Daejeon, July 27–31
The spatial-temporal distribution of religious practices provides a crucial lens for understanding how belief systems interact with social and political structures. In Buddhism, funerary and relic rituals embody the most tangible expressions of faith. Their spatial evolution reveals how Buddhism became institutionalized within imperial power and localized through regional adaptation. Quantitatively examining where and when such practices occurred allows us to trace Buddhism’s transformation from a missionary faith into a geographically embedded institution.
Previous GIS-based Buddhist studies have focused on temples, cave sanctuaries, and pilgrimage routes (ArcGIS n.d.; Fu / Aquilar de Santana 2019; IKCEST–DRR 2020; Kieschnick 2003; Ma et al. 2025; Wang / Li 2023) but rarely on funerary and relic practices—the material core of belief. Analyzing their spatial and temporal patterns clarifies Buddhism’s institutionalization and interaction with state and local cultures (Liu 2008; Faure 2017; Bingenheimer 2021). To address this gap, we propose a knowledge-guided, LLM-assisted GIS framework for reconstructing the geography of Buddhist funerary and relic practices in medieval China (5th–10th centuries) and tracing Buddhism’s transformation from a missionary faith into a geographically embedded institution.
We compiled hagiographical sources from CBETA (CBETA 2025), including Biographies of Eminent Monks (Gaoseng zhuan, ca. 530 CE), Further Biographies of Eminent Monks (Xu gaoseng zhuan, ca. 645 CE), and Song Biographies of Eminent Monks (Song gaoseng zhuan, ca. 988 CE), as well as epigraphic collections from the China Text Project (Sturgeon 2021), such as Collected Epigraphic Inscriptions (Jinshi cuibian), Supplement to the Eight Jade Chamber Edition of Epigraphic Inscriptions (Ba qiong shi jinshi buzheng), Abridged Supplement to the Collected Epigraphic Inscriptions (Jinshi cuibian bulüe), and Collected Tang-Dynasty Epitaphs (Tangdai muzhi huibian). We converted all materials to Simplified Chinese, removed annotations, normalized variants, and segmented them into 1,200-character chunks with an overlap of 200 characters to preserve context for extraction.
Drawing on scholarship by Shufen Liu, Bernard Faure, and John Kieschnick, experts built an ontology describing Buddhist funerary and relic practices along three axes: burial types (forest, stone-chamber, stupa-tumulus, etc.); relic contents (bones, teeth, hair, etc.); and relic forms (stupas, column niches, etc.). This schema guided automatic extraction and validation.
Using the GPT-5.1-mini API (temperature 0.1), we extracted entity-linked data on Buddhist funerary forms, relic contents and forms, and spatial-temporal metadata. Names were normalized to Dharma titles, and places aligned to modern Chinese provinces with the China Historical GIS (CHGIS 2016) to resolve ambiguity. Records were deduplicated by matching tuples of name, place, period, and type. Expert sampling (20%) and iterative prompt refinement reduced the error rate below 2%, yielding 179 verified funerary and 85 relic records.
Cleaned data were mapped on a Chinese mainland map with GeoPandas to generate (1) a spatial-temporal bubble map of funeral practice and relic veneration density, (2) spatial-temporal scatter maps of funeral types, relic content types, and relic form types, for quantitative analysis of Buddhist mortuary patterns within their historical context. For comparability across dynasties, the map includes only provinces with stable source coverage and broadly consistent imperial boundaries (5th–10th c.).
Our findings highlight two dominant patterns, the temporal concentration and core–periphery spatial structure, together with an evolving typology of burial forms.
Figure 1. Spatial distribution of Buddhist funerary practices (blue) and relic veneration (green) across six historical periods in China, shown as proportional bubbles by province.
Figure 1 shows that Buddhist funerary and relic activities reached their highest density during the Sui and Tang—the peak of Buddhist material culture. In the Wei–Jin and Northern–Southern Dynasties, funerary practices appeared across provinces but remained scattered, while relic veneration was rare. During the Sui, both practices expanded nationwide, with Shaanxi as the principal center, marking Buddhism’s alliance with imperial power. In the Tang, new clusters in Shanxi, Henan, and Zhejiang reflected its empire-wide diffusion. Even amid the divided Five Dynasties, these rituals persisted and spread southward, showing remarkable resilience.
Figure 2. Types of burial forms across six periods in China.
Funerary and relic activities were tightly coupled and centered in northern China. Shaanxi (Chang’an) formed the absolute core, Henan (Luoyang) a secondary hub, and Zhejiang the main southern center. In the Sui–Tang, more than half of all recorded sites lay in Shaanxi, underscoring Chang’an’s dual role as political and religious capital. As Figures 2–3 show, funerary stupas, relic towers, and niches clustered in this region, reflecting imperial and elite patronage. Henan also exhibited dense activity, while Zhejiang became the leading southern locus. Despite Buddhist restrictions in the Five Dynasties, Tiantai and early Chan traditions kept material practice alive in the South.
Figure 3. Types of relic contents across six periods in China.
Figure 4. Types of relic forms across six periods in China.
The evolution of burial forms illustrates Buddhism’s institutionalization and localization. In the Wei–Jin and Northern–Southern Dynasties, forest and stone-chamber interments from India remained dominant, while relic worship was limited. In the Sui–Tang, pagoda and earthen interments became prevalent, especially in Shaanxi and Henan under imperial and elite patronage. Relic contents (corporeal and bone) and forms (stupas and niches) proliferated (Figures 3–4), marking Buddhism’s shift to a state-endorsed religion. Northern provinces favored stone-chamber and cave burials, whereas southern regions adopted earthen ones suited to humid soils, reflecting environmental adaptation and local syncretism.
By integrating ontology-based modeling, LLM-assisted extraction, and GIS visualization, this study demonstrates how computational methods can reveal large-scale religious patterns previously inaccessible to quantitative analysis. The reconstructed spatio-temporal ecology of Buddhist funerary and relic practices clarifies how Buddhism transformed from a mobile missionary faith into an institution embedded in local systems.
The dataset centers on eminent monks, offering limited representation of lay practices. Aligning sites with modern provinces ensures consistency but reduces historical spatial precision. Future work will incorporate additional inscriptions, place names, and archaeological data, visualize them on historical maps, and develop interactive interfaces to support comparative research on religious institutionalization across traditions.