Yama and Moral Governance: The Sinicization of Buddhist Judgment in Chinese Religious Culture

Abstract

Yama, originally transmitted to China as a Buddhist deity presiding over postmortem judgment, underwent a profound transformation through sustained engagement with indigenous Chinese ethical, cosmological, and cultural traditions. Rather than a process of passive assimilation, this study conceptualizes the Sinicization of Yama as an active form of cultural translation, through which Buddhist moral authority was selectively reconfigured within familiar frameworks of Confucian ethics, Daoist cosmology, and vernacular religious imagination.

Drawing on historical texts, religious narratives, and popular cultural representations, this article demonstrates how Yama functioned as a symbolic mechanism of moral governance that extended ethical regulation beyond formal legal institutions and into everyday life. The bureaucratization of the underworld, the circulation of moral narratives, and the incorporation of indigenous sacred geographies collectively contributed to the legitimation and internalization of moral norms.

From a contemporary perspective, the continued re-signification of Yama in modern cultural forms complicates linear narratives of secularization. Even when detached from explicit religious belief, Yama persists as a symbolic resource for reflecting on moral responsibility, justice, and human agency. This study thus highlights the enduring social functions of religious symbolism within both historical and modern contexts of moral regulation.