This panel examines the role of festivals, ritual assemblies, and public religious celebrations in shaping Buddhist ritual culture across Asia. Moving beyond doctrinal or philosophical frameworks, the papers foreground ritual performance, visual culture, and communal participation as key mechanisms of religious transmission. Together, the papers trace transregional patterns of ritual adaptation across South, East, and Himalayan Asia. The first paper explores the transformation of large-scale ritual assemblies from India to China through reinterpretations of sacrificial and Buddhist ceremonial traditions. The second paper examines early Buddhist image cults associated with episodes from the Buddha’s life, focusing on festivals and image processions as sites of devotional practice. The third paper investigates contemporary syncretic festival culture in Nepal, where Buddhist and Hindu ritual traditions converge in educational and life-cycle rites. Collectively, the panel highlights how festivals functioned as dynamic sites of ritual translation and religious innovation in Buddhist Asia.
This paper reexamines the origin and ritual character of the Wuzhe Assembly (Ch. wuzhe hui 無遮會), a large-scale Buddhist religious gathering described by the Chinese monk Xuanzang at the court of King Harṣavardhana. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have generally identified the Wuzhe Assembly with the pañcavārṣika (“Five-Year Assembly”). Building on recent philological research, this paper argues instead that the term more likely reflects the Sanskrit nirargaḍamedha, a ritual concept associated with unrestricted generosity and large-scale ceremonial giving that may ultimately derive from the Brahmanical sarvamedha (“universal sacrifice”). By reassessing textual and historical evidence from Indian and Chinese sources, the paper shows how this ritual idea was transformed within Buddhist contexts into large public religious gatherings combining royal patronage, merit-making, and communal participation. The study thus highlights how ritual concepts and forms of religious celebration were transmitted and reinterpreted as Buddhism moved from India to China.
This paper discusses early images depicting Siddhartha as a young prince during his First Meditation, along with epigraphical records attesting to this image cult. Additionally, several passages from the Vinayas of the Sarvāstivādins and Mūlasarvāstivādins preserved in Classical Chinese also document the now largely forgotten image worship of the Bodhisattva Siddhartha and shed light on the cult and iconographic significance of the First Meditation image, helping explain its transregional popularity. These materials demonstrate that the “jambu tree shadow image” once stood at the center of an important monastic cult and formed part of festivals and image processions associated with the major Buddhist festival celebrating Śākyamuni’s Enlightenment, known as the “Great Festival.” The paper also considers the connection between this cult and the emergence of the “Pensive Crown Prince” (Ch. siwei taizi) image, likely originating in Northern India and Gandhāra and later popular across China and East Asia.
Mañju Pañcamī (Śrī Pañcamī) is a major cultural and religious festival of the Kathmandu Valley that commemorates the arrival of Mañjuśrī from China’s sacred Mount Wutai. Celebrated on the fifth day of the waxing moon in Māgha (January–February), the festival venerates Mañjuśrī—revered as the prince of Buddhist Dharma as well as Sarasvatī, the Hindu goddess of learning. This study examines the festival’s syncretic character, in which Buddhist and Hindu traditions converge in shared devotion to wisdom and speech. It also explores associated practices, including ritual bathing at Taudaha Lake for scholarship and prosperity, and the widespread belief that this auspicious day permits life‑cycle ceremonies without astrological consultation. A central rite initiates children into education by guiding them to write “Namo Vāgīśvarāya.” As a nationally observed festival, Mañju Pañcamī integrates religious veneration with educational and social rites of passage, reflecting the Kathmandu Valley’s long-standing cultural harmony.