NO. 2 FOLK RELIGION IN SOUTHWEST CHINA — GRAHAM 121 



The funeral is very important. From late Neolithic times many 

 things have been buried with the dead, including pottery, clothing, 

 jades, ornaments, tools, weapons, bronzes beginning with the Shang 

 dynasty, and bronze coins beginning in the late Chou dynasty. From 

 early in the Shang dynasty, cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, and even 

 human beings were buried with the dead in their tombs. During the 

 first half of the Chou dynasty, living people were buried with the dead. 



In the first half of the Chou dynasty there was a moral development 

 among the Chinese leaders that led to protests against burying live 

 people with the dead. This led to the substitution of wooden and 

 straw images of men and women in the tombs. By the time of the 

 Han dynasty, clay images were substituted for men and women, 

 horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, houses, and 

 stoves, and with these were buried bronzes, iron vessels, jades, money, 

 ornaments of gold and silver, weapons, tools, and pottery vases, jugs, 

 and dishes of many varieties. 



Because of the great value of many of the objects buried with the 

 dead in the tombs, the graves were very often robbed. The Academia 

 Sinica during World War II excavated about 300 Han dynasty tombs 

 in Szechwan, and the Department of Archaeology of Nanking Uni- 

 versity also excavated many, and it was found that every tomb had 

 been opened and robbed at least once, some evidently more than once. 

 I have not heard of a single ancient tomb in Szechwan that had not 

 been looted, although there may have been a few. 



Probably influenced by the robbery of the graves, by the time of 

 the Sung dynasty people began to substitute paper or "spirit" money 

 for actual coins and for lumps of gold and silver. Similar substitu- 

 tions were extended to nearly all other objects, so that very little of 

 value was buried in the graves. Instead, the objects were made of 

 paper and wood and ceremonially burned as part of the funeral cere- 

 monies, in the belief that burning transformed them into actual money 

 and objects that could be used by the souls of the dead in Hades. 

 This custom was still practiced in 1948, just before the iron curtain 

 went down. Paper images of men and women, sedan chairs, houses, 

 gold hills and silver hills, jinrickshas, automobiles, and many other 

 things were burned with heaps of spirit money. 



Another phase of ancestral veneration is the worship of ancestral 

 tablets in the homes and in the ancestral temples. The Chinese believe 

 that there are three main souls and seven lesser souls. Of the main 

 souls, one remains in the coffin, one in the ancestral tablet, and the 

 third goes to Heaven, Hell, Hades, or is reborn in the transmigration 



