Contesting imaginaires in death rituals during the Northern Song dynasty

This dissertation is a historical study of the rise of neo-Confucianism: it focuses on the politics of death rituals during the mid-Northern Song dynasty (9601127). It investigates how the debates concerning death rituals and the actual practice of those rituals introduced new social dynamics into the process of state formation, and how those rituals reflected the varied visions of society held by different groups. I argue that death rituals functioned as a stage on which practitioners not only revealed their imaginings of the world beyond and their positions within that imaginary world, but also located themselves within the hierarchical relations of the contemporary social world. Emperors used newly invented Daoist death rituals to maximize royal authority by enacting a newly invented dynastic myth of the royal family's divine origins. A major line of Confucian scholar-officials employed institutional measures to revive the ancient Confucian rituals as a way of checking power of emperors and wealthy merchants who freely practiced non-Confucian death rituals. By contrast, rich merchants and commoners often used unsanctioned death rituals--primarily Buddhist and Daoist rituals--as a way of resisting a state authority undergirded by Confucian values. I maintain that these ritual disputes helped Confucian officials gain more political power and fostered the rise of neo-Confucianism.