Ancestor Worship Ori Tavor University of Pennsylvania Edited by Chris Shei and Zhouxiang Lu Abstract Ancestor worship refers to rituals designed to commemorate and venerate the spirits of one’ s deceased forebears. While it is often associated with the Confucian notion of filial piety, ancestor worship crosses the boundaries of religious traditions, geographical regions, and socio-economic groups. Dating back to the Neolithic period, it is one of the oldest and most influential components of Chinese religious culture. Ancestral sacrifices are feature heavily in Shang Dynasty oracle bone inscriptions, the oldest existing Chinese textual records. These practices continued to flourish in early China and the worship of imperial ancestors was eventually incorporated into the official state religion. When the organised religions of Buddhism and Daoism began to spread, new forms of ancestor worship rituals, such as the Buddhist Ghost Festival and its Daoist equivalents, began to flourish. By the end of the Song Dynasty, following the Neo-Confucian reformation of domestic rituals, ancestor worship practices pervaded all echelons of Chinese society. Today, these are performed in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and among overseas communities in Southeast Asia and North America. These can be divided into several types: the worship of individua lineage ancestors, which entails the presentation of ritual offering to their tablets or images at the household altar, the collective veneration of ancestors, and most importantly the founder of the lineage, at the ancestral hall, and finally, communal rituals dedicated to the worship of the ancestors also take place at the grave on specific dates, such as the Qingming and Double Ninth Grave-sweeping festivals. Keywords: Confucianism; Daoism; Buddhism; Religion; Filial piety; Ritual; Sacrifice; Netherworld; Hell; Ghosts; Lineage DOI: 10.4324/9780367565152-RECHS10-1