Always Being With Her Practitioners: A Study of the Diversified Devotional Practices of the Cult of Zhunti 準提 in Late Imperial China (1368–1911)

Abstract:As one of the most venerated Buddhist deities in late imperial China, the core of the cult of the goddess Zhunti lies in the diversity of its devotional practices. Nevertheless, influenced by a problematic methodology, previous studies on this topic highly relied on the prescriptive materials and attached too much importance to the elite practitioners, thus presenting an incomplete picture of the actual situation. Therefore, this article divides the devotional practices of the Zhunti cult into full-fledged liturgies and separately performed devotional practices, and takes advantage of both the descriptive and prescriptive sources to reveal how real historical actors (elites/non-elites, men/women) drew on religious culture to suit their own religious exploration.