system similar to the temporal one.
目次
Abstract 1 Keywords 1 1. Introduction 1 2. The Three Kings in the Mingbao Ji 3 3. The Three Kings in the Mulian Bianwen 5 4. Dizang in the Dizang Pusa Jing 6 5. Conclusions 9 Appendix A 10 Appendix B 10 Appendix C 10 Appendix D 10 Notes 10 References 11
