CURRENT PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF CONFUCIAN CLASSICS (BASED ON THE TEXT OF LI JI)

Abstract

The article attempts to analyze the canonical Confucian treatise Li Ji from the philosophical and religious studies’ perspective. Utilizing the information contained in the text, this article reconstructs the content of the ancient Chinese rituals of the life cycle — initiation, marriage, funeral and mourning, all of which served to trace and formalize changes in a person’s social status, securing his transition to a new position. Structure, functions and symbolism of ancient Chinese transitional ceremonies generally correspond with the theory of rituals of passage developed by the French researcher A. van Gennep. The results of this work demonstrate that the treatise may in the future become the object of close attention of researchers from various scientific branches, analyzing the panhuman universals of spiritual development.