The Religious Function Of Buddhist Statue In China Specialty: Religious Studies

Buddhism, with its everlasting vitality and wide adaptability, has been offering an influential and effective way for calming, purifying and enlightening one's mind. Buddhist statue has been in China for more than 2000 years, which was first introduced in Han Dynasty. With the change of society, though it experienced prosperous and falling period, its religious function still has had deep effect on Buddhist belief. Nowadays, Buddhist statue has existed prevalently in China, which continues to make remarkable influence in its religious practice life.This thesis is a study of The Religious Function of Buddhist Statue in China. Buddhist statue is the visual sculpture or the depictive image. But why keep its study in China? Because the writer is only familiar with it in Han, and has more perceptive knowledge on it; besides, its study material offered us in Han is relative easy to collect. On the other hand, the document about this subject in this time I could find is very limited and sporadic, so I have to arrange and classify the document which is massively cited in Taisho Tibet, and attempt to make a discussion about it. The religious function of Buddhist statue is mainly concerned with its effect and meaning on Buddhist belief. Finally, the full text also tries to introduce a way which focuses on the purification of one's own mind in the hope of bringing great fortune to our modern society for generations to come.The thesis is composed of three parts: Preface, Main text and Conclusion.The preface describes the motivation and aim of the thesis. Many people have regarded the Buddhist statue from the artic point, and few from the religious belief to describe it. Based on this situation, the writer tries to illustrate its effect and meaning in order to make more people pay attention to its practical function on our life. This is the motivation to write.The main text includes five chapters:The first chapter introduces Buddhist statue has great importance to protect and keep the Buddhist dharma to the ordinary people with little religious knowledge. Meantime, it is tangible and visible to the converts, so it is good to the spread of the Buddhism. Here I have made many examples to discuss it.