The regularity of convent life is broken by many festivals.  The year is divided into two periods of wandering, two of meditation and one of repose corresponding to the old Vassa.  Though this division has become somewhat theoretical, it is usual for monks to set out on excursions in the spring and autumn.  In each month there are six fasts, including the two uposatha days.  On these latter the 250 rules of the Pratimoksha are recited in a refectory or side hall and subsequently the fifty-eight rules of the Fan-wang-ching are recited with greater ceremony in the main temple.

Another class of holy days includes the birthdays[889] not only of Sakya-muni, but of other Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the anniversaries of events in Sakya-muni’s life and the deaths of Bodhidharma and other Saints, among whom the founder or patron of each monastery has a prominent place.  Another important and popular festival is called Yu-lan-pen or All Souls’ day, which is an adaptation of Buddhist usages to Chinese ancestral worship.  Of many other festivals it may be said that they are purely Chinese but countenanced by Buddhism:  such are the days which mark the changes of the seasons, those sacred to Kuan-ti and other native deities, and (before the revolution) imperial birthdays.

The daily services are primarily for the monks, but the laity may attend them, if they please.  More frequently they pay their devotions at other hours, light a few tapers and too often have recourse to some form of divination before the images.  Sometimes they defray the cost of more elaborate ceremonies to expiate sins or ensure prosperity.  But the lay attendance in temples is specially large at seasons of pilgrimage.  For an account of this interesting side of Chinese religious life I cannot do better than refer the reader to Mr. Johnston’s volume already cited.

Though the services of the priesthood may be invoked at every crisis of life, they are most in requisition for funeral ceremonies.  A detailed description of these as practised at Amoy has been given by De Groot[890] which is probably true in essentials for all parts of China.  These rites unite in incongruous confusion several orders of ideas.  Pre-Buddhist Chinese notions of the life after death seem not to have included the idea of hell.  The disembodied soul is honoured and comforted but without any clear definition of its status.  Some representative—­a person, figure, or tablet—­is thought capable of giving it a temporary residence and at funeral ceremonies offerings are made to such a representative and plays performed before it.  Though Buddhist language may be introduced into this ritual, its spirit is alien to even the most corrupt Buddhism.