The Rites of Zhou and Ritual Fasting: Purifying Body and Mind Before Sacrifice

The term zhaijie, or “ritual fasting,” was originally tied closely to sacrificial ceremonies. Under Zhou dynasty ritual law, participants in any major sacrifice were required to observe several days of “concentrated fasting” and “dispersed fasting” beforehand — restraining their diet and daily conduct, abstaining from wine and meat, and avoiding sexual activity and loud commotion — so as to purify body and mind before facing the spirits and ancestors.

The Difference Between Zhai and Jie

Zhai emphasized inner discipline — gathering one's thoughts and quieting distraction — while jie emphasized outward restraint — abstaining from wine, meat, and sensory indulgence. Together, the two formed a dual discipline of body and spirit that echoes, however distantly, the later Buddhist logic of purity through precepts, even though the two belief systems could not be more different.

Influence on Later Generations

This system, rooted in religious sacrifice, gradually seeped into the scholar-official class's notions of everyday self-cultivation, and it later supplied a ready-made vocabulary for Buddhist fasting practices as they took root in China:

• Zhai evolved from sacrificial preparation into a byword for personal cultivation
• Abstention from meat shifted from an occasional act to a custom fixed to specific dates
• Specialized rules governed the spaces and implements used for fasting
• Scholars practiced “purifying the mind” through self-examination as a cultural stance

When we speak today of “eating vegetarian,” we are, in fact, using linguistic traces left behind by a ritual tradition three thousand years old — though its meaning has since been reshaped again and again by Buddhism and Daoism.