At an autumn sunset beneath red maple leaves, two children crouch on the riverbank releasing glowing paper lanterns onto the water, where many lights drift toward a stone bridge and lit village houses.
Zhongyuan Festival
Mid-seventh month, remembering the departed
Introduction
The fifteenth of the seventh month: offerings for ancestors and the dead, Zhongyuan to Daoists and Ullambana to Buddhists
The Zhongyuan Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, popularly called 'mid-seventh month' or the Ghost Festival, and goes back to offering the new grain to ancestors in autumn. Daoism counts the fifteenth days of the first, seventh and tenth months as the Three Yuan, Zhongyuan being the day the Official of Earth pardons sins; Buddhism, following the Ullambana Sutra story of Mulian rescuing his mother, makes offerings to the sangha on this day, and Emperor Wu of Liang held an Ullambana feast at Tongtai Temple in 538. In Northern Song Kaifeng the play 'Mulian Rescues His Mother' was staged around the festival and Ullambana frames were burned. Its customs are ancestor offerings, universal salvation rites, river lanterns and burning paper offerings, all to remember ancestors and comfort the dead.
Timeline
- 538OriginThe Fozu tongji records that in 538 Emperor Wu of Liang went to Tongtai Temple to hold an Ullambana feast, an early dated record of the seventh-month fifteenth observance.
History › Emperor Wu Holds Ullambana Feast
Literature › Chronicle of the Buddhas and Patriarchs: Juan 37 - 550EvolutionThe Jingchu suishi ji records that on the fifteenth of the seventh month monks, nuns, Daoists and lay people all prepared bowl offerings, the commentary citing the Ullambana Sutra.Literature › Ullambana SutraLiterature › Annual Customs of Jing-Chu
- 1147EvolutionThe Dongjing menghua lu records that Kaifeng's theatres staged 'Mulian Rescues His Mother' from Qixi until the fifteenth to growing crowds, and that bamboo frames called Ullambana bowls were hung with clothes and spirit money and burned.Literature › Record of a Dream of Splendour in the Eastern Capital
- 2011ImpactIn 2011 the Zhongyuan Festival (Chiu Chow Yu Lan Ghost Festival), nominated by Hong Kong, entered the third national batch (X-122).
Heritage Listings
- 2011National List of Representative Items of Intangible Cultural Heritage3rd batch · X-122 Zhongyuan Festival: Chiu Chow Yu Lan Ghost Festival · no. 1197 · nominated by the Hong Kong SAR