Society

and the
Supernatural
in Song
China

Edward L. Davis
Society and the Supernatural in Song China
Society
and the Supernatural
in Song China

Edward L. Davis

U N I V ER S I T Y O F H AWA I ‘ I P R ES S
H O N O LU LU
 © 2001 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
01 02 03 04 05 06 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davis, Edward L.
Society and the supernatural in Song China/ Edward L. Davis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–8248–2310–9 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0–8248–2398–2
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. China—Religious life and customs. 2. China—History—
Sung Dynasty, 960–1279. I. Title.
BL1802 .D38 2001
299'.51—dc21 00–064893

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free

paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Council on Library Resources

Designed by Integrated Composition Systems

Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
 To my sea-strewn ‘ohana—
Mother and Dad,
John, Elizabeth, and Michael,
and Kazuyo,
who still squeals with delight.
Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
1. Introduction 1
2. Therapeutic Movements in the Song:
Texts 21
3. New Therapeutic Movements in the Song:
Practitioners 45
4. The Cult of the Black Killer 67
5. The Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 87
6. Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 115
7. Daoist Priests, Confucian Literati,
and Child-Mediums 153
8. Spirit-Possession and the Grateful Dead:
Daoist and Buddhist Mortuary Ritual in the Song 171
9. The Syncretic Field of Chinese Religion 200
Appendix: Huanglu jiao and Shuilu zhai 227
Notes 243
Glossary 313
Bibliography 329
Index 351
Acknowledgments

roger t. ames • poul andersen • coco anderson • beverly

bossler • philippe buc • gerard caspary • daniel cole •
patricia crosby • mei-lan frame • mark halperin • ihara
hiroshi • lionel jensen • david johnson • terry kleeman •
keith knapp • livia kohn • matsumoto k Oichi • john
lager wey • susan mann • joseph mcdermott • susan
naquin • richard nettell • peter nickerson • cyndy
ning • ir win scheiner • kristofer schipper • victoria
scott • lee siegel • michel strickmann • buzzy teiser •
tu wei-ming • tsao jr-lien • giovanni vitiello • frederic
wakeman • stephen west • yao da-juin • yue ming-bao.
with love and appreciation.
Abbreviations

HY Combined Indices to the Authors and Titles of Books in Two

Collections of Taoist Literature: Harvard-Yenching Institute
Sinological Index Series No. 25. Weng Tu-chieh, ed.
(Peking, 1925). Taipei: Ch’eng-wen reprint, 1966.
Stein Stein Collection of Tun-huang Manuscripts. British
Library, London.
T. Taisho shinshu daizokyo. Takakusu Jinjiro and Watanabe
Kaikyoku, eds. (Kyoto, 1905–1912). Tokyo: Daizokyokai,
1924–1935.
Z. Dai-Nihon Zokuzokyo. Kyoto: Zokyo shoin, 1905–1912.
 1
Introduction

his book takes its title seriously. Its overwhelming concern is the
T relation of Chinese society with the supernatural and with the ex-
perience of the supernatural as an aspect of social relations. More
specifically, it focuses on the experience of the supernatural in its most
palpable and dramatic form—the descent of gods, ghosts, or ances-
tors, and their habitation within a human body. It focuses, in other
words, on what we call “spirit-possession” and what Chinese writers
of the Song period (960–1276) denoted by the term “pingfu.” 1 I un-
derstand this experience both to be occasioned by a crisis in social
relations and to be in itself an occasion for a transformation of these
relations.
Spirit-possession is necessarily a social experience. It has been suc-
cinctly defined as a “trance of identification,” and this identification—
of the subject with a spirit—cannot be made except in the company of
others.2 Moreover, far from being a sign of the private anguish of men-
tal illness, spirit-possession was a means of avoiding it. Spirit-possession
was both a role assumed in public and a shared and universally recog-
nized idiom that allowed an individual person to convert emotion into
culture, and symptoms into symbols.3
In an article written several years ago, Piet van der Loon asked us
to examine and expose the “shamanic substrate” of all Chinese reli-
gions.4 Yet what is exposed by any such examination is the weakness
of “shamanism” as a description of either China’s indigenous religion
or the “substrate” of her religions. If there is a common basis of Chi-

1
2 Society and the Supernatural

nese religious practice, then that basis has more to do with forms of
trance associated with spirit-possession than with shamanism. More-
over, if spirit-possession—and particularly the possession trance of the
spirit-medium (wu)—has informed the religious practice of Daoist and
Buddhist priests, then the textual and ritual traditions of China’s two
organized religions have done just as much over the course of cen-
turies to transform the practices of her spirit-mediums. By the Song
dynasty, it becomes as difficult to talk about the “substrate” of Chi-
nese religion as it is to trace the “origin” of a particular religious prac-
tice, belief, or divinity.
Recent attempts to unearth the “shamanic substrate” of Chinese re-
ligion employ the term “shamanism” in such a loose way that it be-
comes almost meaningless, and therefore useless, as a category of his-
torical and cultural analysis. In a chapter on the shamanic substrate
of the Chinese Buddhist figure Mulian, Stephen Teiser relies on those
authorities who identify shamanism and spirit-possession as more or
less the same thing:

Some scholars have tried to make historical and typological distinctions

between two forms of mediumship, defining the first as mere “spirit-
possession” and the second as true “shamanism.” See, for example, Eli-
ade, Shamanism, pp. 58, 499–507. But this distinction does not appear
valid even for Central Asian spirit-mediumship, to which the distinction
was first applied. As Ioan M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, pp. 55–56, writes,
“the Tungus evidence makes nonsense of the assumption that shaman-
ism and spirit-possession are totally different phenomena, belonging
necessarily to two different cosmological systems and to separate stages
of historical development.”5

Yet the Tungus evidence makes nonsense of no such thing. The analy-
sis of the central funerary rituals of the Gold of Manchuria reveals that
the Tungus shaman is master of the spirits in his journey to the un-
derworld. He employs his auxiliary spirits as his guides, his servants,
his means of transportation, his interlocutors. He converses with them
and occasionally even imitates them, yet in all cases the subject of
trance —the shaman—coexists with the guardian spirits.6
Possession, in contrast, is a trance of identification in which the per-
sona of the divinity is substituted for, and does not coexist with, that
of the subject. The possessed subject does not converse with or imi-
tate the divinity; he (or she) is the divinity! Although it is true that
Introduction 3

shamanism and possession are both representations of trance behav-

ior, these representations, as Gilbert Rouget has demonstrated, oppose
and contradict each other at every point of comparison:

The difference between shamanism and possession trance thus seems

to rest on three factors: the former is a journey made by man to visit
the spirits, the latter is a visit by a spirit (or divinity) to the world of men;
in the former the trance subject gains control over the spirit embodied
within him, in the latter the reverse is true; and lastly, the former is a
voluntary trance whereas the latter is an involuntary one.7

It seems perverse to deny any typological distinctions between

shamanism and spirit-possession when such distinctions are so stark.
A strong case could be made, though I will not make it here, that such
distinctions do in fact correspond to, and indeed reflect, differing eco-
logical, sociological, and cosmological systems. To invoke “shamanism”
as the substrate of Chinese religion is nothing but a substitute for the
serious analysis of everything that is not Buddhism or Daoism, and is
not much better than the use of the term “animism” by nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century ethnographers. My point here is not to
deny that Central Asian shamanism had some influence on China’s
indigenous religion, but only to note that the search for it will go, for
the most part, unrewarded,8 whereas the evidence of spirit-possession
in middle-period China is overwhelming.
For the Song, the Yijian zhi, or Record of Hearsay, by Hong Mai
(1123–1202) includes close to two hundred descriptions of spirit-
possession. For purposes of analysis, these descriptions can be orga-
nized along the lines of ritualized and nonritualized possession. The
accounts of ritualized or religious possession can be further broken
down into three groups:

1. Cults of possession proper, exemplified above all by

village spirit-mediums who would become possessed
by an earth-spirit or other tutelary divinity (occasionally
these spirits might stray from the trees or stones in which
they were thought to lodge and, as incubi, possess women
who, if they were not cured, might become in turn re-
cruits for spirit-mediums);
2. Exorcisms by Daoist priests or Buddhist monks employ-
ing or directing one or more boys who would become
4 Society and the Supernatural

possessed by the spirit afflicting the patient or by a tute-

lary divinity of the exorcist; and
3. Rites for the dead during which relatives of the deceased
(wife, son, grandson) would become possessed by the
deceased and converse with the living.

Nonritualized possession includes all those cases where someone be-

comes harassed and ultimately possessed by a divinity or demon in the
context of family life. In these cases the subject is considered to be suf-
fering from an exogenously caused illness, and the family normally
calls in an exorcist who may be a spirit-medium, Daoist priest, or Bud-
dhist monk. The Yijian zhi is particularly rich in accounts of nonreli-
gious possession, and these accounts present an exceptional view of
family relations and private life in the Song.
The chapters of the present volume are organized around the ex-
egesis of cases of ritualized and nonritualized possession in the Song.
The point of this example of microhistory, however, is not simply to
understand spirit-possession and exorcism in their own right.9 Nor is
it simply to demonstrate how fundamental these phenomena were to
Chinese religion and society at a particular time. Rather, my aim is to
examine the religious interactions and social functions of the Daoist
priest, Buddhist monk, Ritual Master, and spirit-medium in local so-
ciety during the twelfth century, and to present a description of Song
religious life richer than any available to date. In so doing, I also hope
to say something significant about the major themes that have emerged
in the historiography of the culture and religion of the Song dynasty.
The remainder of this chapter is taken up with a discussion of these
themes.

Historians, Sinologists, and the Song Dynasty

For several years—perhaps for as long as I have been studying middle-
period China—I have been dissatisfied with current explanations for
the great transformation of Chinese culture that scholars believe to
have crystallized in the Song dynasty. In particular, I am uncomfort-
able with the view that the Song elite, not to mention the society
in general, can best be understood (a) from the perspective of what
Introduction 5

was to become in later centuries the dominant ideology—namely, Neo-

Confucianism, and (b) by focusing on those individuals who were par-
ticularly strong in articulating that ideology.
In its extreme form, such a view is often conceived negatively, in
terms of the decline of Buddhism and Daoism. According to this the-
sis, these intellectually moribund, socially ineffectual, and politically
irrelevant religions lost the allegiance of the Song elite to a new and
vibrant reformulation of the classical tradition; moreover, it was this
elite that would for all intents and purposes define, from the Song on,
the social, cultural, and political direction of Chinese society. Thus it
was the Confucian, whether in office or out, who would be the repos-
itory of value in this society and—if one follows the implications of
some recent interpretations—the embodiment of the sacred or holy
as well. Scholars may disagree as to when this became a reality, but all
appear to subscribe to its inevitability. The decline of Buddhism and
Daoism and the success of Confucianism were, ostensibly, ensured in
the Song by (1) the examination system, which channeled the intel-
lectual talent of the empire into government service by means of a
Confucian education; (2) the sale of monk and priest certificates of
ordination and the (consequent) moral decline of monastic or cleri-
cal integrity, offices, and institutions; (3) the intellectual assault on
Buddhism and Daoism by Neo-Confucians; and (4) a new syncretic
tendency, primarily defensive and apologetic, that diluted the intel-
lectual substance and power of those religions and confirmed the fact
that their philosophical vibrancy had peaked long before.
For almost forty years, this view has both informed the historiog-
raphy of Song China and to a great extent determined historical in-
quiry. It is still evident in some of the recent and best work of Song
historians and is proverbial wisdom in almost any textbook of pre-
modern Chinese history. The thesis owes its remarkable vitality to many
factors, only a few of which I mention here: first, an abiding, essen-
tialist, and largely nonrational conviction that Chinese civilization and
culture are synonymous with something called “Confucianism”; sec-
ond, a tendency to define religion as a matter of individual belief rather
than as a community of behavior; and third, a complete failure to con-
sider the enormous evidence preserved in the Daoist and Buddhist
canons and in the miscellaneous writings of Song literati.
There is, however, another approach, that takes a noticeably hos-
6 Society and the Supernatural

tile attitude to the victors of the first (the Neo-Confucians) but that,
paradoxically, concludes by leaving their victory fully intact. This is the
approach of European sinology, which has had the difficult task of
helping us grasp more easily the complexity of China’s arcane religious
traditions. Despite, or perhaps because of, these sinologists’ very suc-
cess, their understanding of these traditions is often narrowly textual—
an “unfolding” of (to borrow a word from their adversaries) or, at best,
an endless dialogue with, an equally unexamined construct known as
China’s “shamanic substrate.”
In its extreme form, the sinological view sees the patronage or hos-
tility of the state as the only mechanism for change in China’s un-
broken religious traditions. Thus it posits a fateful split between the
bureaucratic class of early imperial China and Chinese religions,10 a
parting of the ways that was exacerbated by an unholy alliance between
Confucianism and Christianity. In the name of Confucius, “the Philoso-
pher of the Chinese,” the Jesuits of the sixteenth century denied the
religious reality of the state cults and decried the religious validity of
Daoism as an “aberrant belief” (mixin).11 In the meantime, the bu-
reaucratic class, reeling from the fall of the Ming, which it blamed on
sectarian revolt (i.e., religious fervor), took refuge in “Han Studies,”
which, among other things, sought to excise Daoist books from the
imperial library; to force the abandonment of the Daoist canon,
which had until then been a necessary confluence of imperial pa-
tronage and literati involvement; and generally to deny the Chinese
their entire religious patrimony.12
Those historians today who ignore the Daoist and Buddhist canons
are, in more ways than one, the heirs of this grand repression. In the
nineteenth century, Confucians and Christians ultimately joined hands
to defeat the Taipings, who, in the name of the Christian God, did the
work of the bureaucratic class by laying waste to hundreds of Daoist
temples. This Confucian-Christian iconoclasm continued among the
Reformers of 1895, Christian warlords in the South, and proponents
of the New Life movement in the Republican period. The Cultural
Revolution was merely the final blow: “Ce qui, au XVIe siècle, n’était
qu’un vœu pieux a fini par se réaliser: la religion chinoise, comme
notre religion antique, a pour ainsi dire cessé d’exister, et le monde
n’en a rien su.” 13
In statements like these, the sinologist sees himself as the guardian
and caretaker of Chinese culture, which has been in decline since the
Introduction 7

end of the Ming. Like the historians of Confucianism, moreover, he

claims, quite explicitly, to represent the “real China.” Over and against
“le pays officiel”—the state and its Confucianism—he places “le pays
réel”: “la religion” and, more specifically, “the unique, local structures
which express themselves in regional cults and nonofficial religion”
(i.e., Daoism).14 And like the Confucian historian again, the sinolo-
gist may find in his real China some of his most cherished Western val-
ues: autonomy, liberty, even science and democracy.15
Instead, I would like to suggest that we abandon the linear and tele-
ological view of the Tang-Song cultural transition as a succession of
metaphysical systems and as a way station in the Confucian elite’s
march to social and moral preeminence in the Ming and Qing dy-
nasties. We should not immediately replace this thesis with another,
equally comprehensive one, but with a tension in which the categories
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism find themselves in a very dif-
ferent configuration.
I characterize this tension as a tension among three groups placed
along a vertical axis. At the top we find a group broadly defined to in-
clude the emperor, the court, and the bureaucratic and religious hi-
erarchies (civil and military officials and their families, Daoist priests,
and Buddhist monks); at the bottom are village spirit-mediums and
Buddhist acolytes, local landowners (large and small), tenants and ser-
vants, and sub-bureaucratic servicemen and functionaries. In the mid-
dle I place a new and expanding group of lay Daoist exorcists called
“Ritual Masters” ( fashi), Esoteric Buddhist monks, doctors, ritual ex-
perts and religious specialists (shushi, xiangshi, daoren, etc.), and those
who passed one or more of the examinations but were without official
posts (shiren). At times the tension between the three hierarchically
arranged groups can and will be drawn along urban and rural lines,
at other times along the lines of state and local society, or along those
of written and martial culture. However we characterize the tension
among the groups for purposes of analysis (more on this shortly), the
three groups themselves are best conceived of as overlapping or em-
bedded sets, and there are many circumstances in which a member of
one group may become a member of another.
The point of this scheme is not an exhaustive or even accurate rep-
resentation of hierarchies of status or class in Chinese society of the
Song period. Rather, the point is to avoid both the inevitable contra-
dictions that arise from the analysis of Chinese culture and society in
8 Society and the Supernatural

terms of the categories of the “Three Teachings” (Confucianism, Bud-

dhism, and Daoism) and all prejudicial statements that assume, rather
than demonstrate, a necessary relationship between a particular cul-
tural category (e.g., Confucianism), and a particular social category
(e.g., officialdom). To take just one example, bureaucratic officials and
Daoist priests belonged to the same social milieu in the Song. To be
a Daoist priest (daoshi) was, above all, to be a “literatus” (shi) trained
in the classical language and to hold an “office”—that is, to be an ad-
ministrator of the divine world who dealt with that world by bureau-
cratic procedure and endless paperwork.16
This book focuses on relations between one particular cross section
of the three groups outlined above: Daoist priests (group 1), Daoist
Ritual Masters and Tantric exorcists (group 2), and spirit-mediums
(group 3). I have described the relations among the groups as a ten-
sion precisely because these relations were simultaneously symbiotic
and antagonistic. On the one hand, we will see the Daoist Ritual Mas-
ter as an officiant of village spirit-mediums, but also as a traveling ex-
orcist serving an elite, urban clientele; we will see officials as lay ex-
orcists and Daoist exorcists as clerical officials; and we will see increasing
ritual exchange, interaction, and accommodation among priests, ex-
orcists (both Daoist and Buddhist), and spirit-mediums. On the other
hand, we will find a fierce and protracted conflict with magistrates and
“official” and “clerical” exorcists on one side and spirit-mediums and
local society on the other. This conflict, which is explored in Chapter
3, is the more obvious theme, and the one that presents itself more
easily to historians. Symbiosis is, however, the more difficult and im-
portant theme, and deserves not only more attention but a consider-
ably greater degree of analytical subtlety and imagination.
Symbiosis and antagonism are prominent themes in the historiog-
raphy and ethnography of Daoism. They may be seen, in fact, to emerge
out of two quite distinct views of the nature of Daoism and of its rela-
tion to “popular religion.” One of these views I associate with the work
of Michel Strickmann; the other, with that of Kristofer Schipper.
Strickmann’s rather consistent views on the nature, origin, and func-
tion of Daoism are found throughout his wide-ranging work. They have
never been so forcefully argued, however, as in his unpublished study,
“Magical Medicine: Therapeutic Rituals in Medieval China.” Here
Strickmann maintains that “Daoists ancient and modern all agree that
the basic raison-d’être of Daoism was to supplant the local cults with
Introduction 9

which China teemed: to replace ‘shamanism,’ ‘spirit-possession,’ ‘ec-

static religion.’ Whichever of these terms one chooses, such rites were
the long-established means of responding to disease, disaster and the
shadowy world of the spirits.”17 These rites attempted to “coax or ca-
jole” the gods by “wild music,” “lascivious dancing,” and “copious
sacrifices.” They were the established pattern of curative ritual in an-
cient China, a pattern to which the Daoists hoped to put a definitive
end. “The first step in the Daoist program . . . was to unmask the so-
called ‘gods’ worshipped by the people,” to show that these gods were
not gods at all but spirits of the dead—ghosts or demons—which in
fact caused the diseases they were meant to cure or which brought
upon their votaries delirium, madness, and premature death. In
Strickmann’s reading, what the Daoists sought to rectify was not sim-
ply the rites and sacrifices of popular religion but, more fundamen-
tally, a kind of false consciousness. He concludes:
From all this it is clear that Daoism really amounted to a religious re-
formation in the China of Late Antiquity. Here the standard histories
of China, which have neglected Daoist primary sources, have got it quite
wrong. The chief rival of early Daoism was not Buddhism, and not even
the so-called “Confucian” State. Rather, it was the despised and ne-
glected “nameless religion” of the people, the scores of local deities and
the hundreds of practitioners who invoked and embodied them. For
Daoists, the distinction between their own faith and these cults was and
remains quite simply a matter of life against death: the celestial Dao
against the ill-omened, unhallowed dead and everything connected with
them.18

Kristofer Schipper appears to accept Strickmann’s formulation of

the problem, while finding the essence of Daoism somewhere else
entirely:
Daoism always situates itself in relation to Chinese popular religion and
not in opposition to Buddhism or Confucianism. The antagonism is sys-
tematic. Daoism denounces popular cults and shamanism with an in-
sistence that in the end appears suspect. Doesn’t this need to separate
itself betray a fundamental ambivalence? Doesn’t it translate the likely
confusion of two aspects [of Chinese religion] only seemingly contra-
dictory? Even before Daoism had become, by assimilation of local cults,
the religion of townspeople in the Song period, the distance that sep-
arated the two had already been breached. The revelations of Highest
Purity Daoism, among other examples, recognized as their patron
10 Society and the Supernatural

saints the Mao brothers, local divinities in the region of Danyang, and
put into practice a form of mediumism that while difficult to identify
precisely, seems very close to vernacular shamanism. The actual situa-
tion of Daoism confirms this rapprochement. Often on the occasion of com-
munity festivals, two forms of rituals unfold simultaneously: that of the
Daoist priest in a sacred space inside the temple, and that of the magi-
cal Masters, fashi, who practice outside the temple in public. The ritual
of the daoshi is in the classical language; that of the fashi in the vernac-
ular. An entire range of complementary oppositions differentiate the
Daoist black-hats from the shamanistic red-hats, but the links between
them are numerous.19

This was written in 1983. Since then Schipper has elaborated on the
complementary oppositions differentiating the black-head from red-
head priests, and on the rapprochement between Daoism and popu-
lar cults.20 In his strongest formulation to date, Schipper has defined
Daoism as “the written tradition of Chinese indigenous cults.”21 To
him, Daoism was never “a religion that became institutionally defined
by attaining autonomy from its social background of local cults.” 22 It
was and is, rather, the “specific and articulated expression of Chinese
religion, of its shehui or ‘assembly of the Earth God.’”23
There is a great deal to unpack in such statements. Here I want only
to point out that the conclusions of Strickmann and Schipper appear
to offer two contradictory assessments of the nature of Daoism. Where
Strickmann sees Daoism as a kind of new dispensation that sought to
permanently replace the old, eradicating its shamans and local cults,
Schipper sees Daoism as a sublimation of shamanism and as a struc-
turing expression of its cults.
Strickmann’s view, it seems to me, is deeply colored by the apoca-
lypticism of the late fourth- and fifth-century texts with which he
worked. Little consideration is given to the rhetorical nature of these
texts. The Manichaean struggle that imbues the Luxiansheng daomen
kelüe —one of Strickmann’s foundational texts—embodied a precise
rhetorical strategy to win the favor of an emperor who had good rea-
son to be suspicious of Daoism, having just defeated the Celestial Mas-
ter-inspired rebellion of Sun En. This text, therefore, seeks not only
to distance Daoism from popular religion in the strongest terms but
also to distance it from the actual state of affairs and contemporary
practice of Celestial Master Daoism itself.24 Who is to say that the ac-
tual state of affairs of Daoism should not be as much a part of what
Introduction 11

Daoism was or is as the highly pressured definition given by those who

sought to reform it? Perhaps, as Schipper surmises, the insistence with
which Daoism denounces popular cults is suspect and betrays a fun-
damental uneasiness about its origins.
Schipper’s view, in contrast, is deeply colored by years of fieldwork
on the actual state of contemporary Daoism and on how Daoism fits
in with “Chinese religion in its entirety.” When Schipper talks about
what Daoism is, he is often talking about what Daoism has become,
and he occasionally describes what Daoism was in terms of what it is,
or identifies “the enduring aspects of Daoism” as the most salient ones
historically. Moreover, when Schipper speaks about the rapproche-
ment and complementarity of the daoshi and the fashi, this is not
exactly analogous to Strickmann’s contrast between Daoists and “pos-
sessed mediums.” To refer to red-head priests as “têtes-rouges chaman-
istes” is either a sleight-of-hand or requires a lengthy historical
explanation. Schipper admits elsewhere that when one talks about
daoshi and fashi, one is talking about two traditions within Daoism.25
In any case, the rapprochement and complementarity that charac-
terize the modern-day relationship between these two figures took a
millennium to work out.
If immersion in the texts of Six Dynasties Daoism and prolonged
observation of Daoist priests in contemporary Chinese society produce
very different notions of Daoism’s nature and function, both these
views capture an essential truth about Daoism’s historical development
and its relation to its rival—what Strickmann (following A. R. Stein)
refers to as “the nameless religion” and what Schipper (following Piet
van der Loon) refers to as “le sustrat shamanique.” Daoism’s antago-
nistic and symbiotic relationship to its rival is particularly evident dur-
ing the Song dynasty, a period that is, not coincidentally, exactly at the
midpoint of Strickmann’s and Schipper’s respective periods of ex-
pertise. The Song was a time when Daoism still aspired to define im-
perial ideology, still managed to capture the attention of large por-
tions of the official and literati class, and still served as a marker of
social distance as great as any Confucian paideia. Yet the Song was also
a time when, as Schipper remarked above, Daoism became, by assim-
ilation of local cults, the religion of the townspeople. It is, in fact, the
assimilation of local cults by Daoism that produced the Daoist Ritual
Master ( fashi, or red-head priest) who, I will argue, mediated between
Daoism and the possessed mediums of local cults and village religion.
12 Society and the Supernatural

The Chinese of the Song period were the beneficiaries of a major

shift in the center of gravity of their religious institutions, especially
of the she, or biannual religious celebrations held at the altar of the
earth-spirit. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the nature of the
she would shift away from a spring and autumn festival dedicated to
various nature or agricultural spirits—a festival exclusive in member-
ship, dominated by a few local families, and overlaid first with Bud-
dhist (sixth-eighth centuries) and then with Confucian (ninth-tenth
centuries) activities. The center of gravity moved to a basically urban
festival dedicated to one of hundreds of new anthropomorphic or hu-
man deities on the god’s “birthday”—a festival open in membership,
paid for by solicited contributions, dominated by those who could af-
ford the most, and accompanied by processions, theatrical perfor-
mances, and especially by large-scale Daoist or Buddhist liturgies of
renewal and exorcism.26
To participate in these new celebrations, generally called “shehui,”
the surrounding towns and villages would bring their own gods (and
their spirit-mediums) to serve as subordinate deities (and as subordi-
nate priests) in the rituals. In the urban shehui, members of the urban
elite (both official and mercantile), together with the clerical elite
(Daoist or Buddhist priests), were confirmed in their power in the city
and in their control over the hinterland. It is in the urban shehui that
we can locate the structural context for the symbiosis or rapproche-
ment among Daoist priests, Ritual Masters, and spirit-mediums. The
participation of the smaller towns and villages of the hinterland in
these urban celebrations established a natural hierarchy in which all
these practitioners could be seen to be working together, in succes-
sion or simultaneously, inside and outside the temple. This hierarchy
was reproduced throughout those areas, particularly in the South,
where cities, market towns, and villages were tied together by com-
mercial exchange, and it continues to define the relations among
Daoist priests, red-head priests, and tangki (spirit-mediums) on Taiwan
and elsewhere today.
The emergence of the urban shehui after the tenth century did not
mean the disappearance of the rural she. In the landlocked and moun-
tainous villages, newly opened up by an expanding population and ad-
venturous landlords, a particularly archaic name —“congci”—came to
designate the altar of the earth-spirit. Here unpredictable and highly
sexed spirits were worshipped—the “Spirits of the Five Penetrations”
Introduction 13

(wutong shen) and their ilk, akin to the nats of Burma and the jinn of
Islamic Morocco. These spirits were invariably embodied by a spirit-
medium who, as we shall see, was defended by the villagers against all
attempts from inside or outside the village to encroach upon his or
her autonomy.
By the twelfth century, the contradiction between what I see as the
centripetal forces of commercialization and urbanization (forces rep-
resented in the urban shehui) and the centrifugal forces of demo-
graphic and geographic expansion (forces represented in the prolif-
eration of rural she) gave new intensity to the old conflict between
Daoism and local cults. The Spirits of the Five Penetrations and simi-
lar deities of natural villages became the particular bêtes noires of
Daoist priests and Daoist Ritual Masters. These “gods” head the list of
any Daoist demonology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, while
the Daoist ritual texts are replete with methods for destroying their al-
tars and the “black magic” of their spirit-mediums. Whereas the vil-
lagers thought that these gods brought them life and prosperity, the
Daoist knew that they brought only disease, madness, and an early
death. In exorcisms the Daoist priest attempted to impose this inter-
pretation on his clients. This interpretation was shared by the official
and literati class, and many members of this class linked hands tightly
with Daoism and Daoist exorcists in the attempt to eradicate these
“demons.” I should add parenthetically, however, that even these gods
of the village she felt the gravitational pull of the urban shehui. In the
twelfth century, in some areas, the Spirits of the Five Penetrations were
reinterpreted so as to better fit the theological expectations of Daoists,
officials, and the rest of the literati. Safely transformed or redefined,
these gods garnered their own urban temples and shehui.

Themes of the Book

All this may be said to constitute the structural backdrop for the themes
of symbiosis and antagonism, of ritual convergence and social conflict,
that pervade the chapters of this book. Chapter 2 examines a sig-
nificant body of textual material in the Daoist canon, numbering in
the thousands of pages, that is attributable to scores of Daoist lineages
that were active in South China during the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies. The concern of these lineages was overwhelmingly therapeu-
tic and exorcistic. In addition to a historical and textual study of the
14 Society and the Supernatural

Rites of the Celestial Heart, the Rites of the Five Thunder Gods, and
other ritual complexes identified with the new lineages of the twelfth
century, this chapter analyzes how these lineages represented a signifi-
cant break with the orthodox and classical lineages of Daoism and with
older, dominant Daoist notions of religious community, sin, and heal-
ing. Each of these lineages was defined by a particular method or rite
( fa), and their practitioners were addressed as Ritual Masters ( fashi)
or Ritual Officers ( faguan).
These Ritual Masters are examined in Chapter 3. The twelfth-cen-
tury Ritual Master was a lay (nonclerical) or clerical exorcist who me-
diated between the Daoist priesthood on the one hand and village
spirit-mediums on the other. Chapter 3 examines the Ritual Master’s
mediating function in terms of the nature of his recruitment, ritual
practice, divine pantheon, and working relationship with priests and
spirit-mediums. Thus it demonstrates that the Ritual Master was a prod-
uct of the great historical confrontation between Daoism and local
cults, and that he represented a new vernacular culture that stood be-
tween the classical, literary culture of priests and officials and the
largely martial culture of village spirit-mediums and their cults. This
chapter also demonstrates the popularity of the new Daoist lineages
among the Song bureaucratic elite. The Rites of the Celestial Heart,
the Rites of the Five Thunder Gods, and so forth found fervent devo-
tees among officials and their sons, some of whom actually practiced
these exorcistic rituals in the course of their official duties. The Daoist
Ritual Master and the Song magistrate linked hands in the twelfth cen-
tury not only in curing their patients and subjects of demonic obses-
sions but in ridding them of their demonic cults as well, particularly
the cults and temples of local spirit-mediums. The confrontation be-
tween Daoist and “official” exorcists and local cults was a unique
episode in a more global strategy to suppress spirit-mediums by the
representatives of the Song state. This chapter concludes by taking up
the strategies and local alliances that permitted the spirit-medium to
contend with the pressures of external control, and by considering the
elements in the relation between the state and religion that actually
mitigated and counteracted the state’s repressive policies. One of the
many elements working against a European-style inquisition was the
fact that the Daoist exorcist had entered into a profound and lasting
ritual relationship with the spirit-medium himself.
Chapter 4 looks at the cult to the Black Killer, a god who was hon-
Introduction 15

ored by the first Song emperors as a guardian of the dynasty and as a

guarantor of its possession of the “Mandate of Heaven.” In the twelfth
century this fierce martial deity would become one of the central
divinities of the new therapeutic lineages of Daoism, yet its tenth-
century priest already reveals all the characteristics of the twelfth-
century Ritual Master.
Chapters 5, 6, and 7 examine the exorcist at work in local society.
Chapter 5 analyzes the most characteristic therapeutic ritual of the
Daoist exorcist, the Rite of Summoning for Investigation, and demon-
strates that this rite was not an exorcism at all but a ritual of spirit-
possession in which the demon afflicting the patient was encouraged
to possess either the patient himself or a young male surrogate acting
as a spirit-medium. These rites are shown to have been particularly
compelling because of how they intersected two other institutions in
the Song—the judicial trial and the theater.
In Chapters 6 and 7, the focus shifts to Buddhism and to a complex
of esoteric therapeutic rituals performed by a class of monks who were
in many ways counterparts of the Daoist Ritual Master. These Tantric
rituals, like the Daoist ones, involved the possession of a child-medium.
In fact, even the Daoist priest and the lowly spirit-medium were per-
forming similar rites, and it is the purpose of a long analysis here to
demonstrate that not only the rites but the devotional cults of the four
major figures in the Song religious landscape —the Daoist priest, Rit-
ual Master, Buddhist monk, and village spirit-medium—were all con-
verging in the twelfth century.
Chapter 8 takes up Daoist and Buddhist funerary rituals that be-
came in the Song, contrary to much scholarly opinion, a necessary
staple of filial expression for the bureaucratic elite. This chapter of-
fers a detailed analysis of the historical development of the Daoist Re-
treat of the Yellow Register and the Buddhist Retreat of Water and
Land. It demonstrates that the structure and purpose of these Daoist
and Buddhist mortuary rituals were converging in the Song. The cen-
tral event of these rites, moreover, turns out to have been the posses-
sion of a child-medium (in these cases often a son or grandson of the
deceased who transmitted the words of his dead relative or family mem-
ber). I see in these rituals (1) a co-optation of the traditional ances-
tor seance of the spirit-medium by the Daoist and Buddhist priesthood;
(2) a reinterpretation of archaic Chinese funerary rites that employed
someone known as the “corpse-representative”; and, most impor-
16 Society and the Supernatural

tantly, (3) a structural convergence with the Rites of Summoning for

Investigation. Rituals for the dead were, in fact, exorcisms. In a final
example of convergence, these Buddhist and Daoist rites for the dead
also came to be performed at the conclusion of the previously exam-
ined therapeutic rituals, as a way of satisfying an ancestral spirit who
had afflicted a descendant.
Chapter 9 offers an outline of the “syncretic field” of Chinese reli-
gions and locates the practitioners and practices within this field.

Methodological Issues
The major methodological innovation of this work lies in its juxtapo-
sition of religious texts (the ritual literature of the Daoist and Bud-
dhist canons) with the miscellaneous writings of Song literati, espe-
cially Hong Mai’s Yijian zhi.27 A second generation of post-war Daoist
scholars is turning increasingly to the texts of Tang and Song Daoism,
and thanks to their efforts we are now able to locate many of these
texts within a precise matrix of time and space.28 To this matrix I hope
to add a deeper sense of social milieu. My own approach to these texts
takes very seriously some of the comments made by John Lagerwey in
a review of the principal categories of Daoist ritual texts—namely, those
that concern the “offering” ( jiao), “merit” (gongde), and “methods”
( fa).29 Lagerwey’s remarks all emphasize in one way or another that
“a Daoist liturgical text is not a Daoist ritual.” He argues first that “all
liturgical material in public collections such as the Daozang (Daoist
canon)—whether imperially sponsored or privately compiled—are far-
ther removed from real performance than are the manuscript texts
in possession of hereditary priests.” Next, he insists that these mate-
rials “would be incomprehensible —and hence useless—if we could
not compare [them] with their living counterparts,” and finally, he pro-
vides numerous reasons why “the gap between texts and performances
is even greater in the case of Daoist ritual than that of Chinese opera,”
and therefore can only loosely be compared to a theatrical script.30
The gap is particularly formidable in the case of the “method” texts
(those devoted to small-scale rituals to solve specific problems, such
as exorcisms) that are the principal texts used in my study. According
to Lagerwey, the method texts are the most laconic with respect to the
rituals to which they refer, and vary not only from region to region
but from priest to priest.31
Introduction 17

Given the fact that this work focuses on a period in the remote past
for which we cannot roam the countryside collecting manuscripts or
observing ritual performances, are our efforts to use or understand
the ritual texts of the Daoist canon condemned to futility? Fortunately,
I believe, the close reading and the creative use of the literary anec-
dotes that make up Hong Mai’s Yijian zhi can bring us as close to his-
torical fieldwork as we will ever get in using a text of pre-modern China.
The Yijian zhi is not a scientific, Western-style ethnology. It is, however,
unique in the genre of “miscellaneous notes” for its overwhelming con-
cern with the ritual practices and religious expectations of both the
lower and upper strata of Chinese society. This concern represents nei-
ther the eccentric tastes of the author nor the timeworn obsession of
literati with the strange and extraordinary. If one isolates only those
anecdotes in the Yijian zhi that concern Hong Mai’s family, we find
that its members included lay initiates in Daoist mysteries, apprentices
to spirit-mediums, guardians of Daoist texts, demoniacs, habitual em-
ployers of Daoist and Buddhist exorcists, and devotees of Daoist and
Buddhist divinities. Although this family boasted numerous high-de-
gree holders, officials, and erudite classicists, its feet were firmly
planted in the rich soil of China’s religious traditions. Such easy com-
merce between Song literati and China’s religious patrimony was, I
believe, more typical and revealing of Song culture than the defend-
ers of an exclusivist Neo-Confucianism are wont to admit.
Although we find useful discussions about—and occasional in-
sights into—the nature and compilation of Hong Mai’s massive work,
attempts to characterize it as a whole have been less than satisfactory.
To state, for example, that “the simple, sometimes monotonous, struc-
ture of the tales and their frequent repetition of the same themes tes-
tify persuasively to their origin as folktales”32 seems to me an utterly
fallacious inference; to accept that “by identifying his informants, Hong
Mai places himself squarely in the zhiguai [‘strange tale’] tradition” 33
may blind us to serious and substantive differences; to quip that the
Yijian zhi was “the ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not’ of the late twelfth cen-
tury”34 only trivializes a very complex work.
Given a rigorous definition of the folktale, I believe that very few
of the anecdotes in the Yijian zhi can be said to so derive. The anec-
dotes of the Yijian zhi range from hagiography to high-placed gossip,
from reportage to the generic reconfiguration of the events related,
from outside to inside styles of narration. The distinction between out-
18 Society and the Supernatural

side and inside styles of narration—between what G. Genette calls “het-

erodiegesis” and “homodiegesis,” respectively 35—is a distinction be-
tween narrative postures. It has been elaborated on by John Winkler.36
In heterodiegesis, the narrator is outside the story; he or she is a pur-
veyor of fiction, a sheer storyteller. Not many of the anecdotes of the
Yijian zhi are heterodiegetic. In homodiegesis, the narrator does not
tell a story but tells what happened and belongs to the same world as
the characters, whatever part he or she played or did not play in the
events. In homodiegesis, there are degrees of insidedness. The nar-
rator may claim to know something directly because he or she was there
at the events (intradiegesis), or he or she may know something from
others who were there (extradiegesis).
In the Yijian zhi the degrees of insidedness are even more attenu-
ated and refined. Extradiegetically, Hong Mai may also know some-
thing from a colleague, kinsman, friend, or neighbor of someone who
was there, or he may know something because he read a private ac-
count of someone who was there —a diary, perhaps, or commemora-
tive poem. One distinction between the “strange tale” (zhiguai) tradi-
tion and the Yijian zhi is that in the former homodiegetic techniques
(“I saw this,” “I heard this from . . .”) serve the largely heterodiegetic
end of sheer storytelling, whereas in the latter the homodiegetic aim
of telling what happened is, on occasion, shaped by heterodiegetic
forms.
Any attempt to say something significant about the character of the
Yijian zhi as a whole emerges only from a sustained analysis of its in-
dividual anecdotes and from the strength of the interpretive use to
which that analysis is put. This book focuses on a well-defined group
of homodiegetic narratives that concern spirit-possession and thera-
peutic ritual. In all cases we must be sensitive to those occasions when
Hong Mai’s reasons either for telling what happened or for declining
to name an informant or participant serve distinctly political or social
ends. We must also be sensitive to the weight of literary genre on a
particular attempt to tell what happened—the weight of the “demon
story,” say, on an account of an exorcistic ritual. This is by no means
easy to sort out because the structure of the “demon story” itself had
long been determined by the structure of exorcistic ritual.
Yet the evidentiary status of the Yijian zhi, its usefulness as a docu-
ment of social history, does not ultimately rest on our ability to distill
Introduction 19

the prejudicial or the generic from any given anecdote. The Yijian zhi
is primarily a record of subjective experiences, a document of private
life that contrasts with such public documents as historical biographies,
eulogies, and grave inscriptions, all of which mark out a lifetime in
terms of the objective symbols of bureaucratic and family advance-
ment. This still begs the question, however, because most of the anec-
dotes in the Yijian zhi do not record the subjective experiences of Hong
Mai or his family, but the experiences of others that were reported to
him or that he otherwise obtained. On what basis, then, can we trust
the factualness of the anecdotes in the Yijian zhi ?
In terms of the subject of this study—namely, the social history of
spirit-possession and exorcism in the twelfth century—we can begin
to establish trust by juxtaposing a carefully arranged sequence of anec-
dotes with a large body of canonical ritual texts that refer to exactly
the same events. Almost every anecdote I have selected records rit-
ual processes that can be confirmed down to the smallest detail by
independent sources. Even those elements that appear to us as quite
fantastic—elements that are often related to the representation of the
behavior of demons—become decidedly less so in light of the canon-
ical texts. For example, when demons are described in the anecdotes
as appearing as objective entities, this usually corresponds to the pre-
cise moments in the ritual texts when the demons are visualized by
the priest, and when demons are described as speaking, this corre-
sponds to the moments in the texts when they possess the patient.
Now, if the Yijian zhi, or at least the anecdotes from it that I employ,
are consistently correct about extremely esoteric matters of ritual,
should we not also take seriously their evidence about the setting of
these rituals—that is, the social relations of the priests, monks, and
other exorcists, and of the families who hired them? It is difficult, if
not impossible, to settle the question of factualness definitively. But in
addition to building up trust by comparing anecdotes and canonical
ritual texts, the anecdotes I have chosen appear to be believable based
on everything I know and can learn about Song society. For instance,
thanks to the work of social historians such as Patricia Ebrey and
Gudula Linck, we have learned that in the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies a woman’s legal, economic, and personal ties to her natal fam-
ily persisted long after marriage and with greater intensity than in ear-
lier or later dynasties. Can it therefore be an accident that the issue
20 Society and the Supernatural

raised over and over again in the cases of psychosomatic illness in the
Yijian zhi is precisely the trauma that women experienced when try-
ing to maintain these ties in the face of separation?
In this work, I have wherever possible translated rather than para-
phrased or simply referred to the anecdotes that are important for my
subject. I have done so for a very precise reason. In the paraphrase,
the historian tends to discard what seems superfluous (supplemental),
so that what is included serves the overarching, teleological narratives
of history and historiography. Paraphrase, in other words, tends to
close off interpretation and fails to release what Joel Fineman finds to
be the unique potential of the anecdote to “effect the real” and to pro-
vide “an opening to history.”37
 2
Therapeutic Movements
in the Song: Texts

he emergence in the twelfth century of a class of exorcists called

T “Ritual Masters” ( fashi ) coincides more or less with the appear-
ance of a large corpus of textual material, preserved in the Daoist
canon, that was the patrimony of a plethora of new Daoist lineages ac-
tive in South and particularly Southeast China during the twelfth, thir-
teenth, and fourteenth centuries. The overwhelming concern of these
lineages was therapeutic and exorcistic. Each specialized in a partic-
ular method ( fa), and their practitioners are addressed in the texts as
either “Ritual Master” or “Ritual Officer” ( faguan). The most impor-
tant of these new lineages, or at least the ones we encounter most fre-
quently in the twelfth century, were those that specialized in the “Rec-
tifying Rites of the Celestial Heart” (Tianxin zhengfa) and in the “Rites
of the Five Thunder [Gods]” (Wulei fa). Because we will refer to these
lineages over and over again, I first provide a summary but detailed
account of their histories.

The Rites of the Celestial Heart

Thanks largely to Poul Andersen, we now have a better understand-
ing of the “Rites of Tianxin” than of any other therapeutic movement
of the Song. Andersen’s meticulous analysis of the provenance and
transmission of the texts of the Tianxin zhengfa and its derivatives al-
lows us to outline the history of this movement with both confidence
and economy.1

21
22 Society and the Supernatural

Although this Daoist lineage would come to center in Jiangxi, the

putative and, I believe, probable patriarch of its rites was a tenth-cen-
tury Daoist priest from Quanzhou (Fujian) named Tan Zixiao. While
serving the fourth ruler of the state of Min in Fuzhou (Wang Chang,
r. 935–939), Tan was asked to interpret a set of talismans unearthed
by Chen Shouyuan, a politically influential spirit-medium at court.2
Based on his understanding of these talismans, Tan announced that
he had obtained the Rectifying Rites of Tianxin of Zhang Daoling, the
late Han founder of religious Daoism. Lu You (1125–1210) states in
his History of the Southern Tang that practitioners of the Tianxin zhengfa
in his time all considered Tan Zixiao to have been the founder of their
lineage.3 Although we have no idea about the nature of these talismans,
what would distinguish this Daoist lineage from others was, in fact, a
precise set of talismans, one of which embodied the divinity Heisha,
or the Black Killer, of whom Tan was a fervent devotee.4 Tan’s collab-
oration with a spirit-medium, moreover, is significant because spirit-
mediums would come to play an important role in the continuing rev-
elation of talismans to, and in the therapeutic rituals of, twelfth-century
practitioners of the Rites of Tianxin.5
After the fall of the state of Min in 944, Tan Zixiao fled to Lushan
in northern Jiangxi, where he acquired over a hundred students. One
of these was Rao Dongtian, a former minor official in Linchuan,
Jiangxi, who had retired to Mount Huagai in central Jiangxi.6 One
evening in 994, Rao was led by a heavenly light to a particular spot on
one of the summits of Huagaishan. There he discovered a bookcase
filled with the “Secret Formulas of Tianxin.” At the suggestion of a spir-
itual being, Rao apprenticed himself to Tan Zixiao, who initiated him
in the Rites of Tianxin. Tan also recommended that Rao seek further
counsel from the Lord of the Eastern Marchmount (Dongyue jun, i.e.,
the god of Taishan), who endowed him with an array of spirit-soldiers
(yinbing) as protection.7
The Rites of Tianxin passed from Rao Dongtian through four gen-
erations of masters to a man named Deng Yougong. Deng lived on or
around Mount Huagai during the latter half of the eleventh century.
He composed The Rectifying Rites of the Celestial Heart of Highest Purity
(Shangqing Tianxin zhengfa, HY 566). Based on internal evidence, Poul
Andersen argues that Deng’s preface to this work was written before
1075, but that the seven chapters of the canonical text are an expanded
mid-twelfth-century version of a work composed by Deng sometime
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 23

before 1100.8 Deng’s work lays out the fundamental talismans of the
therapeutic rituals of Tianxin. These include the Talisman of the Three
Luminosities (Sanguang fu), the Talisman of the Black Killer (Heisha
fu), the Talisman of the Guideline of Heaven (Tiangang fu),9 and nine
additional talismans, transmitted by Zhang Daoling, known collectively
as the “Spinal Numinous Writ” (Gusui lingwen).10 These talismans and
the exorcistic rituals that employed them were intended to embody
the power of the various divinities that I will discuss at length in con-
nection with the early Song Ritual Master Zhang Shouzhen—namely,
the Emperor of the North, who presides over the Department of Ex-
orcism, and his spiritual agents Tianpeng, Heisha, and Zhenwu,
among many others.11 An anonymous Southern Song work entitled
The Rectifying Rites of the Celestial Heart of the Northern Pole of Highest Pu-
rity (Shangqing beiji Tianxin zhengfa, HY 567) expands on the internal
meditations and circulation of pneumas involved in the writing of the
talismans.12
Sometime before 1116, Deng Yougong also edited a text that he at-
tributes to Rao Dongtian and identifies with “the secret writings” dis-
covered by Rao on Mount Huagai. This is entitled The Demon Code of
the “Spinal Numinous Writ” of Highest Purity (Shangqing Gusui lingwen
guilu, HY 461) and is based on five different versions that Deng him-
self collected from various Daoist abbeys in northern Jiangxi.13 The
text includes a set of regulations governing the behavior of demons
and spirits, which is the Demon Code itself; regulations for clerical ini-
tiation, called “Jade Models” (yuge); and lists of clerical titles and doc-
umentary forms under the rubric “Rituals and Formulas” (yishi ). Rao
Dongtian, having been an official himself, ostensibly based this code
on “the laws and regulations of secular administration.” 14 Deng men-
tions in his preface that similar but inadequate “Demon Codes” were
currently in the possession of lay (i.e., unordained) masters (sushi ).15
I will have more to say about these “lay masters” and their “Demon
Codes” later on.
About the time Deng was completing his edition of Rao’s Demon
Code, a man named Yuan Miaozong was performing exorcisms for the
people of Nanyang. In 1115, Yuan was summoned to the capital in
Kaifeng to take part in the compilation of texts for a new, printed edi-
tion of the Daoist canon. To redress what he saw to be a marked
deficiency in therapeutic texts, Yuan began work on The Secret Essen-
tials of the Totality of the Perfected, of [Lord Lao] the Most High, for Assist-
24 Society and the Supernatural

ing the Country and Saving the People (Taishang jiuguo jiumin zongzhen
biyao, HY 1217), which was submitted to the throne in 1116. The Secret
Essentials is the largest compendium of, and our principal source for,
the exorcistic rituals of Tianxin. Yuan traces the Tianxin tradition back
from Rao Dongtian and Tan Zixiao to Zhang Daoling. The relation of
the Tianxin zhengfa to the Orthodox Unity tradition begun by Zhang
is an issue I address later on. Because I refer to this text over and over
again, there is no need to review its contents here, except to point out
the overwhelming coherence between its talismans, seals, divinities,
and rituals and those of its textual antecedents.16

The Rites of the Five Thunder Gods

The history of Thunder Magic in the Song presents difficulties entirely
different from that of the Rites of Tianxin. First, the compilation of a
textual tradition was a somewhat belated event with respect to the prac-
tice of Thunder Magic. The relation of the early practitioners and what
they practiced to the textual tradition is problematic. Second, there
is no basic text or set of texts that can be granted priority—that is, from
which others derived or by which they were influenced in part. Thun-
der Magic was a kind of generic practice that could be and was
adopted by many Daoist lineages, including the one that practiced the
Rites of Tianxin. There were as many styles of Thunder Magic as there
were Daoist lineages. This, along with the sheer volume of textual ma-
terial, goes a long way toward explaining why few scholars have un-
dertaken its systematic study; when they have studied it at all, the re-
sults have often been confusing or unsatisfying.17
As a natural phenomenon, thunder had long been perceived as both
a beneficial and a harmful force, a welcome sign of rain and an un-
expected cause of fire. In accordance with this archaic perception,
Thunder Magic was simply a human attempt to ritually harness the
benevolent and destructive power of this spectacular cosmic mani-
festation in order to bring relief in times of drought and destroy
demons in the event of illness. The divinization of thunder was already
well established in classical times.18 By the Tang, the focus of the cult
had shifted to a Thunder God temple in Leizhou (Guangdong),19
which spawned many temples throughout the South.
Magicians who summoned thunder and lightning to various ends
appear in the sources as far back as the Han.20 Only one of these pre-
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 25

Song examples seems to be relevant with respect to the Daoist thun-

der rites of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Du Guangting’s Shen-
xian ganyu zhuan (HY 592) includes a biography of a late Tang native
of Xinzhou, Jiangxi, named Ye Qianshao.21 As a youth, the Lord of
Thunder (Leigong) appeared to Ye during a rainstorm, and on the
following day transmitted to him a single scroll that enabled its pos-
sessor to bring down thunder and rain and to cure sickness for the
benefit of mankind. The scroll actually contained rites for summon-
ing the five Thunder Gods, brothers of the Lord of Thunder himself
and obvious forerunners of the Prime Marshals of the Five Thunders
(Wulei yuanshuai) central to the Thunder Magic schools of the Song.
Evidently they were so violent that the Lord of Thunder warned Ye
that these divinities could not be summoned except in the most calami-
tous circumstances. Their violence would continue to present prob-
lems for devotees in the Song.22 Ye soon found an opportunity to
demonstrate their destructive power when he was arrested for drunken
rowdiness in the marketplace of Jizhou, Jiangxi, and taunted with in-
sults by the local prefect (taishou). After forcing this person to submit
ignominiously to a thunderous assault, Ye’s reputation carried him
throughout the towns south of the Yangzi ( Jiangzhe), writing and trans-
mitting talismans, exorcizing demons, and making rain. It is said that
Ye neither kept a vegetarian diet nor cultivated the Dao.
The career of Ye Qianshao is paradigmatic of the unmediated re-
lationship with a divinity, the peripatetic lifestyle, and the therapeu-
tic activities of the lay Daoist exorcist of the Song, whom we will ex-
amine shortly in great detail. Although we cannot yet speak here of
Daoist Thunder Magic as it evolved in the Song, a significant segment
of those who practiced the Rites of the Five Thunder Gods in the
twelfth century cannot be said to have practiced it with any more so-
phistication than Ye Qianshao and were quite ignorant of its theoret-
ical and ritual elaboration.
It is precisely this elaboration that came to define Daoist Thunder
Magic proper in the Song. The summoning of Thunder Gods to bring
rain and to exorcise demons came to be supported by a vast ethical,
cosmological, and ritual scaffolding.23 First, the destructive power of
thunder became ethicized. Long thought to be an expression of heav-
enly anger, particularly with respect to unfilial behavior,24 thunder be-
came, in its divinized and personified form, the executor of heavenly
punishment. And the Daoist practitioner who embodied and directed
26 Society and the Supernatural

its power on behalf of Heaven was, above all, an administrator of jus-

tice, upholding orthodox values against evil demons and the cults that
lay behind them. It was this function that would highly recommend
Thunder Magic to Song magistrates.
Second, thunder became bureaucratized and cosmologized. On the
one hand, the various schools of Thunder Magic created complex sys-
tems of imperial courts, departments, and prisons, infinitely tesserated
hierarchies of officials, spirit-generals and -soldiers, and mythic ge-
nealogies linking all these to the supreme divinities of the Daoist heav-
ens. On the other hand, thunder was transformed from a manifesta-
tion of nature into the controlling power of the cosmos itself, the pivot
of Heaven and Earth and the power of transformation behind the con-
tinuous alternation of yin and yang. The point of Thunder Magic, there-
fore, was to plug into this cosmic force and, as one text says, literally
to “hold the power of transformation in the palm of one’s hand.” To
do so, Daoists erected a vast ritual apparatus defined above all by the
complex meditations of internal or physiological alchemy (neidan). Us-
ing these meditations, which vary endlessly with respect to the school
and task, the practitioner learned to reproduce and store thunder
within his own body, to generate and summon the Thunder Gods, and
to create, vitalize, and project the talismans that embody their power.
Hung Mai’s Yijian zhi confirms the ubiquity of Daoist masters of the
Rites of the Five Thunder Gods throughout the twelfth century. The
person who is generally acknowledged to have made an early and for-
mative contribution to the development of the Daoist tradition is Lin
Lingsu (1076–1120). Lin was born to a poor family in the port city of
Wenzhou in southern Zhejiang. His remarkable career ultimately
brought him to Kaifeng as part of the emperor Huizong’s general call
for participation in the project of publishing a Daoist canon. Lin dis-
tinguished himself from others, first as the revealer and sponsor of a
new scriptural tradition identified with the gods of a heretofore un-
known part of the cosmos, the Divine Empyrean (Shenxiao), and sec-
ond as the inspiration for the emperor’s self-proclaimed incarnation
as the “Great Monarch of Everlasting Life” (Changsheng dadi), the
central divinity of this most sublime of Daoist heavens.25
The school spawned by Lin’s revelation passed from Zhang Ruhui
in the first generation to Chen Daoyi in the second, Lu Ye in the third,
and Liu Yu in the fourth. Liu Yu and his teacher, Lu Ye, were respon-
sible for compiling The Great Rites of the Divine Empyrean of the Golden
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 27

Flame Celestial Stalwart, in which the Thunder Gods are given a promi-
nent role.26 The history of Daoist thunder ritual and cosmology is, in
fact, inseparable from the texts inspired by Lin Lingsu’s revelation
of the Divine Empyrean. This is evident in such theoretical works as
The Jade Scripture of the Thunderclap,27 as well as in such large ritual
compendia as The Great Rites in Purple Script of the Most High Divine
Empyrean.28 Although Lin Lingsu is credited as both a master of Shen-
xiao and as a practitioner of Thunder Magic, his role in the process
of integrating the two traditions is far from certain.
According to Lin’s biography in The Comprehensive Mirror of Im-
mortals, when Lin was traveling in Shanxi as a young man, he en-
countered a holy man (daoren) later identified as Zhao Sheng, a dis-
ciple of Zhang Daoling.29 Zhao transmitted to him a three-volume,
nineteen-chapter work entitled The Jade Book of the Heavenly Altars of
the Divine Empyrean, which included spells and talismans for control-
ling thunder and lightning in order to exorcise demons and cure ill-
ness. Zhao subsequently conferred upon Lin the titles “Master of the
Teaching of the Divine Empyrean” and “Great Judicial Officer of the
Thunderclap.” The more contemporary but unflattering account of
Lin preserved in the Bin Tuilu places this mysterious encounter in
Sichuan, and states that from this time on Lin practiced the “Rites of
the Five Thunders.” The Song History also emphasizes Lin’s mastery of
Thunder Magic. There he is described as a devotee of the popular
Thunder God cults of the Southeast and as ultimately seeking in-
struction in Daoism from Zhang Jixian, the thirtieth Celestial Master,
on Mount Longhu in Jiangxi.
The Divine Empyrean, Thunder Magic, and the Celestial Masters
are brought together in another passage in Lin’s biography in The Com-
prehensive Mirror. After Lin arrived at court, he was asked to collect and
submit to the throne the various works on thunder ritual (wulei fa) for
inclusion in the Daoist canon. Apparently, the first Celestial Master
had possessed a certain Thunder Book of the Divine Empyrean (Shenxiao
leishu) in twenty volumes. Ten volumes of this work had been trans-
mitted by the eighth Celestial Master to the present, while the rest had
disappeared. Five of the lost volumes, it was now discovered, had been
revealed to the early Song Ritual Master Zhang Shouzhen by the Per-
fected Lord “Protector of Sageliness” (i.e., the Black Killer), and the
remaining five were now mysteriously revealed to Lin himself by the
Emperor on High.30
28 Society and the Supernatural

All this is quite fantastical, and, needless to say, I can find no trace
of such a book in Daoist bibliographies or the Ming canon. Moreover,
though it is not impossible that Lin was a popular practitioner of Thun-
der Magic—though even here I have my doubts—it seems more prob-
able that the integration of the Rites of the Five Thunders and the Rites
of Shenxiao was a gradual process that Lin Lingsu was belatedly hon-
ored as having established willy-nilly. Lin left his mark on only one text
in the Ming-dynasty canon, A Song of the Flaming Bell of the Three Ema-
nations of the Divine Empyrean and the Celestial Stalwart of Metal and Fire.31
He was, I believe, an inspired cosmographer and poetic visionary, but
the textual elaboration of Thunder Magic by the school he founded
was primarily the work of others.32
One of these was another first-generation disciple of Lin Lingsu
named Wang Wenqing (1093–1153). Like Lin, Wang was from Wen-
zhou and was summoned to the court in Kaifeng. Yet unlike Lin, we
have confirmation of Wang’s practice of Thunder Magic in a non-
Daoist source, the Yijian zhi. One anecdote states that “ Wang Wen-
qing’s disciple Zheng the Daoist Priest (Zheng Daoshi) obtained
from him the Rites of the Five Thunder [Gods]”;33 another, that
“ Wang’s technique was none other than the Rites of the Five Thun-
der [Gods]”;34 and still another, that “when Fu Xuan became the As-
sistant Regional Governor of Jiangxi, he invited Wang Shichen [i.e.,
Wang Wenqing] from Linchuan to come to Yuzhang and studied
Thunder Rites (leifa) with him.”35 Wang, moreover, produced nu-
merous disciples 36 and was responsible for several basic texts on
Thunder Magic in the canon.
Chapters 56 through 100 of the Daofa huiyuan (Corpus of Rites of the
Dao), for example, appear to constitute a coherent, or at least related,
tradition of Thunder Magic attributed to the Tang-dynasty Fire Mas-
ter (huoshi) Wang Zihua.37 Many of the texts in this group invoke one
or more of three spirit-generals, the Celestial Lords Deng, Xin, and
Zhang. Wang Wenqing was responsible for the prefaces, and perhaps
the texts themselves, of chapters 56 and 61, for a theoretical discus-
sion of thunder cosmology in chapter 67, for all of chapter 69, and
for the editing of chapter 70.38
The Daomen shigui (Ten Statutes for Followers of the Way), a Ming text,
states that the Shenxiao (Divine Empyrean) lineage itself was founded
by Wang the Fire Master and Wang Wenqing, from whom it was passed
to Zhang, Li, Bo (Yuchan), Sa (Shoujian), Fan (Songnian), Yang
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 29

( Jingchang), Dang, Mo (Yueding), and others.39 Indeed, when we re-

view the contents of chapters 56 through 100 of the Daofa huiyuan, we
find that, among these so-called Shenxiao masters, Bo Yuchan wrote
a commentary to chapter 70, the preface to chapter 76, and all of chap-
ter 82; Sa Shoujian composed another theoretical treatise on thunder
and ritual instructions in chapter 67; Fan Songnian and Yang Jing-
chang are mentioned as the authors of chapters 80 and 81; and Mo
Yueding transmitted “the oral instructions for writing talismans” in
chapter 77. Can we not conclude, then, that the “Shenxiao” lineage
described in the Daomen shigui is none other than the very same lin-
eage attributed to the Fire Master and associated with forty-four chap-
ters from the Daofa huiyuan?
Although Wang Wenqing evidently played a formative role in the
development of the practice and theory of Daoist Thunder Magic, the
constitution of this textual tradition began, I suspect, with Bo Yuchan
and those who followed him. Bo Yuchan (1194?–1229) was born in Min-
qing county in Fujian, trained in Qiongzhou on Hainan Island, and
focused his pedagogical activities on Mount Wuyi in northern Fujian.40
By his own account, Bo was a major beneficiary and organizer of the
Divine Empyrean and Thunderclap traditions, as well as a practitioner
of Thunder Magic and an astute and critical genealogist of its various
schools.41 He wrote, moreover, some notes (ti ) on the major text in-
tegrating Thunder Magic and Shenxiao cosmology, namely, The Jade
Scripture of the Thunderclap, examined superficially above.42 According
to his notes, this scripture was circulated by a man named Zhang Yuan-
duan on Mount Wuyi and passed to Bo by Zhang’s son. If Bo Yuchan
played a central role in the editing of this and other important texts
on Thunder Magic,43 then this would provide additional evidence to
support the notion that, in contrast to the Tianxin tradition, the cen-
ter of gravity of the textual canonization of Thunder Magic should
be placed in the early thirteenth century. Recall that Liu Ye and Lu
Yu, the third- and fourth-generation disciples of Lin Lingsu, occupied
the most important editorial positions in the textual compilation of
Lin’s tradition, again highlighting the first half of the thirteenth cen-
tury. It was during the same period, finally, that a third great textual
tradition of thunder ritual was formed under the rubric “Qingwei”
(Pure Tenuity).
The Qingwei was the ultimate accretionist tradition, unifying all the
great lineages of middle-period Daoism and assimilating the cosmol-
30 Society and the Supernatural

ogy of the Divine Empyrean, elements of Tantric Buddhism, and var-

ious local exorcistic cults. Thunder Magic is a prominent feature of
the Qingwei ritual texts, which occupy the first fifty-five chapters of
the Daofa huiyuan. The legendary founder of the Qingwei tradition
was a late ninth–early tenth-century female adept named Zu Shu. The
compiler of the tradition, however, was Huang Shunshen (b. 1224), a
native of Jianning (Fujian) and an official in Guangxi.44 From Huang,
the Qingwei tradition was apparently transmitted north by Zhang
(Shouqing) of Mount Wudang (Hubei), and throughout the South by
Xiong (Daohui) of Mount Xi ( Jiangxi).45 There is no need to pursue
this any further here. In addition to the Divine Empyrean, Fire Mas-
ter, and Pure Tenuity styles of Thunder Magic, there were others, rep-
resented by individual chapters in the Daofa huiyuan.46
The Rites of Tianxin and the Rites of the Five Thunder Gods were
clearly the most popular, but by no means the only, new therapeutic
movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Many more are
represented in the 268 chapters of the Daofa huiyuan, a fourteenth-
century compilation of ritual, theoretical, and legalistic texts that were
circulating among various southern Daoist lineages during the pre-
ceding two centuries.47 I refer to the content of this collection re-
peatedly in the course of this book. For the moment, what needs to
be said is that each of these lineages was associated with one or more
martial deities generally referred to as “Generals” ( jiang jun), “Prime
Marshals” (yuanshuai), or “Spiritual Officers” (lingguan). The Daoist
practitioner—the Ritual Master ( fashi ) or Ritual Officer ( faguan)—
controlled these deities by means of registers, talismans, spells, and
seals in order to dispel demons from an individual, family, or com-
munity. Many lineages formed around cults to individual deities such
as Ma Sheng, Zhu Yan, or Chen Danian.48 Some of these, as well as
others, were distinguished by the transformation of the Ritual Master
into the divinity itself and by his use of a spirit-medium, a young boy
to whom was transferred the demon afflicting the patient. At this level
of generalization, these texts should be read as the literary residue of
a creative confrontation and accommodation between Daoism and lo-
cal cults or village religion. The Ritual Master was at one and the same
time midwife and human precipitate of this confrontation.
To some scholars, the appearance of the lineages represented by
the Rites of Tianxin, Thunder Magic, and the texts of the Daofa huiyuan
marks a profound shift in the history of Daoism itself. In a conference
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 31

paper several years ago, Michel Strickmann argued that as late as the
eleventh century, Daoism “was epitomized in the official and popular
mind not so much by its urban temples as by its great mountain cen-
ters of pilgrimage and ascetic practice” (i.e., Maoshan in Jiangsu and
Gezaoshan and Longhushan, both in Jiangxi).49 Citing the contents
of the Yunji qiqian, the great Daoist summa published sometime after
1028, and the overwhelming dominance of the Maoshan lineage in
official and court circles during the Tang and Northern Song, Strick-
mann saw a continuity of meditational and liturgical practice from the
fifth century until Emperor Huizong (r. 1101–1125) turned his at-
tention to some of the new revelations outlined above. Strickmann
perhaps placed too much emphasis on imperial or official patronage
in drawing the broad contours of Daoist history; he thereby managed
to finesse the problem of the historical relation between the new Daoist
lineages and the great medieval traditions, especially the Celestial Mas-
ter tradition, whose therapeutic concerns and involvement in local so-
ciety ran long and deep. If, as Strickmann says, the new Daoist lineages
posed a direct challenge to the older orders, then the Celestial Mas-
ters could best meet this challenge by claiming many of these new lin-
eages as their own (more on this later).50
Still, Strickmann’s recognition of a sea change in Daoist history was
both prescient and insightful. First, the focus of these new revelations
and lineages was overwhelmingly therapeutic and exorcistic, rather
than liturgical, meditational, or related to a personal and graduated
ascesis. Second, their pantheons were dominated by martial, human-
ized, and historicized deities rather than by cosmic powers, immor-
tals, or emanations of the Dao. Third, their texts often reflect the prac-
tices of an unorganized class of lay Daoist practitioners, some living
within the communities or among the families whom they served, oth-
ers traveling throughout the villages and towns of South China, per-
forming exorcisms. Many of these exorcists existed outside the Daoist
religious organization and hierarchy.
The Daoist priest (daoshi ), like the Buddhist monk, was subject to
a process of examination, ordination certification, and temple affili-
ation and residence, all administered by the Board of Rites. The ex-
tent to which the Daoist priesthood ever conformed to the ascetic or
monastic model envisioned by this policy is questionable, however. The
Southern Song Daoist exegete Jin Yunzhong remarked critically on
the number of priests in his day who had obtained Daoist registers yet
32 Society and the Supernatural

who still lived and practiced within the boundaries of family life (zai-
jia). What does distinguish the Daoist priest is precisely these registers
(lu), the transmission of which was controlled ostensibly by the priests
and ordination centers of Maoshan, Gezaoshan, and Longhushan. In
the Song, there were seven types of registers corresponding to seven
levels of initiation, though instruction in and transmission of the first,
the “Register of the Authority of the Covenant of Orthodox Unity”
(Zhengyi mengwei lu), was sufficient to grant the acolyte the clerical title
of “daoshi.” 51 The lay exorcist, in contrast, eluded this formal initia-
tion, acquiring his registers, talismans, and texts by a variety of un-
orthodox means: in visions, by revelation, pursuant to mysterious en-
counters with holy men, or simply by windfall or purchase.52
The anecdotes in Hung Mai’s Yijian zhi explicitly refer to the lay
practitioner of the Rites of Tianxin or Rites of the Five Thunder Gods
as a “fashi.” This is also the title conferred upon the practitioner who
is addressed in the canonical texts, which is not to suggest that the per-
son so addressed was not a Daoist priest (daoshi ). Daoist priests were
clearly the compilers of, and the intended audience for, many of these
texts. The fashi was simply a master (shi ) of the rites ( fa) of a partic-
ular exorcistic tradition the instructions for which were conferred
upon the acolytes along with a corresponding register. The Jade Mod-
els of the Celestial Altar of Taishang asserts that if the priest is to practice
the Rites of Tianxin, he must first receive the “Register of All Merit of
the Three and the Five” (Sanwu dougong lu); if he is to practice the
Rites of Thunder, he must first receive the “Register of the Divine
Empyrean of the Most High” (Gaoshang Shenxiao lu); and so forth. The
passage goes on to mention eight other exorcistic traditions and their
corresponding registers. The list reveals no particular hierarchy of ini-
tiation, and, as we shall see, a priest could launch an entire career based
exclusively on his expertise in one or another of these exorcistic ritu-
als. At the same time, however, it is clear that by the Song period, the
term “fashi,” or “Ritual Master,” had also come to denote a class of lay
exorcists who were explicitly distinguished from Daoist priests. The
relation between these lay and clerical exorcists was nonetheless ex-
tremely fluid, and many of the latter were hardly distinguishable from
their unordained counterparts. Exploring the contours of this rela-
tionship will occupy most of the next section.
The term “fashi ” has a long and intricate history in the context of
medieval Daoism. It figures prominently, for example, in The Scripture
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 33

of the Spirit-Spells from the Abyss of the Most High (Taishang dongyuan shen-
zhou jing, HY 335), which has been studied by Christine Mollier.53 The
first ten chapters of this text had their origins among the members of
a Daoist community in fifth-century Jiangnan. This popular apoca-
lyptic movement existed at the margins of the Celestial Master sect.
Its leaders were individuals called “Preceptors of the Three Caverns”
(Sandong fashi ), the Three Caverns being, in this context, a euphemism
for Daoism.54 These “preceptors” were proselytizing and itinerant rit-
ual therapists whom Mollier contrasts with the hierarchical and hered-
itary clergy, or “libationers” ( jijiu), of the Celestial Master sect. Simi-
larly, Mollier has identified two scriptures dedicated to the Emperor
of the North (Beidi) with another apocalyptic community in the lower
Yangzi region during the fourth and fifth centuries. The priests of this
community were called “Preceptors of Samadhi of the Emperor of the
North” (Beidi sanmei fashi). They, too, were itinerant exorcists who per-
formed large-scale communal exorcisms in addition to private cures
at the homes of their devotees.55
Mollier suggests that the idea of a missionary priesthood may have
been borrowed directly from Buddhism.56 This suggests to me, in
turn, that the title of these priests may also have been borrowed from
Buddhism—from the “Dharma Master” ( fashi ), or “Preacher of the
Law,” to whom The Lotus Sutra devotes an entire chapter. It is clear from
numerous studies of the early development of Mahayana Buddhism
in China that the term “fashi ” (Skt. Dharmabhanaka) designated pros-
elytizers, and specifically lay householders, as opposed to monks who
recited and explained The Prajñaparamita Sutra.57 This is why, at this
early stage in the Daoist use of the term “fashi,” I have translated it as
“preceptor” rather than “ritual master.”
Be that as it may, by the Tang, when the various Daoist traditions
had become organized hierarchically into a single ordination system,
the title “fashi ” became the appellation conferred upon a “disciple of
pure faith” (qingxin dizi ) who had mastered, and then formally re-
ceived, a particular group of texts along with their corresponding reg-
isters and regulations, all of which corresponded, in turn, to a partic-
ular tradition and/or section of the Daoist canon.58
None of this really prepares us for the Song-dynasty use of the term
“fashi ” to designate a class of lay Daoist practitioners—or even a group
of clerical exorcists who looked very much like them. There are, how-
ever, antecedents for, if not direct ancestors of, such exorcists. There
34 Society and the Supernatural

is, for example, the ancient “Master of [Demonic] Projection” ( fang-

xiang shi ), who served, and even transformed himself into, a fierce mar-
tial deity in order to expel demons from tombs and the imperial court.
In the Tang, we also find a group of practitioners known as “Master
Demon Seers” ( jiangui shi ), and of course there is the perennial spirit-
medium (wu), whose influence on the therapeutic practices of the
Song Ritual Master may have been more profound than is commonly
thought. All of these were exclusively or primarily exorcists, as will be
acknowledged in the following chapters. The influence of Esoteric
Buddhist exorcisms on Daoist Ritual Masters must also be considered.
Mantras, mudras, and Tantric iconography and paraphernalia figure
prominently in the texts of the new Daoist therapeutic movements of
the Song. Many lay Daoist exorcists of the twelfth century, moreover,
counted themselves as devotees of Tantric cults, and some of their dis-
tinctive ritual practices have antecedents in a set of popular Tantric
scriptures composed in China during the eighth and ninth centuries.
Exploring the complex relationship between the Daoist Ritual Master
and Tantric exorcists, both past and present, will occupy most of Chap-
ters 6 and 7.59
However many antecedents we may find for the Daoist Ritual Mas-
ter, however far back we may trace the origins of the new therapeutic
lineages of the Song, both the new ritual traditions and their clerical
and lay practitioners come into sharper focus only in the twelfth cen-
tury. This higher profile may be explained in part by the attention paid
to these practitioners and traditions by the emperor Huizong and by
the Daoist religious organization, especially the Celestial Master sect.
We must assess their contributions very carefully.
In the early part of Huizong’s reign, the emperor continued to sup-
port the traditional Daoist lineages, their temples, and their current
leaders—the twenty-fifth patriarch of Maoshan, Liu Hunkang, and the
thirtieth Celestial Master, Zhang Jixian.60 A shift in Huizong’s inter-
ests, however, is already suggested in the sixth month of 1106, when
he issued an edict proclaiming an empire-wide search for provincial
magicians ( fangshi ) and recluses (yinshi). This search continued for
more than ten years, judging from a similar edict proclaimed in the
eighth month of 1116. A passage in the Xu Zizhi tong jian changbian jishi
benmo (Narratives from Beginning to End from the “Collected Data for a Con-
tinuation of the Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government” ) reveals the
precise manner in which these “accomplished literati” (gaoshi ) were
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 35

identified by local village servicemen, and the not inconsiderable pres-

sure, including thinly disguised bribery, that was brought to bear to
convince them to follow local officials to court.61
Among the so-called fangshi who came to Kaifeng were Wang
Laozhi, Wang Zixi, and Lin Lingsu.62 To varying degrees all sought to
protect, and especially to exalt, the imperial person, his consorts and
favored courtiers, yet the claims made on behalf of the emperor by
Lin Lingsu were the most grandiose and, from the point of view of the
traditional Daoist orders, the most presumptuous. As we have already
seen, Lin was preoccupied with a portion of the cosmos called the Di-
vine Empyrean (Shenxiao), one of nine such empyreans ( jiuxiao) and
the most sublime of all Daoist heavens. The Divine Empyrean was ruled
by the Emperor of Jade Purity of Shenxiao, also called the “Great Lord
of Everlasting Life,” who was the eldest son of the Jade Emperor
(Yuhuang dadi). The political implications of this creative cosmology
were worked out soon enough. In the fourth month of 1117, follow-
ing the subordination of all previous Daoist lineages to the new Shen-
xiao order, Emperor Huizong announced that he was none other than
the Sovereign of the Grand Empyrean (Taixiao dijun), the eldest son
of the Jade Emperor, who had descended to Earth. The celestial ad-
ministration of the Divine Empyrean, meanwhile, had been handed
over to the younger brother of the Sovereign, Qinghua dijun, while
many of Huizong’s courtiers, including the minister Cai Jing, were
identified with transcendents in the region of Shenxiao.
The search for nontraditional practitioners like Lin Lingsu is often
presented in the context of Huizong’s call for the reconstitution and
publication of a new Daoist canon.63 The submission of Daoist texts
and the preparation for a printed edition began in earnest in 1114,
two years before Lin’s arrival at court. However, our most learned stu-
dent of Song bibliography, Piet van der Loon, has concluded that
“there is hardly any evidence that [the] new movements or cults were
represented” in the canon, which was printed sometime after 1119 with
blocks cut at the Tianning Temple in Fuzhou.64 The texts inspired by
Lin’s revelation of the Divine Empyrean were clearly composed or
edited much later, and van der Loon doubts that the canon would have
contained any books on Thunder Magic, including those ostensibly
revealed to Lin Lingsu.65 He is even skeptical of an account claiming
that a work attributed to Yang Xizhen (1101–1124), revealer of the
“Rites of Youth’s Incipience,” was included in the canon. Van der Loon
36 Society and the Supernatural

does think it possible “that works deriving from the T’ien-hsin cheng-fa
tradition were included in the Daozang, since it had been officially rec-
ognized by 1122 at the latest.” 66 Yuan Miaozong, the author of a ma-
jor compendium of Tianxin rites, was assigned to the “scripture office”
in 1115 and submitted his work to the throne in the following year.
At best, then, Huizong’s call for the submission of Daoist texts in
1114 provided only a limited inspiration to the new Daoist movements
of the Song, and the canon reflected only a partial affirmation and
recognition of these new trends in the provinces. Even Huizong’s in-
terest in representatives of these new trends, such as Lin Lingsu, seems
to have been prompted more by their greater willingness to serve his
inflated ideological needs; as we have seen in passing, later Daoist ex-
egetes even found it necessary to cut Huizong down to size by recast-
ing the cosmology of the Divine Empyrean.67
From a more general point of view, however, Huizong’s patronage
of Daoism was part of a larger and coherent religious policy that, I be-
lieve, set the tone for the rest of the century. In the first decade of the
twelfth century, the emperor undertook a large-scale reformation of
court ritual and music. This had been attempted before, but never with
such comprehensiveness or success. A guiding principle of the un-
dertaking was the abolition of the ritual order established in the Qin
and Han, and the restoration and adaptation to present circum-
stances of the rites and music of the Three Periods (i.e., the Xia, Shang,
and Zhou dynasties). In the first month of 1107, a special Ritual Ser-
vice (Yili ju) was created within the Department of State Affairs
(Shangshu sheng). Over the next six years, the Ritual Service produced
several massive compilations of classical liturgy.68 Even then, the pro-
ject was thought to have remained incomplete, and the Jishi benmo at-
tributes this to Huizong’s shift to Daoism during the Zhenghe reign
period (1111–1118). Yet even this seems to be overstated. Already in
1108, Huizong called for the emendation of Daoist liturgy, which re-
sulted in the production of the Jinlu lingbao daochang yifan. This col-
lection of more than four hundred rituals was to be sent to all Daoist
temples in the empire: “Prefects and county administrators,” accord-
ing to Piet van der Loon, “were entrusted to select daoshi who would
perform the new liturgy according to the law.” 69
The reformations of classical and of Daoist ritual, therefore, were
the warp and woof of a single weave, bound ever more tightly by
Huizong’s suppression of Buddhism. In 1110, the emperor instructed
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 37

the Ritual Service to put a stop to the invasion of Buddhist tendencies

in court rituals, and in 1117 Huizong’s identification as the Great Sov-
ereign of the Divine Empyrean was explicitly announced “to rectify
the fact that the Central Kingdom had become blanketed by the teach-
ings of the Jin barbarians”—as a counterweight, in other words, to the
Buddhist claims of the Liao emperors. “The buttressing of Daoism
against its foreign rival,” in the more emphatic proposition of Michel
Strickmann, “was tantamount to a move in the interests of national se-
curity.” 70 Huizong’s anti-Buddhism, however, did not lead to a sup-
pression in the Tang sense of this word. In 1107 Huizong merely placed
Daoist monks and nuns above their Buddhist counterparts in the re-
ligious hierarchy, and in 1119 he Daoicized the titles of Buddhist priests
and the terms for Buddhist monasteries and temples. The Daoiciza-
tion of Buddhism was an attempt to sinify it, and an attempt to force
it to submit to Huizong in the same way that Huizong thought the Liao
should submit to a Chinese emperor.
Huizong’s anti-Buddhism was a base upon which he erected the twin
pillars of the Song dynasty: classical and Daoist ritual. And it is clear
that these pillars were mined, at least in the eyes of Huizong, from ex-
actly the same quarry. In an edict of 1118, Huizong expressed his view
that the Dao of the Yellow Emperor and Laozi and the Dao of Yao,
Shun, and the Rites of Zhou derived from the same Dao that was
equally present in the classicist’s governing of the country and in the
gentleman’s cultivation of himself. Since the Han, unfortunately, the
Dao of classicism and the Dao of Daoism had been unnaturally dis-
tinguished and separated, and it was the purpose of Huizong’s reli-
gious policies to restore this ancient and happy unity.71 This sentiment
was widely shared. The major effect of Huizong’s religious policy was,
I believe, to create the atmosphere in which classical and Daoist ritual
could be performed enthusiastically, and without a sense of contra-
diction, by members of the bureaucratic elite. As we shall see, Daoist
ritual, and especially Daoist exorcisms, were an expression of the le-
galistic and penal arm of Confucian administration, while the Daoist
exorcist was conceived of and represented in precisely the same terms
as a Confucian magistrate.
If the effect of Huizong’s religious policies on the new Daoist ther-
apeutic movements was both more and less than is commonly repre-
sented, the same can be said for the Celestial Master sect. Longhushan,
site of the Celestial Master organization, was located in the southern
38 Society and the Supernatural

corner of Jiangxi and at the center of the region that produced many
of the new Daoist lineages. Some of these lineages claimed that their
exorcistic traditions derived directly from Celestial Master, or Ortho-
dox Unity, Daoism. As we have seen, Lu You noted that Tan Zixiao
“obtained the Rectifying Rites of the Celestial Heart of Zhang Daol-
ing,” while the texts of the rites are replete with references and attri-
butions to Zhang Daoling and his tradition.72 In addition to the
Shangqing Tianxin zhengfa (HY 566), several major texts of the Leifa,
or Thunder Magic, tradition recommend that the practitioner entrust
himself to the tutelage of an Orthodox Unity priest (Zhengyi daoshi ),73
while still other exorcistic texts representing other traditions, such as
The Rites of the Earth-Spirits and The Rites of General Chu, to name just
two, are attributed specifically to the thirtieth Celestial Master, Zhang
Jixian.74
In general, we can read these attributions as grants of legitimacy
and of the imprimatur of orthodoxy. Yet this still begs the question of
the precise relation between each of these new exorcistic traditions
and the Celestial Master priests. Although we may accept Poul An-
dersen’s characterization of the Tianxin zhengfa as “a form of Ortho-
dox Unity Daoism,” we as yet know little of the nature of post-Tang
Celestial Master Daoism of which the Rites of Tianxin were suppos-
edly a form.
What we do know, however, is that during the reign of Emperor Li-
zong (r. 1225–1264), the thirty-fifth Celestial Master, Zhang Keda, was
granted undisputed control over the “talismanic registers of the Three
Mountains” (Sanshan fulu), which is to say, control over the ordina-
tion of priests in the Zhengyi, Lingbao, and Maoshan traditions.75 This
control was enhanced in the Yuan, when the thirty-sixth Celestial Mas-
ter and his descendants were recognized as the “masters of Daoism
south of the Yangzi” (ming zhuling Jiangnan daojiao).76 Could it be that
the climb of the Orthodox Unity priests to the top of the Daoist hier-
archy and their ultimate recognition as the leaders of southern Dao-
ism were made possible in part by their ability to stay slightly ahead of
the curve of local trends and claim many of the new therapeutic lin-
eages as their own, whether or not they had anything to do with their
development?77 Be that as it may, already by the early thirteenth cen-
tury, the great Daoist exegete Jin Yunzhong thought that the Rites of
Tianxin formed the core of the Orthodox Unity tradition,78 and that
“all the miscellaneous registers below the Covenant Authority Regis-
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 39

ter [of the Celestial Masters] had been unified in the altars of Ortho-
dox Unity and that the rites of Tianxin, the various rites of the Five
Thunder [Gods], the writings on [the rites of] summoning and in-
vestigating [demons], and the art of writing spells, had [all] been sub-
ordinated to the same.” 79
Meanwhile, as the new therapeutic movements were being sub-
sumed by the Orthodox Unity tradition, the Celestial Masters them-
selves were being portrayed, increasingly and even exclusively, as ex-
orcists. In the anecdotes of the Yijian zhi, the Celestial Masters of the
twelfth century appear as Ritual Masters writ large.80 Moreover, the
event which now captures the imagination of Song and Yuan hagiog-
raphers of Zhang Daoling is a great cosmic battle on Mount Qingcheng
(Sichuan) between Zhang and eight classes of demons.81 Each of these
classes of demons is identified with a particular illness. What is so in-
teresting about them is that many, if not all, appear as the spirit-gen-
erals (shenjiang) in the texts of the new exorcistic lineages of the Song!
Such are the ways of Daoist orthodoxy.
The assimilation of the new Daoist movements by the Orthodox
Unity tradition, and of the Celestial Masters themselves to the Daoist
Ritual Master, was not simply an accident of history. It has, I believe,
a more profound explanation. In a very real sense, the concerns of
the new Daoist movements represented a return to the concerns of
the Celestial Masters of the Han—namely, therapeutic ritual—and
therefore a return to the origin of religious Daoism itself. Like
Huizong’s call for a restoration of the rituals of the classical period,
these new movements shared in the general fundamentalism of the
age, with its return to antiquity ( fugu), which until recently has only
been viewed as a defining characteristic of Song Confucianism. Like
all fundamentalisms, moreover, this one was not an accurate gauge of
the time to which it hoped to return. A brief review of the place of ther-
apeutic ritual among the early Celestial Masters will allow us to cali-
brate exactly how much had changed in the intervening millennium.
The centrality of illness and its cure to the early Celestial Masters
is made eminently clear in the biography of Zhang Lu in the Wei His-
tory and its commentary. These passages have been translated many
times; here I follow the felicitous rendition of Michel Strickmann:

They [the Celestial Masters] taught people to have wholehearted faith,

and not to cheat or deceive others. If someone fell ill, he had to con-
40 Society and the Supernatural

fess his misdeeds. . . . The priests constructed “houses of justice,” [placed

at regular intervals] like the post stations of the present day. Inside, they
put grain and meat, and travelers might take as much as they needed.
But if someone took too much, the spirits would inevitably afflict him
with illness. . . . In addition, they had “chambers of quietness,” where
they made such people stay to meditate on their transgressions. . . . A
priest [“director of spirits”] would pray on behalf of the sick person.
The method of the prayer was to write out the family name and given
name of the sufferer, and words explaining that he admitted his mis-
deeds. Then copies of the document were to be made. One was sent up
to Heaven, and placed on a mountaintop. One was buried in the earth,
and one was sunk in water. These were called “the documents of the
Three Officers.” 82

What these passages reveal, above all, is the link that was forged at
the heart of early Daoist ritual between illness and morality. Illness was
the result of moral transgression, and its cure was effected by confes-
sion overseen by a Daoist priest in an oratory. These ideas are under-
scored in a fifth-century text of the Celestial Masters: “Any sick per-
son must only recollect and repent all the sins and misdemeanors he
or she committed from first reaching consciousness at about age seven.
One must then perform the proper observances and submit a peti-
tion and talisman to the spirits. This will invariably cure even long-
standing ailments and severe illnesses.” 83 The “proper observances”
followed a set pattern. After a purification of the oratory and invoca-
tions to Lord Lao and the Four Directions, the priest prepared a writ-
ten memorial stating the facts of the case. The memorial was then con-
sumed in the incense burner and carried to the celestial officials by
divine emissaries that had been generated from the priest’s own body.
Finally, the priest prepared a written talisman addressed to specific
disease-demons, commanding them to desist. The talisman was also
burned, but then ingested by the patient in a mixture of ashes and
water.84
For knowledge of these disease-demons, the priest would turn to a
distinct genre of religious literature known as “Demon Codes” or “De-
mon Statutes” (guilü). The earliest extant example of such a text is The
Demon Statutes of Nüqing, which was produced by the Celestial Masters
in the fourth century.85 Page after page of this code is given over to
an enumeration of demons and the specific diseases identified with
each. Yet while demons may be said to be the proximate cause of dis-
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 41

ease, in the sense that all disease was conceived of in terms of inter-
nal or external pathogenic agents, demons are not the ultimate or even
real cause of disease: the real cause is moral transgression. Chapter 3
and parts of chapter 5 of The Demon Statutes enumerate, respectively,
twenty-two and fourteen rules and prohibitions the infringement of
which would inevitably invite demonic attack and shorten one’s life
span. The entire work, in fact, is addressed to “the faithful,” and we
soon realize that the “statutes” of the title apply not to the demons but
to the Daoist adept or lay believer.86
Demon Statutes, and the related “ Writings on Law” ( fawen), con-
tinued to be produced by the Orthodox Unity tradition. They were
also produced, however, by some of the new therapeutic movements
of the Song. As we have seen, Rao Dongtian, one of the founders of
the Rectifying Rites of Tianxin, was responsible for The Demon Code of
the “Spinal Numinous Writ” of Highest Purity, edited by Deng Yougong.87
This code, in a slightly abridged form, was reproduced as chapter 6
of The Secret Essentials of Unified Perfection by Yuan Miaozong. In the Daofa
huiyuan, moreover, we find such examples as The Celestial Statutes and
Edicts of Nüqing: Red Writs of the Primordial Cavern of the Most High and
The Ritual Models and Black Statutes of the Great Darkness Fengdu.88 If the
presence of such Demon Statutes among the new movements speaks
to their continuity with the Orthodox Unity tradition, and in some
cases provides further evidence for its direct influence, an analysis of
the content of these Song codes reveals the extent to which we have
entered an entirely different world.
The most obvious change is that the “Demon Statutes” of the Song
are no longer addressed to the faithful. Rather, they are addressed to
the demons, and not simply to the demons. All the spirits, but espe-
cially those that constitute the lower and sub-bureaucracies, and even
the Daoist Ritual Master himself, are the object of the statutes, which
now apply only to them and no longer to the Daoist adept or lay be-
liever. These statutes essentially specify the punishments to be suffered
by demons who consort with humans, by earth-spirits (tudi shen), by
City Gods (Chenghuang), by spirit-generals who consort with demons
or who allow demons to consort with humans from negligence or cor-
ruption, and, finally, by “the officers who practice the rites” (xingfa
guan; i.e., the Ritual Masters) who either willfully pervert or unwittingly
fail to exercise those rites in the proper manner. The fault for illness,
therefore, has been placed entirely at the feet of the demons and of
42 Society and the Supernatural

the lesser spirits whose job it is to keep these demons away. The me-
dieval link between illness and morality has been severed, and the im-
plications of this are profound.
By the Song, we are no longer dealing with self-conscious religious
communities held together by rules, regulations, and prohibitions and
by a parish priest who uses illness as a means to bind the individual ever
more closely to the community. Illness here was transparent to group
morality. In the Song, the faithful are absent from the Demon Statutes
because, I believe, there are no faithful in the sense that there once
were. In the Song, we are dealing with a society that was relatively—I
hesitate to use the term—secularized. We are dealing, that is, with
households highly differentiated by geography, by economic and so-
cial status, and by the nature and strength of their ideological com-
mitments. These households now invite to their home a lay or cleri-
cal Daoist exorcist who may, in fact, have been preceded by a doctor
or a spirit-medium or a Buddhist monk. The Daoist exorcist, whether
lay or clerical, has become, quite simply, a ritual expert who must share
the field with many others. He is differentiated from these others, how-
ever, by the fact that he is an outsider who may have traveled great dis-
tances and by the fact of a reputation that is based not only on thera-
peutic success but on a moral probity derived from a long and
demanding personal ascesis. All this held out the promise of objec-
tivity and impartiality among villagers and urban neighbors weighed
down with competition and envy. In this the Daoist exorcist was highly
preferable to the spirit-medium, who might see in someone’s illness
an opportunity to make some personal hay, or to the monk, who ap-
peared to many as just another neighbor always asking for something.
The approach of the Daoist exorcist to a particular case was not un-
like that taken in criminal proceedings by another outsider, the mag-
istrate, whose office had been gained after years of study and moral
paideia. From the de-moralized view of the Demon Statutes, a case of
illness was simply a case of breaking and entering. The point was to
round up the usual suspects and submit them to questioning. It is not
surprising, then, that the suspects might turn out to include those sub-
bureaucratic “servicemen” (the earth-spirits) who had remained on
too good terms with the local population (the demons), or that, if the
proceedings went badly or produced no result, the presiding judge
(the Ritual Master) would now be held accountable for administrative
misfeasance.
Therapeutic Movements: Texts 43

There is another, equally significant implication of the de-linking

of illness and morality in the Demon Statutes of the Song period—
namely, that if illness is no longer the result of sin, then the demons
have been liberated as the agents of punishment to become free agents
of the imagination. The anecdotes of the Yijian zhi reveal that the men
and women afflicted by demonic illness now manipulate the demons
as representations of their inner states. Analysis of the exorcistic ritu-
als in the texts of the Daoist canon confirms that this manipulation
was precisely what the rituals were meant to encourage. The descrip-
tive and prescriptive accounts of exorcism complement each other per-
fectly in this respect. The man or woman who is suffering from vari-
ous symptoms is first made to understand that these symptoms reflect
an illness caused by one or another category of demon. He or she is
then induced to become possessed by the afflicting demon, which is
to say that he or she now identifies in trance with a particular demon
with a particular name that is irreducible to any known demon. He or
she then proceeds to provide a narrative account of its history and why
it has come to harass him or her.89 What is remarkable is that these
demons and their narratives are unique, and reveal an uncanny rela-
tionship to the structure or characteristics of what we learn in the anec-
dote of the patient’s family situation. The exorcist finally proceeds to
negotiate with these “inner objects” in a way that satisfies them, and
thereby brings a satisfying resolution to the family crisis by which they
were produced. Thus we have moved from morality to psychology.90
A paradox of the absence of the patient from the Demon Statutes
of the Song period is that the patient is now included more forcefully
in his or her own cure. This point is best made by comparison with
medieval exorcisms once again. We have already seen how, except for
the initial confession of sin, the afflicted remained a passive bystander
to ritual actions taken by the priest. One of the more peculiar ramifi-
cations of the transparency of individual illness to group morality was
that the transgressions that left an individual vulnerable to demonic
illness were not necessarily committed by that individual. Rather, in
many instances, these sins or crimes or transgressions might be im-
puted to a dead member of the patient’s family. The mechanism that
set the illness in motion was a “lawsuit from beyond the tomb,” or
“sepulchral plaint” (zhongsong), filed with the celestial prosecutors by
those (also dead human beings) who had suffered at the hands of their
ancestors. The cure required not that the suffering individual dispute
44 Society and the Supernatural

the truth of these ancient crimes, which were in fact acknowledged,

but that the priest himself file a vigorous countersuit, which, by the
very fact of its having been filed and by the forcefulness of its counter-
charges, would itself block the demonic process.91 Therapy, therefore,
was merely a matter of the priest’s opposing one lawsuit against an-
other, of charge and counter-charge. Except perhaps for the sufferer’s
initial help in recalling family history—though this information could
be gotten from others, or even from the celestial spirits—he or she
was noticeably absent from the cure.
The contrast could not be greater with the Song. By then, illness
had become a matter entirely of and for the individual; and therapy
had become a process of negotiation between an exorcist and a pa-
tient, speaking in the voice of another whom he or she had colonized
symbolically. We now investigate more closely this world of exorcists
and their patients.
 3
New Therapeutic Movements
in the Song: Practitioners

he importance of the new therapeutic rites in the social life of the

T Song upper and lower strata is confirmed by the secular, anecdo-
tal literature of the twelfth century. In Hong Mai’s Yijian zhi, those ad-
dressed in the canonical text as “Ritual Masters” or “Ritual Officers”
emerge as an identifiable class of exorcists distinct, on the one hand,
from both the Daoist priest and spirit-medium, yet associated, on the
other, with a broader group of lay religious experts and healers. If these
exorcists can be said to constitute a class, they do so precisely as a func-
tion of these distinctions and associations. In terms of social origins,
the fashi were as diverse as the clientele they served.

The Ritual Master as Exorcist

The term “fashi ” might best be translated as “Master of Rites,” sug-
gesting the diversity of noncommunal “lesser rites” (xiaofa) that define
the repertoire of his modern-day descendant. Even the fashi in the
Song, as we shall see, performed simple versions of Daoist “offerings.”
I will refer to the fashi as an exorcist, however, because that was his
most important function. For example:

Somewhere in Jiangxi, after the failure of various treat-

ments, medical and otherwise, a father invited a certain
Long fashi to his home to cure his son (who was also a
doctor). The son’s feverish illness had progressed from

45
46 Society and the Supernatural

bouts of inspired and sonorous poetry to loud chanting

of scriptures, songs, and even medical prescriptions.
When the fashi arrived, the son was on the verge of
demonic possession. The fashi put an end to all this
by placing an exorcistic seal ( fayin) in his hand—his
writing hand, no doubt—which was then bound tightly
with rope.1
In the subprefecture of Changshu, a retired magis-
trate invited a fashi named Chen Guoqian, who assem-
bled his various spirit-soldiers ( jiangli ) to identify the
demon afflicting the son of a deceased minister (shang-
shu). It transpired that the son’s illness was in fact a
punishment sought by the spirit of the minister for
his son’s unfilial behavior.2
In 1193, in the canton of Xiangdun (Dexing, Jiangxi),
the younger of two unmarried brothers who were living
together after their parents’ death took up with a female
apparition that tried to separate them. The elder brother
conferred with a certain Zhang fashi, who advised the
younger one to stop by his ritual sanctuary ( fayuan) at
night, at which time he would be given some talismanic
water to drink and another talisman to hold in his hand
while sleeping.3
In Mingzhou, the Vice Censor-in-Chief (zhongcheng),
Shu Xindao, became so obsessed with a female appari-
tion in the very hall where he lectured his disciples that
his family summoned the fashi Zhu Yancheng, who went
on to perform a most extraordinary exorcism.4
In 1135, in Ping jiang, the elder of a monastery sum-
moned Dao fashi to cure one of his monks who had
transformed himself into a “hungry ghost,” refusing all
food because he believed it to be made of iron. The fashi
appealed to the monk’s Buddhist values, recommending
a confession of past sins, which, with a little sacralized
water again, seemed to do the trick.5

A doctor, a magistrate, a commoner, a vice-censor, a monk—all required

and sought the exorcistic services of fashi. But who were these fashi ?
In a number of anecdotes in the Yijian zhi, the fashi is explicitly dis-
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 47

tinguished from the Daoist priest (daoshi ). One such anecdote de-
scribes an exorcism of a fox-demon, performed at the patient’s home
in Haikou xian (Dexing, Jiangxi), by a certain Tan fashi. Tan was a vil-
lage practitioner of something called the “Rites of Maoshan” (Maoshan
fa). He is identified as a layman, or “suren,” a term that also suggests a
lack of the refinement that necessarily accompanied clerical (or
official) status. Most importantly, the text states that “although Tan was
not a Daoist priest, he nonetheless acquired this appellation [i.e.,
fashi]” (Sui fei daoshi, er de ci cheng).6 The implication of the Chinese
passage is clearly that, in the Song, the appellation “fashi” was under-
stood to be a title of a Daoist priest, and that it was being usurped by
a group of lay practitioners who were not priests at all.
Such passages should alert us to the possibility that in certain so-
cial contexts someone who was called a Daoist priest may not, in fact,
have been one. In Yihuang, on the occasion of a multi-village festival
known as “xiangshe,” a man named Hu Wu performed the functions
of a Daoist priest (daoshi ) and was so addressed or regarded by the
people.7 Yet it is unlikely that this commoner (ximin), who made his
living by hawking boiled mollusks, was actually a Daoist priest. One
would be hard-pressed to find a priest residing in a village. The village
was the province of the spirit-medium and, now perhaps, of exorcists
like Tan fashi.
The Rites of Maoshan, Tan’s speciality, were probably unrelated to
the august Daoist lineage identified with Mount Mao in Jiangsu.8 An-
other anecdote gives us some idea of both the content of these rites
and the nature of those who practiced them:

Cheng fashi, from Zhang village [Wuyuan, Jiangxi], prac-

ticed the “Rectifying Rites of Maoshan” (Maoshan zhengfa).
Many commoners in the vicinity went to his altar to entreat
[his aid], and none was not completely cured. Chan Cong, a
man from the neighboring village of Xinding, suddenly fell
ill and summoned Cheng to save him. Cheng complied and
promptly restored him to health. The time was already dusk,
and Cheng desired to return home. Cong’s father begged
him to remain until morning, but Cheng declined and went
on his way. As soon as he reached the Sun Family Hill, when
the moon’s color revealed a weak luminescence, a black,
bell-shaped prodigy (wu) emerged directly out of the trees in
48 Society and the Supernatural

front of him. It circled and turned, producing a noise as if it

intended to attack him. Cheng anxiously recited a spell and
walked the [Celestial] Outline (bugang). The prodigy showed
not the slightest fear and gradually pressed in upon his body.
Cheng realized that this was a “rock sprite.” Consequently, he
recited the “Spell of Nezha’s Fireball” (Nezha huoqiu zhou)
and, forming a mudra ( jieyin), recited, “Do you think that
my spirit-general would permit a wangliang-demon to ob-
struct my forward progress! Quickly stop and pull back!”
And suddenly a fireball emerged from behind his body and
struggled with the black lump. After a while a noise burst
out, like clashing metal, and the black lump disappeared.
The fireball made several revolutions around Cheng’s body
and also vanished. At the time, the resident at the foot of the
Sun Family Hill, Xiang Dun, as well as his entire household,
had heard the clamor of metal drums atop the mountain,
like the sound of a hundred thousand men at war. With his
sons and nephews, Xiang Dun watched from a distance, yet
they saw only Cheng, standing absolutely rigid, in stillness
and in darkness. Then they called out to him, and Cheng
became aware ( jue). Immediately they took him back home,
and his heart and intention stabilized. From that time he
didn’t dare travel at night.9

Evidently, Ritual Masters Cheng and Tan belonged to a group of lay

exorcists and to a tradition of exorcism peculiar to the villages of two
neighboring subprefectures in Jiangxi—Wuyuan and Dexing. These
exorcists visited the homes of their clients, though in the case of Rit-
ual Master Cheng, clients might apparently make the trip to his pri-
vate altar as well. Central to this episode, and perhaps to the Rites of
Maoshan, is the reference to a particular Tantric deity, Nezha (Skt.
Nata), who was also the spirit-general invoked by Cheng.
Nezha was the third son of the Devaraja of the North, Vai4ravana,
one of the four lokapalas (guardian deities) of Buddhism. The cult to
Vai4ravana and to his sons entered China from Khotan in the eighth
century and inspired a series of apocryphal Buddhist scriptures that were
attributed to the Tantric monk Amoghavajra but that probably date
some generations after his death. Nonetheless, these scriptures accu-
rately reflect the courtly activities of Tantric monks during the reign of
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 49

the emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–756), and the role of Nezha and his fa-
ther as defenders of both the imperial person and the Tang empire.10
Nezha, in fact, appears in the pantheon of an identifiable group of
Tantric exorcists active at precisely the same time and in precisely the
same place ( Jiangxi) as Ritual Master Cheng. The use of mantras
(spells) and mudras (hand-seals), characteristic of Tantric practice, had
long been assimilated by Daoist exorcists, and Nezha plays a significant
role in a number of exorcistic texts in the Daofa huiyuan.11
One of the defining features of the rituals described in the exorcistic
texts of the Daofa huiyuan is the transformation of the Daoist Ritual
Master into his spirit-general. During the recitation of a spell and the
formation of a particular seal, the practitioner evoked and visualized
his tutelary deity and then visualized himself as that deity. This
identification subsequently empowered the practitioner to manipulate
his spirit-general’s lethal accoutrements and military subordinates. All
this is implied in what I read as Cheng fashi ’s ability to generate Nezha’s
characteristic weapon, the fireball, and then recall it into his own body.
And the sights and sounds of battle I take to be the externalized ef-
fects of an internal meditative process that left Cheng fashi in a dis-
tinctive state of concentration and self-absorption, and from which he
emerged only after Xiang Dun called out his name. I will return to
the nature of this state shortly.
Fashi who were explicitly distinguished from Daoist priests were to
be found in urban as well as rural environments. They were not ex-
clusively “country priests,” as Lagerwey calls them:

Within the Yong jin Gate in Lin’an [i.e., Hangzhou], a fashi

named Wang daily practiced the Rites of the Celestial Heart
and performed “offerings of petition” (chang jiao) on behalf
of people. He wore a star hat and ritual vestments, yet he
was not a Daoist priest ( fei daoshi ). Commoners (minsu)
considered that he charged as much as thirty percent less
than real Yellow Cappers (huangguan) [i.e., Daoist priests],
and so many employed him. Wang always used his neighbor
Li Sheng to write the petitions and to memorialize with
green writs (qingci ).12

The relative cheapness of Wang’s services does not appear to have

limited his clientele to the underprivileged, however. On the occasion
50 Society and the Supernatural

of a New Year’s celebration in 1132, Wang was invited by a wealthy fam-

ily to conduct a private “offering to secure peace” (bao’an jiao). Un-
fortunately, Wang’s neighbor and secretarial aide, Li Sheng, could not
contain his holiday enthusiasm. On the way to the offering, Li feasted
with friends and composed his petitions in a state of inebriation. To-
ward the end of the ceremony, Wang fashi had a vision in which he
was brought before a celestial official only to find that his amanuen-
sis had already been taken prisoner and tortured. The judge criticized
Li Sheng for his sloppy calligraphy and for his inability to abstain from
meat and alcohol. Wang protested that it was his responsibility only to
take charge of the ceremonial feast ( jiaoxi ), which he had done with
great merit, and that he knew nothing of Li’s transgressions. These
excuses did not particularly impress the celestial court. Wang was re-
buked and sent on his way with a blow to the chest, an event that punc-
tured his vision and brought it to an end. Within a matter of days, Li
passed away, and Wang followed three months later.13
The point is that there were lay practitioners who looked and per-
formed very much like Daoist priests but who were not priests, and
that the rules of purity and correct procedure applied to the fashi just
as they did to the Daoist priest.14 Priests were also punished for their
inattention to such rules or details, and it might equally well be a par-
ticularly unimpeachable fashi who would find himself in a position to
point out these clerical shortcomings:

The fashi Li Mingwei was a native of Fuzhou [Fujian] who

observed the precepts of the Dao with exceptional care. He
sent petitions and submitted writs (baizhang fuci ) on behalf
of the people, and the response was immediate. In 1135,
the Controller-General (tongpan) of Jianzhou, Yuan Fuyi,
had him perform an “offering” ( jiao) together with Ye, a
Daoist priest of the Tianqing Abbey. After the completion
of the ceremony, Li addressed Ye: “ When I was sending up
the petition, I arrived before the Gate of the Three Heavens
and saw the Daoist priest of the commandary, named
Zhang, also memorializing green writs on someone’s behalf.
The envelope of the memorial had been prepared very
clumsily, and it was damaged a bit as well. The Celestial
Master [i.e., Laozi] said, ‘This cannot be offered to me (the
imperial person),’ and Zhang threw it away.” Ye responded:
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 51

“Zhang is a Daoist colleague in my abbey. However, I do not

know in whose home he is spending the evening.” On the
following day Zhang returned from outside, and Ye asked
him where he had been. Zhang said, “Last night I per-
formed an offering at the home of the Ye family twenty
miles away. The village households were crude and careless,
and the paper for the green writs was not good at all.
Moreover, at the point of burning the memorial, the
[wooden] envelope turned over, and the writ fell upon the
ground. I quickly used a calling-card (shouban) to prop it
up, so it was not seriously damaged. However, my feathered
outer-garment (hechang) was burned.” Ye told Zhang what
Mingwei had seen. Zhang became very frightened and
immediately prepared an offering ( jiao) to confess his
transgressions.15

The presentation of the memorial, accompanied by the visualiza-

tion of one’s presence in Heaven at the time of its submission, was and
still is the climax of the jiao, or offering, performed by the Daoist
priest.16 Here someone called a “fashi” specializes in this aspect of
Daoist liturgy for individuals, much like Wang fashi in the preceding
andecdote. Yet he also performs at the request of a vice-prefect (i.e.,
controller-general) and in conjunction with a Daoist priest and resi-
dent of a Daoist abbey. We find, moreover, that the priests of the same
abbey made excursions into the surrounding villages to perform pri-
vate ceremonies with paraphernalia, unfortunately of low quality, pro-
vided by the local family itself. These two comments spawn two ques-
tions. Is the designation “fashi” sufficient to associate Li Mingwei with
that group of lay exorcists and practitioners whom we have explicitly
contrasted with the Daoist priest? How do we distinguish between fashi
and daoshi in those situations where the first performs with the sec-
ond, and the latter acts like the former?
Perhaps we can approach an answer to these questions from another
direction. Just as we have found certain lay practitioners who adopted,
presumptuously, the title of Daoist priest (like Hu Wu, mentioned
above), so we will find many Daoist priests adopting the title “fashi.”
There appear to be two explanations for this—one formal, the other
functional.
As mentioned in Chapter 2, by Tang times the term “fashi” appeared
52 Society and the Supernatural

as a title conferred upon a disciple who had mastered a particular text

or group of texts that corresponded to a particular Daoist tradition
and/or section of the Daoist canon. Mastery of the Daode jing and its
various commentaries included in the Taixuan section of the canon con-
ferred the title “Taishang daode fashi”; the titles “Wushang tongxuan fashi”
and “Wushang santong fashi ” corresponded to the Lingbao and Maoshan
corpuses, respectively.17 One might easily imagine, theoretically, how the
term “fashi” could have been extended to new traditions as they evolved
and were taken up by the Daoist establishment. Thus, on the one hand,
someone referred to as a “fashi” may have been a Daoist priest;18 on the
other hand, he may not have been. In the Yijian zhi, the term “fashi” is
sufficiently flexible and overdetermined that it should be understood
to refer to a master (shi) or practitioner of a particular exorcistic tech-
nique ( fa), and such a person may not have been a priest at all.
It is precisely in the context of exorcisms that we find Daoist priests
(daoshi ) referred to as “fashi.” In 1166, for instance, during the course
of an exorcism performed at the patient’s home in Poyang ( Jiangxi)
by a Daoist priest of the Tianqing Abbey, the demon, who had been
pursued and arrested by the priest’s spirit-general, refers to the priest,
Xu Zhongshi, as a “fashi.” 19 Without slighting demons or their testi-
monial veracity, other examples could be cited where the narrator or
a participant employs the term “fashi” in reference to someone ini-
tially identified as a Daoist priest.20 The point is that in these and other
instances, the term “fashi ” is best understood as denoting an exorcist,
and that priests were so called when they were fulfilling this function.
Here we are presented with an anticipation of the modern situation
in which the Daoist priest literally exchanges his black hat for the red
one of the fashi when performing exorcisms and other vernacular rites
associated with the latter role.
The role or appellation of “fashi” was not limited to Daoist priests or
lay exorcists, however. We also find the term applied to some spirit-
mediums (wu). For example, an elderly spirit-medium who specialized
in the exorcism or eradication of snakes ( jinshe) was addressed as
“Cheng fashi” by villagers in Xiangdun (Dexing, Jiangxi). The anecdote
concerns the fatal result of Cheng’s encounter with a snake at a time
late in life, when his powers had abated considerably. In his prime, how-
ever, his method ( fa) was evidently so effective that it had been cov-
eted by and passed on to the Commercial-Tax Official of Nankang.21
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 53

In another case, in the subprefecture of Houguan (Fujian), the mag-

istrate Zhang Delong summoned a village medium (liwu) named Wen
fashi to cure one of his five maidservants who was possessed and ha-
rassed by a demon. Apparently, exorcism was not Ritual Master Wen’s
only talent. Recently he had opened his own wine shop, though eco-
nomic diversification clearly undermined his exorcistic authority.
When Wen appeared before the maidservant, she commented, doing
her best to hide her laughter, “How could someone whose body is per-
vaded with the pneuma of distilled sediment and yeast possibly get hold
of me?!” Wen fashi retreated, and after another failed attempt by Zhang
Delong’s brother-in-law, the magistrate enlisted the services of two lay
exorcists—also called “fashi ”—one of whom served and employed as
his spirit-general the Tantric deity Ucchu3ma.22
The most spectacular example is the case of Shen Anzhi, a spirit-
medium in Wenzhou (Zhejiang) who used his mother’s illness to im-
press his neighbor’s child and two nephews with his therapeutic abil-
ities. Anzhi was then summoned to the home of the child’s father,
Xue Jixuan (1104–1171), a student of the Neo-Confucian Cheng Yi
and a scholar of practical learning ( jingshi zhi xue). Anzhi proceeded
to make use of these impressionable children in a nearly successful
attempt to convert the entire household into dependents and patrons
of his cult to the “Nine Saints of the Five Penetrations” (Wutong
jiushen). But in the rites he practiced and the divine powers he called
upon, this spirit-medium was indistinguishable from the Daoist prac-
titioner of Thunder Magic, and it took another Daoist Ritual Master
to discredit him.23
The class of lay exorcists called “fashi” were clearly finding recruits
among village spirit-mediums, though some spirit-mediums may have
attained this title simply in their capacity as exorcists or as a result of
their proficiency in such activities: in Linchuan ( Jiangxi), for instance,
a medium of the cult of Third Master Muping (Muping sanlang) who
specialized in exorcisms was addressed as “fashi ” by two clients ap-
pearing at his door.24
I should point out that all these examples derive from provinces—
Jiangxi, Fujian, and Zhejiang—characterized by the strong presence
of lay Daoist exorcists called “fashi,” and that we might well ask what
manner of social or ritual interaction existed between the Ritual Mas-
ter and village spirit-medium. Their relationship was, in fact, profound.
54 Society and the Supernatural

The Ritual Master and the Bureaucratic Elite

In the preceding pages, I have sought to identify the existence in the
Song period of a class of exorcists who were distinguished from Daoist
priests and spirit-mediums but who also mediated between these
other practitioners. The religious practice and experience of the Rit-
ual Master combined elements of Daoist meditation and the trances
of possession associated with spirit-mediums; his martial, humanized
deities linked the ethical order of the absolute with the raw power of
the conditioned realm; his mobility took him from villages to towns
and to all points in between. I have shown that some Ritual Masters
might work together, as assistants, with Daoist priests, while others be-
came officiants of spirit-mediums. Conversely, we have seen that some
Daoist priests and some spirit-mediums might become, or play the role
of, fashi.25
The class of Ritual Masters was a kind of “fuzzy set” that also tended
to bifurcate into two social groups, depending on whether it leaned
toward one or the other of two poles defined by the Daoist priest and
the spirit-medium. One group consisted of relatively uneducated, un-
sophisticated, and localized practitioners whose clients looked much
like themselves, and who themselves looked much like the spirit-medi-
ums with whom they frequently interacted. Ritual Masters Tan, Cheng,
and Wang all belonged to this group, which I examine more exten-
sively in Chapters 4 and 5. The other group consisted of highly liter-
ate, worldly, and mobile practitioners who found their clientele almost
exclusively among the bureaucratic and economic elite. This group
also consisted of members of these elites, who themselves became lay
practitioners of the new therapeutic rites of the Song.
Examples of lay exorcists who began their careers outside the
Daoist religious organization yet came to serve an elite clientele in-
clude Wang Wenqing and Lu Shizhong. As we have seen, Wang Wen-
qing ultimately found himself in the atelier of Lin Lingsu at court and
was responsible for several theoretical texts now preserved in the Daoist
canon. Initially, however, he established his reputation moving along
the Southeast Coast, first as a physiognomist (xiangshi ) and then as a
popular practitioner of Thunder Magic.26
If we follow Wang’s career in the anecdotes of the Yijian zhi, estab-
lishing this reputation was not without its difficulties. From Wenzhou,
Wang moved to Fujian, where he was as yet an unknown quantity. His
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 55

shoddy appearance and behavior immediately brought him into

conflict with the monks of the Qingcheng Monastery in Fuzhou, where
he was lodging. Wang then sought out and antagonized yet another
monk, who was revered by the urban community as a thaumaturge and
director of “offerings” ( jiao). Eventually, Wang found his opportunity
in a Daoist “offering” established by the yamen to bring rain. Holding
a sword, Wang danced “the steps of Yu” (Yubu), and a rainstorm fol-
lowed immediately upon his submission of a writ (ci ) to Heaven. From
this point, the text says, both Daoists and laymen (daosu) began to re-
vere him. Hong Mai, however—or perhaps the transmitter of this anec-
dote, a Fuzhou resident named Liu Cunli—remained skeptical: “ Wang
employed [the Rites of the Five Thunder Gods] to deceive and cheat
people.” 27
Even after Wang Wenqing was well established in the Baozhen
Palace in Kaifeng, his therapeutic practice did not always run smoothly.
After a difficult but ultimately successful cure of a literatus who had
been bewitched by a woman he met while taking a stroll on the eve of
the Lantern Festival, Wang was incarcerated temporarily in the city
jail because of a lawsuit filed with the sheriff by the family of the girl.
A temple sinecure in the capital obviously did not immunize Wang
from accusations of sorcery or from the hasty workings of the judicial
system.28
Even before Wang’s arrival in Kaifeng, students were evidently com-
ing so fast that Wang could have had little control over their behav-
ior. Such was the case with Zheng daoshi, who was struck down for mak-
ing idle use of his powers,29 and with Fu Xuan, the governor-general
of Jiangxi, who had demanded instruction in Thunder Magic and
summoned Wang from Linchuan. Wang took an immediate dislike to
the man and, fearing his temper, chose to instruct him as little as pos-
sible. This tactic proved prescient, for this high provincial official went
on to abuse his unknowingly insufficient powers by attempting to burn
down a Buddhist pagoda that he thought was too high. When he then
complained to Wang, Wang offered a stern reprimand.30 Here and
elsewhere, Wang reveals himself to have been an astute judge of char-
acter, which belies Hong Mai’s early and critical remarks. Perhaps it
was this very quality that recommended Wang to the retired minister
Cai Jing. Making use of his earlier talents as a physiognomist, Wang
was asked to assess the future fortunes of Cai’s family. On this occa-
sion he predicted the importance to Daoism of Cai’s nephew (named
56 Society and the Supernatural

Chen), who in fact went on to become a master of the Rites of

Tianxin.31
Lu Shizhong, one of the premier Daoist exorcists of the twelfth cen-
tury, also found himself ministering to the needs of another Cai, Cai
Juhou (?–1125), who ended his career as a Vice-Minister of Revenue.
In 1125, Lu was invited by Cai’s widow to perform a Yellow Register
Retreat for the salvation of his soul.32 Cai’s soul evidently needed sav-
ing. According to the anecdote, Cai’s death was attributed to divine
retribution for his merciless execution of five hundred rebels who had
surrendered to Cai in Yun prefecture. This fact, revealed during a
Daoist “offering” performed at Cai’s request when still ill, is of great
historical interest.
Lu Shizhong (Dangke) was either the son or grandnephew of
Lu Guan ( Junbao), magistrate of the subprefecture of Shangshui
(Chenzhou, Henan).33 Sometime during the Zhenghe reign period
(1111–1117), when Lu was seventeen years old, still unmarried, and
studying in the yamen, he had one of those close and fortuitous en-
counters with an unnamed Daoist holy man (or divinity) that pre-
saged a career outside the Daoist establishment. The Daoist in-
structed Lu in “the art of talismans so that he could control all the
demons and spirits under Heaven.” 34 Information provided to Hong
Mai by a nephew of Shizhong himself suggests that he actually ob-
tained his Daoist instruction in Sichuan.
However obscure the facts of Lu’s early life, he went on to establish
a new Daoist tradition. In 1120, Zhao Sheng, a disciple of Zhang Dao-
ling, descended into Lu’s room and directed him to a scroll of “secret
writings” (bishu) on Maoshan. This scroll formed a large part of what
would become The Great Method of the Jade Hall of the Three Heavens of
the Supreme Mysterious Origin (HY 220) in thirty chapters.35 Several late
chapters of this work were apparently revealed by spirit-writing in the
decade before 1120, but only copied in 1158. Poul Andersen, whose
analysis I am relying on here, has demontrated a deep connection be-
tween the Rites of the Jade Hall and the Rites of Tianxin.36 The ma-
jor differences, he points out, are an emphasis on meditational prac-
tice in The Great Method of the Jade Hall and its inclusion of the funeral
rites of the Lingbao tradition. We have seen above that Lu Shizhong
was invited to perform a Yellow Register Retreat for Cai Juhou. Ander-
sen, in fact, cites Jin Yunzhong’s early thirteenth-century criticism of
the practitioners of the Rites of the Jade Hall for performing such Ling-
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 57

bao funeral rites “while having only Zhengyi titles and registers,” as
well as his criticism of Lingbao priests themselves for incorporating
elements of the Rites of the Jade Hall.37 The fluid situation revealed
in these criticisms will form the basis for an examination in Chapter
8 of the deep structural continuities between rituals of exorcism and
rituals for the dead.
In any event, Lu Shizhong built a career primarily by performing
exorcisms for an elite clientele. As one anecdote explains, “Lu . . . made
a reputation by exorcising demons with talismans and registers. Among
high officials (shidaifu) he was known as ‘Lu the Perfected Official’
(Lu Zhenguan), and he was constantly pursued by suits brought
against demons.” 38 Throughout the 1120s and 1130s, Lu seems to have
been always on the move. While traveling in Xinjiang, he was asked
by a ferryman to explore the mysterious and demonic deaths of his
two sons;39 in Chen prefecture (Henan), he was invited by a magis-
trate to bring an end to a six-month drought;40 in Lingbi subprefec-
ture, the magistrate asked Lu to cure his daughter, who was haunted
and then possessed by the spirit of her younger sister; 41 in Yan pre-
fecture, he cured another daughter of a rural magnate who had be-
come possessed on the eve of her marriage;42 and in Nanjing, Lu was
summoned by a high official to exorcise his son.43
Not only did many fashi come to specialize in ministering to the
therapeutic needs of the sons and daughters of official or wealthy fam-
ilies, but many of those sons and some of their fathers became lay
practitioners of the new exorcistic traditions associated with the
Daoist Ritual Master. Lu Shizhong, in fact, represents both trends si-
multaneously, for he was the scion of an official family who went on
to become a full-time exorcist catering to an elite clientele. There
are many other examples from the twelfth century, a few of which
follow:

Xu Shisan, son of Xu Chaofeng from the prefectural

city of Huzhou, is described as a member of an official
family (guanren). After relatives became prone to de-
monic afflictions, Shisan dedicated himself to the Dao
and practiced the “Rites of the Celestial Heart for
Summoning and Investigating” on behalf of the resi-
dents of his urban community, rich and poor alike.
During the Dunxi reign period (1174–1189), he cured
58 Society and the Supernatural

the possessed daughter of a merchant after numerous

Daoist priests had failed.44
In Fuzhou, Ren Daoyuan, the eldest son of a vice-
chamberlain, became a disciple of the Daoist master
Ouyang Wenbin, from whom he received instruction
in “Rites of Salvation by Refinement” (liandu). He also
practiced the Rites of the Celestial Heart and went on
to perform exorcisms even when he himself assumed
office after his father’s death.45
Li Henglao, the eldest son of the Grand Minister Li
Shimei, studied the Rectifying Rites of the Celestial Heart
as a youth, during which time he learned some painful
lessons about not taking those studies seriously enough.46
Yan Fu practiced the “Rites of the Five Thunder Gods”
(wulei shu) just after his father passed away in the yamen
of Poyang, where his grandfather had moved the family
from Kaifeng in order to take up an official post. The
members of this official family, we learn later, were en-
thusiastic devotees of the Four Saints (i.e., Tianpeng,
Tianyou, Zhenwu, and Heisha), whose effigies adorned
their residence.47
As a youth, the son of Hong Mai’s own sister-in-law
received instruction in “ritual registers” from a Daoist
priest and practiced the Rites of the Celestial Heart.48

Interest in Daoist therapeutic rituals even extended to younger

members of the imperial family. In Mingzhou, one such member, who
goes unnamed (as is sometimes the case when Hong Mai passes on
sensitive gossip), practiced the Rites of Tianxin and was summoned to
exorcise a demon afflicting the members of a study society made up
of the sons of the city’s great families.49 Another descendant of the
imperial family, Zhao Ziju, studied the Rites of Tianxin with a holy man
(daoren) and became a devotee of the Six Jia and Six Ding spirits (liu-
jia liuding). Zhao went on to treat his relatives and friends.50 His son,
as we learn from another anecdote, attempted unsuccessfully to carry
on his father’s practice of the Rites of the Celestial Heart, underscor-
ing Schipper’s remark that the role of the Ritual Master, unlike that
of many Daoist priests (and some spirit-mediums, I might add), was
and is vocational, not hereditary.
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 59

Officials, as well as their sons, became lay devotees of the Rites of

Tianxin in particular. In Nanjing, an Attendant Censor (shiyushi )
“practiced the Rites of the Celestial Heart to cure people’s illnesses,”
and on one occasion summoned a Daoist priest to assist him.51 In
Changzhou, Yao Jiangshi, who had acquired his official post by pur-
chase, practiced the “Rites of the Five Thunder Gods of the Celestial
Heart” and was invited to cure a relative of Hong Mai.52 In the sub-
prefecture of Tianchang (Zhizhou), a Commercial-Tax Official (shui-
guan), Sun Gu, who had received the Register of Highest Purity
(Shangqing lu) and practiced the Rites of Tianxin, was invited to cure
a Military Inspector (Dayizhen xunjian).53 And in Fujian, the Edict
Attendant (Daiji ) and a member of the Hanlin Academy, Zhen
Yuancheng, gave up meat and alcohol after a vision of the immortal
Lü Dongbin, studied and practiced the Rectifying Rites of the Celestial
Heart, and went on to perform “retreats” (zhai ) and “offerings” ( jiao)
for others.54
Devotees of the new therapeutic rituals of the Song were also to be
found among students and literati of nonofficial status.55 And among
the many literati or members of the bureaucratic elite who were cur-
ing friends and relatives, some were actually performing the new ther-
apeutic rituals in the course of their official duties. Song Anguo, the
Intendant of Zhexi, practiced the Rites of the Celestial Heart and reg-
ularly performed exorcisms for the people of Deqing, a subprefecture
that has been made famous recently by Philip Kuhn as a center of the
sorcery scare in the eighteenth century. One failure led Song Anguo
to a temporary but intense ascesis in a local Daoist abbey. Returning
to the home of the patient, Anguo adopted the characteristic guise of
spirit-mediums and now exorcists—he loosened his hair and held a
sword, and then defeated the demon with Thunder Magic.56 In
Jiankang, a military grandee (wugong daifu) named Cheng Chun also
“loosened his hair and bared his feet,” after which he actually donned
Daoist robes and summoned his spirit-general while performing an
exorcism of snakes at the behest of the magistrate.57
A motif related to the emerging theme of the Song official as Daoist
exorcist is introduced by the case of Yang Zhonggong, a high official
(youcong zhenglang) who practiced the Rites of the Celestial Heart and
who could determine the nature of someone’s illness simply by look-
ing at him. During the Qiandao reign period (1165–1173), Yang be-
came the Managing Prefectural Adjutant (Lushi canjun) in Daozhou.
60 Society and the Supernatural

With a Daoist priest looking on, he performed an exorcistic rite of

“summoning and investigation” for a local clerk, which resulted in the
destruction of a medium temple dedicated to the Four Maidens (Si-
niang miao).58 Many of these “official exorcists,” in fact, employed the
new Daoist exorcistic rituals not simply to cure their subjects of de-
monic obsession but to rid them of their demonic cults and practices.
During the Zhaoxing reign period (1131–1162), the magistrate of Nan-
ling county (Xuanzhou) employed the Rites of the Celestial Heart to
destroy the rural cynosure of the subprefecture, a temple dedicated
to the Bee King (Fengwang ci), which was supported by spirit-medi-
ums (wuzhu), clerks (limin), and the village commoners (lisu).59 In
1194, the incoming magistrate of Jingxian, Tang Xianzu, the grand-
son of a vice-minister of war, practiced the Rites of the Five Thunder
Gods and refused to debase himself by prostrating himself before the
god of the local temple, to the consternation of the clerks and resi-
dents. Tang ultimately rebuilt and became an enthusiastic devotee of
the temple, though only after adorning it with effigies of his Daoist
spirit-generals.60 This local cult was therefore Daoicized rather than
destroyed (more on this later).61
Occasionally, the diffusion of the new Daoist ritual traditions
throughout local society presented the magistrate with difficulties in
his attempt to undermine village cults and their representatives. In one
case described in the Yijian zhi, a spirit-medium and a local literatus
(shiren) combined their talents to terrorize a rural community. After
accusations of sorcery, the medium was imprisoned by the magistrate.
The medium claimed to practice the “Rites of the Celestial Heart,” a
claim that we must take seriously. The text refers to the medium’s use
of talismans, to his control over spirit-generals, to a “ritual sanctuary,”
and to an entourage of thirty disciples. Usurping the power and the
persona of a Daoist Ritual Master, the medium raised the stakes, so to
speak, and was met by a magistrate employing an even higher power,
the “Demon-Suppressing Seal of the Celestial Master.” 62
The conflict between officials on one side and local cults, spirit-
mediums, and sub-bureaucratic functionaries and commoners on the
other had existed in a more primitive form in earlier centuries.63 By
the Song we are no longer dealing simply with a literary trope; the
Confucian magistrate actually could become a Daoist exorcist. A mag-
istrate wielding Thunder Magic was a powerful combination of an
office conferred from above and a supernatural authority deeply
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 61

rooted in the local culture of his subjects. He was now a formidable

competitor of local spirit-mediums.
And if the Song official had become, in some instances, a Daoist
Ritual Master, the Daoist Ritual Master was almost always portrayed as
an official. Throughout the new ritual compendia of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, we find that one overriding mandate has been
conferred on the Daoist Ritual Master: everywhere, irrespective of a
particular tradition or lineage, he is charged with “civilizing and trans-
forming on behalf of (or, as the representative of ) Heaven, by de-
stroying temples and rooting out the demonic” (xinghua daitian famiao
quxie).64 The same compendia are replete with special ritual instruc-
tions for carrying out this charter.65 In doing so, the Ritual Master also
oversaw the behavior of spirits and ghosts in a way that was modeled
on the legal and administrative law of the Song magistrate. Moreover,
as we shall see in Chapter 5, his exorcisms captured the precise
rhythms of the judicial proceedings with which the magistrate dealt
with criminal suspects.
The confrontation between exorcists (“official” as well as Daoist)
and local cults was a unique episode in a more global strategy to sup-
press spirit-mediums by the Song state and its representatives. It is im-
portant to recall that the Tang court continued to employ at least
fifteen master spirit-mediums (shiwu) in the Imperial Divination
Office (Taibu shu) of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices (Taichang si),
plus a number of related exorcists known as “Spellbinding Erudites”
(Zhoujin boshi, Zhoujin shi, or Zhoujin gong). A thorough review of the
Taiping guang ji reveals, moreover, that Tang courtiers, aristocrats, and
officials consistently sought the services of spirit-mediums for private
and community purposes.66
Intimations of a real change only occur in the north, beginning in
the middle of the tenth century, when spirit-mediums were not only
excluded from the bureaucracy of the Later Zhou dynasty but were
actively targeted, along with Buddhists, in the countryside. Rulers of
the northern kingdoms, in fact, generally appear to have personally
turned to Daoists, doctors, and other ritual experts to perform func-
tions once demanded of spirit-mediums.67 A precious account, writ-
ten in 956, of a magistrate’s reasoning behind his attempt to eradi-
cate a local cult in Shandong indicates the extent of a spirit-medium’s
following in the Five Dynasties period. During each of the four sea-
sons of the year, a female medium residing in the administrative city
62 Society and the Supernatural

of Qizhou, He Niang, would direct a major celebration at an altar on

Mount Changbai in the county of Zhangqiu. These festivals attracted
the residents of four prefectures (Zhizhou, Zizhou, Dezhou, and
Dizhou), while the medium’s entourage included not only a team of
lesser mediums, who would impersonate the gods, but another team
of actors and actresses, who would put on plays at the same time.68
A policy of active suppression targeted spirit-mediums with even
greater force and specificity under the Song. At the time, the policy
was extended throughout the South, where spirit-mediums had been
enthusiastically patronized by the rulers of many of the southern king-
doms in the tenth century.69 The evidence of their suppression by en-
terprising magistrates is extensive and has been documented, reign
by reign, by Nakamura Jihei.70 From these memorials and edicts we
can actually deduce the number of spirit-mediums per capita in sev-
eral areas. These numbers are not small. In Hongzhou (Nanchang,
Jiangxi), for example, nineteen hundred spirit-mediums were rounded
up in the early eleventh century, which produces a ratio of one spirit-
medium household for every 135 families;71 in Chuzhou (Zhejiang),
there were thirty-seven hundred spirit-medium households in the pre-
fecture in the late eleventh century, and therefore one medium house-
hold for every 24 families;72 and in Fujian, Kanai Noriyuki has used
similar evidence to calculate that there were four or five spirit-medium
households for every village!73
From the same evidence we can learn much about the nomencla-
ture, attire, allies, practices, and altars and temples of spirit-mediums
in the Song. We can also learn about the nature and techniques of
official suppression (which included corporal punishment, tattooing,
exile, and particularly conversion to the agricultural or medical pro-
fessions), as well as something about the limitations, contradictions, fail-
ures, and unanticipated consequences of suppression. I make use of
this evidence from time to time in later chapters. A full treatment of
official attempts to suppress spirit-mediums would, I believe, also have
to take into account heightened concerns about (1) sorcery (yaoshu;
nanfa), both real and imagined, with which the spirit-medium was
identified, for better or for worse;74 (2) witchcraft (gudu), especially the
phenomenon of ritual murder (sharen jigui ), reports of which, sig-
nificantly, do not precede the Song;75 and even (3) heresies (zuodao)
in the twelfth century, especially the Vegetarian Devil-Worshipping
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 63

Sects.76 Exploring all of these would, however, take us too far afield at
the present time.
The suppression of spirit-mediums and of the practices with which
they were associated (sorcery, witchcraft, and so forth) was the dark
side of a marginally more benign and long-standing strategy on the
part of officials to penetrate and control local society through its cults
and religious institutions. The destruction of the altars of spirit-medi-
ums was only one element of this strategy in the Song, and not nec-
essarily the most significant or effective one. A famous edict from
Huizong’s reign, dated to the first year of Zhenghe (1111), called for
the abolition of approximately thirteen hundred “spirit-altars” (shenci)
in Kaifeng. This so-called abolition, however, actually entailed the re-
moval of the spirits of those altars—or, rather, their images—into Bud-
dhist monasteries, Daoist abbeys, and community temples (ben miao).
Images of Zhenwu, for instance, were moved into Daoist abbeys, while
images of earth-spirits (tudi shen) were transferred to City God tem-
ples (chenghuang miao).77 Here we find not so much suppression as the
integration of cults and spirits into a hierarchy of temples and gods.
Integration rather than suppression also informed Huizong’s so-
called anti-Buddhist policy, as we have seen.
The same memorial did single out three classes of spirits as “perverse
cults” (yinci) to be extinguished completely. These are the Wutong, Ziyi,
and Shi Jiang jun spirits. I can find little information about the latter
two, but the wutong spirits were the characteristic divinities of village
spirit-medium cults in the South during the twelfth century. These
quasi-natural and highly sexed spirits were worshipped at “congci,”
which both Nakamura Jihei and Kanai Noriyuki have shown to be a
technical term for the religious foci of new villages since the late Tang.
These “rustic altars,” and their spirits, continued to spring up in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries wherever new land was brought under
cultivation, especially in Jiangnan and Fujian. Huizong’s edict called
for their eradication, yet even these cults were not really destroyed, as
we shall see. Rather, they were transformed, and their spirits wor-
shipped under other names.78
The effects of Huizong’s edict, or the trends that it merely codified,
can be traced throughout the twelfth century. Everywhere in the South,
we find examples of an altar or small temple dedicated to one or an-
other spirit being handed over to a Buddhist monk or Daoist priest to
64 Society and the Supernatural

administer, or being moved into the precincts of a Buddhist mon-

astery.79 Occasionally the themes of suppression and integration are
brought together, as in Changzhou, where, in 1195, the prefect re-
placed the spirit-mediums attached to an Auxiliary Temple of the East-
ern Peak with Buddhist monks, who then oversaw worship for the com-
munity besieged by an epidemic.80 Other attempts to control local
cults, however, often met with considerable and successful resistance.
In the canton of Changtian (Poyang, Jiangxi), in 1196, more than
one hundred spirit-mediums and artisans intervened to prevent the
destruction of a rural temple, the Mingshan miao.81 The spirits of
the medium, moreover, enjoyed external control no more than the
medium himself. In 1162, in Hong Prefecture, an Earth God resisted
the destruction of his temple and removal to the City God temple by
an Army Commander (shuaishou).82
If the spirit-medium had to contend with the pressures of external
control, he had also to fend off various internal challenges to his or
her position. In Nankang, during the Zhaoxing reign period (1131–
1162), a spirit-medium backed by local literati confronted a villager
attempting to destroy a local temple in order to expand his living quar-
ters.83 Even in villages where the power of the medium and the eco-
nomic development of the village itself had been so closely linked, a
spirit-medium might find unexpected challenges. Sometime during the
twelfth century in Jiangdong (Eastern Zhejiang), the leading men in
a village rallied behind the female medium of theircongci who had been
threatened at the altar by a skeptical, abusive, and desecrating youth.
Fearing that all their work over the years might be lost in this one mo-
ment, the village leaders conspired to neutralize the youth, unwittingly
transforming him into a sacrificial substitute. With the entire village
looking on, the boy was bribed to repeat his blasphemous performance
and recklessly consumed the offerings, which had been poisoned; his
death was widely seen to have been caused by the god. Here the vil-
lage elders closed ranks around “the medium” through which their
power over the community had been sustained, even to the extent of
murder and a judicial investigation!84
Outside of such a village, however, a medium was normally left to
his or her own devices. In the city of Yi, a medium of a congci suc-
cessfully conspired with his clique to neutralize yet another blas-
pheming youth in order to demonstrate his spirit’s power, and thereby
win contributions to renovate his altar from the urban residents
Therapeutic Movements: Practitioners 65

(yimin) who had thus far been unaccommodating.85 In the city, there-
fore, a spirit-medium confronted challenges similar to those he faced
in the village, but exploited them to secure patrons he had never be-
fore had. Along the same lines, another medium in Tongzhou used
complex duplicity to gain a permanent sinecure in a temple patron-
ized by literati (shiren).86
The position of the spirit-medium was inherently unstable. The
medium was often one power broker among many, dependent on al-
liances with landlords, functionaries, local literati, and his band of
acolytes. Sometimes, however, even the goodwill of the community was
unable to guarantee a spirit-medium control over his destiny:

In the subprefecture of Chong’an [Fujian], there was a

spirit-medium (wu) named Weng Chishi who served the
spirits with great efficacy. The villagers (cunmin) flocked to
him eagerly. On the first of the ninth month of 1161, just as
he was petitioning on behalf of the people, he spoke all of a
sudden in the voice of his spirit: “I must go far away and will
be temporarily unable to respond to people’s requests and
cure their illnesses.” The members of Weng’s household
angrily complained: “For generations we have held on to
the power of you, the spirit, for our livelihood. We have
burned incense and reverentially served you without any
disrespect. We do not understand why we have been re-
jected.” Three times they came forward and kowtowed. But
the spirit responded, “The barbarian bandits are coming
south. The Lord on High (shangtian) has given a general
order that all cavalry soldiers that belong to each general
of the Community Temples of the City God (chenghuang
shemiao) under Heaven should defend the River. Therefore
I must go.” They asked, “How long before you return?” and
he said, “I cannot yet determine. I suspect it may be before
the winter solstice.” From this moment, communication was
cut off. Meanwhile there was an illness in a rich family, and
they beseeched Weng to come to their home. Though he
exhaustively prayed, the spirit would not descend. [Yet,] when
the first of the twelfth month arrived, he assumed once more
the voice of the spirit, saying, “ We have already killed the
desired barbarian king. Worship of the earth deities (shenqi )
66 Society and the Supernatural

in all the circuits has been liberated and continues.” From

that day, Weng’s spiritual power was like it had been.87

Here a hereditary medium temporarily loses his power because his

tutelary divinity is called away by the Emperor on High for the defense
of the realm. The significance of this anecdote lies in its demonstra-
tion of the extent to which even the spirits of the medium had become
integrated in, and on occasion subordinated to, a spiritual hierarchy
that placed limits on their autonomy. The tutelary divinity of this spirit-
medium is identified as one of an army of mounted soldiers, the min-
ions of various generals (i.e., the deities of the Daoist Ritual Master)
who are, in turn, the subordinates of the City Gods. This is but a seg-
ment of a much larger and complex bureaucracy of souls of the dead
that crystallized in the tenth century and became an integral part of
the pantheon of Daoist Ritual Masters in the twelfth. The bureaucra-
tization of the medium’s tutelary divinity reflects a process of accom-
modation on which we have yet to touch—between Daoist exorcists
and spirit-mediums at the level of ritual practice. The entire conflict,
in fact, between exorcists (Daoist or “official”) and spirit-medium cults
was held in check by a profound and lasting ritual relationship that
emerged in the twelfth century among these same practitioners.
Exposing this relationship is the subject of the next five chapters.
Chapter 4 examines the relationship between Ritual Masters and
spirit-mediums in the context of Daoist revelation and, in particular,
the divine revelations of the talismans, rituals, and texts associated
with the new therapeutic lineages of the Song. Chapter 4 juxtaposes
two seemingly unrelated episodes: one associated with the court and
the founding of the Song dynasty in the late tenth century, the other
emanating from the countryside, from the ritual crisis of a Daoist ex-
orcist in the twelfth century. The link between these two episodes will
expose the profound relationship between court and countryside, be-
tween imperial legitimization and popular religion. Chapters 5, 6, and
7 offer a precise genealogy and delineation of the working relation-
ship between Ritual Masters and spirit-mediums in the twelfth century.
 4
The Cult of the Black Killer

y the Northern Song, the Mandate of Heaven had moved squarely

B within the fold of Daoist interpretation. It became clear, more-
over, that even with the consolidation of the South, this mandate was
in serious need of shoring up. After 1005, the emperor Zhenzong
(r. 998–1022) woke up to the defeat of his armies, the loss of territory,
and the humiliating treaty with the Liao. In 1006, the architect of
this treaty, Kou Zhun, was dismissed, and the emperor turned in-
creasingly to Wang Qinruo. Wang would be excoriated by Song his-
torians for allowing the emperor to fiddle away his time in Daoist pavil-
ions while the capital, Kaifeng, was threatened. It is true that, as a
southerner in a courtly and bureaucratic milieu still dominated by
northerners, Wang’s views on defense seemed callous. Yet in the
Daoist Wang Qinruo, the emperor found a minister who let the em-
peror be himself.1

The Supporter of Sageliness and Protector of Virtue

Wang suggested that the emperor might best overcome the shameful
treaty by performing the feng and shan sacrifices and by searching for
celestial omens. In the first month of 1008, the first of four “heavenly
texts” (tianshu) was “discovered” on the palace grounds. In several cases
their discovery was indicated directly to the emperor by a spirit dressed
in Daoist costume. All these texts were “dynastic treasures,” celestial
talismans that explicitly confirmed the Zhaos’ possession of the man-

67
68 Society and the Supernatural

date, thereby guaranteeing, incidentally, the emperor’s right to per-

form the sacrifices recommended by Wang. Amidst an outpouring of
support, but also much criticism, the emperor went to Mount Tai in
the ninth month of 1008 and performed the feng and shan sacrifices.
And in the second month of 1011, he performed the great sacrifice
to the Earth at Fengyin.
Meanwhile, the identity of the spirit who had appeared to the em-
peror was taking shape. In the tenth month of 1012, the emperor had
a vision in which a spirit-being descended and conveyed to him a com-
mand from the Jade Emperor (Yuhuang) which said, “In the past I or-
dered your ancestor Zhao [Yuanlang] to confer upon you the ‘heav-
enly texts.’ Honor him as the Tang honored Laozi!” Several days later,
during the course of what appears to have been a Daoist “offering”
( jiao) in the Abbey of Extended Mercy, the “holy ancestor” appeared
again to the emperor and declared that he was in fact the Yellow Em-
peror (Xuanyuan huangdi) who, in one last incarnation, had de-
scended during the Later Tang (923–935) as the first ancestor of the
Zhao clan. In 1017, Zhenzong visited the Palace of Reflection and Re-
sponse of Jade Purity (Yuqing zhaoying gong), built three years previ-
ously to house the “heavenly texts,” and set up tablets for the Jade Em-
peror, the Holy Ancestor (i.e., the Yellow Emperor), and all subsequent
ancestors of the Zhao clan. The claim of descent from the primordial
Yellow Emperor, patron of Daoism, was a quite self-conscious attempt
not only to imitate but to surpass the divine genealogy of the Tang.
Already, from 1007, much of this had been prepared behind the
scenes. Through a eunuch intermediary, a certain Wang Jie had been
lodged in a building in the Capital Security Office (Huangcheng si),
the bureau that controlled access to the imperial city. Wang was from
Fujian and claimed to have met there, in the closing years of the tenth
century, a magician named Zhao. Zhao taught Wang his techniques
and entrusted him to perform them in the service of the emperor.
When Wang Jie finally arrived in Kaifeng, he identified his master Zhao
as none other than the Perfected Lord “Controller of Destiny” (Siming
zhenjun) and the original ancestor of the ruling family. From 1007
on, the Controller of Destiny descended and transmitted to Wang a
series of revelations and predictions that were passed on to the em-
peror.2 We can agree with Michel Soymié that the imperial visions that
began in 1008 probably originated through the offices of this medium
from Fujian.3
The Cult of the Black Killer 69

The years between 1007 and 1022, when the emperor died, were
a period, therefore, of intense Daoist activity. All this is well known.
What is perhaps less well known is Zhenzong’s devotion to a god known
as the Perfected Lord “Protector of Sageliness” (Yisheng zhenjun):
The emperor received the “primordial talismans” [i.e., the heavenly
texts] and [as a consequence] performed the feng sacrifice on Mount
Tai. He built the Palace of Reflection and Response of Jade Purity.
Within the Palace grounds, to the northwest of the Tower of the Pre-
cious Talismans (Baofu ge), he constructed a Pavilion for Extending the
Mandate (Ningming dian). And behind this was the Tower for Ex-
tending the Mandate (Ningming lou) in which he honored the Per-
fected Lord.4

In 1014, Zhenzong issued an edict granting the Perfected Lord a

new title, “Supporter of Sageliness and Protector of Virtue” (Yisheng
baode). “In the generation and execution of the precious mandate,”
he wrote, “we have relied on this greatest of gods to bear the burden;
as a luminous reward for the extraordinary evidence of his power, we
reverentially add to his fine title.” 5 Indeed, after reviewing the support
this god had provided to his predecessor, Emperor Taizong, Zhenzong
took this opportunity to announce “the completion of the mandate.”
In 1016, none other than Wang Qinruo presented to the emperor The
Transmissions of the Supporter of Sageliness and Protector of Virtue, the source
of the previous quotations.6 The process of discovering the identity of
the Perfected Lord “Supporter of Sageliness” will take us from the lofty
world of imperial legitimation to the daily routine of Daoist exorcists.

The Ritual Master Zhang Shouzhen

The Transmissions open with an account of the god’s first epiphany:

At the beginning of the Jianlong reign period [960–963], a

commoner from Zhouzhi subprefecture in Fenghuang
[Shanxi], Zhang Shouzhen, was wandering on Mount
Zhongnan. Suddenly he heard someone calling him from
above in a pure and sonorous voice. Shouzhen was startled
and looked around, but saw nothing. He picked up the
pace, listening intently for several miles. Again he heard a
voice, saying, “If you walk ahead, I’ll be right behind you.”
70 Society and the Supernatural

This went on for several days. Shouzhen could not figure

it out. Thereupon he returned home. Inside his house, he
again heard the voice: “I have received an order to send
down my spirit. Why have you been so obstinate in this way,
refusing to listen to my words?! If I am not able to perform
great deeds for the Song dynasty, then you will surely be
ground to powder!” At this moment Shouzhen knew that
he had encountered something extraordinary, but at the
same time was terrified. Therefore he said, “I am unclear
what star has descended in this manner. I am ignorant and
cloudy by nature. I only wish that you do not intimidate
me. I have nothing with which to worship you.” Therefore
the god said, “I am an Assisting Minister of the Jade Em-
peror and a Great Sage of the Highest Heaven. I have
received a mandate to protect these times and have de-
scended among men, riding on a dragon. However, there
are no upright and true gentlemen who revere my teaching.
You have exceptional bones which are completely out of the
ordinary. You will be able to receive, with a reverent heart,
my holy instructions.” Shouzhen replied, “ Your servant has
heard that in the case of men such people are called wu
and in the case of women, xi [sic].” Although Shouzhen
was of mediocre intelligence, his sense of humility was of
the benevolent sort. Again the god spoke: “I am a god of
the Highest Heaven, not a ghost or demon. I can cause the
spirits of the Five Peaks and Four Rivers to serve me. If you
turn your heart and enter the Way and respectfully offer me
incense, I will have you respond to the sought-after mandate
of the Great Dynasty [i.e., the Song] and receive the kind-
ness of the True Ruler [i.e., the emperor]. What has this
to do with the vocation of a wu or xi?” Shouzhen replied, “If
you intend to teach and instruct me like this, I have indeed
dared to serve you with disrespect. Therefore, I will lay out
offerings of wine and meat as a sacrifice to you.” Again
Shouzhen heard the words, “I am a spiritual being. How
can you pollute me with offerings of meat? Since, however,
you do not understand, I will not punish you. From now on,
only use incense, vegetables, and fruit as tribute. Although I
The Cult of the Black Killer 71

do not consume these, still I will appreciate the thought.”

Shouzhen kneeled and thanked him.7

Following the advice of the god, Zhang Shouzhen became a disci-

ple of the Daoist master Liang Quan of the Tower Abbey (Louguan).8
After Shouzhen was ordained as a Daoist priest, he built a hermitage
on some empty land next to his home and entered the religious life
(chujia). He also set aside a pavilion within the Palace of the North-
ern Emperor (Beidi gong) where he worshipped the god and received
from him a series of revelations. The first involved three sets of “Sword
Rituals” ( jianfa) to use in performing exorcisms on behalf of the dy-
nastic family, villages, and individuals, respectively; the second involved
three sets of “Rituals for the Construction of Altars” ( jiantan fa) to se-
cure blessings for the dynasty, officials, and literati and commoners,
respectively.9
All this transpired during the three years after the founding of the
dynasty in 960. Subsequently, the divine revelations became more in-
tertwined with imperial politics. At some point during the Qiande
reign period (963–967), the Prince of Jin ( Jinwang, who was Lord
of Kaifeng and the future emperor Taizong) commissioned the per-
formance of a Daoist offering ( jiao) in the Temple of the Northern
Emperor during which a representative conveyed the Prince of Jin’s
vow to enlarge the temple. In response to this commitment, the god—
probably through the mediation of Zhang Shouzhen—prophesied that
he would make the Prince of Jin the second ruler of the Song dynasty.10
The Prince of Jin’s brother, the current emperor Taizu, grew alarmed
when he heard about this and summoned Shouzhen to the palace.
Shouzhen warned the emperor that the god would only respond to a
proper memorial and would not descend in the face of insincerity. The
emperor, however, went ahead and had a small child in the domestic
service —a eunuch—stand to the side and whistle (changxiao). Taizu
asked whether this was how the god conveyed his words, only insult-
ing the god further while incidentally proving his own unworthiness.11
Later, during an offering performed by Zhang Shouzhen in the Jian-
long Abbey in Kaifeng, the god descended again and claimed to be a
supporting minister of the Jade Emperor who had been given a man-
date to protect the Song dynasty and its altars. The god also renewed
his praise for the “benevolent heart” of the Prince of Jin. All this ap-
72 Society and the Supernatural

parently transpired on the evening of the nineteenth day of the tenth

month of the ninth year of Kaibao (976)—the eve of Taizu’s death.12
Thus these prophecies and claims amounted to nothing less than a
divine justification for the Prince of Jin’s usurpation of the throne,
made more problematic by persistent rumors of fratricide.13
After Taizong’s accession, he had Shouzhen perform a “Great Of-
fering of the Entire Heaven” (Zhoutian dajiao) in the Qionglin yuan, a
park in the western suburbs of Kaifeng where the emperor entertained
the newly graduated examination candidates for the jinshi degree.14 In
verse, the god confirmed his support for the founding and continued
stability of the Song dynasty. In response, the emperor commissioned
two officials to oversee the construction of a major temple dedicated
to the god. The “Palace of Great Peace of [the Heaven of ] Highest Pu-
rity” (Shangqing taiping gong) was built in the northern foothills of
Zhongnanshan, home of Zhang Shouzhen. The temple complex in-
cluded (a) four pavilions in the center dedicated to the Jade Emperor,
Purple Tenuity (Ziwei), the Seven Primordials (Qiyuan), and the Per-
fected Lord, respectively; (b) four pavilions to the east, the first of which
was dedicated to the divinity Tianpeng; (c) four pavilions to the west,
the first of which was dedicated to the divinity Zhenwu; (d) special halls
dedicated to divinities known as “spiritual officers” (lingguan), among
others; (e) a Bell Tower and a Scripture Tower; and, finally, (f ) a tablet
(bei) that recorded the history of the temple and its god.15
The Bell Tower and the Scripture Tower had been defining features
of the Tang-dynasty Tower Abbey. According to a temple inscription
engraved in 988, the Bell Tower of this abbey, which had since been
moved to another place, was installed in the Palace of Great Peace at
the request of Zhang Shouzhen.16 It seems quite probable that the
Palace of Great Peace not only came within the jurisdiction of the
Daoist lineage of the Tower Abbey but was its successor. Given that our
text, as we have seen, identifies Liang Quan, the ordination master of
Zhang Shouzhen, as a priest of the Tower Abbey, we can hypothesize
that the link between the cult of the Perfected Lord “Protector of Sage-
liness” and the emperor Taizong had been engineered by this partic-
ular Daoist faction well-versed in the ways of imperial legitimization.17
Even if this hypothesis is too conspiratorial, The Transmissions of the
Supporter of Sageliness and Protector of Virtue remains an ideologizing doc-
ument. This is particularly true with respect to the identity of the god
himself. Throughout The Transmissions, the god who descends is re-
The Cult of the Black Killer 73

ferred to as the “Perfected Lord” (zhenjun), a rather general and com-

mon term for Daoist divinities that forms part of the title conferred
upon the god by Emperor Zhenzong. Twice we have seen that the Per-
fected Lord introduces himself as a “supporting minister of the Jade
Emperor,” yet this is clearly a functional description and was probably
meant to impress a later audience, for the Jade Emperor became rec-
ognized as a tutelary divinity of the Song dynasty only during the reign
of Zhenzong.18
In 983, Taizong granted the Perfected Lord his first title: “General
Who Supports the Sage” (Yisheng jiang jun). This investiture ( feng),
normally pro forma, created an amusing difficulty. After the title was
reported to the god by Zhang Shouzhen, the god asked him which
sage he was supposed to be supporting. The implication that the god
may have been subordinated to the emperor was not lost on Shouzhen,
who became terrified as the messenger of a potential insult. The god,
however, told Shouzhen that it was not his fault, and he was relieved
to learn, after further inquiries, that the sage whom the god supported
was the Emperor on High (Shangdi).19
That the god himself is not quite sure exactly who he is supposed
to be I take as just one more indication that the authors of this text
found his identity to be a problem. The text seems intent on dancing
around the issue in a studied attempt at avoidance, even effacement.
The title “General” ( jiang jun), however—a title that the god does not
dispute —is a trace, and the only indication here, of his true nature.
The god’s identity in fact emerges with great clarity in other, non-
Daoist, accounts of Zhang Shouzhen’s relation to the Song court. A
passage in the Xu Zizhi tong jian changbian (Collected Data for a Contin-
uation of the “Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government” ) opens with the
following:

In the beginning, a spirit descended before Zhang Shouzhen, a com-

moner in Zhouzhi subprefecture, and said, “I am a venerable god of
Heaven. My title is ‘General Black Killer’ (Heisha jiang jun). I support
the Jade Emperor.” Each time Shouzhen purified himself and invited
the god with prayer, the spirit would always descend into the room. The
wind would whistle, and his voice was like that of a small child; only
Shouzhen was able to understand it.20

And a section devoted to the General Black Killer in the Southern Song
Huangchao shishi leiyuan offers a significant variant of this account:
74 Society and the Supernatural

During the Kaibao reign period [968–976], a spirit descended before

Zhang Shouzhen, a Daoist priest on Zhongnanshan, and said, “I am a
venerable spirit of Heaven. My title is ‘General Black Killer.’ Together
with Xuanwu, Tianpeng, and their retinue, we are the Three Great Gen-
erals of Heaven.” [Henceforth] the god spoke about matters of fortune
and misfortune with great efficacy. Each time Shouzhen purified him-
self and invited the god, he would descend into the room. The wind
would whistle, and his voice was like that of a small child; only Shouzhen
could understand it.21

The General Black Killer appeared to Zhang Shouzhen as one mem-

ber of a divine trio that included Xuanwu and Tianpeng. Like his com-
panions, Black Killer was a god of the north—hence his black color—
and a lieutenant of the Emperor of the North (Beidi). It is not
insignificant in this respect that after Zhang Shouzhen took up the re-
ligious life, he worshipped his god and was the beneficiary of his rev-
elations in the Palace of the Northern Emperor (Beidi gong). More-
over, the trio of deities subordinated to Beidi was represented spatially
in the Temple of Great Peace of Highest Purity, the temple complex
built by Taizong on Zhongnanshan, where there was a central hall ded-
icated to the Perfected Lord (i.e., Black Killer) that sat along a verti-
cal axis headed by halls to the Jade Emperor and to Purple Tenuity,
both emperors of the north, and that was flanked by halls to Zhenwu
(i.e., Xuanwu) and to Tianpeng. The important point, however, is that
Heisha, Zhenwu, and Tianpeng were the central cultic divinities of
many of the most significant and innovative Daoist exorcistic lineages
of the Song. These three were the source both of their revelations and
of the powers that were embodied in, and made effective by, their ther-
apeutic practices.

The Four Saints

The General Black Killer was appropriately named. He was, above all,
a demonifuge, a destroyer of demons. The Huangchao shishi leiyuan pro-
vides a graphic description of his appearance. After construction be-
gan on the Palace of Great Peace on Mount Zhongnan, artisans set
about creating the all-important effigy of the god. To this end, they
first invited the Black Killer to descend. Perhaps through the inter-
mediary of Zhang Shouzhen, he told them: “I am of human form and
I have angry eyes and disheveled hair. I ride on a dragon and hold a
The Cult of the Black Killer 75

sword. In front I point to a star.” 22 The god’s self-description is

confirmed in a poem by Su Shi on the occasion of a visit to the tem-
ple in the second month of 1062: “The secret pavilion opens by a
golden lock, the god is riding on a golden dragon; dressed in black,
he grasps a massive sword; his hair is disheveled, and his two eyes cause
one to shiver with fear.” 23 A Qing-dynasty commentary adds that im-
ages of the “Protector of Sageliness” all represent the god with “di-
sheveled hair and bare feet, grasping a sword and riding a dragon.”
The human body, military implements, and aggressive and wild de-
meanor are also characteristic of Heisha’s divine comrades-in-arms,
and of the entire class of divinities venerated by the Daoist exorcistic
lineages of the Song. According to one text, Tianpeng was armed to
the teeth—of which he also had, apparently, several sets. He had three
heads and six arms, which held a hatchet, rope, bow, arrow, lance, and
spear. He was dressed in black clothes and a dark hat, and led an army
of three hundred thousand soldiers.24 Tianpeng was the first of the
“Divine Ennead of the Occultated Jia” (dunjia jiushen), the nine stars
of the esoteric Dipper; these are described in the sixth-century book
of divination, the Wuxing dayi,25 where Tianpeng is assigned the func-
tion of security and protection.26 In the sixth century, he was already
venerated as an exorcistic divinity and lieutenant of the Northern Em-
peror. An entry in Tao Hong jing’s Zhengao describes the “Rites of the
Northern Emperor for Killing Demons” (Beidi shagui zhi fa), which en-
tail, for the most part, the recitation of a rather dramatic spell to Tian-
peng.27 By the ninth century, his cult had spread west to Sichuan, where
a Daoist exorcist who worshipped the Northern Emperor engraved a
Seal of Tianpeng to protect families from the period’s civil wars.28 The
cult to Tianpeng remained popular among military circles into the
Southern Song, when he aided various generals in their battles with
the Jin.29
Since the Warring States period, Xuanwu, or the Dark Warrior, had
been one of the theriomorphic spirits identified with the four direc-
tions. He governed the northern quadrant and, in another scheme,
the seven stellar mansions (xingxiu) associated with this direction. His
body was a composite, part tortoise and part snake; he was dark like
Tianpeng and Heisha; and his martial spirit was represented not only
by his name but by the protective armor of the turtle shell.30
The development of an independent cult to Xuanwu can be traced
in the Xuantian shangdi qishenglu (Record of Revelations to the Sages by the
76 Society and the Supernatural

Supreme Sovereign of the Dark Heaven, HY 957). The purpose of this Ming-
dynasty hagiography was to establish the god’s association, both leg-
endary and historical, with Mount Wudang, a major pilgrimage site
closely identified with the fortunes of the Ming emperors.31 Although
several passages testify to the god’s appearance in the Tang 32—on
Mount Wudang but also in Jiangxi—the popularity of his cult becomes
significant only with the founding of the Song in the tenth century.
Renamed the “Perfected Warrior” (Zhenwu), the god was honored
prodigiously by the first emperors of the Song, not least for his con-
tribution to the dynasty’s consolidation of the South and to its con-
tinuing defense of the frontiers.
In this regard, one of the more astonishing revelations of the Ming
hagiography is the link between the Perfected Warrior and Zhang
Shouzhen. Toward the end of the tenth century, Zhang took under
his wing a “presented scholar” ( jinshi ) named Zhuan Hong from
Yangzhou. Zhuan Hong was a lifelong devotee of the Perfected War-
rior and had made a pilgrimage to the Palace of Great Peace of (the
Heaven of ) Highest Purity in the Zhongnan mountains. There, at the
altar of the Western Pavilion dedicated to the Perfected Warrior, this
literatus entered into a trance and was possessed by the god under the
watchful eyes of the temple administrator (zhigong), who was none
other than Zhang Shouzhen. In four allusive lines, the Perfected War-
rior prophesied the birth of a son to the childless emperor, as well as
the renewal of the Song mandate in the son’s accession to the throne.
Zhang wrote down the verse and presented it, through military inter-
mediaries, to the throne. The emperor was both astonished and de-
lighted. Many years later, after Zhang had died and the thirteen-year-
old Renzong (r. 1023–1063) had succeeded his father, the possessed
scholar was worshipped as a transcendent, and a small altar was ded-
icated to him in the Western Pavilion of the Perfected Warrior. Here
we see not only Zhang’s role as a mediator of divine revelation and
imperial legitimization, but his role as an officiant (and interpreter)
of possession trance —a role characteristic of Daoist Ritual Masters in
the twelfth century.33
The main focus of imperial attention, however, was neither Mount
Zhongnan nor Mount Wudang, for that matter, but the Abbey of the
Four Saints of the Northern Pole (Beiji sisheng guan) constructed by
the emperors Taizu and Taizong in Kaifeng.34 The abbey was dedicated
to Purple Tenuity, Emperor of the North, and to the Four Saints:
The Cult of the Black Killer 77

Heisha, Zhenwu, and Tianpeng—the Three Great Generals of Zhang

Shouzhen’s Temple of Great Peace —and a fourth, Tianyou, who had
been invoked along with Tianpeng in the sixth-century Rites of the
Northern Emperor for Killing Demons. This divine quartet, moreover,
formed the central pantheon of an important Daoist exorcistic tradi-
tion indigenous to the lower Yangzi in the early twelfth century, the
“Great Rites of Youth’s Incipience” (Tongchu dafa).35
In response to the imperial patronage of Zhenwu, pavilions to him
were established in many Daoist abbeys.36 Imperial patronage, how-
ever, does not account for the popularity of this god, who was wor-
shipped quite independently, and privately, in the homes of officials,
soldiers, and merchants.37 By the twelfth century he was the focus of
many large-scale community festivals.38 Zhenwu was the god par ex-
cellence of village spirit-mediums (wu); in a very concrete sense, he
was their alter ego.39 The legendary portion of the Xuantian shangdi
qishenglu can be read as a mythogenesis of Zhenwu’s iconographic rep-
resentation. In each and every epiphany of the god, he appears with
“disheveled hair and bare feet” (pifa xianzu), armed with a “precious
sword” (baojian), and accompanied by a turtle and snake —animal
transformations of the Demon King (Mowang) whom Zhenwu de-
feated in a great cosmic battle on Wudangshan.40 “Disheveled hair and
bare feet” are precisely the terms used to describe possessed spirit-
mediums. Put more strongly, to describe someone in this way was ei-
ther to describe a spirit-medium in trance or someone imitating such
a person. Examples of this are legion in the anecdotal literature of the
Song and before.41 Any photograph of a modern “divination youth”
with his unkempt hair, half-naked body, and handheld weapon shows
that not much has changed at this level of village religion.
As we have seen, the Black Killer was described in precisely the same
terms—with disheveled hair and bare feet, holding a sword. The ori-
gin of Heisha is somewhat obscure, though perhaps no more obscure
than the origin of any god. What we do know is that during the third
decade of the tenth century, in Fujian, a Daoist priest named Tan Zi-
xiao came to possess a set of talismans “discovered” by a spirit-medium.42
These talismans formed the basis for his creation of the Rectifying Rites
of Tianxin (Tianxin zhengfa), which would become the most widely
practiced therapeutic rituals of the twelfth century. According to one
source, the divine object of Tan’s personal cult was none other than
the Black Killer, and indeed, we find that the “Talisman of the Black
78 Society and the Supernatural

Killer” (Heisha fu) is of fundamental importance in the texts of the

Rites of Tianxin and their derivatives.43 These texts, moreover, iden-
tify the Black Killer as the “Talismanic Envoy of the Dark Warrior”
(Xuanwu fushi);44 he is, therefore, closely linked—and in a sense even
subordinated—to Xuanwu, who may be invoked separately in the
Tianxin rituals. Filling out the triad is the “Great Prime Marshal Tian-
peng” (Tianpeng da yuanshuai), supreme commander of thirty-six
generals.45 Heisha, Xuanwu, and Tianpeng are the three principal
agents of the Emperor of the North (Beidi), who presides over the De-
partment of Exorcism (Chuxie yuan) and who is both the “patriarchal
master” (zushi ) and the central divinity of the Rites of Tianxin.46
Therefore, at the core of the imperial cult to the Perfected Lord
“Supporter of Sageliness and Protector of Virtue” was a precise set of
fierce martial deities who would become the principal agents of the
rituals practiced by a number of Daoist exorcists active mainly in the
South during the late Northern and Southern Song. And however we
read Zhang Shouzhen’s relation to the court, both as a prophet of im-
perial succession and as an officiant of large-scale Daoist “offerings,”
he was, above all, originally if not exclusively an exorcist.
The initial set of divine revelations in the Palace of the Northern
Emperor were “Sword Rituals,” and the last third of The Transmissions
is given over entirely to an account of exorcisms performed by Zhang
Shouzhen for commoner and official residents in the vicinity of
Chang’an.47 The text of a biographical inscription, the first part of
which was composed by twenty-one disciples of Zhang Shouzhen and
engraved in 999, three years after his death, explains that, following
the revelations in the Palace of the Northern Emperor, Zhang pacified
the local area by exorcising demons and became known by the title,
“Gentleman Who Penetrates the Numinous, Zhang the Black Killer”
(Tongling xiansheng Zhang Heisha).48 This appellation suggests that
Zhang was so identified with his divinity that he was named after him.
(In the Song, if not before, it was common for village spirit-mediums
to adopt as personal names the very name of the god who possessed
them.)49
The temple tablet, moreover, opens by referring to Zhang Shouzhen
as a “Ritual Master” ( fashi ) and by identifying him as a descendant of
the immortal Zhang Zifang, the sixth-generation ancestor of Zhang
Daoling, the founder of the Celestial Master sect and religious Dao-
ism.50 This identification is, of course, a complete contrivance based
The Cult of the Black Killer 79

on the similarity of their family names. It is not, however, gratuitous.

The defining concern of Zhang Daoling and the Celestial Master tra-
dition was therapeutic ritual. And many of the Daoist exorcistic lin-
eages of the Song found their inspiration in, or claimed a direct rela-
tion to, the “Orthodox Unity” (Zhengyi) tradition of the Celestial
Masters, who had, since the late Tang, relocated on Mount Longhu
in Jiangxi.51

Spirit-Mediums and Daoist Revelation

By now, the nature of the Perfected Lord and of Zhang Shouzhen him-
self have become fairly transparent. What is less clear is the relation-
ship between this dark, murderous spirit and his demon-quelling devo-
tee. How, precisely, did the Black Killer reveal himself to Zhang
Shouzhen? The Transmissions state merely that the god “descended”
( jiang), or that he “sent down his words” ( jiangyan), statements that
are then followed in every case by a direct quotation from the spirit.
Are we dealing here with auditory hallucinations or with descriptive
terms that are willfully imprecise so as to obscure some other means
of divine revelation?
Recall that, when the Perfected Lord first made known his inten-
tion of conferring upon Zhang Shouzhen his holy instructions, Zhang
naturally thought that he himself was being put in the position of a
spirit-medium (wu/xi ), the time-honored representative of village re-
ligion who offered blood sacrifices and who either transmitted mes-
sages from, or became possessed by, a guardian spirit. The Perfected
Lord protested this quite vigorously, as he did again when Zhang tried
to honor him with meat offerings: the Perfected Lord is a heavenly
deity who does not require provisions of food. Yet could it be that, just
as this text is at pains to efface the true nature of its divinity, so it is at
pains to hide or transform the true manner of his revelation?
Recall, further, that the Perfected Lord was absolutely beside him-
self with anger when the emperor Taizu had a small child (xiao’er ) whis-
tle in order “to imitate” the voice of the Perfected Lord. Here, I think,
we have a clear case of textual, if not also psychological, displacement.
The accounts in the Xu Zizhi tong jian changpian and Huangchao shishi
leiyuan agree that when Zhang Shouzhen summoned the Black Killer,
“the wind would whistle, his voice was like that of a small child, and
only Zhang Shouzhen could understand it.” Could it be that the voice
80 Society and the Supernatural

of the Black Killer manifested itself as the voice of a small child pre-
cisely because it was a small child—a child-medium—who embodied
him? We know, for example, that large portions of The Great Rites of the
Jade Hall (Yudang dafa)—the ritual manual compiled in the early
twelfth century by Lu Shizhong—were transmitted from a divinity by
“spirit-writing” ( jiangbi ). And there we read that “when the Celestial
Lord descended, his voice sounded like a small child, and only [Lu]
Shizhong and his disciple, Zhai Duwen, could hear it.” 52 As we shall
see immediately below and in subsequent chapters, real children
played precisely this role in the new revelations, as well as the thera-
peutic rituals, of twelfth-century Daoist exorcists like Lu Shizhong.
In the preceding pages, we have found the revelations of the Black
Killer to be at the center of imperial legitimization, succession, and
the Mandate of Heaven in the early Song. The transformation of the
dark, militaristic god of a tenth-century cult into the Perfected Lord
of an eleventh-century text—into a supporting minister of the Jade
Emperor and defender of the Song dynasty—seems to me entirely
homologous with the transformation of the military elite of tenth-
century kingdoms into bureaucratic servants of eleventh-century em-
perors.53 The cult to the Black Killer, moreover, seems to me equally
paradigmatic of the new Daoist movements of the twelfth century:
these movements were built upon the revelation of therapeutic ritual;
they invoked fierce martial deities, such as the Black Killer or the Per-
fected Warrior; and they involved a special class of exorcists who, like
Zhang Shouzhen, were referred to by the term “Ritual Master.” It is
to one of these that I now turn:

Zhao Zujian, a Daoist priest (daoshi ) from Heng prefecture,

once practiced the Rites of the Celestial Heart (Tianxin fa)
and would cure demonic illness for rural folk (xiangren).
Suddenly he could no longer perform. Unable to control
his anger, he summoned a spirit to take possession of
someone so that he could interrogate him. The spirit
responded, “It is unlawful to dare come without authoriza-
tion. Yet because a spirit-general in the law courts ( fayuan
shenjiang) received a certain bribe, this was allowed to
happen.” Zhao silently thought to himself: “In suppressing
chimei-demons by upholding the Rectifying Rites to make a
living, I have put my trust in the spirits and employed them.
The Cult of the Black Killer 81

Now this spirit54 has received a commission by bribery; in

what way have I presumed upon my authority?” And Zhao
intended to report this transgression to the Eastern Peak
(Dongyue).
That night, Zhao dreamed that an armored knight with a
particularly fierce demeanor came before him with clasped
hands and said, “I, your disciple, am the spirit-general
under you, the Ritual Master. When alive, I was a soldier
with awesome power, and people called me ‘Chen the Iron
Whip’ (Chen Tiebian). In death I became a god and was
attached to a sacrificial altar. I was unable to control myself
to such an extent that I offered a demonic bribe. Now I
hear that the Ritual Master intends to inform Mount Tai,
whereby I will fall into the eternal prison of Fengdu,
forever without salvation. I hope you will condescend to
pity and forgive me, and I beseech you to purify your heart
and reform yourself.” Zhao replied, “I cannot bear to
report your transgression and will only mention that I am
no longer willing to practice these rites and that I have
caused you yourself to return.” The soldier then bowed in
gratitude and retreated. In the end, Zhao sent up a memor-
ial to nullify his practices. He considered changing to
practice the Rites of the Five Thunder [Gods], and without
his spirit-general, he burned incense before an effigy of
Tan the Perfected (Tan Zhenren) and anticipated receiving
admonishment.
After several years, Zhao again practiced “rites of sum-
moning and investigating [demons]” (kaozhao) for people.
At the time he compelled a boy to investigate by illumina-
tion (shi tongzi zhaoshi ). Suddenly the youth jumped up, and
with his hair disheveled and his feet bare, he shouted
angrily, “I am Tan the Perfected. I have taken pity on your
diligence and industry. Therefore I will instruct you in
ritual. Have you heretofore obtained anything?” Zhao
responded, “Only four talismans that were transmitted to
this world by the Perfected Warrior (Zhenwu).” The spirit
said, “My talismans of the Five Thunders have seventy-two
manifestations. Those that you have already received are
only one-eighteenth of them, so how can you possibly
82 Society and the Supernatural

control demonic malignancies?! It would benefit you to take

one hundred sheets of paper and place them upon the
table, and I will transmit them to you.” Then, planting his
sword in the ground, the spirit said, “I have welcomed a
Judicial Officer of the Five Thunders to quickly transmit the
seventy-two talismans, and I specified that they only be
completed now.” From the beginning Zhao did not see what
was being done, but after a mealtime had passed, the spirit
said, “The talismans have already been completed,” and he
ordered Zhao to take them in his hands. Raising them up,
Zhao examined the paper. Altogether there were sixty-eight
sheets. On each was drawn a talisman, and the celestial seals
(tianyin) were resplendent. They were not written in an
earthly style. Zhao was ecstatically happy and he held them
up in supplication. The youth also became conscious. From
this time Zhao used the talismans with spiritual efficacy.55

Zhao Zujian is described as a Daoist priest and a practitioner of the

Rectifying Rites of the Celestial Heart. Yet at one and the same time,
he was what Lagerwey means by a “country priest,” a priest who resided
not in a Daoist abbey or ordination center, but one who, in the words
of the text, “made a living” by exorcising demons “for rural folk.” It is
hard to distinguish this clerical Ritual Master from lay exorcists like
Tan or Zheng fashi, and Zhao’s therapeutic practice is paradigmatic
of the way in which the new exorcistic rites of the twelfth century were
embedded in local cults.
Zhao’s spirit-general, Chen the Iron Whip, was a soldier who re-
ceived blood sacrifices at a local altar or temple and who undoubtedly
manifested his power through village spirit-mediums, perhaps even
through those whom Zhao himself employed. Indeed, the implication
is that, in exorcising local demons, the Daoist Ritual Master had no
choice but to trust in the local spirits. Just as the Song state sought to
solve its personnel and fiscal problems by creating a range of village
service positions, so the Daoist exorcist sought to maintain local or-
der and spiritual well-being by creating an entire sub-bureaucracy from
the gods of local cults. Yet by absorbing these unreconstructed spirits,
the Ritual Master left himself open to the consequences of their volatile
nature, which neither he nor apparently they could control.56
The most remarkable aspect of this episode is its adumbration of
The Cult of the Black Killer 83

what we will discover to be the binding links that were being formed
in the twelfth century between Ritual Masters and spirit-mediums. On
the one hand, spirit-mediums were employed by Zhao Zujian as sur-
rogates in a therapeutic rite known as “summoning for investigation”
(kaozhao), which we examine in Chapter 5. On the other hand, spirit-
mediums functioned as this Daoist exorcist’s principal means of com-
munication with the other world, and even as the source of his eso-
teric knowledge. Initially, Zhao employed a spirit-medium—“someone
whose body was possessed”—to question a spirit belonging to the ce-
lestial hierarchy about the interruption in his ability to perform. This
interview led Zhao to abandon his practice of the Rectifying Rites of
the Celestial Heart. He then placed his hopes in the Rites of the Five
Thunder Gods and, in the meantime, focused his devotion on Tan the
Perfected. Several years later, Zhao resumed his practice of the ex-
orcistic “rituals of summoning for investigation,” which, as we shall see,
commonly employed spirit-mediums. On one of these occasions, the
young boy (tongzi ) became spontaneously possessed by the object of
Zhao’s devotion, Tan the Perfected, in the wild manner of village spirit-
mediums—“with loosened hair and bare feet” and holding a sword—
precisely the terms used to describe the divinities of the Rites of the
Celestial Heart, namely, the Black Killer and the Perfected Warrior.
Tan the Perfected, in fact, was none other than Tan Zixiao, the “Pa-
triarchal Master” and tenth-century founder of the Rites of the Ce-
lestial Heart. Tan the divinity now decided to transmit to Zhao talis-
mans of Thunder Magic to supplement those already in his possession.
Apparently Zhao had been making do with a handful of common and
perhaps locally distributed talismans revealed by the Perfected Warrior.
What is so fascinating here is that the means of the transmission
from Tan Zixiao was nothing less than the automatic writing of a pos-
sessed spirit-medium! The spirit-medium, in other words, was the
source of continuing Daoist revelation, and this fact forces us to en-
tertain the possibility that the so-called original talismans and revela-
tions of the Rectifying Rites of the Celestial Heart, of Thunder Magic,
and of other exorcistic rites were transmitted in precisely the same
manner. Recall that the first set of revelations (talismans and seals) of
the Celestial Heart lineage were supposedly discovered, buried in the
ground, by a Daoist/medium who passed them on to Tan Zixiao to
decipher; the second set was also discovered, buried in the ground,
by the clerk Rao Dongtian, who because of their unintelligible, oth-
84 Society and the Supernatural

erworldly nature was instructed by a spirit to seek out Tan Zixiao—

the man or the spirit?—for their interpretation (see Chapter 2, “The
Rites of the Celestial Heart”). But who is to say that these stories were
not elaborate attempts to make the origin of rituals conform to the
traditional Daoist ideology of “textual” discovery, even though that ori-
gin was to be found among those (spirit-mediums) who would actu-
ally form the cynosure of those same rituals? Put another way, it was
precisely because the spirit-medium was at the center of the Ritual Mas-
ter’s exorcistic rituals from the outset that Daoists felt compelled to
displace him.
This is obviously an a fortiori argument, one that tries to prove a
weaker and chronologically earlier point by a stronger and chrono-
logically later one; one may do with it what one wants. What needs to
be taken seriously, however, is the fact that the generation of Daoist
talismans by a spirit-medium possessed by Tan Zixiao is very similar to
the ritual operations of a Daoist Ritual Master. If we turn to the texts
of the Rites of the Celestial Heart, we find that when the Ritual Mas-
ter writes the talismans to be used in subsequent exorcisms, he must
first transform himself into the divinity (the Perfected Warrior, for ex-
ample) whose power is embodied in these talismans!57
The Daoist exorcist as well as the spirit-medium identify themselves
with a particular divinity. Now, possession has been defined, quite sim-
ply and accurately, as a trance of identification. Yet the exorcist is
definitely not possessed by his deity. If anything, the exorcist takes pos-
session of the deity that has first been generated by a hyperconscious
process of visualization (xiang) and actualization (cun). The Ritual Mas-
ter’s identification with his divinity enhances his ego rather than erases
it; his self has been enlarged rather than diminished. The issue of con-
trol is fundamental here, as is the question of consciousness, for the
Ritual Master is not entranced any more than he is possessed. His ex-
perience, in fact, approaches what has been called “ecstasy,” a term
that is often taken, mistakenly, for “trance.”
Gilbert Rouget has demonstrated convincingly that the experiences
represented by these two terms oppose and contradict each other at
every level of comparison. Trance, whether that of the shaman or pos-
sessed spirit-medium, is always associated with convulsions, movement
(dance), noise (music), amnesia, and the company of others (an au-
dience), whereas ecstasy is characterized by immobility, silence, and
solitude.58 Phenomenological descriptions of the Ritual Master’s psy-
The Cult of the Black Killer 85

chophysical state are hard to come by. Yet when we recall the episode
involving Ritual Master Cheng translated in Chapter 3, we find that
the values of immobility, silence, and solitude were precisely those that
were attributed to the exorcist. After the residents of the Sun Family
Hill were drawn to the sounds of a great battle between Cheng’s armies
and the demon’s, they saw nothing but the Ritual Master “alone, stand-
ing absolutely rigid, in stillness and in darkness.” This, in fact, is as he
has been all along. The observers, moreover, discover what we will learn
from the ritual texts: that the anecdotal account of the clash between
the exorcist’s armies and the demons is a narrative trope and a
reification of visualizations that were entirely internal to the exorcist.
Rouget has also demonstrated that visualizations of any kind, whether
visions or hallucinations, are not to be found in possession trances.
Like the spirit-medium, therefore, the Ritual Master identifies with his
divinity; yet like the Daoist priest, he does so through a controlled
process of meditation and visualization.
In contrast to the Daoist priest, however, both the lay Daoist exor-
cist and the spirit-medium found their institutional base in local cults
to particular divinities. This was what brought them together and en-
couraged these exorcists to employ spirit-mediums in their therapeu-
tic rituals on a regular basis. The control that the lay exorcist had over
his given deity extended to those who were defined by their trans-
parency to the divine. Yet unlike the spirit-medium, the Daoist Ritual
Master might transcend the geographical and ideological limitations
of cult. As we have seen, a growing reputation for successful exorcisms
would take many Ritual Masters through the market towns and urban
centers of South and East China and into the homes of landed mag-
nates, magistrates, high officials, and courtiers, whereas the spirit-
medium rarely strayed from his village or urban neighborhood.
Thus the spirit-medium was, literally, the child of his god and the
local community, whose presence was required to confirm his iden-
tification with the god. Moreover, like the unpredictable terrestrial di-
vinities whom he embodied, the spirit-medium was either benevolent
or malevolent depending on how he was treated. If one spirit-medium
might open a wine shop, as we have seen, another might poison all
the produce of a group of taverners he was trying to extort.59 The spirit-
medium was an involved, competitive, and thoroughly interested
member of his local community, no better than anyone else and oc-
casionally far worse. He was considered “wild” in part because he and
86 Society and the Supernatural

his gods were unrestrained by the ethical concerns of organized

religion.
The behavior of the Ritual Master, in contrast, was restrained by laws
of purity, morality, and correct bureaucratic procedure. His human-
ized, historicized, and mythologized deities were either fierce mani-
festations or lieutenants of cosmological powers or they were trans-
formations of dangerous terrestrial divinities now sworn to uphold and
defend the religious law. The Ritual Master tamed or civilized the dan-
gerous forces present in uncontrolled form in spirit-mediums and har-
nessed the power of their divinities in the service of the ethical con-
cerns of Daoist teaching. In the ritual texts, some of these gods might
be presented as fierce subordinates of the high gods of Daoism, while
others appeared as wrathful forms of the high gods themselves, in
much the same way that the Black Killer, who manifested himself in
the wild demeanor of spirit-mediums, was presented as an all-powerful
minister of the Jade Emperor, a protector of virtue and a high god him-
self who had nothing to do with sacrificial offerings.
 5
The Daoist Ritual Master
and Child-Mediums

n a recent essay on vernacular and classical traditions of contem-

I porary Daoist ritual, Kristofer Schipper offers a modern perspec-
tive on the notion of the Daoist Ritual Master’s mediating function in
the Song, just outlined in Chapter 4. Following J. J. M. de Groot’s obser-
vations in nineteenth-century Amoy, Schipper states that Ritual Mas-
ters ( fashi ) were, and for that matter still are, recruited from two
sources: from among “the junior, non-ordained members of daoshi fam-
ilies,” and from among the local initiation groups of “gong-beating
lads,” or young spirit-mediums.1 This “double direction of recruit-
ment” obtained in the Song period, though with respect to the daoshi,
or clerical, provenance of the fashi, the evidence is more oblique. In
Chapter 2 I considered elite relations with the fashi and their exten-
sive involvement in exorcism. Here I am concerned with the other side
of the fashi’s mediating function—his relation with spirit-mediums.
In the modern period, the relationship between the Daoist Ritual
Master and spirit-mediums is not defined simply by recruitment. The
two actually perform together in varying religious contexts in which
the Ritual Master officiates and directs the trance of the spirit-medium.
Schipper makes the following general comments in reference to one
complex of rituals that concern journeys to the other world:

The transaction between the living and the dead is the favorite field of
action for mediumistic practices, and in these cases the fashi may yield
his place of officiant to a spirit-medium (dangki; Mandarin: tong ji or

87
88 Society and the Supernatural

tongzi ). While the latter takes the leading role in the dancing and mim-
ing, the fashi remains at his side as his assistant, directing the trance.
When the ritual has progressed to the point that the emissary stands
before the judges of the Inferno, the singing is interrupted, and the
seance takes over. Speaking in different voices, now the plaintiff’s, then
the judge’s, the medium transmits the voices of these spirits of the nether
world to the accused persons. In some cases, a speaking medium may
be replaced by experts in spirit writing. The fashi acts as the interpreter
of the medium’s utterances or the scribbled signs of the writing stick.2

We must look, I believe, to the Song dynasty for the formation of

the special relationship between Ritual Masters and spirit-mediums.
In the twelfth century, Daoist fashi and spirit-mediums were brought
together for the first time, primarily in the performance of therapeutic
ritual. Ritualized spirit-possession became an enduring feature of the
exorcisms of the Daoist fashi, and these exorcisms can be seen as a mo-
mentous episode in the process whereby Daoism entered into a last-
ing and complex accommodation with those representatives of village
religion and their practices to which it had previously stood in firm
opposition.3
Let us begin, then, with an anecdote from Hong Mai’s Yijian Zhi as
a way to introduce this characteristic practice of the lay Daoist Ritual
Master:

In the summer of 1192—twenty-two years since I recorded

[the anecdote entitled] “The Retribution of Qingxi’s Cat”
(Qingxi maobao)—Qingxi’s mistress became ill from water
vermin and daily her condition became increasingly danger-
ous. The woman’s hired servant, Wang Fu, said, “I have
heard Mr. Qianyong Erlang of the teashop in Tianjing alley
remark that a Mr. Pan, who resides outside the gate of
Mount Gen, is good at matters that concern the other
world. People call him ‘Pan the Demon Seer’ (Pan Jiangui).
I will beg him to go with me and pay my respects.” Wang
consequently dragged Qian to Pan’s residence.
Pan burned mulberry paper money and with his hands
offered up a handkerchief before the effigy of the spirit he
served. At the top of a lantern, he saw a woman and a cat
standing opposite each other. Pan said, “Both of you have
grievances, yet I do not understand the cause.” Wang and
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 89

Qian took the handkerchief, returned home, and explained

to the mistress what had transpired. The mistress was
astonished and said, “ Years ago, I was in fact angry and
blamed this servant. However, her death was from injuries.
It was not I who caused her death. For what reason does she
cause demonic visitations like this?” And she sent them back
to see Pan.
Pan [performed a rite of] summoning for investigation
by compelling a boy to become possessed. The boy said,
in the voice of a woman, “My name is Qingxi. I died before
my allotted time. Up to now, I have not yet been reborn.
Originally it was not my mistress who killed me; yet it was
because of her that I died. Hitherto her good fortune has
not declined, and therefore I have waited and held on these
many years.” Pan promised to perform a fast (zhai) and an
offering ( jiao), but there was absolutely no response. More-
over, the boy cried out several times in a cat’s voice and
then fell asleep. When he awakened he was unable to recall
anything. Pan sent an official dispatch [a warrant] to the
City God, who ordered that her spirit be placed in the
Palace of Fengdu. Moreover, Pan sacralized some jujube
and water, and gave it to the woman to drink. She seemed
to improve somewhat, but within several days her condition
became grave, and she could not get up at all. Qian went
to mourn her death. That night, Qian dreamed that Qingxi
arrived, saying, “I myself will avenge the injustice. Why did
you interfere in this matter, hiring and ordering the Ritual
Master Pan to imprison me in purgatory? It is an injustice
for which you will go to purgatory to bear witness!” And she
caused him to come down with a fever, and he died within
a day.4

I begin with this anecdote because of the exemplary way in which

it reveals the process of exorcism employing a child-medium and the
very palpable manner in which that medium was possessed. Yet the
anecdote also presents a difficult interpretive problem that calls into
question the entire therapeutic process, for even after a single read-
ing one cannot avoid the conclusion that this exorcism was a tragic
failure. Not only one but two people died, and one might well ask if
90 Society and the Supernatural

the patient’s hired servant might have better served his mistress had
he called in a doctor. This query is not entirely rhetorical, however. It
would be wrong to second-guess Wang Fu, whose familiarity with his
employer’s history and temperament may have suggested a psycho-
logical treatment. More importantly, the Chinese understanding of
the illness from which his mistress suffered was pervaded by a cen-
tral ambiguity that explains, if it does not justify, the treatment she
in fact received.
Gu illness resulted from a contamination by gu poison, which a re-
cent analyst has characterized as “an alien evil spirit which entered
[the] body and developed into worms or some similar animal that
gnawed away at the intestines or genitalia.” 5 This poison was thought
to be picked up in damp and humid wetlands, and after a consider-
able incubation period, it would cause severe symptoms, including de-
rangement and debauchery, ending in death. The parasitical, grubby,
and toxic character of gu has led, inevitably, to speculations about var-
ious diseases to which the illness might actually correspond—Japanese
encephalitis B, for instance. Yet the search for a medical etiology is
frustrated by the metaphorical nature of the evidence that inspires
these speculations. As it turns out, the gu itself was produced from the
sexual secretions of men and women engaged in lascivious and in-
cestuous intercourse, or from the similar secretions of various insects
and animals purposely cultivated by a person with the intention of poi-
soning another.6 These and other accounts point to an origin of gu in
an abnormal and degenerate intensification of the emotions, and N.
H. van Straten has persuasively argued for a connection with the trans-
gression of taboos on sexuality and aggression:

This gu poison and various related aspects can be considered to repre-

sent an intensified materialization of the various notions which centered
on fear of the instincts as causes of disorder. In theory this disorder was
believed to be the natural concomitant of disturbed sexual relationships
and the overt expression of aggression that had been dormant for a long
time. In practice this meant the repression of the instincts in order to
cut out potential sexual and social conflicts; and the psychological prob-
lems that arose from this demand are concreted in the concepts of gu
poison.7

It seems to me that a very similar view emerges in the course of the

exorcism of Wang Fu’s employer. Indeed, the exorcist and his infor-
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 91

mants had good reason to suppose that her illness was a result of “the
overt expression of aggression that had been dormant for a long time.”
Fortunately, we have access to these long-repressed feelings of hostil-
ity, or at least to those that were assumed by the exorcist to have been
repressed. In its first sentence, the anecdote refers to another case that
occurred twenty-two years before the events we are considering. This
other story was told to Hong Mai by a relative of Wang Fu’s employer
and is preserved in the Yijian zhi:

In the household of Lü Deqing’s relations by marriage,

a female slave named Qingxi brought a mouse into the
kitchen to feed her cat surreptitiously. She met with a
scolding from her mistress and could not overcome her
resentment. Qingxi caught the cat and threw it atop a pile
of firewood. There happened to be a forked branch which
caught its abdomen. Bamboo thorns penetrated right
through the cat’s stomach and bowels; cries and screams
filled one day and night before they ceased. A year passed,
and, because of some exposed clothing, this slave tripped
and fell upon the ground and was injured by a sharp piece
of bamboo. Her dainty abdomen was split open, her body
covered in flowing blood; by the following day she was
already dead.8

This episode, I suspect, would have been brought to the attention

of the exorcist and his medium, perhaps through the servant Wang
Fu and his friend. Yet can it really be said that the exorcist had good
reason to believe that her illness was the result of hostility too long re-
pressed? Would there not be more reason to suppose, in this case, that
the exorcist’s particular understanding of gu illness predisposed him
to focus exclusively on a certain kind of information? Apparently the
patient herself was none too impressed with this bit of ancient history.
She readily admitted to past anger, yet refused any suggestion of guilt.
The slave Qingxi, for her part, readily admitted the accidental nature
of her death, yet refused any satisfaction. Thus each woman refused
to acknowledge the other, severing the abiding link between demon
and demoniac, which is both the premise of any exorcism and the sine
qua non of its success. The application of a potion was too little too
late.
92 Society and the Supernatural

Precedents, Daoist and Otherwise

Despite the probability of misdiagnosis, exorcisms of the kind just de-
scribed might be highly successful. Pan is called a “fashi,” and he clearly
belonged to that group of lay exorcists whom we have distinguished
from the Daoist priest. Yet he was also called a “Demon Seer,” an ap-
pellation that locates Pan within a long tradition of religious practi-
tioners, beginning perhaps with spirit-mediums in the Han, who
boasted an ability to see ghosts or to cause them to manifest their true
forms. In 434, for example, the magistrate of Wuning consulted a
spirit-medium after a hallucinatory encounter and conversation with
his recently deceased wife. To the trained eye of the medium, how-
ever, there appeared two domestic animals, and the medium revealed
that it was one of these —a chicken—that had in fact impersonated
the magistrate’s wife. The identification of the chicken was by no means
fortuitous. We are meant to understand this chicken as the very same
one that the wife had once butchered as a youth, or so we learn from
that earlier conversation between the magistrate and what he thought
was his wife. Apparently the wife paid for this crime by spending three
days in purgatory before she bribed her way out with a pair of golden
rings. The hapless chicken, however, was doubly unlucky. The magis-
trate then summoned a Buddhist holy man, styled Huilan Daoren, who
recited various dharanis to ward off the demon fowl.9
From the Tang dynasty on, spirit-mediums who were “expert in see-
ing ghosts” were joined first by Daoist priests and Buddhist monks and
then by a group of Master Demon Seers, lay practitioners who were
obvious forerunners of fashi such as Pan Jiangui.10 Already by the third
century, however, the ability to perceive demons was considered a nec-
essary, if only defensive, strategy for the Daoist priest. In a famous pas-
sage in The Master Who Embraces Simplicity (Baopuzi), Ge Hong men-
tions that the Daoist practitioner who plans to enter the mountains
should carry with him a mirror with which to reflect the true forms
of the various demons trying to obstruct his path.11 Reflective mate-
rials of all kinds quickly became a frequent staple of Daoist exorcisms.12
Quoting the Laozi zhong jin, an eleventh-century compendium of the
medieval Daoist tradition advises the practicant to suspend a talisman
and sword over a basin of water, or to use the light of celestial bodies
when confronted by illusory prodigies on the road.13 Detection of the
demon is then followed by the exorcism proper (here designated by
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 93

the term “zhi ”)—the second part of a two-stage process already evi-
dent in the division of labor between the spirit-medium and Buddhist
monk in the anecdote above.
A variety of terms were used before the Song to describe what we
have conveniently called “exorcism.” These included bi (to get rid of ),
qianhe (to reproach and accuse), zhaohe (to summon and accuse), shiyi
(to compel and dispatch), and so forth.14 An analysis of the contexts
in which these terms occur would bear out what is implied by many
of the terms themselves: a general mastery and control over spirits and
demons, of which the ability to expel or ward them off was merely a
logical corollary. The demon, in other words, might just as easily be
summoned to a particular place as driven away, a possibility clearly ex-
ploited in the rite that defines the second stage of the therapeutic pro-
cedure of Pan fashi.
In the first stage of that process—that which I have called “detec-
tion” ( jiangui or shigui )—Pan perceived a woman and a cat facing each
other within the reflective glow of a lantern. This took place, inter-
estingly enough, before the altar of his spirit-general, whose aid he
had enlisted with a sacrifice of paper money and clothing. The mere
illumination of two revenants was, by definition, sufficient to have de-
duced a grievance, but Pan sent Wang Fu and his friend home to dis-
cover the basis for their unhappiness. Having heard from the afflicted,
Pan proceeded to hear from the afflictors, to embody them and
thereby give them voice. In the second stage of the process, which also
appears to have taken place before the fashi’s domestic altar, Pan per-
formed a rite of “summoning for investigation by compelling the pos-
session of a young boy,” which is to say, he summoned the offending
demons to take possession of a young spirit-medium so that he might
interrogate them. And there is no doubt that the boy was possessed:
he identified with the two demons, speaking first as the slave girl and
then as the cat, and he also remembered nothing of what transpired,
amnesia being a necessary aspect and ready indicator of all possession
trances.
The “Rite of Summoning for Investigation” (kaozhao fa) formed the
centerpiece of the fashi’s therapeutic repertoire in the twelfth cen-
tury. It deserves and will receive a full analysis. Explicit references to
kaozhao fa before the Song are sporadic and generally frustrating.
Some of these references, moreover, designate ritual performances
that bear only a superficial resemblance to what we will come to ex-
94 Society and the Supernatural

pect from performances similarly designated in the Song period.15

And a Tang-dynasty account of what appears to be a true antecedent
of the Song “Rite of Summoning for Investigation” is neither de-
scribed as such nor occurs within a Daoist context. A consideration
of this account, however, will be put off until we can better appreci-
ate its contents.16
Here it seems more appropriate to follow a lead in one of the found-
ing texts of the Tianxin lineage. The text is Secret Essentials of the Most
High for Assembling the Perfected Ones for Relief of the State and Deliverance
of the People (Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao, HY 1217) and dates
from 1116. The preface to a chapter devoted to kaozhao procedures
cites as one of its authorities a work entitled Flowing Pearls of the Golden
Lock ( Jinsuo liuzhu).17 The Daoist canon, in fact, preserves a Guide to
the Flowing Pearls of the Golden Lock ( Jinsuo liuzhu yin, HY 1009), which
is an abridgment of and commentary on a now-lost scripture of the
same name ( Jinsuo liuzhu jing).18 It is unclear whether the Taishang
zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao is referring to the Scripture or the Guide,
or perhaps even to both. The Guide is attributed to the seventh-cen-
tury Grand Astrologer Li Chunfeng (602–670).19 Some scholars have
readily accepted this attribution, whereas others have opted for a Song
date for the text.20 Based on internal evidence, however, both Poul
Andersen and Timothy Barrett have separately and convincingly con-
cluded that the attribution to Li Chunfeng is false and that the Guide
should be placed somewhere between the late eighth and early tenth
century.21 The Guide, and presumably the Scripture on which it is based,
were ostensibly transmitted by the Latter Saint (Housheng), a mani-
festation of Taishang laojun, to Zhang Daoling. Internal evidence,
again, does appear to place the book within the late Zhengyi, or Ce-
lestial Master, tradition.
Much of the Guide is taken up with the choreography and visual-
izations for “walking the [celestial] outline” (bugang). Several chap-
ters, however, include instructions for the performance of kaozhao fa,
instructions that were supposedly transmitted to future generations
by Zhao Rui, a disciple of Zhang Daoling, in the Later Han.22 The
kaozhao fa is glossed here as a ritual for “investigating demons and sum-
moning spirits” (kaogui zhaoshen).23 The initial instructions fall neatly
into three parts. The first concerns the creation and purification of
the ritual area, which includes an altar, a prison, and various gates.24
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 95

The second constitutes “the rites of investigating and summoning”

proper.25 And the third identifies six categories of demonic illness
against which the ritual will prove effective.26 A large part of the in-
structions for the rites proper is taken up with the visualizations nec-
essary to actualize various spirit-generals, spirit-armies, and the di-
vinized masters of the practitioner. From the perspective of the Song
procedures, the most interesting sequence, rather hastily enumerated,
involves: (1) the summoning of the demons and spirits into the ritual
area; (2) an interrogation to ascertain the personal and family name
of “one who has caused demonic illness” (kaowen zuosui zhi zhe mingzi );
(3) the consignment of the demon to a period of incarceration in the
prison; and (4) the submission of a “red petition” (chizhang) request-
ing that the “celestial soldiers” carry out the execution of the demon.
None of this is elaborated upon.
Several later chapters in the Guide include further instructions ad-
dressed to a Daoist priest or practitioner identified as the “Ritual Mas-
ter of Investigating and Summoning.” On the tenth of every month,
this Ritual Master is expected to visualize himself at the head of large
armies of spirit-generals and spirit-soldiers, patrolling the cosmos for
demons that bring disease and disaster.27 In the event of individual ill-
ness, the Master is first told to visualize himself patrolling outside the
patient’s house, and then to visualize himself actually entering the
home and examining the patient lying in bed. Finally, the Master sum-
mons and actualizes (cun) a host of ferocious theriomorphic spirits
who seize, devour, or trample to death the afflicting demon.28
All three of these sets of ritual procedures, and especially the first,
include elements that anticipate the Song-dynasty rituals of kaozhao—
in particular, the visualization of the spirit-generals and soldiers, the
summoning of the demon, and the interrogation of his identity.29 All
these procedures, however, and even the first, seem oddly isolated from
the person of the patient; and the last two procedures appear to oc-
cur entirely within the priestly realm of mental projection. Yet it is the
engagement of the patient directly in his own cure that will charac-
terize the kaozhao rites of the Song. There is, moreover, no mention
whatsoever of the use or possession of a spirit-medium. Yet again, it is
possession—and not just the possession of a spirit-medium, but of the
patient as well—that will come to define the Rites of Summoning for
Investigation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.30
96 Society and the Supernatural

The Daoist Rite of Summoning for Investigation

It has been suggested by some commentators that the Rite of Sum-
moning for Investigation was employed in the Song as a cure for de-
monic possession. This view, however, is misleading. In almost all ac-
counts of psychosomatic illness and its cure in the Yijian zhi, the subject
is engaged, at least initially, in behavior that we can justifiably call symp-
tomatic. These symptoms include highly erratic and demonstrative be-
havior, extreme mood swings, loss of appetite, lassitude, self-imposed
isolation, auditory and visual hallucinations, conversations with imag-
inary people, fixation on inanimate objects such as trees, uncontrolled
laughter and insulting speech, dressing up and putting on cosmetics,
and so forth.31 The parents or relatives of the subject interpret this
symptomatic behavior as sign of demonic harassment. They interpret
it, in other words, in a manner very similar to what in a Christian and
Renaissance context was meant by the term “obsession,” “the state of
a person thought to be disturbed, besieged by the devil, which is dif-
ferent from possession, which signifies actual habitation by the devil
within the body.”32
On the recommendation of a friend, neighbor, or local spirit-
medium, the parents or relatives of the subject then invite an exorcist—
often a Daoist priest or Ritual Master. Yet he is thereby misnamed by
us, for what he does has little to do with exorcism. What he does in
most cases is perform various ritual actions the purpose of which is
first to control or stabilize the afflicted and then to compel him or her
to become possessed, just as if he or she were a spirit-medium employed
by the Master. This view of what has been traditionally called “exor-
cism” as a process of induced possession—as a cult of possession, in
other words—is confirmed by a patient analysis of the large corpus of
Rites of Summoning for Investigation described in the Daoist canon-
ical texts from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, and by the
fact that the possession of the subject is then followed by complex ne-
gotiations and an additional set of rites the purpose of which is, in
turn, to reach an accommodation with, rather than an exorcism of,
the demon. To demonstrate that the kaozhao ritual really is a process
of inducing a possession trance in the patient, I present here a rep-
resentative ritual sequence, extracted from several dozen sources re-
ferred to in the notes to this chapter, and divided into four essential
movements:
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 97

A. The Metamorphosis of the Master. The fashi transforms or

metamorphosizes himself into either his spirit-general
or one of several cosmic powers through a complex pro-
cess of external and internal visualization. The Master
first visualizes both the deity within his own body and
an external environment that forms the cosmic back-
ground for this internal representation. He then actual-
izes himself (cunwei ) as the deity.33 In other words, the
Master empowers this deity as much as he is empowered
by it. The point of the metamorphosis is that the Master
can now manipulate or command the various subordi-
nate spirit-soldiers under the spirit-general’s control, and
employ the various instruments and weapons associated
with him. Yet there is also, I believe, a hidden agenda.
The identification through visualization of the Master
with his deity is meant to encourage a kind of mimetic
role-playing on the part of the patient that will result in
the identification, through possession this time, of the
patient with his demon.

B. Rites of Detection (corresponding to jiangui or shigui ).

These rites are characterized by a double action. On
the one hand, the Master—with the aid of various hand-
seals, talismans, and Chinese or pseudo-Sanskrit spells—
bids his subordinate deities bring the afflicting demon
into a mirror, basin of water, or some other object or
bounded space. On the other hand, the patient, who is
standing before the Master with his eyes closed, is asked
to exhale into this object; the implication for the patient,
as the subsequent materialization makes clear, is that he
has been contaminated or infiltrated by a demon that is
causing his illness. The patient is then asked to open his
eyes and describe what he sees. In one case the Master
asks whether the patient sees a demon of nature or a soul
of the dead.34 In contrast to earlier accounts of detec-
tion, the burden of identifying the afflicting demon has
shifted from the practitioner to the patient, introducing
the patient into a process that will lead to his identi-
fication of himself with the demon. The patient, we
98 Society and the Supernatural

should recall, is suffering from various symptoms of a

hysterical nature. The rites of detection are first a means
of focusing the patient’s attention. (To say that he or she
is distracted would be an understatement.) Second, they
involve a process of externalization and objectification
whereby the patient is led to convert a surplus of affect
into an economy of symbols, to express a private subjec-
tive state in terms of a public and cultural idiom of
demonology. Yet it is important to recognize that the
demon the patient identifies in the reflecting object is a
category of demon (a hun or a jing) and not a particular
demonic being. It will be the function of the patient’s
possession to allow him or her to select a specific being
with a particular name and history—to invest, in other
words, these public, cultural symbols with personal
meaning and to manipulate them to express his or
her psychological needs.35 Through possession, the
kaozhao rituals offer the patient access to the symbolic,
in contrast to Renaissance exorcisms in which the
patient leaves all responsibility for interpretation to
the exorcist, and the exorcist in turn aims not to save
the patient but to use the patient’s possession to save
a particular theology.36

C. Rites of Seizure. Following the externalization and ob-

jectification of the patient’s symptoms, the Master
prepares for the ritual re-introduction of the demon
into the patient. In the simplest form of these rites, the
Master merely invokes one or more subordinate deities,
commanding them to pursue, seize, yoke, or bind the
demon and to force it to take possession of the body of
the afflicted.37 The Master may attempt to “substantiate”
the command to seize and bring down the demon into
the patient: in one sequence where the spirits of the
Four Directions are enlisted to arrest the avenging soul
of a deceased, the Master inhales the pneumas of the
Four Directions, mixes them with a mouthful of water,
and finally spits out the water on to the head of the
patient at the very moment when he commands these
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 99

spirit-generals to seize the demon and force it to possess

the patient.38 This unsettling assault was expected to
produce a violent shaking or trembling in the patient—
a “fit” that signifies the onset of trance.39 It is also, I
believe, appropriate to inducing a particular kind of
trance, what we call “identificatory” trance or possession:
“spitting,” here, has been assimilated to “seizing,” and
the patient was being encouraged to conclude, at a cog-
nitive if subconscious level, that the demon who was
seized was none other than the one who was spat upon:
in other words, himself. Other variations of these rites of
seizure are discussed below. Their complexity is in direct
proportion to the resistance of the patient.

D. The Possession of the Afflicted or a Surrogate. Following

the rites of seizure and the onset of trance, the patient
submits to the Master’s interrogation in which he (the
demon) relates his name and provides an account of
himself. The patient, in other words, identifies with a
particular demon, and it is only now that we can speak
of actual possession. For the content of this possessed
speech and for the continuing dialogue and negotiations
between the Master and the demon/patient, we must
turn to the anecdotal accounts in the Yijian zhi, which
essentially pick up where the ritual texts leave off. Before
we leave these texts ourselves, however, it is essential to
point out that many of them offer an alternative to the
possession of the afflicted, though one that only slightly
alters the process we have been examining. In cases
where the patient is either too weak to withstand the
rigors of trance or too young to articulate himself or
herself verbally, the Master might employ a surrogate
(dairen; lizhe ren) to be possessed by the demon afflicting
the patient. In the Tianxin tradition, the possession of
the surrogate was brought about by a transfer of breath
from the patient to the surrogate.40 When the afflicted
was an infant, the transfer was made to a wet-nurse who
held the baby in her arms, indicating perhaps that,
in other cases as well, the surrogate might be a family
100 Society and the Supernatural

member or someone near at hand.41 In other traditions,

however, particularly those that evolved around the local
cult to a particular deity, the fashi employed, on a per-
manent or ad hoc basis, one or more adolescent boys
or spirit-mediums (tongzi ) otherwise referred to as “the
possessed” ( furen).”42 These spirit-mediums were not,
strictly speaking, surrogates, for their use in kaozhao
rituals was a corollary or subset of their more encom-
passing function as possessed oracles. A fragmentary
but important text representing one of these local cultic
traditions indicates that the spirit-mediums—in this case
three were employed—might be possessed by the fashi’s
spirit-general as well as by the demon.43 Be that as it may,
the full range of rites of seizure would precede the pos-
session and interrogation of the spirit-medium. These,
however, might also be encased within or even subsumed
by another rite, what we may call a “rite of dispossession,”
in which the three hun-souls representing the conscious
self of the medium were themselves “seized” and removed
through an opening in his head.44 This rite, and similar
ones, seems to me to be particularly appropriate for those
subjects for whom trance was a voluntary rather than in-
voluntary matter, and for whom resistance was minimal.
The ritual texts, in fact, give more space to the difficulties
presented in getting the medium out of trance than to
those of getting him into it.

This analysis gives a somewhat idealized representation of the Rites

of Summoning for Investigation. Both the sequence as a whole and
its individual movements were subject to great variation. Some se-
quences, for instance, lack the rites of seizure (A-B-D),45 while others
drop the rites of detection (A-C-D).46 In some, the rites of seizure are
greatly expanded, subjecting the demon/patient to a succession of
seizures, yokings, pummelings, beatings, and so forth;47 in others, they
are significantly contracted, being subordinated to or even replaced
by a rite of dispossession. Finally, we encounter sequences in which
rites of detection also expand and contract, even within a single text.
The Great Rites of Shangqing for the Subjugation of Evil by Tianpeng is ob-
sessed throughout its several hundred pages with the physical con-
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 101

struction and visualization of “fiery detention houses,” which can,

among other permutations, take the form of vessels of oil placed un-
der the patient’s bed or a demarcated area assimilated to the house-
hold hearth.48 These detention houses become the focus for elabo-
rate rites of detection and exorcism in which the demon is confined,
identified, and incinerated, and in which the patient returns to the
passive role he occupied in the more traditional performances of ear-
lier Demon Seers. These rituals are called “Rites of Investigation by Il-
lumination” to distinguish them from “Rites of Investigation by Pos-
session,” which are now branded “unorthodox” and unacceptable.49
What appears to be a rigid stance and an exclusive opposition, how-
ever, turns out not to be, and the text rather unwittingly undercuts
itself: at one point, the use of detention houses is reserved for severe
illness, specifying the Rites of Investigation by Possession for less se-
rious cases; at another point, their use actually follows these Rites of
Investigation by Possession;50 and at still other points, the use of de-
tention houses is fully integrated in a kaozhao rite employing a child-
medium.51 The kaozhao rites involving spirit-possession may be un-
orthodox because innovative, but they are now the dominant mode,
exerting considerable pressure on more traditional conceptions of
therapy.
What strikes me as particularly compelling about these rituals is the
way in which they captured the rhythms of Song-dynasty criminal pro-
ceedings. The analogy is, indeed, more profound than the ritual use,
in some instances, of a version of Song prisons or detention houses,
where the accused was confined pending trial, sentencing, and exe-
cution.52 The Rites of Summoning for Investigation were introduced
in almost all traditions by a “rite of entrapment” (zhaofa), a rite I have
mentioned only in passing, but one that corresponds to Song meth-
ods of initial search and arrest, including a general blockade and the
saturation of the area within the blockade by a large-scale mobiliza-
tion of police and military personnel. Like criminal proceedings, more-
over, the kaozhao rites concluded with an “application of the law,” the
rendering of a judgment based on elaborate Daoist codes (lü), statutes
(ling), and regulations (ke) that specified punishments for the infrac-
tions and crimes committed by demons, as well as by spirits and the
Master himself.
Both the actual case histories in the Yijian zhi and the religious codes
reveal that these judgments were highly open and discretionary and
102 Society and the Supernatural

that they were based on Chinese notions of equity. The afflicting de-
mon might have been beaten, exiled, or executed, but it might just as
easily have been granted amnesty, restored to its spiritual community,
or even rehabilitated and promoted in the celestial hierarchy—all de-
pending on the nature of the demon, the circumstances that led it to
attack the patient, and its blood relationship to the patient. The fashi
was a judge rather than an exorcist, and his title “Master of the Law,”
whatever its Buddhist origins as such, resonated less with the monk-
ish propagation of the Dharma ( fa) than with the legalistic and judi-
cial functions of the Song magistrate. The most profound link between
therapy and law, however, emerges from an analysis of the second and
central stage of Song criminal proceedings: the trial.

Ritual and Judicial Trials

Research on Chinese procedural law is still somewhat unsystematic,
and we are far from a comprehensive, historical treatment of the sub-
ject that would allow us to identify significant shifts in trial practice
over long periods of time. Unlike earlier dynasties, for example, the
Song excluded the police from participation in the interrogation and
thereby guaranteed the magistrate a degree of control that the fashi
appears to have attained as well. And unlike the trials of later dy-
nasties, the Song trial was closed to the public (a corollary of the first
innovation), which accords with comments made over and over
again in the ritual texts advising the Master to seal off the home of
the afflicted from visitors as well as intruders. Such parallels will re-
main superficial and less than convincing, however, until we expose
the essential structure shared by both the Song trial and the kaozhao
ritual. To this end we can hardly do better than to quote Miyazaki
Ichisada on the importance of torture and confession in the crimi-
nal interrogation:
In major cases the actual fact of a completed offense was established by
the criminal’s confession, and not by the material evidence or the tes-
timony of witnesses. Even when material evidence existed, if the accused
did not acknowledge it, guilt could not be legally established. However,
when despite a substantial showing of evidence the accused refused to
confess, the magistrate could have him tortured. All that was required
procedurally was the consent of the assistant magistrate and the record
keeper. The magistrate would issue a writ ordering a certain number of
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 103

blows, obtain the signature of his colleagues signifying their assent, and
show the writ to the chief clerk and the runners on duty. The runner
then carried out the beating in the presence of the officials and clerks.53

Xu Daoling, in contrast, argues from statutory evidence that ob-

taining a confession was not always necessary for conviction.54 I pre-
fer to follow Miyazaki here because his conclusions are based on an
early twelfth-century record of a magistrate’s own judicial practice and
administrative experience.55 Ideally, perhaps, a confession was not nec-
essary. Yet I suspect that it was precisely because the burden of evi-
dentiary proof and testimonial veracity became so onerous in the Song
that confession became indispensable, not simply as one kind of proof
but as the regina probationum—the queen of proofs. And as confession
came to constitute the only full proof, torture also became indis-
pensable. Among the dozens of criminal trials represented in Outlaws
of the Marsh (Shuihu zhuan), the popular novel that reflects Song as well
as Ming social conditions, all but one attain their verdict, even if a false
one, through the accused’s confession under torture.56
However we choose to view the mechanism that propelled confes-
sion up the hierarchy of proofs and that reinvigorated the use of tor-
ture in the Song, it should be less difficult to see that judicial torture
and confession served as a model, or one of the models, for the
essential events of the kaozhao ritual—the rites of seizure and the pos-
session of the afflicted (C-D). The link is even made explicit in a de-
scription of a proto-kaozhao ritual performed by a Tang-dynasty spirit-
medium in the subprefecture of Baitian in Chuzhou.57 The medium,
named Xue Erniang, served the cult of the Great King of the Golden
Heaven and specialized in exorcisms that were evidently highly es-
teemed by the residents of the subprefectural city. In this case, how-
ever, she had been invited to the home of a villager to attend to his
daughter. The girl had been afflicted by an incubus (mei ), though at
this stage her parents merely thought her mad. Occasionally she would
walk through fire and water or do physical harm to her body. How-
ever mad she may have appeared, the girl’s obliviousness to physical
pain strikes me as not too dissimilar from the kind of trance entered
into by the medium:

When [the medium] had arrived, [the family of the

afflicted] set up an altar in a room and laid the patient
down beside it. Then they constructed a large fire pit next
104 Society and the Supernatural

to [the altar] and heated a large iron pan over it until it

was red. Thereupon the medium donned her ritual attire
and, dancing to music and drums, called her spirit. In a few
moments the spirit descended [into her?]. The onlookers
made repeated obeisances, and [then] the medium respect-
fully invoked [the spirit], saying, “In haste summon the mei-
demon to come!” As she concluded, the medium entered
the fire pit and sat down inside; her expression remained
completely unperturbed. After a long while she shook her
clothes and stood up, and, placing the burning pan upside-
down on her head, danced to the beating of drums. When
the song concluded, she got rid of the pan and then cried
out in barbarian fashion, commanding the patient to bind
herself. The girl placed her hands together behind her
back, as if they were tied up. [Then the medium] com-
manded [the afflicted] to confess. At first the girl merely
cried and did not speak. The medium became enraged,
and drawing her sword, struck her so that the sword passed
through her, though her body remained unharmed. The
afflicted, however, said, “I surrender,” and made the follow-
ing confession. . . .58

We need not quote the entire confession here, but merely point out
that the “I” under which it is made refers to someone —or, rather,
something—other than the girl: an incubus that has assumed the form
of an old otter. The girl, in other words, has become possessed, and
the story that this seemingly benign demon tells (= tongzhuan) refers
to the girl, as one might expect, in the third person. Possession and
confession intersect here, and both are preceded by a rite of seizure
(a ritual binding, specifically), which, in turn, intersects with or slips
into torture. The confession is made, quite literally, under the knife.
This text presents the most stimulating and coherent description
of the actual performance of a kaozhao ritual before the Song. It is ex-
traordinary that we should find it performed not by a Daoist priest
but by a spirit-medium, a fact which suggests to me that it may very
well have been the interaction of the visualizing techniques of the
Daoist (as represented in the Tang Guide to the Flowing Pearls of the Golden
Lock) with the more demonstrative ritual behavior of spirit-mediums
that produced the kaozhao rites of the Song-dynasty fashi. Such a hy-
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 105

pothesis, if true, would give a certain historical dimension to the fashi’s

mediating function, analyzed in Chapter 4, and would provide yet an-
other perspective on his emergence from the encounter of Daoism
with local cults. The contribution of spirit-mediums to the practices
of Ritual Masters, Buddhist as well as Daoist, is explored in great de-
tail in Chapter 6.
In the meantime, the performance of this Tang-dynasty medium
anticipates all the significant elements of the kaozhao rites of the Song.
She identifies with her divinity and commands it to bring down the
afflicting demon; the patient, in turn, is seized (bound) and possessed
(A-C1; C2-D). Other elements are characteristic not only of this
medium but of all possession cults. First, there is the role of dance and
music. Possession trances, as we have said, are trances of identification,
and in possession cults the means par excellence of representing this
identification is through dance to the accompaniment of instrumen-
tal (percussive) and/or vocal music provided by a group of individu-
als other than the possessed.
Following Gilbert Rouget, we might say that spirit-possession is a so-
cialization of trance behavior and a domestication of the divine
whereby the possessed and the group make a simultaneous iden-
tification of the possessed as the divinity. The music of the acolytes and
the dance of the possessed are the auditory and choreographic
signifiers corresponding to a single signified, which is the divinity. In
the kaozhao rites of the Daoist fashi, all such identificatory trances
through dance and music will be dispensed with and replaced by the
Daoist/Tantric metamorphosis of the Master. Another element char-
acteristic of possession cults will also be dropped. Trances of posses-
sion are often the occasion for fakiristic displays of bravura,59 and it
is clear that the medium’s descent into the fire pit was meant to im-
press and overwhelm the patient and demon with her own physical
power and even greater imperviousness to pain. The aggression that
the medium directs toward herself is then turned outward; anger and
violence now assume the role of intimidating the patient.60
The fact that the body of the girl remained untouched by the vio-
lent assault upon her should not be taken primarily as a test of our
credulity, but as a sign either that the girl is in trance or that it is the
demon who is being tortured, not the girl. This leads to a more gen-
eral point about the relation of the kaozhao ritual to criminal proceed-
ings. The relation of torture and confession to ritual seizure and pos-
106 Society and the Supernatural

session, though isomorphic in the biological sense of the formal con-

vergence of two organisms of different origin, is not strictly analogous—
or, rather, is analogous only when viewed from the perspective of the
demon, for it is the demon who confesses, not the patient, and the de-
mon confesses because it is only the demon who has something to
confess. By disrupting the link between illness and morality in the
patient, the new Daoist codes, regulations, and protocols of the fashi
locate guilt solely on the side of demons, identifying their transgres-
sion essentially with their refusal to remain where they belong.61 And
therefore we find, in the ritual texts, that it is only the demon who is
tortured. The Master invokes his spirit-soldiers to seize, bind, flog, pum-
mel, yoke, burn, freeze, or crush the demon. The afflicted, in contrast,
is possessed, nothing more or less, and the rites of seizure are intended
not to inflict pain on the patient but to encourage him or her to iden-
tify with the demon. Therefore, the medium commands the patient
to bind herself, and the patient places her hands together as if they
were tied.
In the ritual texts of the Song, there is the expectation that the pa-
tient, face to face with the Master, will respond directly to the latter’s
invocation to the demon by becoming possessed or, alternatively, by
acting out the content of the invocation. Thus it is said that if the Mas-
ter calls for the demon to be struck or pounded, the patient will strike
or pound himself or herself.62 If the patient does not identify so eas-
ily with the demon, the Master may perform certain actions to drive
the point home. Hence we find that if the patient does not become
possessed when the Master commands his spirit-soldiers to yoke the
demon in cangues and force it down, the Master actually borrows a
cangue from the City God temple and places it around the neck of
the patient;63 similarly, if the patient is unresponsive to an invocation
to seize and flog the demon, the Master will place several thorned
branches across the patient’s back and legs.64 In all these situations,
the Master is clearly not torturing the patient but attempting to in-
duce a possession trance by encouraging the patient to identify with
the object of his invocation, or by encouraging certain mimetic, rep-
resentational action in the patient that will lead to this identification.
The model here is not judicial but theatrical. The ritual area has now
become a stage where the Master, who is playing the role of one spirit,
induces the patient to play the role of another.
The Rites of Summoning for Investigation resided at the overlap of
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 107

two cultural spaces—the judicial and the theatrical—and existed within

a constant state of negotiation and vacillation between them. To a cer-
tain extent, this vacillation was a function of shifting perspectives—that
of the demon and that of the patient—yet both perspectives, and there-
fore both models, were held in a persistent tension by the central am-
biguity of the kaozhao rite, namely, the identification and potential con-
fusion of the demon with the patient. One of the consequences of this
ambiguity was that, in practice, the patient might be so demonized that
the kaozhao rites threatened to devolve into pure torture; another was
that the demon might become so humanized that the same rites were
reduced to pure theater.

Ritual and Therapy

We can explore these alternative possibilities in two anecdotes from
the twelfth century. Both offer fascinating portraits of the lay exorcist:

During the Qiandao reign period [1165–1173], Yu Ronggu

of Leping [ Jiangxi], because of famine, sailed along the
Huai River. By chance he obtained the Method of the Five
Thunders (Wulei fa) and practiced it after a little study. At
the time, many of the field oxen in the villages had become
ill, and Yu went about curing them, each time with success.
After procuring small remunerations, he could make a
living and subsequently established his residence there [i.e.,
around the Huai].
In 1185, Yu returned to his native area for a while. The
wife of his brother’s son, Zhiquan, was named Lu; her father
and mother had just then gone to the land around the Huai
River, and Zhiquan and his wife had seen them off. When
his wife returned home she felt ill, talked recklessly and
nonsensically as if she were mad, and no longer understood
human matters. Therefore they invited Ronggu to examine
her condition.
Thereupon, Ronggu practiced his method for summon-
ing and investigating [the demon]: it was a deceased ances-
tor of Lu. Ronggu looked at her and said, “ We can bind
it up.” The afflicted at that moment lay down inside her
room and extended her hands in front of her as if to receive
108 Society and the Supernatural

shackles; and he continued, having her beaten and interro-

gated, whereupon she cried out and admitted her crimes.
Yu chastised [the demon], saying, “ You are an ancestor of
this Lu household who attaches yourself to the residence
of your descendant to receive incense —how can you dare
to wantonly enter the domicile of humans and, moreover,
cause such misfortune?! I have kept in mind that you are
a relative by marriage and am not yet about to extend my
method. It would benefit you to make a hasty retreat.” Then
she confessed her transgressions and begged for liberation.
He granted it, and shortly thereafter the afflicted became
as calm as normal.65

As mentioned in Chapter 3, the class of lay exorcists, or fashi, that

emerged in the twelfth century was comprised of two social groups.
One was highly literate, more urban than not, and served an elite clien-
tele. This group was probably responsible for a good proportion of
the ritual and theoretical texts of the new therapeutic lineages. It ap-
proached, if some of its members did not actually merge with, the per-
son and the social and intellectual environment of the Daoist priest.
Members of the other group were in every way less literate and less so-
phisticated, and attended to the needs of rural or suburban people
more like themselves. This second group, to which Yu Ronggu clearly
belonged, was not any less mobile than the first, yet its mobility was
certainly more circumscribed and defined by economic circumstances.
Yu Ronggu was perhaps himself a casualty of the famine mentioned
in the text, and I do not think it too farfetched to infer that Thun-
der Magic held out the promise of, and provided the opportunity for,
some badly needed employment. Certainly Yu wasted little time in
making use of his magical windfall, and the continuing economic
tragedy of the region guaranteed a stream of rural clients that
financed his wanderings.
What concerns me here is the Rite of Summoning for Investigation
that Yu Ronggu performed on his return home after several years in
the Huai area. One suspects that even if Ronggu had found the leisure
time, he would have had neither the economic nor intellectual re-
sources, perhaps not even the inclination, to master the complex vi-
sualizations and correlative cosmologies that characterized the Thun-
der Magic of the ritual texts. Ronggu’s performance, at least, places
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 109

him in a world closer to that of spirit-mediums than Daoist priests. As

in the account of the Tang medium Xue Erniang, Ronggu commanded
the binding of the demon, and the patient extended her hands in front
of her as if to receive shackles. The fashi, however, does not wait for
the patient to become possessed before he interrogates the demon.
Histrionics give way to torture, to an interrogation accompanied by
the infliction of pain. The distinction between patient and demon col-
lapses, as does that between the resulting confession and possession.
Yet if the patient has become demonized, the demon ultimately be-
comes humanized. The fashi treats the possessing spirit not as some-
thing to be exorcised, but very much as someone whose special rela-
tionship to the patient needs to be acknowledged. In so doing, the
fashi is acknowledging the issues raised by the patient’s illness, for there
can be little doubt of the intensity of the patient’s symptoms or of the
fact that they followed immediately upon her parents’ departure.
Clearly, her symptoms were related to problems of separation and,
more specifically, to feelings of abandonment and estrangement. The
departure of her parents may have brought home to her with some
finality the reality of the ritual, as well as familial disenfranchisement
that came with marriage. Thus it seems appropriate that she should
objectify her symptoms in terms of an unrecognized and wandering
spirit of a deceased but ill-defined ancestor who is seeking ritual at-
tention. And if, in fact, she sees her situation as that of an abandoned
spirit, the desire of this spirit to attach itself to a descendant is repre-
sentative of her own desire to maintain those links to her natal family
at a moment when those links seemed most threatened. One can only
conclude that the young woman’s symptoms disappeared (she was
cured) precisely because the fashi allowed her to give voice to a de-
monomorphic representation that was symbolically meaningful to her.
If the patient was demonized in torture, the purpose was only to re-
humanize her. In the end, therapy reclaimed its territory from the
judicial.
Another anecdote reveals how this territory might be lost to the
theatrical:

The youngest son of Lü Chunnian was three years old when,

in the summer of the year 1193, he became ill, coughing up
phlegm. His mother and father worried over him, and
medical attention and prayers were exhaustively employed.
110 Society and the Supernatural

Someone said that there was a certain Ritual Master

Wu whose talismanicized water was extremely efficacious
and that they had better get him to bring the illness under
control. Thereupon Lü hastened to invite him, and he
advanced Wu one hundred cash to hire a small boy in the
marketplace whom Wu would compel to become possessed
[by the demon] and speak.
Wu scolded the demon vituperatively and angrily de-
manded an explanation. He ordered his spirit-general to
bind its hands, whereupon the boy deliberately raised his
hands in the manner of receiving shackles. Continuing, Wu
ordered the spirit-general to bind both its feet, and once
again the boy acted in a similar fashion. Wu then scolded
it, saying, “ You are such and such a demon, correct?” The
boy hung his head and said, “ Yes.” Striking him with several
lashes, all were met with murmured assent. Again Wu said,
“I cannot bear to punish you. You want some ‘ritual of
merit’ [performed on your behalf], right?” The boy raised
his head and said, in gratitude, “That would be very fortu-
nate,” and in a moment Wu reviled the demon and caused
it to go away. The boy fell upon the ground in a daze and
after a little while stood up. The Ritual Master retreated,
and Lü asked of the little boy, “ What I have just witnessed,
are you still able to recall it?” To which he answered, “Hop-
ing for a profit of one hundred cash, I therefore complied
with everything he said. Its binding and responding, that
was all my doing.” All the spectators laughed and went away.
The young child got well on his own.66

The therapy here takes place not in the privacy of the patient’s home
or of the exorcist’s sanctuary, but outdoors, in the marketplace, be-
fore a crowd of spectators who had come, perhaps, for other purposes.
The one who is to be possessed, moreover, is neither the patient nor
one of his kin acting as a surrogate, but a complete stranger to the
fashi as well as to the patient’s family, a boy selected at random and
secured temporarily by a monetary transaction. One can imagine that
these two factors alone might well work to transform, and even un-
dermine, the serious goal of therapy that was kept on track by famil-
ial concern and commitment in an environment of domestic seclusion.
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 111

Released from these pressures, the ritual now had to submit to new
ones—to the expectations of a different audience accustomed to other
kinds of spectacles—for the market was a place, and often a periodic
one at that, for more than the exchange of goods and services. Here
the state or its representatives executed in public those it condemned
in private trials; here, too, roving actors paused to put on plays formed
from bits of pantomime, music, and dialogue, as well as more kinetic
performances in the tradition of the “One Hundred Entertainments.”
These actors were called “luji ” or “sanyue.”As itinerant and unregis-
tered troupes or individuals, they stood in much the same relation to
the established actors of the court and permanent urban theaters as
the class of fashi did to the Daoist hierarchy and urban temples.67 And
if the Rites of Summoning for Investigation owed something to both
judicial proceedings and the theater, it would seem that a therapeu-
tic ritual ran something of a risk in returning to the venue where these
other spectacles converged.
Despite the focus on the boy rather than the patient, the ritual just
described opens on a familiar note. As in the previous anecdote, the
fashi orders his spirit-general to bind the hands and feet of the demon;
the young boy then responds, mimetically, by extending his own
hands and feet, as if he were the demon being bound. The process of
identification is complete when the boy admits under questioning to
being “such and such a demon.” At this point one expects some elab-
oration on the identity of the demon and its circumstances, some ar-
ticulation of the demonic with the illness of the patient. Instead, ther-
apy immediately gives way to a spectacle of punishment and mercy—a
public demonstration, through the body of the surrogate, of the fashi’s
power over the demonic, not unlike the political ceremonial of exe-
cution, in which the power of the state was felt just as much in the sus-
pension as in the extraction of vengeance.
One spectacle, however, gives way to another. The entire ritual per-
formance, from bindings to beatings, turns out to have been scripted
and choreographed beforehand. Even the trance was faked. A ques-
tion from the patient’s father, a question that demonstrates how well
he understood the necessary relation between possession and amne-
sia, forced the confession of fraudulence. Therapy has become the-
ater, a kind of “demon play” in which the fashi directs a cast of one.
The audience appears to have been appropriately surprised by the de-
ception, if not entertained. Several decades earlier, however, a court
112 Society and the Supernatural

official was not at all amused when he realized too late that the priest
he had hired to perform a Daoist sacrifice, as well as all the transcen-
dents whom he witnessed descending during the service, were roving
actors intent on pilfering his valuable sacrificial vessels.68 If the fashi
could become an itinerant dramaturge, roving actors could also play
the Daoist priest.

Ritual and Theatrical Performances

To greater and lesser degrees, both trances of possession and exor-
cisms normally involve an element of theatricalization. It is this ele-
ment that has recently led the Shakespearean scholar Stephen Green-
blatt to argue that possession is in fact theater that cannot “confess
its own theatricality.” 69 Greenblatt’s understanding of possession as the-
ater that must hide this fact from itself is a felicitous formulation in
the context of early Stuart England, a time when possession and exor-
cism had to defend themselves against the charge of being theater—
against the charge, in other words, of falsity, counterfeit, and illusion.
In Song China, however, possession and the theater did not lean up
against each other in quite the same way—and this despite the fact
that the Song tolerated a full-blown secular stage that, like its English
counterpart, stood at the margins of urban society but also enjoyed
the support and encouragement of the court.
This is not to say that the question of inauthentic possession did
not arise (we have seen that it has), but only that possession itself did
not have to defend itself against the charge of fraudulence. At worst,
possession was rejected by some groups in the society as an undisci-
plined intrusion of the divine into human affairs, or as an unwelcome
assault on the integrity of the body. At best, it was something to be ac-
tively encouraged in controlled situations, such as kaozhao rituals, as a
means of overcoming and giving form to an outburst of inarticulate
and chaotic symptoms. I would argue that, in Song China, possession
was decidedly not theater, and that for this very reason it had no prob-
lem whatsoever in revealing its theatricality. Possession was distin-
guished from the theater by the feature that defined it—a trance of
identification—and the presence or absence of this feature deter-
mined its authenticity or fraudulence. Conversely, theater was not
possession, though it, too, was not unwilling to stage such an event.
Thus, in the Song, we find rites of spirit-possession followed by the-
Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums 113

atrical performances, and theatrical performances that represent

spirit-possession without the actor or spectators becoming possessed.
The relationship between ritual and theater in the Song is a large
and still largely unexplored subject. Fortunately, our focus on thera-
peutic ritual circumscribes one piece of relevant evidence —the Great
Exorcism (danuo), as described in the Liji, Zhouli, dynastic histories of
the Han, and poetic enumerations ( fu) of the Tang.70 Despite a gen-
eral impression to the contrary, the Great Exorcism continued to be per-
formed at the Song court and flourished in the countryside. The
significant feature of the court performance is the fact that the spir-
its of the classical nuo (the twelve beasts and the ten demoniform pesti-
lences) were replaced by the civil, and especially the martial, gods of
Song popular religion, and that these roles were assumed by actors
with painted faces rather than by masked priests.71 This aestheticiza-
tion and theatricalization of the Great Exorcism was mirrored by the rit-
ualization of court theater. One cycle of “farce” (yuanben) performed
in the Southern Song focused on the tragic fate of dead emperors or
heroes (e.g., Huizong, Xiang Yu). Three extant scripts in this genre
from the Yuan dynasty reveal that their structure derived from ritual
“offerings” ( jiao) for the dead. The actors represented the descent of
the wandering soul into the ritual area; the possessed speech of the
medium, in which the wandering soul described its “grievance” and
related its sad fate; and, finally, the performance of a ritual of salva-
tion (within the play) by a Daoist priest or Buddhist monk.72
In contrast to the Great Exorcism at court, nuo-exorcisms in the
countryside (xiangnuo) were performed by troupes of village spirit-
mediums (liwu), who are alternatively referred to as “children” (xiao’er
or ernü) or barefoot lads.73 On occasion, such village exorcisms were
performed in homes (tangnuo), for which we have a superb thirteenth-
century account from Nanfeng, Jiangxi. In this commemorative
poem—clearly written by a literatus for a friend among the local elite—
the spirit-mediums invoke the gods to liberate the soul of a deceased
family member from the chains of purgatory, and they assume many
of the divine roles that will be central to the nuo-exorcisms and nuo-
plays of late-imperial and modern villages—Chongkui, Leigong, Wufang
bingma, Jinhua nu/Yinhua nu, Tudishen, Yama, and so forth.74
Although the choreography of the village nuo may have derived from
both Daoist ritual and juedixi-style entertainments, the crucial factor
in the precipitation of nuo-plays out of nuo-exorcisms was the trans-
114 Society and the Supernatural

formation of the object of the exorcism from the “miasma” or “pesti-

lence” of the classical ritual to the souls of the dead by the time of the
Song period.75 During the nuo-exorcism, spirits of the dead would take
possession of a medium and tell its story, just as in the Rites of Sum-
moning for Investigation. Some of these stories became paradigmatic
and developed into elaborate narratives that would be dramatically ren-
dered and that came to form a distinct segment of the larger ritual.
The quantity and quality of the evidence for the ritualization of the-
ater increases exponentially in the Ming and Qing periods. The rela-
tive paucity of the evidence from the Song should not, however, be
understood as an indication of the importance of ritualized theater
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the Song dynasty, writing
on theater in general was not yet a form of elite discourse suitable for
either public consumption or preservation. This situation changes
significantly after the Yuan, when in several areas of China the theater
comes to rival Confucian discourse in the cultural self-definition of
the local elite. The later evidence, even that of the twentieth century,
must be considered relevant as well, if handled judiciously.76 Be that
as it may, the evidence we do have is sufficient to demonstrate the mu-
tual appropriation of ritual and theater, and highlights the activities
of village youths, who will become ready recruits for the Buddhist,
Daoist, and other exorcists examined in the next two chapters.
 6
Tantric Exorcists
and Child-Mediums

ur analysis will now move freely across the boundaries that dis-
O tinguish China’s religious traditions, for at the very same time,
in many of the same areas, there were Buddhist monks who were us-
ing child-mediums in exorcisms. Buddhism, in fact, had its own, very
specialized tradition of the ritualized possession of children, a tradi-
tion we consider below. By the Song, however, we have moved so far
beyond the rather restricted milieu of the Tang court, where this tra-
dition was first elaborated, that it becomes difficult to know when and
where we are justified in speaking of continuity. By the Song, we have
entered the vastly different world of rural or suburban monks whose
practices were already in an advanced stage of convergence with those
of their competitors, namely, the Daoist exorcists and village spirit-
mediums. Thus it is fitting that we begin in an area of Jiangxi where
all these practitioners were very active.

Tantric Monks and Child-Mediums

The Rites of the Three Altars

Xu Yuquan was a native of the village of Hukou in the

subprefecture of Leping [ Jiangxi]. The front of his house
looked on a large stream, and there he constructed a tower
and vegetable garden. On a spring day, the members of the

115
116 Society and the Supernatural

household made an excursion there, and they returned

after sundown. His young daughter suddenly became ill.
She seemed completely bewildered and confused. Only
occasionally would she talk and laugh to herself. Xu knew
that she had been bewitched by a demon. A band of spirit-
mediums was unable to cure her. Xu had heard that a monk
named Master Dong Shen, from the nearby village of Baishi,
practiced the “Rite of the Three Altars” (santan fa) with
great efficacy, and he summoned him immediately. Shen
said, “This one, being a water spook, is easy to cure. How-
ever, the house of a commoner is not clean or pure; we must
perform [the rite] in the temple at the boundary of your
house, and then can it be accomplished.” Thereupon, Dong
Shen went to the Cloister for Assisting the Nation (Zhuguo
yuan), fasted, set up an altar, and recited incantations. He
called upon three boys to investigate by illumination. And
afterward, he set up a sacrifice to welcome the spirit[s]. The
boys subsequently collapsed upon the ground and, after a
short while, rose and hastened into the sitting hall. They
addressed Xu Baowen, saying, “Do you still have implements
and knives? If you do, it would be beneficial to lend them to
us.” The Xu household originally had implements to protect
itself against bandits, but Xu, fearing that they would cause
injury, deceivingly said that he had none. The boys went
straight to another room. The outside lock opened by it-
self, and the boys reappeared, each grasping a knife. They
skipped and jumped into the middle of the stream. With
the utmost sincerity Shen approached the water and recited
incantations incessantly. After two nights he became silent.
The parents of the three boys complained to Xu, but Shen
said, “The spirit is going to possess them. Certainly there
will be no harm.” Then, unexpectedly, three different
possessed boys ran into the stream. After a while, one
of them came out and proclaimed, “The evil demon has
already descended into my hand. It would be convenient
to boil thirty catties of sesame oil in order to dispose of the
demon completely.” With these words he again entered the
water. When the oil pot was boiling, the six boys together
grasped a tortoise as large as a mat and weighing over one
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 117

hundred catties. The boys zealously wielded their knives,

cut it up, and put it in the oil to cook until ready. Then
they discarded it deep in the mountains. The girl’s illness
immediately subsided, and within another ten days she was
pacified. Shen has disciples who learn this art. They neither
eat meat nor marry. They considerably exorcize malignan-
cies for people. But their self-cultivation cannot last, and
they break all the regulations and die within a short while.
Shen survived until the end of the Junxi reign period
[1174–1190], and then his long life ended.1

The Rite of the Three Altars, at least as it is described here, re-

veals the influence of Daoist fashi and even of the local cult of spirit-
mediums. For reasons of purity, the ritual takes place in part of a tem-
ple borrowed temporarily because of its proximity to the patient’s
home. The Master marks off a ritual space, recites incantations, and
commands three young boys to identify the true form of the water de-
mon in a rite of “investigation by illumination.” Identification is then
followed by possession, though at this point the rite swerves from the
Daoist pattern, for the boys are possessed by divinities rather than
demons. The Master brings down the divinity (or divinities) into the
ritual area with a sacrifice, and the boys enter into a trance indicated
by their collapse on the ground. Armed with knives, the boys then jump
into the stream that runs in front of the patient’s home. (The god or
demon of this stream has evidently been offended by Xu Yuchan’s ad-
ditions to his home.) The boys apparently remain in the river for two
days, while the Master recites incantations over it. The three boys are
then joined, mysteriously, by three others, also in trance, and together
they finally emerge from the river holding a tortoise, which is cut up,
boiled in sesame oil, and discarded in the mountains.
The social content of this account is equally impressive. The (Rit-
ual) Master Dong Shen is a monk, yet it is not at all certain that he is
attached to a monastery. Hong Mai is quite careful—indeed, he is thor-
oughly consistent—about identifying the institutional affiliations and
ordinational names of Buddhist monks and Daoist priests. Dong Shen
may have been a monk who resided in the village of Baishi and who
was more involved with villagers than with the members of a monas-
tic community. In the first place, Master Dong devoted himself to a
group of disciples who were instructed in the Rite of the Three Altars
118 Society and the Supernatural

and who practiced it on condition that they adhere strictly to vege-

tarianism, refuse to marry, and carefully attend to their own moral cul-
tivation. In other words, he was the leader of a local sect of lay exor-
cists modeled on Buddhist laws of purity, a sect that may be seen as a
distant ancestor of those groups and traditions of red-head Daoists still
to be found today on Taiwan and Southeast China (i.e., Lüshan jiao,
Puan jiao, and so forth).2
In addition to instructing villagers in ritual and the rigors of a Bud-
dhist lifestyle, Master Dong maintained enduring links with village
households through their children. As we might infer from the anxi-
ety and concern voiced by the parents of the three boys who had en-
tered into trance, these children were not professional, or at least ha-
bitual, spirit-mediums. Rather, they can best be compared to those
known on modern Taiwan as shengtong (“raw youths”), who become
spontaneously entranced, most often during the festivals of the local
tutelary spirit.3 This “seizure” (lüe shengtong) is viewed as a sign of their
election, and one or more of these youths are then chosen to become
“divination youths” (tong ji or tongzi ), or oracles of the god. They pass
through an elaborate intitiation overseen by a fashi, which includes an
incubation period in the god’s temple.4 The techniques subsequently
used by the fashi for compelling the god to descend into the tong ji are
known as “guan,” and at this stage the boys are known as “guantong”
or “guan tong ji”5—precisely the words used in our text to describe the
three other boys who joined the first set of three. It is impossible to
confirm, however, whether the first group, like the second, were ac-
tually village “divination youths.” Nonetheless, whether the Buddhist
master employed them on an ad hoc or consistent basis, we can be
fairly confident that the first three might become, had already become,
or were at least representative of those who did become recruits for
the local bands of spirit-mediums like the one that initially tried to cure
the young girl in question.6
In the last two decades, the village tradition of initiating boys as
spirit-mediums has been revived in Fujian under the rubric “guanjie ”—
meaning the rules or prescriptions ( jie) received by those who are en-
closed (guan) within the temple. It has been observed and docu-
mented by Kenneth Dean and Zheng Zhenman of Xiamen University.7
In the village of Liangcuo, for example, near the township of Jiangkou
(Putian), the initiation is the culmination of an elaborate process ex-
tending over several months, or even years, and overseen by Ritual Mas-
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 119

ters of the Lüshan Daoist tradition. Boys are selected and instructed
in the arts of trance, the recitation of spells, and the performance of
nuo-exorcisms. The initiation ceremony itself follows a Daoist “offer-
ing” ( jiao). Inside the temple, before three altars, three Daoist priests
perform a ritual of announcement that includes the “opening of light
and dotting the eyes” to animate the effigies of the divinities and a
black paper crow. Then, led by a “group of eight” (baban), who are the
temple security guards, the priest conducts about thirty-five of the “al-
tar lads” across the courtyard to an altar set up on the theatrical stage
facing the temple. The “altar lads” are divided into three groups: six
initiates, who face the priest, and the rest equally distributed to their
right and left:

The ritual lasted about an hour. The priest read from the liturgy, sum-
moned the black crow, gave it a message, and then had it burnt to send
the message to the gods. The ashes were placed in a bowl of talisman-
water. At that time, he read in a loud, clear voice, the various prescrip-
tions the lads were to adopt. Then he animated the various ritual ob-
jects by blowing his long curved buffalo horn at them . . . [then] he
climbed up a footstool so that he stood at the top of the altar . . . hold-
ing his Thunder Seal before his face while the altar lads, in pairs, moved
up to the altar, put their heads under a pair of crossed swords held by
elder initiates, and drank from the bowl of talisman-water. When every-
one had completed the rite, he came forward, stood before the medi-
ums and twirled back and forth. Then he sprayed the mediums with sa-
cred water. They immediately went into trance. The priest moved back,
and the support lads came forward to hold up the six mediums. The el-
der initiates assisted them with the ritual clothing and headdresses. When
everyone was ready, the support lads led the mediums, now fully dressed
in god’s clothes and holding a sword between their arms, back into the
temple. The door of the temple was fastened tight. Altar-tables were piled
up in front of it, and the doors of the temple were sealed with paper
that read Lüshan dafayuan (The Great Ritual Institute of Mt. Lü).8

The initiates remained in the temple for nine days. On three of

these days, representatives, or the entire population, of more than
two hundred neighboring villages came to pay their respects. At 3 a.m.
on the ninth day, the doors of the temple were opened, flames flared,
and the six initiates burst out, chanting and shouting, and made a
procession around the village. Later that day, after they had been
feasted at home, they would make another procession around the vil-
120 Society and the Supernatural

lage and then perform a nuo-exorcism in front of the temple. The

initiation ceremony would conclude, as it had begun, with another
Daoist ritual.
It is, of course, difficult to determine the significance of the fact
that the number of initiates in the modern rite and the number of
spirit-mediums in the Buddhist exorcism is the same —six. Nonethe-
less, there is a profound link between these two events separated by
almost eight hundred years, and it is fascinating that we first encounter
these village boys in a Buddhist, rather than Daoist, context, which per-
haps begins to explain some of the Buddhist elements found in the
Lüshan Daoist tradition.
The popularity of the Buddhist practitioners of the Rites of the
Three Altars is attested to in an unlikely source. During the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, in the Southeast, there were a number of
Daoist therapeutic lineages that had evolved from the cultic devotion
to various specifically chthonic deities, including the ancient hero
Xiang Yu. One of these lineages is represented by three texts in the
Daofa huiyuan—“The Rites of the Earth-Spirits,” 9 “The Secret Rites
for Summoning and Investigation of Grand Protector Wen of the East-
ern Peak,”10 and “The Great Rites of the Earth-Spirit, Prime Marshal
Wen.”11 The fashi of this lineage once again performed “rituals of
summoning for investigation,” during which the patient would be-
come possessed by the afflicting demon.12 Like their spirit-general,
Prime Marshal Wen, they also specialized in individual and commu-
nal exorcisms of epidemics. A partial genealogy of the lineage was
recorded by Huang Gong jin,13 a native of Jiangxi, who was also re-
sponsible for composing, in 1274, the hagiography of its central di-
vinity, The Biography of Grand Protector Wen, Supreme Commander of the
Earth-Spirits.14
The most fascinating and relevant aspect of this hagiography is its
presentation of “Grand Protector’s Wen’s Secret Rites” as an instru-
ment in the religious conversion of the Southeast. The Daoist Wang
Zong jing sends his disciple Wu Daoxian on a missionary expedition
into Fujian, a trip that takes him as far as Quanzhou. Daoxian’s trav-
els reveal a religious topography drawn entirely with a Buddhist brush.
This is significant. Buddhism has now come to occupy the space once
reserved for the popular cults by which Daoism differentiated itself.
In contrast, the gods of the popular cults (i.e., Wen Qiong) are look-
ing better and better, wanting nothing more than to be integrated into
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 121

the hierarchy of the Dao—an indication of the extent to which Dao-

ism was willing to integrate them.
The description of the Buddhist cults of the region occupies the
largest part of the biography of Grand Protector Wen. Everywhere, for
example, Daoxian encounters worship of a certain Kalayak3a ( Jialuo
wang), a spirit linked here with the practice of sorcery (gudu) and the
cultivation of “golden caterpillars” used to poison strangers, steal their
property, and enslave their souls.15 Outside of Fuzhou, on a mountain
named after the Buddhist monk Sengjia, Daoxian confronts an entire
congregation reciting The Diamond Sutra ( Jin’gang jing) in a temple
dedicated to what is perhaps another yak3a, Jialu wang.16 The most re-
markable and drawn-out confrontation, however, is with a “heterodox”
Buddhist sect led by two non-clerics, Xu Wen and Hao Bian. The “per-
verse teachings” of these two individuals are identified as the “ Way of
the Sangha-Households of the Three Altars” (Santan seng jia zhi dao),
which includes adherence to something called the “Diamond (or Va-
jra) Dhyana” ( Jin’gang chan).17
Between 1163 and 1166, the scholar-official Lu You (1125–1210)
submitted a memorial on a number of lay religious associations, in-
cluding the Diamond Dhyana, and the threat they posed to public or-
der. “In Huainan,” Lu You writes, “they are called ‘People of the Two
Knots’; in the two Zhe they are called [followers of] ‘the doctrine of
Muni’; in Jiangdong, they are called the ‘Four Fruits’ and in Jiangxi
they are called the ‘Diamond Dhyana’ ( Jin’gang chan); in Fujian they
are called followers of the ‘Religion of Light’ or [those who observe]
the ‘Gati Fast’ and by various other titles.”18 Lu You makes no attempt
to distinguish between these sects. He views them all as potentially sedi-
tious successors of the late Han rebel Zhang Jue, and, more recently,
of Fang La. The enumeration, in any case, immediately gives way to
an extended discussion of Manichaeism, the “Religion of Light.” Lu
You’s association of the Diamond Dhyana with Jiangxi, however, is
confirmed in the writings of a late twelfth-century official, Wang Zhi.
Wang was an eyewitness to a sect of “vegetarian demon-worshippers”
in Jiangxi that identified itself in part by the term “Diamond Dhyana.”19
Wang Zhi gives a list of the various scriptures employed by the sect, a
list almost identical to one found in an exposition and denunciation
of Manicheaism by the Buddhist historian Zongjian.20
We now know, however, thanks to the research of Chikusa Masa’aki,
that the Diamond Dhyana was not a subsect of Manichaeism at all, but
122 Society and the Supernatural

a lay Buddhist sect founded by a monk in Liangzhou during the tenth

century.21 The popularity of this group continued into the twelfth cen-
tury, in Zhejiang as well as Jiangxi, though little else is known except
that its followers based their devotion on The Diamond Sutra. Unfor-
tunately, the laconic accounts of the Diamond Dhyana are so nega-
tive that the term itself may also have become one of reproach, much
like “vegetarian devil-worshippers,” and therefore unreliable as a
signifier of the nature of the Way of the Sangha-Households of the
Three Altars.
Although Dong Shen, master of the Rites of the Three Altars in
Jiangxi, also appears to have been at the center of a lay Buddhist as-
sociation, I would like to suggest that we pursue the rites themselves
within the context of the popularization of Tantric Buddhism after the
Tang.22 This much is suggested by the opening passage of another
anecdote from the Yijian zhi, one which confirms, by the way, that, as
the biography of Wen Qiong indicated, Buddhist practitioners of the
Rites of the Three Altars were found in Fujian as well as in Jiangxi:

Ye Dao, styled Faguang, was a native of [the subprefecture of] Jianning

[Fujian]. He neither drank alcohol nor ate meat. He transmitted and
practiced the “Rites of the Five Divisions of the Three Altars” (Santan
wubu fa) in order to exorcise malignancy and cure illness.23

The qualification of the Rites of the Three Altars as “Rites of the

Five Divisions (or Classes)” clearly locates these rites in the Tantric
Buddhist tradition. In the dictionaries and encyclopedias of Esoteric
Buddhism, the term “wubu” is normally taken to refer to the five Bud-
dha families, or, by extension, to a fivefold classification of presiding
Tantric divinities, sections of the mandala, ritual genres, and altars.
Yet I suspect that, several centuries earlier, “wubu” had become a kind
of synecdoche for Esoteric Buddhism in general, and the “Rites of the
Five Divisions” a kind of shorthand for Tantric exorcisms of a partic-
ular kind. In the Tang dynasty, for example, a monk named Zhuan
Qing was summoned to the home of a “man of the market” to cure
his wife who had been bewitched by a demon for several years. Zhuan
Qing was an expert in wubu fa. He made a straw puppet, eight inches
high, and dressed it in clothing made from five-colored threads. The
monk then constructed an altar and, standing the puppet up, recited
incantations over it until the image became animated by the demon
and cried out for help. Zhuan Qing interrogated ( jiewen) the demon
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 123

and threatened it with beatings if it reported falsely. The demon, in

turn, confessed that he had spied on the young woman in the Tem-
ple of Yu (Yu miao) in Guiji and had caused her to lose her mind.
Zhuan did not believe this story, and he used a whip to chase the pup-
pet into a jar, which he then sealed with a red talisman, encased in
mud, and finally buried in a mulberry grove. The wife was cured.24
This anecdote suggests that, in the Tang, the term “wubu fa” did im-
ply exorcisms, and that these exorcisms included the possession of a
surrogate, albeit a nonhuman one. However, at the end of the biog-
raphy of the Tantric monk Vajrabodhi in the Gaoseng zhuan, the edi-
tor Zanning (919–1001) comments:
According to the “Rites of the Mandala of the Five Divisions,” young
boys or virgins must be used as mediums to summon spirits, and it was
once extremely easy to cure illness or exorcise evil. People in modern
times, [however,] use this [method] to profit their body or mouth; there-
fore little result is obtained. Generally [this method] is held in contempt
by the world. Alas, that the deterioration of the Correct Law has gone
so far as this!25

Zanning’s comments were no doubt prompted by the central

episode in Vajrabodhi’s biography, an exorcism he performed for one
of the daughters of the emperor Xuanzong in which two seven-year-
old female mediums were employed to embody the souls of the sick
daughter and her dead nurse.26 It is also in the Tang, in the texts of
Tantric Buddhism, that we find ritual instructions not only for the an-
imation of images but for the possession of child-mediums as well.

Tang-Dynasty Precedents
These rituals for the possession of child-mediums were referred to by
the term “aweishe,” a transliteration of the Sanskrit ave4a (“to take hold
of” and, by extension, “to possess”). They are described in a number
of texts, dating from the seventh and eighth centuries, that were trans-
lated by, attributed to, or generally reflective of the practices of a num-
ber of Esoteric Buddhist masters at the courts of the emperors Xuan-
zong and Taizong. For our purposes it is not necessary to analyze each
of these texts separately. They reveal a set of practices of considerable
coherence in both form and function.27
Basically, the Tantric master recites various incantations to summon
one or more Buddhist deities, sometimes identified, sometimes not,
124 Society and the Supernatural

into either a luminous, reflective object (water, mirror, jewel, pearl),

the image or icon of the divinity, or the body of a child. In the case of
children, considerable attention is given to their number (anywhere
from two to ten boys or girls, in some cases) and to their age (between
eight and fourteen). The texts describe an elaborate process of
purification and the physical appearance of the children both before
and during the trance. It is said that when the divinity has descended
into the children, they will speak of “all matters past, present, and fu-
ture,” of “things yet to come,” or of “good or evil fortune,” or that they
will be able to answer any question asked of the god.28
The divinity, as we have said, could also be compelled to enter a
reflective object or hollow icon, whereupon it apparently revealed it-
self directly to an audience through visual or auditory hallucinations.
Yet even in these cases, children were given a prominent, if not pre-
ferred, part to play as mediators. In two of the texts, children were
asked to gaze into a mirror, which had either been purified with the
ash of the homa offering or otherwise empowered by the divinity, and
then to answer all manner of questions based on what they saw. This
was a variation on the art of catoptromancy, or divination by mirrors,
which would play an important role in the Song period in Daoist as
well as Buddhist rites employing child-mediums.29
Whatever the form taken by the “ave4a rites,” the function of the
children was clearly mediumistic and oracular. Because of the thera-
peutic nature of some parts of the texts in which descriptions of ave4a
were embedded, we cannot rule out the possibility that diagnosis was
indeed part of prognosis. There is no reason to suppose that a ques-
tion posed to the divinity possessing the child might not have concerned
the nature of a demon causing illness. Yet therapy and exorcism are
hardly mentioned, much less emphasized, in the ritual accounts per
se. The boys do not appear to have been acting as vehicles for demonic
possession or as surrogates for a demoniac. One text does mention that
in the course of the ritual of divine possession, the children might be-
come possessed by a yak3a, but this eventuality was not encouraged, and
the Master is advised to send the demon away immediately.30
All in all, the ave4a rituals seem to have been not too distant from
the most popular kind of seance performed by the Tang-dynasty spirit-
medium for officials and members of the aristocracy. In these seances
the spirit-medium summoned a divinity either into himself or into
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 125

some other localized place. Then he either answered himself, or com-

municated the divinity’s responses to, specific questions posed by the
supplicant about “good and evil fortune,” “matters past, present, and
future,” or “things yet to come.”31 What has changed in the ave4a rites
is the fact that the spirit-medium’s trance was officiated by a Tantric
master and resulted from the power conferred on the master by his
own identification with a Buddhist deity. In The Rites of Ave4a as Ex-
plained by the Deva Mahe4vara, a text in one short scroll submitted to
the throne by Amoghavajra, the officiant or “practicant,” as he is called,
must first transform himself into the eponymous Mahe4vara,32 thereby
empowering the mantras and mudras he then employs to compel an
“emissary of Mahe4vara” to possess the children.33 The text notes that
after the appropriate spell has been recited seven times, “the boys and
girls will tremble violently, causing one to realize that the ‘Holy One’
(shengzhe) had entered their bodies.”34
The unity of practitioner and divinity is a defining feature of Eso-
teric Buddhism and a mark of the extent to which even Daoist thera-
peutic rituals had become “tantricized” in the Song. In the canonical
“Rite of Summoning for Investigation,” the metamorphosis of the
Ritual Master was just as necessary to effect the possession of the pa-
tient or his surrogate, though the purpose of these Daoist rites, as I
have argued, was to listen to the demonic voice rather than to im-
part divine knowledge. Of course, it is precisely as an officiant of
spirit-mediums that the Tang masters of ave4a may be seen to have an-
ticipated not only the Daoist practitioners of kaozhao but also the Bud-
dhist practitioners of the Rites of the Three Altars. Yet the social con-
text for the performance of these and other Buddhist rites employing
child-mediums had changed so significantly by the twelfth century that
I find it difficult to see as much continuity in substance as I do in form.
The monks who were practicing these rituals were no longer associ-
ated with the court. They were operating out of provincial monaster-
ies with close ties to the surrounding villages and to their inhabitants.
The changed milieu seriously affected the content of these rites, to
the extent that they owed as much, if not more, to the wild theatrics
of the spirit-mediums whom the monks employed as to the Tantric pat-
rimony of the monks themselves. This will become increasingly evi-
dent as we reconsider this patrimony within the context of the exor-
cisms of another group of Tantric monks in the Song dynasty.
126 Society and the Supernatural

The Rites of Ucchu3ma

The people of Zhang and Quan prefectures [in Fujian]

enjoy practicing the “Rites of the Vajra-Being of Impure
Traces [i.e., Ucchu3ma]” (Huiji jin’gang fa) to cure sickness
and to perform exorcisms. The deity descends and pos-
sesses a young boy in order to speak. In 1152 the monk
Ruochong was residing in the Guang Fu Cloister on Mount
Xi in Quan prefecture. In the middle of the night a monk
sought him out, and Chong was surprised at the improper
hour. The monk said, “I am very poor. My almsbowl, which
contained several taels of silver, was stolen by someone. I
just now entreated the ‘Holy One’ (daozhe) to employ his
method. The spirit said to me, ‘I will wait for the Elder to
come and then speak,’ and fortunately you came for alms.”
Chong accompanied the monk to a room where a village
youth was standing on a table holding a sword. The youth
looked at Chong and greeted him, saying, “The monk
should sit for a while; in the middle of the night it is not
fitting that we humble ourselves to each other.” Chong said,
“I didn’t realize that the Venerable Spirit had descended
here; I have been deficient in offerings. Can I ask you to
reveal yourself to me?” The spirit said, “I am a high-ranking
spirit of Heaven. It is not difficult to certify the owner of
something lost in the temple. I am afraid, however, that
a litigious suit might arise which would harm my purity
(benxin). If you do not make a report to the officials, then
I will help you.” Chong bowed many times in gratitude and
said, “ We will diligently respect your warning.” The spirit
said, “Then the rite will be performed.” The youth went
out of the room clasping his sword, jumping at one mo-
ment, walking at another. Suddenly he threw himself into
a large well. After a long time he came jumping out and
passed through the temple gate until he reached a pile
of cow dung. He flung himself about, circling it as he went.
Then he struck the pile three times with his sword, and
all of a sudden collapsed on the ground. After a spell, the
youth came to. They asked about this, but he wasn’t aware
of anything. Then they noticed that there was a mud brick
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 127

that was uneven, under the dung. Picking it up, the silver
was underneath. They said it was what the thief had
concealed.35

The most interesting social fact we can glean from this anecdote
concerns the nature of the boy. He is referred to by the poor mendi-
cant monk as the “Holy One” (daozhe), either because he was consid-
ered to have dedicated himself to a religious life as a follower of “the
Way,” and/or because he was transparent to the divine, the “Venera-
ble Spirit,” who in this case we may assume to have been either the
“Vajra-Being of Impure Traces” or perhaps one of several subordinate
deities we will see to have been associated with his cult.
The presence of this possessed oracle in the monastery elicits no
surprise from the temple elder or from his unfortunate visitor. We can
infer from this that he was a regular and accustomed feature of the
monastic environment, to such an extent that he and his divinity were
occasionally taken too much for granted: the elder apologizes for hav-
ing been negligent in sacrifices. According to another anecdote in the
Yijian zhi, a young medium was also present in the “Dharma hall” ( fa-
tang) of a remote temple in Wuyuan, Jiangxi, when, in 1165, an un-
named fierce deity descended twice to criticize and condemn the
monks for various transgressions.36
The medium of Guang Fu Cloister exemplifies, both in his person
and in his actions, the porosity of the membrane that separated the
monastery from the surrounding environment. This can be seen in
the worries of the god himself about the consequences of being
dragged into a matter normally left to the secular authorities. In ad-
dition, like the group of boys employed by Dong Shen, the Ritual Mas-
ter of the Three Altars, the monastic medium here was a village youth,
drawn, I suspect, from that fund of local boys who would have become
possessed during village festivals. The medium, in fact, brings to his
monastic service of the Bodhisattva Ucchu3ma all the autonomous
characteristics of that other role. First, he appears to be —and to al-
ways have been, even while in the monastery—the master of his own
trance, spontaneously possessed by the god. Second, he even appears
to be the initiator, if not master himself, of the “rites” he performs;
knowledge of these rites, in any case, is claimed by the divinity with
whom he has identified, rather than residing in a Buddhist master who
mediates this identification. Finally, his entranced performance ex-
128 Society and the Supernatural

hibits all the frenzy and theatricality of village mediums. The young
boy works himself up in fits and starts, throws himself into a well, and
then, leaving the monastery, circumambulates a pile of excrement that
he slashes repeatedly with his sword. The intensity of the trance finally
overcomes him, and he collapses on the ground. Once again, amne-
sia is taken as a necessary mark of authenticity by the spectators.
Here we are far from the highly controlled, rarefied, and even claus-
trophobic atmosphere of the Buddhist ave4a rites, in which two or more
virginal and purified children stood passively before the master amidst
lighted incense and strewn flowers; in which the descent of the divin-
ity and the onset of trance were distinguishable only by the most sub-
tle of signs—the cessation of breathing, unblinking eyes, and a slight
reddish tint around the pupils; and in which the children had in
essence become living icons, as luminescent, but also as confined, as
the pearl or crystal for which they were substitutes.37 In the Song, Bud-
dhist rites employing possessed children had become invaded by the
sound and fury of village spirit-mediums, while part of the temple had,
in a sense, been commandeered as an outpost of village culture.
Though it is unclear to whom Hong Mai is referring when he says
that it was “the people of Zhang and Quan prefectures” who practiced
the “Rites of Ucchu3ma,” they were obviously not limited to monks.
Indeed, we will find that, in addition to clerics, both laymen and vil-
lage spirit-mediums claimed these rites for themselves, and at that
point we will be in a better position to judge what they brought with
them. Meanwhile, it is necessary to examine the Rites of Ucchu3ma
within the context of the history of Tantric Buddhism, if only to dis-
cover that the monks who practiced these rituals in the Song were not
cut from exactly the same cloth as those who frequented the court of
the Tang emperors.

Ucchu3ma’s Cult in the Tang and Song

The deity Ucchu3ma (Wuchusema) is described by Marie-Thérèse de
Mallmann in her study of Tantric iconography as “Le Crepitant,” or
“the One Who Crackles,” an attribute of the Hindu god Agni with
whom Ucchu3ma is also closely identified as a “devouring” divinity.38
Ucchu3ma is frequently represented within a garland of flames, the
fire that transforms and purifies all impurities. Many of his popular
names, in fact, take into account his contact with the impure, includ-
ing the above-mentioned “Vajra[-Being] of Impure Traces.” Iyanaga
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 129

Nobumi suggests, more convincingly, that the name Ucchu3ma derives

from the Sanskrit “ucchista,” for “rejected [from the mouth],” an evo-
cation of the alimentary remains of the meal or sacrifice that are en-
thusiastically consumed and transformed by him.39
In the Buddhist canon, there are at least five texts especially devoted
to Ucchu3ma, three of which date from the early eighth century, and
several other scriptures in which he figures to a greater or lesser de-
gree.40 We shall return to these momentarily. What is remarkable with
respect to the exorcistic rites performed in the name of Ucchu3ma
is that the cult to this relatively minor bodhisattva was considered by
some observers to have attained a position of central significance in
the devotion and practice of Esoteric Buddhism in the Song. Evidence
for this is found in The Recorded Conversations of the great thirteenth-
century Fujianese Daoist Bo Yuchan. At one point in these discussions,
a disciple asks about the current state of Buddhist yogic (i.e., Tantric)
teaching. Bo Yuchan answers that contemporary practice derived from
the posthumous teaching of the Buddha $akyamuni—from the teach-
ing, that is, of a future incarnation of the Buddha, whom he identifies
with none other than Ucchu3ma. He goes on to explain that “$akyamuni
transformed himself into the Vajra[-Being] of Impure Traces in order
to suppress the Brahma King $ikhin”; as a consequence, the “teaching”
( jiao) associated with this event was disseminated widely and applied
broadly against all evil beings (Mara) and heterodox ways (waidao). Its
comprehensive efficacy, in fact, seems to have been in inverse propor-
tion to the complexity of the teaching itself, which was condensed into
a thirty-three syllable mantra called the “Spell of [the Vajra-Being] of
the Golden Disc and Impure Traces” ( Jinlun huiji zhou).41
The Daoist master Bo Yuchan was evidently intimately familiar with
a group of Tantric Buddhist practitioners in Fujian who still maintained
traditions associated with the eighth-century texts devoted to Uc-
chu3ma. The story of the Brahma King $ikhin is found in The Scripture
of the Essential Ritual Techniques as Explained by the Vajra[-Being] of Im-
pure Traces,42 an apochryphal scripture attributed to the North Indian
monk Ajitasena, working in the Western Protectorate (Khotan) of the
Tang empire. I include here Iyanaga Nobumi’s translation of the scrip-
tural narrative:

The scene is Kusinagara at the time when the Buddha is preparing him-
self to enter paranirvana. All the Beings have assembled except the
130 Society and the Supernatural

Brahma king $ikhin . . . who remains in his heaven out of pride, sur-
rounded by thousands of celestial maidens. Upset, the Beings send
vidyadhana [transcendents] to escort $ikhin to assist in the Buddha’s
extinction, but they are prevented from approaching the god by a wall
of refuse that surrounds his palace. Then, out of pity for the Beings,
the Buddha causes a divinity called Adamantine Diamond to appear
from the “Heart of the Right Hand.” The divinity points to the wall of
refuse with his finger and it collapses to the ground. Adamantine Dia-
mond then points to the Brahma king, who is converted to Buddhism.
The king produces the “Spirit of Awakening” and joins the Assembly of
Beings. Adamantine Diamond makes a vow whereby he promises that
after the Buddha’s extinction, those Beings who pronounce his mantra
will invariably be helped, and he explained the mantra which was called
the “Mantra of Impure Traces.”43

The motifs mentioned in this eighth-century text—the transfor-

mation of the Buddha into Ucchu3ma (“Diamant indestructible”), the
conversion of $ikhin, the provision of a mantra for general use —and
perhaps even the text itself were very much alive among the thirteenth-
century devotees of Ucchu3ma as they were described by Bo Yuchan.
Nonetheless, it would be wrong to assume an easy continuity between
these Song practitioners and those who wrote the Tang scripture. Bo
Yuchan continues his discussion of the Rites of Ucchu3ma with the
word “however,” and indeed, he believed that current practice, which
he goes on to describe, was a gross deviation from the original intent.
Still, we do not have to accept this judgment, and might very well come
to accept the opposite view—namely, that the so-called deviations he
describes were very much part of the original, or at least an earlier,
situation.
In any case, Bo Yuchan proceeds to show not only that, by the thir-
teenth century, the cult to Ucchu3ma had moved to center stage in
the ongoing Tantric drama, but that Ucchu3ma himself had come to
occupy the pinnacle of a large and most interesting pantheon of di-
vinities as well. Ucchu3ma is paired here with the Medicine King
Dragon Tree.44 Long Shu (“Dragon Tree”) is the Chinese name for
Nagarjuna, the great Indian philosopher and patriarch of Mahayana
Buddhism, who lived anywhere from the second through fourth cen-
turies c.e. According to a biography translated by Kumarajiva in the
first decade of the fifth century, Nagarjuna owed his name to two leg-
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 131

endary facts: his birth under a tree (Skt. arjuna), and his instruction
in the Mahayana scriptures by serpents (Skt. naga).45
All the so-called biographies, however, in Tibetan as well as in Chi-
nese, are so steeped in legend that it is impossible to say anything
significant about Nagarjuna as a historical person. What we have in
these accounts are really different Nagarjunas—or, rather, different
versions of a single uncommon intelligence revered not just for his
philosophical disputation but for his mastery of astronomy, clairvoy-
ance, and even sorcery. At least one, and perhaps two, Tantric Bud-
dhist texts composed in China were attributed to this mythic and
deified Nagarjuna, a personality not unlike Hermes Trismegistus or
one of the venerable Old Testament figures (Enoch, for example)
claimed as the source of esoteric wisdom by Jewish apocrypha. We will
return to these texts and their possible association with devotion to
Ucchu3ma later in this chapter.
Ucchu3ma and the Medicine King Dragon Tree (Longshu yiwang)
apparently formed a divine pair at the center of the cult. Bo Yuchan
then mentions a series of ten subordinate deities:46 the Two Great
Lords Incense Mountain and Snowy Mountain (Xiang shan xueshan
er dasheng);47 the Two Great Lords Swine Head and Elephant Trunk
(Zhutou xiangbi er dasheng);48 the Two Great Lords Heroic Author-
ity and Flower Radiance (Xiongwei Huaguang er dasheng);49 Prince
Nezha and the Lordly King Dinglun (Nezha taizi Dinglun sheng-
wang);50 and the God of Deep Sands and the Jiedi God (Shensha shen,
Jiedi shen).51 These ten divinities, in turn, are assisted by the Adjutant
Emissary (Yushi) Jin’gang lishi, who commands four military hirelings
( jiangli )—Hu jialuo, Ma jialuo, Niutou luo, and Jintou luo.
As far as I have been able to determine, this pantheon is without
textual precedent. It represents, I believe, the distillation of several in-
dependent cults into a unique configuration of fierce bodhisattvas,
guardian deities, and converted demons. The origin of many of these
divinities in the region where China meets Tibet and Central Asia lends
the pantheon a distinct air of exoticism. On the surface, it would ap-
pear to divide itself neatly and hierarchically into three distinct tiers,
much like a Chinese temple mural: Ucchu3ma and Nagarjuna sit at
the top, with the ten Great Lords and other divinities stretched out
along the middle, and the Adamantine Stalwart and his lackeys at the
bottom.
132 Society and the Supernatural

Another arrangement, however, is suggested by the mandala-like

configuration of the five pairs of divinities of the middle tier and by
certain associations between the divinities of the top and bottom: the
Adamantine Stalwart ( Jin’gang lishi; Skt.: Vajramalla) is to be iden-
tified with the Bodhisattva Vajrapani ( Jin’gang shou), also known as
the “Vajra[-Being] of the Traces of the Mysteries” (Miji jin’gang) or
the “Vajra[-Being], Master of the Mysteries” (Mizhu jin’gang).52 Va-
jrapani, however, is closely associated with Ucchu3ma,53 with whom he
shared, among other characteristics, the task of vanquishing the re-
calcitrant Hindu deity, Mahe4vara (i.e., $iva). Vajrapani also shared with
other deities (Vai4ravana, for example) the role of king of the yak3as,
demonic beings which, I believe, are represented here by Vajrapani’s
four military subordinates, Hu jialuo, Ma jialuo, Niutou luo, and Jin-
tou luo. The names of these demons suggest that they were conceived
as two pairs, a fact that perhaps results from the bifurcated appear-
ance of Vajrapani himself as a pair of fierce divinities ( Jin’gang and
Lishi) guarding the gates of Buddhist monasteries in China and
Japan.
We learn from Rolf Stein’s study of Buddhist door gods that in Chi-
nese monasteries these guardian deities were placed back to back, one
in the north, facing the temple, the other in the south, facing the en-
trance gate. In the northern position one usually finds the fierce and
ascetic figure of Weituo (Skt. Skanda), and, in the southern position,
the rather benign and glutinous figure of Miluo (Skt. Maitreya), or,
perhaps, the equally comic and hungry monk Budai heshang. De-
pending on the particular Buddhist tradition, cultural area, and his-
torical period, this initial pair gives way to an extensive range of sub-
stitutes (of doubles and of partitioned deities) based on the oppositions
north/south, fierce/benign, ascetic/glutinous, and so forth.54 About
the Esoteric Buddhist tradition in particular, Stein writes:
We find here, in both association and opposition, two principal char-
acters in a variety of partitioned forms. On one side is Vajrapani (in
China divided into Jin’gang and Lishi, guardians of the temple gate)
and his Tibetan variations (Heruka or Vajrakumara); on the other side
is Gane4a (in China doubled as male and female elephants who embrace
and are called Huanxitian, a name corresponding to the epithet Hehe).
Despite contingency and the many possible reasons for arbitrary trans-
formation (personal or local convention, economic reasons, confusion,
lack of information, etc.), the play of the imagination that results in the
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 133

transformation of the central characters is not made freely, arbitrarily,

or by chance, but is a response to a bipartitioned structure which sub-
tends a coherent meaning formulated by a limited number of forms.55

Ucchu3ma, Gane4a, and Vajrapani each appear in our thirteenth-

century Chinese Tantric pantheon as the Vajra-Being of Impure
Traces, the Two Great Lords Swine Head and Elephant Trunk, and
the Adamantine Stalwart, respectively. Given their prominence in and
their representation at all levels of this pantheon, I would like to sug-
gest that all the divinities might be submitted to the same bipartite
logic that Stein has applied in his analysis of the door gods—and, fur-
ther, that the hierarchy implicit in Bo’s description of the pantheon
might collapse, under further analysis, into a series of divine pairs
drawn along a north/south axis.56 This, however, will remain hypo-
thetical until we can identify the attributes of all the divinities in the
pantheon.
As already noted,57 many of the Buddhist deities in the pantheon
of Ucchu3ma had already penetrated the cults and discourse of the
Daoist Ritual Master. Yet, as even Bo Yuchan noticed, the thirteenth-
century Tantric devotees of Ucchu3ma were equally influenced by the
Daoists. Continuing his discussion of contemporary practitioners of
the Rites of Ucchu3ma, Bo remarks,
The wayward masters (xieshi ) of today mix [their practices] with pre-
scriptions of Daoist rites. And, in addition, they trace the steps of the
Celestial Outline and pinch their fingers to form secret signs (bugang
nianjue); they cry out in loud voices; they jump about like barbarians
and dance like Chinese (hutiao hanwu); they shake small bells and rat-
tle clappered ones; they whip with hempen stalks and strike with peach
staves. In doing so, the truth of the ancient teachings has been lost en-
tirely, and [their behavior] seems completely contrary to that of Bud-
dhism. Nonetheless, yoga is still one method of the Buddhists for sub-
jugating evil[-beings] (mo).58

Bo Yuchan was a man forever on the lookout for breaches of or-

thodoxy, even within traditions other than his own. In this respect he
was much like his near contemporary Zhu Xi, with whom his efforts
to establish a true line of transmission in Daoism, a daotong, ought to
be compared. To Bo, the Tantric practitioners of his day were essen-
tially a class of popular exorcists who had more in common with Daoist
fashi, and even with spirit-mediums, than with Buddhists of the past.
134 Society and the Supernatural

Indeed, the phraseology he employs to describe the singing, dancing,

shaking of bells, and wielding of sticks is almost proverbial in Song ac-
counts of spirit-mediums. We may accept Bo Yuchan’s characterization
of these Buddhist exorcists, without, however, accepting his judgment
that they either were alienated from or had seriously corrupted their
tradition. Long before the Song, Daoism had been fraying the edges
of Esoteric Buddhism; in some cases, it had actually altered its con-
tent. And no better example of Daoist influence on Tantric Buddhism
can be found than in the texts of the early devotees of Ucchu3ma.
The Scripture on the Rites of the Vajra[-Being] of Impure Traces for Exorcis-
ing the One Hundred [Demonic] Transformations,59 one of the pseudo-
epigraphical and apochryphal scriptures attributed to the eighth-
century Ajitasena, is largely devoted to illustrations and instructions for
engraving Chinese-style wooden seals and writing Daoist-style talis-
mans. The talismans were to be written on paper with vermilion ink
and then swallowed to ward off various disease-demons or to protect
against the elements, to prolong life, and even to cause the sponta-
neous appearance of all kinds of precious treasure.60
Several scholars have recognized the similarities between this scrip-
ture and another inspired by the deified Nagarjuna, Nagarjuna’s Trea-
tise on the Five Sciences.61 Our present, canonical version of this other
work is based on a late Heian manuscript preserved in the Japanese
monastery, Sekizanji.62 Parts of it evidently date back to the Six Dy-
nasties period. In his monumental study of Tantric Buddhism, Omura
Seigai mentions a now-lost Treatise on the Five Sciences (Wuming lun) that
was translated in the second year of Emperor Ming of the Northern
Zhou (558).63 The Treatise, as we have it, is a sprawling, eclectic work
in which the Chinese and Daoist elements sit side by side with, if they
do not actually overwhelm, the Indian and Tantric ones.
The first part of the Treatise opens with a Daoist-style spell in the
bureaucratic language of Chinese edicts (“Quickly, quickly, do as the
law commands”),64 and closes with a stream of Sanskrit dharanis.65 In
between we find a list of eighteen talismans to be written on silk,66 and
a catalogue of twelve apotropaic talismans whose application is cor-
related with an astronomical matrix of time and space that goes back
at least as far as Ge Hong’s Baopuzi.67 In the second part, we find il-
lustrated instructions for engraving ten wooden seals composed of
linked stars and pseudo-constellations, Chinese characters, and vari-
ous geometric patterns, all as they appear in Daoist texts.68 In some
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 135

cases these seals were to be impressed upon the body of a patient or

some other object that needed protection;69 on other occasions they
were to be used to print paper talismans that were ingested or simi-
larly worn by a person or object.70
The claims made for these seals and talismans are comprehensive.
In addition to curing disease and securing one’s person against all
forms of environmental and human assault, one talisman printed from
a wooden seal allows you how to enter the home of a great minister
unseen and subject him to such a barrage of incurable demonic visi-
tations and nightmares that, in the end, he will be forced to summon
you and listen to a sermon on the Dharma. As a result, the minister
will be cured and converted to Buddhism, and in the name of this high
purpose, there will be nothing you cannot extract from him.71 One
understands how Daoists encountering such lack of human fellowship
might link certain popular Buddhist devotions with sorcery.
Toward the end of the Treatise, it becomes clear that the efficacious
use of all these seals and talismans depends on a rigorous devotion-
alism carried out in a precise cultic context. The “practitioner”
(xingzhe) is advised to place effigies of the bodhisattvas Nagarjuna
and A4vagho3a (Maming),72 Vajrapani ( Jin’gang miji) and the Spirit
Kings of the Eight Powers (Bali shenwang) in a carefully constructed
room—actually a Daoist-style oratory—cluttered with canopies, ban-
ners, and seven incense burners.73 Amidst all the smoke and many
rounds of recitations, the two bodhisattvas will finally send down var-
ious spirits who will do anything the practicant commands. And it is
these subordinate deities, along with Nagarjuna and A4vagho3a, who
actually empower the seals and talismans subsequently employed by
the practicant.74
All the religious activity described in the Treatise is to take place in
rooms—ordinary rooms, apparently—that have been purified and
outfitted for the particular purpose at hand. There is no reason to sup-
pose that these rooms did not exist in monasteries, though it is just as
likely that they belonged to the patient or practicant. Similarly, it is
just as probable that the practicant was a Buddhist layman as it is that
he was a monk. Osabe Kazuo has demonstrated how the texts of ma-
ture and systematic Tantrism, translated or composed during the mid-
dle of the Tang dynasty by monks affiliated with the court, insist on
the absolute secrecy of their content and warn in no uncertain terms
about the necessity for nonproliferation. The strictures against trans-
136 Society and the Supernatural

mission, however, become significantly softened in Nagarjuna’s Trea-

tise on the Five Sciences, as well as in many scriptures of a similar nature
composed in China in the eighth and ninth centuries.75 The Treatise,
for example, warns only against the reckless transmission of its contents;
it is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to pass it on to anyone who
sincerely professes the Buddhist faith.76 A popular, nonclerical profile
of the practicants and beneficiaries of this text is supported by the mun-
dane and materialistic objectives of the rites, by the suggestion of class
tension that characterizes some of these objectives, and by the fact that
the rites themselves are said to have been offered originally to King
A4oka in response to the king’s concern for the suffering and poverty
of his people. Among the rites offered to King A4oka were a set of Daoist
talismans, spells, and rites brought by a Buddhist nun and former
heretic from southern India.77 The heterodox origin of her ritual prac-
tices is symbolic of the non-Buddhist nature of much of the text itself.
As we have said, scholars have already asked us to compare Nagar-
juna’s Treatise with The Scripture of the Vajra[-Being] of Impure Traces for
Exorcising the One Hundred [Demonic] Transformations. We may perhaps
go farther and surmise that these two texts, among others, represent
and anticipate a distinct social and Buddho-Daoist milieu that becomes
visible only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, crystallizing in a class
of Buddhist-style Ritual Masters and devotees of a cult to the two divine
patrons of those earlier texts. When we focus once again on this class
of twelfth-century monks, moreover, we find that ritual practices of such
similarity were being performed, in the name first of Ucchu3ma and
then of Nagarjuna, that we are already justified in referring these prac-
tices to a group or sect of Tantric practitioners who, according to the
testimony of Bo Yuchan, actually honored these divinities together.

Ucchu3ma, Nagarjuna, and Village Spirit-Mediums

To the exclusion of almost everything else, the twelfth-century devo-
tees of Ucchu3ma and Nagarjuna specialized in exorcisms employing
child-mediums. The style of these exorcisms appears to reflect many
things at once —the late Tang rituals of ave4a, the Daoist rites of kaozhao,
and especially the characteristic practices of village spirit-mediums in
the Song.

The resident of Leping [ Jiangxi], Xu Jixian, had his home

in Jiudun; later he bought the house of the great monk
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 137

Cheng to live in. He lived there for several years while a

demon spied on the dwelling. Occasionally it would take
form and speak on its own: “I am [the spirit] of one of the
three Yellow Rivers. We [i.e., you and I] were both traveling
merchants selling silk and cloth and died there together.
Now I should share this dwelling with you.” At first it had
not yet spooked them, but after a while it would enter the
room of their son. Originally the husband and wife would
sleep [together] without incident, but by morning their hair
became so tangled together that they moved into another
room. Just when they were eating cooked rice, it suddenly
transformed into barley. When they were eating morning
gruel, it transformed into evening rice. When, on occasion,
guests shared a meal with them, the food would transform
as they ate, and the guests would all become frightened and
flee.
Xu Jixian summoned magicians (shushi ) to exorcise it
and invited Daoists (daoliu) to hold offerings ( jiao) to beg
for the forgiveness of the spirits and for their long life [i.e.,
rebirth], all without the slightest efficacy.
The monk, [Ritual] Master Quan of the Fenglin Temple
next to their residence, could practice the “Incantations of
[the Vajra-Being of] Impure Traces” (Huiji zhou), and Jixian
intended to summon him. At the time, his son’s wife had
become ill. The demon proclaimed to her, saying, “I have
heard that your household is about to have Master Zhuan
exorcise (zhi ) me. Although the Vajra[-Being] of Impure
Traces has a thousand hands and eyes, yet during the liber-
ation through the offerings of a Great Retreat (dazhai ), he
often only seizes spoiled dumplings. How can he harm me?”
When the monk received the invitation, he first marked off
a ritual space in the temple and recited spells for seven day
and nights. When this was completed, the demon spoke to
the wife, saying, “Baldhead comes after all, but I will pru-
dently avoid him. However, before several months have
passed I will return. How can he be worth fearing?! I have
not yet caused your household any misfortune. If I had
known it would come to this, how I regret not having
devised strategies earlier!” The monk arrived and ordered
138 Society and the Supernatural

a boy to stand in the middle of the room and gaze

and examine. He then called for him to be infused by
the spirit. The boy saw great spirits holding halberds and
pennants run quickly into the room. One spirit held up a
large streamer with a title above that said “Spirit-Soldiers
of Impure Traces” (Huiji shenbing), and it circumambulated
one hundred times. The demon proceeded to hide under
the wife’s bed. The spirit left, and only then did the demon
come out. Its head was now several hundred times larger
than before. Soon he was arrested by someone and taken
away. The monk said, “ You should again see two figures
appear from behind the bed of the afflicted; for the first
time they will be truly extirpated.” The following day, a pair
of ox horns sprang out from the side of a large cabinet
behind the wife’s bed and, after a long time, disappeared.
From that point on, the demon was cut off and didn’t
return. All those who caused evil were lodged in the spring
and autumn [sacrifices], and the Xu household became
pacified because of this.78

The manner in which the monk, (Ritual) Master Quan, is addressed

in this anecdote suggests a certain familiarity both with him and with
his role as exorcist. He may very well have resided in the temple, the
Fenglin si, which in any case was the venue for a week of intense prepa-
rations for the exorcism—that is, of devotion and ceaseless spell
recitation, as described in the Tang ritual texts.
The monk, as we see, was actually the third person summoned to
the home of Xu Jixian. Over and over again in Hong Mai’s accounts
of healing, we find that the local reputation and charisma of the prac-
titioner counted more in determining the choice of a therapist than
the particular devotion, class, or ideology of the client. In matters of
healing and, increasingly, in matters of liturgy in general, Buddhists
and Daoists, spirit-mediums and lay religious practitioners were viewed
primarily as ritual experts and were judged accordingly. Moreover, the
choice of a healer, or rather the succession of choices, was often de-
termined by what we might call “hierarchies of proximity and ex-
pense.” Afflicted families often turned first to a spirit-medium or even
to a knowledgeable household member, and then, if treatment failed,
to a lay Daoist exorcist, Buddhist monk, or Daoist priest.
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 139

It is unclear in the present case why the first two kinds of therapists—
the magicians and the Daoists—failed, especially given that the gen-
eral assumption underlying the Daoist approach ultimately resolved
the issue satisfactorily, as we will see. Perhaps it is the fact that the de-
mon and his affliction remained too amorphous, too unlocalized, un-
til the monk was summoned. The invitation to the monk coincided,
more or less, with the daughter-in-law’s illness, creating a concrete fo-
cus of attack as well as an embodied point of resistance. The demon
(or the patient with whom he communicated) initially dismissed his
spirit-opponent, making fun of Ucchu3ma’s well-known association
with the impure remains of the sacrifice. After the monk’s period of
ascesis, the demon then directed his sarcasm to the monk himself, al-
though, feeling the pressure, he now adopted a tone as evasive as it
was threatening.
In an earlier anecdote, Hong Mai commented that the people of
Fujian who performed the Rites of Ucchu3ma in exorcisms caused the
spirit “to descend and possess a boy in order to speak.” The rite as per-
formed by this monk in Jiangxi offers an interesting variation on this
pattern (a variation also taken up by Daoist priests, as we shall see). At
the patient’s home, Master Zhuan asked a young boy to stand in the
middle of a room and literally gaze out into space and examine what
he sees (guanci ). The monk then called for “the opening of light” or
“the commencement of illumination” (kaiguang). In contemporary re-
ligious usage, the term “kaiguang ” has a very precise ritual meaning.
It refers to the opening—actually, the painting—of the eyes of a reli-
gious idol, which is understood to animate and vitalize the effigy with
the spirit of the god it represents. In the early thirteenth century, Bo
Yuchan speaks of kaiguang and futi (“bodily possession”) in the same
breath.79 I do not think it is too farfetched to infer that the young spirit-
medium here, like an effigy, was infused and animated by a deity, which
empowered him not simply to see but actually to visualize and describe
in material terms the exorcistic action effected by the spells and recita-
tions of the master.
The action involves the pursuit and arrest of the demon by the
armies of Ucchu3ma all around the bed of the patient, who was no
doubt lying there and taking it all in. This kind of symbolic narrative
was evidently convincing to the daughter-in-law but insufficient to re-
solve the issue for the household at large. The demon was the spirit
of an itinerant merchant who had drowned while peddling his wares
140 Society and the Supernatural

and who was now seeking some sort of ritual recognition. This is why
he is granted a position in the biannual village festivals, where his soul,
along with the other unknown, unburied dead, would be invited to
take part in the sacrifice.
At the same time, the festival allowed the household of Xu Jixian
to overcome publicly the social alienation accompanying its long de-
monic ordeal, to integrate itself within the community, and, in its pa-
tronage of the sacrifice, actually to redistribute food to those guests
whose meals at the Xu home had been disrupted and the cause of so
much distress. One sorely wishes for more information about Xu Ji-
xian so that we could accurately assess the extent to which the demonic
visitation may have been a mark of the anxiety and apprehension posed
by the recent arrival of a large and nouveau-riche family; the extent
to which the wandering ghost of an itinerant merchant who claims Xu
as his former colleague may have been an actual representation of both
their own occupation and their status as outsiders; and, finally, the ex-
tent to which giving the wandering ghost a place in the biannual fes-
tival marked Xu’s acknowledgment by the community.
The Rites of Ucchu3ma practiced by Master Quan appear to have
retained the basic structure of the Tang rituals of ave4a—namely, the
controlled possession of a boy by a cultic divinity and his subsequent
clairvoyance. The context, however, has become more explicitly ther-
apeutic and exorcistic, while the child-medium offers a running com-
mentary on the action rather than responding to questions or mak-
ing oracular pronouncements. The following short anecdote describing
an exorcism performed by a devotee of Nagarjuna seems to me even
more characteristic of the Song:

The Hu family of Bilong subprefecture [Changzhou,

Jiangsu] wanted to expand the halls and rooms [of their
house], and they cut down a large tree in the central court-
yard that they considered to be in the way. They sliced the
tree through the middle, exposing a ceramic jar large
enough to hold three pecks of rice and with a surface and
gradient that were just so. That day, they became spooked
by a mountain sprite (shanxiao). There was a [Buddhist]
acolyte (xingzhe) who was proficient in the recitation of the
“Spells of Nagarjuna” (Longshu zhou). They summoned him
to exorcise (zhi ) the demon. He ordered a boy to visualize it
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 141

(ming tongzi guan yan). The boy saw a figure several inches
tall being pursued by Nagarjuna onto the wife’s bed. Subse-
quently the demon possessed him, so as to speak. Moreover,
the acolyte marked off the altar and, examining the demon,
bound and expelled it. In all, the disturbance lasted half a
year before being settled.80

This exorcism, performed in the name of Nagarjuna, begins in

much the same way as the previous one. The Buddhist acolyte places
a young boy in the master bedroom of the Hu household and com-
pels him to gaze at the demon. The boy envisions Nagarjuna himself
pursuing the demon into the wife’s bed. But then events take an un-
expected turn. The demon itself takes possession of the boy, and al-
most imperceptibly we have slipped into the Daoist-style Rite of Sum-
moning for Investigation (kaozhao fa). The acolyte examines, binds,
and expels the demon, which we may understand to mean that the
acolyte first interrogates the boy—who has been possessed by the de-
mon specifically, it is said, in order that it can speak—and then has
the demon bound, perhaps by one of Nagarjuna’s spirit-generals, and
taken away.
We may well imagine that the spirit-medium is also bound or binds
himself, though the narrative is much too parsimonious here for us
to do anything but speculate on this point. Also unclear is the extent
to which the demonic possession of the spirit-medium was anticipated
by the acolyte, although he was clearly prepared for this eventuality
and had brought to his Buddhist apprenticeship a familiarity with the
simple rites of lay Daoist Ritual Masters. Indeed, we must pay close at-
tention to the way in which young acolytes may have been particularly
well placed as conduits for the penetration of the monastery by the
rites of Daoist and other village practitioners. One acolyte, for exam-
ple, in the Cloister of Dizang (Dizang yuan), in Poyang, actually be-
came a spirit-medium when called upon.81

Tantric Cults and Daoist Ritual Masters

If the rites of the Daoist fashi were reflected, on occasion, in the per-
formances of Buddhist exorcists, then the practices of the Tantric devo-
tees of Ucchu3ma and Nagarjuna had clearly penetrated Daoist cir-
cles as well. No better example can be found than the case of Liang
142 Society and the Supernatural

Hun, a young man from Fujian who was a nephew by marriage of Ren
Daoyuan, a lay Daoist exorcist and the son of an official. Liang Hun
was apparently pursuing on his own a religious career similar to that
of his uncle, and he often assisted him and another sought-after Daoist
fashi, Shang Rixuan, in Fujian. On one of these occasions, Liang Hun
accompanied Shang Rixuan to the home of the magistrate of Houguan
subprefecture in Fuzhou. Shang Rixuan had been summoned to cure
one of the magistrate’s maidservants of a demonic illness. Liang Hun
was actually invited to perform first, and it transpired in the course of
his confrontation with the demon that the evil spirit had already tried
to bring misfortune upon Liang Hun’s own household, but had been
rebuffed by an array of Ucchu3ma’s spirit-soldiers (Huiji shenbing).
Hong Mai comments that Ucchu3ma was in fact the object of Liang
Hun’s private cult, so we can assume that he was also the basis for
Liang’s exorcistic practices, though these are not described in any de-
tail.82 Ren Daoyuan and Shang Rixuan, however, both employed
child-mediums—in very innovative ways, as we shall see —and it seems
reasonable to infer that their young disciple did the same.
At the very end of The Biography of Grand Protector Wen, Supreme Com-
mander of the Earth-Spirits, the author Huang Gong jin narrates an
episode in the itinerant career of Lu Yanghao,83 a Daoist priest who
played a significant role in the transmission of the “Secret Rites of the
Earth-Spirits.” 84 The episode concerns an exorcism that Lu performed
on behalf of a family named Xiao in the commandary of Linchiang,
again in Jiangxi. Given what we know about the attitude of these Daoists
to Buddhism, it is surprising to find that Lu Yanghao performs his ther-
apeutic rite —an “investigation by possession” (kaofu)—not at the pa-
tient’s home but in front of a Buddhist temple, the Huili si. Lu evidently
knew where he might draw a crowd, but perhaps he was trying to make
another point as well, for as the text continues, with little explanatory
preparation, each of the three boys whom he has caused to become
possessed jumps into the river, where they apparently remain for quite
a while. Meanwhile, the spectators are growing rather skeptical—
until, that is, Lu Yanghao causes yet another youth to become pos-
sessed. This youth grabs the sword that the Ritual Officer ( faguan) has
been holding and also jumps into the river. Finally, after another long
period of time, all three (!) of the young boys emerge from the water
lifting the head of a fish and climb back onto the riverbank.
The exorcism performed by Lu Yanghao and his three entranced
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 143

youths, one wielding a weapon, is hardly distinguishable from the Rite

of the Three Altars as it was practiced by the Buddhist Master Dong
Shen. Despite the ideology and rhetoric of the biography of Grand
Protector Wen, despite its hereticization of the Way of the Three Al-
tars, Daoist practitioners of the Secret Rites of the Earth-Spirits were
in some cases doing exactly the same thing as the Buddhist fashi, and
it was perhaps precisely because of mutual influence and competition
that the Daoists felt compelled to anathematize them. In fact, in the
Yijian zhi we actually encounter a lay Daoist exorcist named Peng fashi
who was an expert in what are now termed the “Rectifying [!] Rites of
the Three Altars” (Santan zhengfa). Peng was a resident of Village No.
20 in Leping, Jiangxi.85 Moreover, a fragmentary Daoist ritual text, The
Secret Rites of Prime Marshal Wang, Spiritual Officer of the Fiery Thunder of
the Southern Pole Star, expressly calls for the possession of three boys
during a “ritual of summoning for investigation.” 86 And it transpires,
in the course of the ritual instructions, that the three boys, in addi-
tion to becoming possessed by demons, might become possessed by
the fashi ’s “Celestial Officers” (tianguan), of which there were also
three: Prime Marshal Wang Shan and two Assistant Commanders ( fu-
jiang), Chen Wei and Qiu Xian.87
By the Song period, it becomes very difficult to resolve the prob-
lem of exactly who was influencing whom, which is perhaps sympto-
matic of the extent to which the practices of Daoist and Buddhist fashi
were already in an advanced stage of convergence. If the Rites of the
Three Altars, as practiced by Master Dong Shen, revealed a Daoist com-
ponent in the “investigation by illumination,” or at least in the use of
Daoist terminology to describe a component of that rite, then there
were also Daoist fashi who practiced either the Rite of the Three Altars
or rites that were very similar in form and content. Barring the dis-
covery of new evidence about the meaning of the term “Three Altars”
outside a Buddhist context, one might appeal to the mechanism of con-
vergence as a means for understanding how the “Three Altars” ulti-
mately became, in Schipper’s words, “a name for the traditions of the
fashi in Taiwan and among the daoshi from Quanzhou in Singapore.”

Tantric Cults and Village Spirit-Mediums

The Chinese spirit-medium (wu) was even more influenced by the
Tantric cults of Ucchu3ma and Nagarjuna than was the Daoist Ritual
144 Society and the Supernatural

Master. This, at least, is how the evidence appears on the surface. When
we submit the relevant texts to serious questioning, however, we find
that the spirit-medium was not simply a passive recipient of outside
influence, nor, for that matter, a perennial village presence whom we
can presume easily to understand. In the Song, the spirit-medium was
just as much a historical player in the cultural field as was the Daoist
Ritual Master or Tantric exorcist. His role in the village and beyond
was becoming increasingly segmented and complex, and with respect
to matters of religious influence, he gave as much as he took.

In Fuzhou, there was a spirit-medium (wu) who was able to

practice the “Rites of [the Vajra-Being of] Impure Traces”
(Huiji fa) and who was extremely efficacious in exorcizing
the demonic for the benefit of people. The uneducated (su)
called him “the Great Compassionate” (dabei ). A virgin girl
of a village family suddenly became pregnant. Her mother
and father pressed her for the cause. At first, not knowing
how it could be, they summoned the spirit-medium to inves-
tigate and exorcise (kaozhi ) it. At the moment when he had
just arrived, a small child dallied and then opened and
entered the gate to their home. For a long time he danced
and jumped about and, without further ado, threw himself
into a pond in front of their house. The child was, in fact,
the son of the rich family that lived next door. At sundown,
the child had still not come out. On the following day,
another child did exactly the same thing. The fathers of the
two households assembled to revile and attack the spirit-
medium. They intended to seize and send him to the
magistrate. The spirit-medium said, “If you grant me a slight
reprieve and allow me to complete my rite, your sons will
come out [of the pond] on their own, unharmed.” Onlook-
ers rushed to the scene, surrounded the pond on all four
sides, and waited. After a while, a sound as if made by hun-
dreds of thousands of people rose out of the pond, and the
bystanders recoiled in fear. The two children emerged from
the water on their own—one holding a carp bound with
rope, the other following behind and flogging it with
a whip. They were dragged up onto the bank; the carp was
already dead. The two children looked as spritely as ever,
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 145

but they were not aware in the slightest of what had tran-
spired. The spirit-medium ordered that pitcher tiles be tied
to the girl’s stomach and smashed to pieces with a wooden
rod. It was done, and [the tiles] crashed to the ground. The
pregnancy was miscarried. They say it was the carp that had
been the cause of her demonic suffering.88

In Fuzhou, the cult of Ucchu3ma and its associated rites had found
devotees among spirit-mediums as well as Daoist Ritual Masters. The
spirit-medium in the anecdote above was described as “the Great Com-
passionate,” an epithet widely applied to the Buddhist deity Ava-
lokite4vara (Guanyin). The common people of this area viewed the
spirit-medium’s successful application of the Rites of Ucchu3ma for
their benefit in light of the universal pity and concern that defined
the bodhisattva’s nature and motivation.
Evidently, not all members of the village looked at him in this way,
however. The fathers of the two children saw an example not of gen-
eralized compassion but of particularized self-interest and a less-than-
perfect guardianship of their sons’ welfare. To a certain extent, they
were right. A spirit-medium could never get out from under the vigi-
lant eye that villagers trained on any of their neighbors on the make.
He could never be that comfortable and well-received bearer of ob-
jectivity that moral discipline and outside status permitted the Daoist
priest to be. Yet we should not exaggerate the fathers’ distrust, despite
the harshness of their reproach. In the first place, the fathers were
spurred to action only when it appeared to them, justifiably, that their
sons were in physical danger. In any case, they allowed the spirit-
medium to continue after he promised the safety of their children.
Second, it would be naive of us to assume that these heads of house-
holds were not fully aware of what had been going on all along. Their
two young sons were apprentices to the village spirit-medium, “div-
ination youths” (tong ji ) who embodied either Ucchu3ma himself or
one of the deities associated with him.
These divination youths were hardly passive transmitters of divine
messages. What is so compelling about their performance is that it re-
calls nothing so much as the Rite of the Three Altars officiated by
Tantric Master Dong Shen in Leping, Jiangxi. Recall that Dong Shen
employed six village youths rather than two, and that the first set of
three was initially asked to identify the demon in a Daoist-style “rite of
146 Society and the Supernatural

investigation by illumination” that took place in a Buddhist cloister.

But from that point on, and in every other respect, the rite imitates
the one officiated by the spirit-medium in Fuzhou. Possessed by the
gods, the three youths threw themselves into a body of water. After the
Master calmed the fears of their anxious parents, the submerged boys
were joined by a second set of entranced children, and finally all six
emerged from the water carrying a turtle, which was identified with
the demon afflicting the patient.
I mentioned earlier how this scenario was taken up as well by Daoist
practitioners of the Rites of Grand Protector Wen. We must now enter-
tain seriously the hypothesis that the mechanism for this convergence
was that Buddhist and Daoist fashi were both imitating an exorcistic
scenario that originated with spirit-mediums, and that spirit-mediums,
in turn, having accommodated themselves to the devotional cults and
spells of the Tantric Buddhists, were now bringing their characteris-
tic exorcisms within the fold of the Rites of Ucchu3ma. The second
part of this hypothesis is even more evident in the case of a female
spirit-medium in Yangzhou.
Following the fall of the Northern Song, Yangzhou had become a
temporary refuge for important officials fleeing the North. There they
waited for new appointments and for the families they had been forced
to leave behind. One such official was Jiang Yanyan, who had yet to
receive a letter from his mother and younger brother, who were trav-
eling from Shandong. Jiang’s anxiety occupied him day and night and
ultimately led him to consult a female spirit-medium named Sheng
Qiniang, whom Hong Mai tells us was highly regarded by the local
people. She practiced the Rites of the Vajra-being of Impure Traces,
which empowered her to communicate with spirits (xing Huiji fa
tongling) and to predict the future, “making known matters which had
yet to take place.” (It is this that undoubtedly had recommended her
to Jiang.) When Jiang arrived at her house, he was surprised to find
the spirit-medium to be a woman in her prime who was already in the
midst of a deep trance, stepping on red-hot tiles and balancing a burn-
ing iron cooking plate on her head. Then the spirit-general (shenjiang)
descended into the medium and declared himself to be the “Master
of Merit and the Path of Righteousness in charge of the Temple of the
Southern Peak that lies within the stream.” Jiang knelt before her and
inquired after the fate of his mother and brother. The spirit-general
answered that Jiang would learn of this in ten days and, after another
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 147

three days, would actually see them—a prediction that was corrobo-
rated by subsequent events.89
The confirmation of this spirit-medium’s talent for prognostication
is less interesting to us than the fact that the traditional scenario of
the mediumistic seance —the trance (of dispossession) and fakiristic
display, followed by the possession trance and the direct consultation
of the divinity by the suppliant—is now performed under the rubric
of “the Rites of Ucchu3ma.” The medium was simply doing what spirit-
mediums had always done, here in the service of a local temple god
and perhaps Ucchu3ma himself. Even the use of young boys by spirit-
mediums, as in the exorcism officiated by the Fujianese medium
influenced by the Rites of Ucchu3ma, was a practice that had devel-
oped independently in the Song, in the context of the traditional con-
sultative seance of the spirit-medium:

In the village of Shili in the canton of Fanshang, Wujiang

subprefecture, there was a farmer named You Da. In front
of his entrance stood a tall poplar tree whose drooping
shade obscured his house. On a summer day in the year
1166, for no reason, he unwittingly ascended the tree and
fell asleep on a branch. The members of his household
gazed at him, perspiring with trepidation. His son climbed
a tall ladder to retrieve him, but he would not come down.
Three days passed, and, seeming to regain some awareness,
he returned after a while to the house. From this moment he
was able to know [the time of] people’s life and death. In his
sixty-seventh year, he addressed his wife, saying, “My allotted
years are already exhausted. You may prepare a dowry.”
After he had bathed, they set down wine and invited his
marriage relations and neighbors to discuss his parting. He
inquired, “Has the noon hour passed?” His wife responded,
“It is still morning.” Then You said, “As soon as I have died,
there will be a scar, made by a rod, on my back. This will be
the result of the struggle between the spirits and myself.”
When the day had reached the noon hour precisely, he
died. They examined his back, and there turned out to be
a scar from a wound. After they buried him, the rural folk
often saw him wandering as if alive, followed by a band
of demons. When someone would become ill, they would
148 Society and the Supernatural

engage a spirit-medium (wuzhe) to invite [his presence],

and he would always come. The medium would compel him
to possess the body of a young boy (ming tongzi futi ) in order
to determine good and ill fortune. Sometimes he would
recommend the consumption of medicine; other times he
would recommend the establishment of Daoist retreats and
offerings (zhai and jiao). All were immediately efficacious.
Those who attained well-being were many. This is still going
on today.90

This anecdote is precious in several respects. First, it describes the

origin of a village cult served by spirit-mediums—a celebration, in a
sense, of the spirit’s powers of prognostication in life. Second, it em-
phasizes the often limited, diagnostic function of the spirit-medium.
In the Song, depending on the nature of the illness, the gods of spirit-
mediums found no difficulty in recommending that the client consult
a pharmacist or Daoist priest. Third, and most importantly, the anec-
dote demonstrates that, in contrast to some spirit-mediums like Sheng
Qiniang, others were handing over their traditional function as pos-
sessed mediums to young boys—true ancestors of the modern “div-
ination youths” (tong ji or tangki ), though these last are not necessar-
ily young. The spirit-medium, for his or her part, was becoming an
officiant, much like the Daoist or Buddhist fashi, and in Chapter 3 we
saw that some spirit-mediums were actually called “fashi.”
As officiants, however, spirit-mediums were not simply imitating
their functional counterparts among the Daoists and Buddhists. In
early medieval China, one invariably finds the spirit-medium working
alone. (At least I have yet to find a single description of a medium’s
performance where this is not so, which is, of course, not to say that
it was always in fact the case.) After the late Tang and Five Dynasties
period, however, we begin to make out the outlines of a functionally
differentiated entourage. Some sources speak of musicians and ac-
tors.91 Others describe a band of youths who number as many as twelve
and accompany the spirit-medium everywhere.92 Poems composed in
commemoration of rain rituals or of spring and autumn festivals fur-
ther distinguish the spirit-medium and his band of acolytes as the “great
medium” (dawu), sometimes also referred to as the “master medium”
(shiwu or wushi ), and the “little mediums” (xiaowu), who dance and
become possessed.93
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 149

All this suggests that the spirit-medium’s use of young boys—in ex-
orcisms as well as in divination seances and village festivals—was a par-
allel but independent development. By the twelfth century, spirit-
mediums, Daoist Ritual Masters, and Buddhist exorcists were all
competing for the same group of village boys, and in the process they
came to assimilate one another’s therapeutic styles and cultic traditions.
On occasion, the convergence of role, style, and substance was so ab-
solute as to actually create a new tradition in which the spirit-medium
was hardly distinguishable from the Daoist or Tantric Ritual Master. Wit-
ness Hong Mai’s account of his own younger brother’s activities:

In my village there are many mediums (liwu). Reciting

spells, they can enter boiling water and fire (dao tanghuo).
Yuanzhong, my younger brother, received their instructions
( jue). He cures illness for people without any mistakes. The
spell (zhou) he employs goes as follows: “Nagarjuna (Long-
shu wang) authorized me to practice and maintain ‘the
Great Method for Exorcizing Fire of Beifang Rengui’
(Beifang Rengui jinhuo dafa). Nagarjuna, I am Beifang
Rengui! With water I execute all the fire stars under
Heaven! The fire stars within a thousand miles must surren-
der! Hastily, do as the law decrees!” When the spell is fin-
ished, he grasps in his hand the Seal of Zhenwu (Zhenwu
yin) and blows on it. He uses a little water to wash them. All
those with blisters on their hands and feet can be cured.94

It may surprise the reader that such an illustrious family as Hong Mai’s
should have a son who was not only on familiar terms with the medi-
ums of their village (near Poyang, Jiangxi), but was actually a practic-
ing apprentice as well. This fact alone should warn us against drawing
too fast a distinction between elite and popular culture in the Song.
Other distinctions similarly collapse in this anecdote.
The mediums of Hong Mai’s village walked through boiling water
and fire, which is to say, again, that they did what Chinese mediums
have always done and still do: they subjected themselves to harsh phys-
ical trials to demonstrate the authenticity of their trance, their im-
perviousness to pain, and the power of their divinities. Apparently,
however, they did not do so in the characteristic manner of mediums,
by entering into a trance state. Rather, they entered fire and boiling
150 Society and the Supernatural

water—and cured burns and blisters—by reciting a spell and per-

forming the operations of the “Rites for Exorcizing Fire of Beifang Ren-
gui,” which are referred to in this spell.95 Both the spell and the rit-
ual operations, moreover, are completely Daoist.
First, the spirit-medium transforms himself into the divinity Zhenwu
by the kind of ego-exchange that characterized the Daoist Ritual Mas-
ter (bianshen). Zhenwu was a “Daoist” divinity of the north, a per-
sonified and martialized asterism and an embodiment of water with
power over the southern asterisms and fire. After commanding these
fire stars to surrender, the medium, alias Zhenwu, infuses his exorcistic
seal with his own spirit. One suspects that he continues to hold this
seal when he throws himself into boiling water or across burning coals,
and that the water with which he washes burn victims was similarly
sacralized, either by his breath once again or by the seal itself.
While all this is going on, the spirit-medium is indistinguishable
from the Daoist Ritual Master. But there is evidently still another cul-
tural layer to apply, for the patron of these mediums—and the patron
of the Daoist rites of Zhenwu that the mediums practice —is none other
than Nagarjuna, aide-de-camp of Ucchu3ma and the source of the
Tantric/Daoist wisdom represented in The Treatise on the Five Sciences.
The spirit-mediums of Hong Mai’s village engage in their character-
istic exhibitionism in the role of Daoist fashi, all within the devotional
context of the cult to a Tantric deity and to a Daoist god who serves
as this deity’s subordinate and spirit-general.
The convergence of so many cultural traditions here provides a rare
opportunity to assess the influence of these tantricized and Daoicized
spirit-mediums on the as yet unwritten history of the so-called Daoist
red-head sects on Taiwan. In the complex pantheon of contemporary
practitioners of the Lüshan jiao, we find, amazingly, that Nagarjuna
and Zhenwu occupy the left and right altars, respectively, and that they
are consistently treated as a divine pair in the hymns that invite their
descent into the ritual area. Moreover, the pantheon and hymns give
particular prominence to many of the divinities associated with the
cult to Ucchu3ma as described by Bo Yuchan in the thirteenth cen-
tury. In addition to Nagarjuna, who assisted Ucchu3ma himself and
who is now paired with Zhenwu, we find the Two Great Lords Incense
Mountain and Snowy Mountain; Prince Nezha, Prime Marshal Li, of
the Central Altar; the Dragon Officer of the Five Saints, Ma Huaguang,
a fusion of the Daoist divinity Ma Sheng and the Bodhisattva Flower
Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums 151

Radiance; and the yak3as Ma jialuo and Hu jialuo.96 This array of di-
vinities cuts across too wide a spectrum of the early thirteenth-century
pantheon of Ucchu3ma to be coincidental. I believe we must seriously
consider the hypothesis that the Lüshan jiao, Puan jiao, Santan jiao,
and other so-called Daoist sects are a product of Tantric as well as
Daoist traditions as they were filtered through spirit-mediums like
those in Poyang, Jiangxi, in the Song.97
Thus, in the Song period, spirit-mediums cannot simply be taken
for granted as timeless relics to be unearthed from the religious soil
of China’s “shamanic substrate.” Rather, they were active players in the
historical work of cultural negotiation between China’s written and
martial religious traditions—a negotiation that produced, in the Song,
a distinctive milieu that I initially identified with the Daoist Ritual Mas-
ter. In this chapter this milieu has been widened to include Buddhists
and even spirit-mediums. We have found, in Southeast China during
the twelfth century, a group of Tantric monks and acolytes who were
hardly distinguishable from the Daoist Ritual Master. These Buddhists
specialized in exorcisms, and though many clearly resided in temples
or monasteries, they performed for the most part in the homes of their
clients. Some, like Master Dong Shen, clearly found not only their
clientele but their disciples among lay villagers. Villagers also supplied
their sons to be used in the Buddhist rituals.
As with the Daoist Rites of Summoning for Investigation, the exor-
cisms of the monks invariably came to center on the possession of one
or more boys. The convergence of Buddhist and Daoist exorcisms
around the possession of spirit-mediums was probably both cause and
effect of a process of competitive mimesis that occurred as Buddhists
and Daoists came to terms with village religion. This process, in turn,
was the occasion for a great deal of cultural exchange between Bud-
dhist and Daoist exorcists: in the case of the Rites of Ucchu3ma, the
exchange took place at the levels of cult and textual discourse, as well
as of ritual practice; some Daoist Ritual Masters, moreover, became
devotees of the Buddhist Rites of the Three Altars and Rites of Uc-
chu3ma, while Buddhist performances of these rites often included
elements borrowed directly from Daoist Rites of Summoning for
Investigation.
Unlike their Daoist counterparts, the Buddhist Ritual Masters did
have a well-defined if somewhat socially circumscribed tradition of us-
ing young boys and girls as possessed mediums. In the tenth century,
152 Society and the Supernatural

Zanning wrote that people in his day did so for profit. It would be un-
wise to discount the influence of the ave4a rituals of the Tang on the
Tantric exorcisms of the Song and, in particular, on the seeming pref-
erence for the divine possession of a divinatory medium over the de-
monic possession of a surrogate for the patient. Yet the tradition de-
veloped by the Tantric masters of the Tang weighed lightly on their
Song successors. As Chinese Tantrism’s center of gravity shifted from
court to country, the style and content of its exorcisms came to reflect
the exuberance, unpredictability, and variation of the village culture
of the mediums. As we saw in Chapter 5, for example, much of the
“plot” of the Daoist Rite of Summoning for Investigation in the Song
was anticipated by the exorcism of a Tang-dynasty spirit-medium.
In the twelfth century, spirit-mediums, in turn, became masters of
the Buddhist rites of Ucchu3ma and Nagarjuna. Thus they became Rit-
ual Masters, although their experience as officiants of possessed
acolytes had already prepared them for this role and the style of their
“Buddhist” exorcisms remained very much their own. Some even man-
aged to combine Tantric cult, the operations of the Daoist Ritual Mas-
ter, and manifestations of their own trance behavior to produce hy-
brid practices that would gain the force of tradition. From whatever
perspective we examine the question of influence in the context of
therapeutic ritual, the spirit-medium was a player as well as a pole of
attraction that would now prove irresistible even to Daoist priests.
 7
Daoist Priests, Confucian
Literati, and Child-Mediums

n the previous pages, I have purposely restricted my analysis to the

I rural and suburban world of lay Daoist Ritual Masters, Tantric ex-
orcists, and spirit-mediums. To this picture of village and vernacular
life we must now apply a more classical and highborn veneer, for just
as spirit-mediums became fashi, so members of the religious and bu-
reaucratic elite did, and these Daoist priests and upper-class laymen
also performed exorcisms in which they employed child-mediums.
Moreover, they did so in ways that particularly engaged their moral
anxieties and moralizing sensibilities. Before we come to these and
other concerns that reflect the distinct expectations of elite practi-
tioners and their clients, I present three episodes in which upper-class
spirit-mediums were central to the therapeutic process.

Daoist Priests and Child-Mediums

On Maoshan, Pilgrimage Site
of Aristocratic Daoism just South of Nanjing

On a New Year’s evening in 1137, two literati from Nanjing

set out on an excursion and encountered two beautiful
women—immortals, in fact—who invite them to join their
retinue and associates in the garden belonging to a certain
Du household.1 In our source there now follows a detailed
description of the kind of fairy banquet well known to us

153
154 Society and the Supernatural

from the religious literature and belles lettres associated

with the medieval Daoism of Maoshan. Before leaving
the next morning, the two literati are given elixirs to allow
them to avoid cereal foods and extend their lives. They
are asked, however, not to seek another meeting through
divination. From that moment they subsist only on fruit
and are absolutely ecstatic about the prospect of becoming
transcendents.
To hasten this eventuality, the two gentlemen proceed
to Maoshan, where they stay with the resident Daoist priest,
Liu fashi. At this point, however, their hopes are deflated,
and the narrative swerves significantly from our expecta-
tions about the generic nature of what we are reading. The
priest remarks that his two new disciples appear to him to
have become increasingly listless and disaffected (suomo),
something that should not occur had they encountered
“true immortals” (zhenxian). Liu suspects that they have
been weakened by some “perverse pneuma” (yaochi ) and
sets out to get rid of it.
Initially, things do not go well, and after a disquisition
on the vagaries of life and death, Liu fashi changes course.
The priest has an incense table prepared and selects three
or four spirit-mediums (tongzi ) to stand next to it. Forming
mudras and reciting spells, he orders the boys to face the
incense burner, in which they envision a luminous reflec-
tion in the circular shape of the sun and moon. The priest
remarks that this is exactly what they should see, and then
has the boys look into the light more closely. This time they
notice an emissary. The priest then orders this soldier to
pursue the local Earth God and have the god capture and
escort into the ritual area the “evil-causing agents of the
Du family garden.”
After half an hour or so, one of the spirit-mediums
confirms their arrival: “Two ladies have taken off their hats
and are prostrating themselves on the ground and confess-
ing their crimes. In addition, there are several maidservants
by their sides.” The priest then commands the ladies to
convey their names (tong xingming). One declares herself
to be Zhang Lihua, the other, Kong Guipin; both follow up
Priests, Literati, Child-Mediums 155

with an exhaustive account of their involvement with the

two gentlemen.
[All this may have been transmitted directly through
the mouths of the spirit-mediums. In the texts of the “Rites
of Summoning for Investigation,” the communication of
the spirit’s name and story (tong xingming and tongzhuan)
are semantic markers of possession. In contrast, these
spirit-mediums may only have been repeating what they
alone heard in conversation. As we shall see throughout
this chapter, in the more refined atmosphere of upper-
class exorcisms, the visual and auditory powers of the
spirit-medium are emphasized at the expense of the
identificatory.]
In the final moment, the priest turns to the two gentle-
men and takes up the matter of punishment. He asks them
to recall the ladies-in-waiting who had actively encouraged
their aspirations of immortality. These women, Liu argues,
had actually endured punishment in life (for reasons that
are not specified), and in any case they had not caused the
gentlemen serious injury. It therefore seems sufficient to
Liu that, having stood accused, they should be released. The
literati accept this resolution, take their leave, and resume
a normal diet.

This episode seems to mark the end of a historical era. It is not that
the immortals were really demonic beings. The fairy feast, the elixirs,
the names of the transcendents, the reluctance of the priest to impose
any punishment, and even the reason he gives for this reluctance all
suggest that they were very much immortals, even “true immortals.”
Rather, it is the effects of their intercourse with men that are now be-
ing interpreted as demonic. Elixirs that aid in the avoidance of cereal
consumption and in the extension of life —once thought, and evi-
dently still thought by the two literati, to be signs of election—are now
viewed by the priest in terms of the immediate ill-effects on their mor-
tal constitutions.
The time when men should aspire to become transcendents has ev-
idently passed. Moreover, in a stunning reversal, this message is con-
veyed by ritual means—by the ritualized use of spirit-mediums—to
which the ideology of transcendents and the revelations of Highest
156 Society and the Supernatural

Purity (Shangqing) had always stood in firm opposition. The priest of

Maoshan has become a Ritual Master, engaging the transcendents
through spirit-mediums and treating them just like any other spirit
summoned for investigation, whether god, ghost, or ancestor, whose
primary transgression is an inability to stay in its place. At the end, the
priest stands before the two literati plaintiffs as an attorney for the de-
fense, pleading mitigating circumstances. It is as if the immortals are
the ones who require pity from men and are visitors from another time
who have not yet heard that the world has changed.

In an Official Compound in Jiangsu

In Changzhou [ Jiangsu], Hong Jinggao, the magistrate

of Qinling and Hong Mai’s cousin, summoned a local man,
Yao Jiangshi, to examine his ten-year-old nephew. The
nephew had become delirious and irrational after return-
ing from a family pilgrimage to an Auxiliary Temple of the
Eastern Peak (Dongyue xingmiao).2
Yao Jiangshi was an expert in the Five Thunder Rites of
the Celestial Heart (Wulei tianxin fa). Though not a Daoist
priest, he must be considered to have belonged to the same
social class as his client, having purchased an office. When
this lay exorcist arrived at the magistrate’s home, he or-
dered his spirit-general to bring down the local Earth God
(tudi ) for questioning. The descent of the Earth God was
witnessed by a small boy (xiaotong ), a spirit-medium to
whom the spirit communicated directly: “An official resi-
dence (guanfu) is serious and upright. How can some
polluting and evil-causing agent get inside? I fear it is the
doing of a cabal of maidservants and concubines from
another family; how can you accuse me? In fact, there is
no demon to be arrested!” Yao Jiangshi apologized and
went home. There he continued his ritual applications.
After two weeks, the afflicting spirit was finally brought
before him and identified (again by the spirit-medium?)
as the mother of a certain Xun.
How this woman came to be identified as the culprit
is explained by information given at the beginning of the
anecdote. Xun was a younger brother of Wen Huigong, the
Priests, Literati, Child-Mediums 157

posthumous name of Hong Gua (1117–1184), a brother

of Hong Mai (Xun and Hong Mai were probably half-
brothers). Hong Xun had accompanied Wen Huigong when
the latter became Overseer-General of Huaidong (Huaidong
zongling). Xun’s “birth mother” (shengmu), who had accom-
panied them as well, became ill. Because of a lack of good
medical doctors, she was moved to Changzhou and came
under the care of Wen Huigong’s paternal cousin, the
aforementioned magistrate of Qinling. The magistrate, in
turn, eventually moved Xun’s mother to the nearby home
of a certain Fan An because he feared that she might be
suffering from some contagious disease. (Evidence later in
the anecdote suggests that Fan’s residence was outside the
walls of the county seat.) Medical mediums (yiwu) were then
summoned, but to no avail. Xun’s mother died, and her
coffin was placed in the sanctuary of a Buddhist monk
(sengshe).
As it turns out, Fan An’s residence was contiguous to the
Auxiliary Temple of the Eastern Peak that the magistrate’s
nephew would visit, in the company of his relatives, several
months later. On the way home, this party would stop off
at Fan An’s for some refreshment, and it was precisely then
that the nephew became ill. Still later, when the exorcist
Yao Jiangshi was interrogating the spirit of Xun’s mother,
she was unwilling to say anything about why she had come
before him, and Yao memorialized the City God (cheng-
huang) to keep her. On another day, Yao summoned her
again for questioning, and finally she admitted: “It was
because the young master (xiao guanren, i.e., the nephew)
had come to the Fan household that I followed him back to
his residence in the subprefectural seat (xianshe).” At that
point, Yao prepared a variety of sacrificial offerings and
appealed to the Prefectural Office of Taishan to secure her
rebirth. Her coffin, and the body in it, were burned, and the
nephew recovered at long last.

Two aspects of this anecdote require comment and emphasis. The first
is the wide array of religious practitioners operating within this official
milieu. Doctors, spirit-mediums, and a lay Daoist exorcist were sum-
158 Society and the Supernatural

moned at various stages in the therapeutic process; Buddhist monks

were engaged to keep and then cremate the coffined body of Xun’s
mother. The second aspect is the appearance, both here and in the
previous anecdote, of the local earth-spirit (tudi shen) in Daoist exor-
cisms. In both cases, and in striking contrast to those examined in
Chapter 5, the Earth God is called on to identify the afflicting demon
and then bring it within the ritual area. His insinuation into the Rites
of Summoning for Investigation, and the involvement later on of the
City God and Lord of Taishan, represent a reliance on bureaucratic
hierarchy, procedure, and responsibility that becomes more pro-
nounced in circles of clerical and literati exorcists.
As we saw in Chapter 2, the various “Demon Codes” of the Daoist
Ritual Master in the Song held these local Earth Gods and City Gods
ultimately responsible for permitting demons to attack the residents
within their respective jurisdictions. These territorial spirits of the dead,
moreover, were not to be trusted any more than a magistrate, in the
midst of a criminal trial, could depend on the local people who served
as clerks, policemen, and in other village service positions. It is there-
fore not surprising that in this and in other Rites of Summoning for
Investigation considered below, it is the local Earth God who is “sum-
moned” into the ritual area under restraint and who is “investigated,”
sometimes under torture. Determining which is more guilty, the Earth
God or the demon, becomes increasingly difficult in these elite and
bureaucratic versions of the Rites of Summoning for Investigation.
In the anecdote under consideration, the Earth God’s anxiety and
defensiveness are therefore understandable. He argues that the moral
standing of an official household ought to leave it immune to the
depredations of demons and that, in any event, the demons in his area
have all been accounted for. Moreover, his surmise that the source of
the illness must, by default, be the domestics or concubines of another
family (i.e., ancestral spirits over which he had no control) proves to
be essentially correct. Xun’s “birth mother” is so designated, it seems
to me, because she was not the mother of Xun’s elder brother, Wen
Huigong, and was therefore their father’s concubine.
Once the afflicting spirit had been identified, its disposition con-
tinued to be a matter for the purgatorial bureaucracy. The exorcist
entrusted the soul of Xun’s mother to the City God and then to the
Lord of Taishan. The various Temples of the Eastern Peak were in fact
branch offices of the central bureau on Taishan, and one wonders
Priests, Literati, Child-Mediums 159

whether the Auxiliary Temple visited by the magistrate’s nephew did

not now become the venue for Daoist rites for the dead that would
have guaranteed the rebirth of Xun’s mother referred to in the text.3

At the Home of an Extended Confucian Family in Zhejiang

In 1181, in the subprefecture of Fenghua, [Zhejiang,] a

literatus named Dong Song summoned an exorcist to cure
his wife, Lady Wang. Lady Wang had become possessed by
an incubus. The exorcist, Zhao Shandao, was related to the
imperial clan, bore an official title, and was also a resident
of Fenghua. His Daoist career began in his youth when he
received the “Great Rites of Numinous Treasure” (Lingbao
dafa) from a certain Mr. Zhou of Mount Jiuhua [Anhui].4
I include here only the central events of Zhao’s exorcism,
which took place at Dong Song’s home.5
On the first day, Zhao Shandao pressed a ritual seal
( fayin) against the chest of Lady Wang. Suddenly, she acted
as if she were drunk and related that, in fact, she had been
drinking with a young man. At that point a sword-bearing,
red-clothed emissary appeared and took away the youth.
Three days later, Zhao returned. He constructed an altar
and began the ritual. First, he burned incense and danced
“the steps of Yu” (Yubu). Then he ordered the “young boys
of the Dong household” (Dong jia zidi ) to search for de-
monic images (wuxiang) in the incense burner. Hong Mai
comments here that Zhao’s technique enabled light to be
retained in the incense smoke like a mirror and to gradually
expand until ghosts, spirits, and the demonic forms of
inanimate things all manifested themselves, and a person
could converse with these directly.
Dong Song’s eleven-year-old nephew, Dun, saw a fierce
spirit of barbarian appearance descend in a garland of
flames and take a seat at the altar, surrounded by his body-
guards. Humbling himself, Dun approached the god, who
declared himself to be “Commander Deng of the Celestial
Prime Who Summons for Investigation” (Tianyuan kaozhao
Deng jiang jun). In the ensuing conversation with the
nephew, Commander Deng identified the incubus as the
160 Society and the Supernatural

transformation of the pollution associated with a canine

corpse buried long ago behind the house by some of Dong’s
relatives. The corpse was located, exhumed, and brought
before the altar, whereupon Commander Deng expressed
his surprise that a family with pretensions to classical learn-
ing would not have been more familiar with the principles
of natural transformation embodied in the Yijing.
Dong Song then asked Zhao to get rid of the pollution.
If this were an exorcism performed by one of the Daoist
or Buddhist Ritual Masters examined in Chapter 6 and in
previous sections of this chapter, the remains of the dog
would simply have been boiled in oil or disposed of some-
where in the hills. But here, among the members of a
literati family with official aspirations, everything must first
follow bureaucratic procedure. On the following morning,
the nephew witnessed the descent of a band of martial
youths whom Commander Deng ordered to restore the
corpse to its original canine form. Then the Commander
had the nephew ask the Ritual Master to memorialize the
Emperor on High. On the following evening, the nephew
again witnessed the descent of a yellow-robed Daoist priest
holding the Ritual Master’s memorial, with four characters
now written on the back: “Chaotiao juzhan” (Certification
for Decapitation). In parallel actions, the Commander’s
spirit-soldiers then cut up the restored dog into three pieces
while Dong Song sliced what remained of the corpse with a
steel saw and threw it in the river. His wife subsequently
recovered.

It is remarkable that the children of this extended literati family were

being encouraged to serve as spirit-mediums. That this caused the fa-
ther none of the anxiety that resulted from the use of household chil-
dren by the “tantricized” medium in Fuzhou (see Chapter 6) may have
something to do with the nature of their role in the exorcism. The
children function here not as possessed and frenzied mediums, but
as hypnotized and highly suggestible visionaries whose perceptions
served to complement and “realize” for an audience the results of the
internal operations of the Ritual Master. The children, however, are
not simply ancillary to these operations. It is the nephew who sees and
Priests, Literati, Child-Mediums 161

communicates directly with the spirit-general, who relates the spirit-

general’s commands to the Ritual Master, and who conveys the impe-
rial response to his memorial. The Ritual Master is very much de-
pendent on this boy who, while not possessed, is not any less a
spirit-medium.

Confucian Literati and Child-Mediums

At several points in this and earlier chapters, we have had occasion to
discuss the de-linking of illness and morality in Song Daoist exorcisms.
Guilt was transferred from the patient to the spirits, whether demons
or the deities that had jurisdiction over them, and the spirits, in turn,
were transformed into personal symbols that could be manipulated as
demonomorphic representations of the patient’s inner states. Illness
now became open to psychological as well as moral interpretation.
There were special circumstances, however, in which the medieval
understanding of illness as a consequence of moral transgression re-
mained compelling. In those groups defined by a strong sense of re-
ligious or cultic community, the individual was somehow transparent
to the group, and his illness was viewed in terms of either a particular
or a more generalized failure to meet the group’s moral expectations,
religious rules, or ritual protocol. These communities might just as well
have been Confucian as Daoist or Buddhist. Yet even when Confucian,
as we shall now see, Daoist priests and spirit-mediums were entrusted
with the task of articulating the precise relationship between individ-
ual illness and group morality:

The Assistant Secretary Li Zhongyong resided within the

boundary-fields ( jietian) of the subprefecture of Fouliang
[Raozhou, Jiangxi], where he had retired in seclusion
during his later years. Within 3 li east of his residence he
built for himself a “charitable school.” In addition, he con-
structed a Temple to Confucius with a clay effigy that
he worshipped reverently. The craftsmanship was elabo-
rately ornate to the point where sandalwood had been used
for the tongue. At the sacrificial periods of the spring and
autumn, he invited teachers and classicists and summoned
the entire lineage (zongtang) to gather. More than thirty
persons received instruction. He also endowed [the tem-
162 Society and the Supernatural

ple/school] with 200 mu of fertile land to support its

operation. Moreover, each day during his free time, he
personally went to lecture on the Changes of Zhou (Zhou Yi ).
Among the disciples in his lineage there were those who
neglected [their studies] for pleasure and considered the
repetitions and discipline of study to be painful. They would
return home under the cover of darkness, and would take
the wooden boards of the bridges they passed and overturn
and throw them aside. Li could not have them stopped. In
the year 1160, Li died. His descendants barely prospered
and were unable to carry on their ancestor’s aspirations;
gradually, studies became overgrown and uncultivated, and
teachers and students swept away all rules. Some broke up
the buildings, others took away the wood and stone, and still
others used the place as their residence. The sandalwood
incense was stolen and sold. One grandchild was extremely
brash and consequently erected a room on the school’s
foundation. In the year 1197, this grandchild was struck
with a feverish illness. Doctors prayed for his recovery,
working incessantly for a month, but were completely un-
successful. There was a Daoist priest (daoshi ) who could
investigate and illuminate demonic misfortune (kaozhao
suihuo), and he was summoned to examine the grandchild.
The priest commanded a small boy (xiaotong) to stand on
top of a table. While looking into the distance, the boy saw
a man wearing a bejeweled crown, of lofty and ancient
demeanor, and followed by ten men. The man said, “I am
Wenxuan wang, and those who follow me are ten wise men
(shi zhe).” The priest inquired, “ Why have you come here?”
and he explained, “I received incense from Li and he was
extremely conscientious and sincere. Since the death of
the Assistant Secretary, all his descendants no longer pay
attention to this and have already destroyed the temple and
knocked down my effigy. Now, forty years later, not the
slightest trace remains. I will call up an eminent and awe-
some spirit (xianwei ling) to warn them.” Then the small
boy saw a man who had had the Assistant Secretary Li
summoned and who was about to punish Li for not being
able to instruct his descendants. After a little while the man
Priests, Literati, Child-Mediums 163

returned and said, “I have just had an audience with

the City God of Ezhou. Today he has an official obligation
and is unable to follow the order.” Then the man addressed
the group, saying, “If you again renew the old matter, I will
secure blessings.” The group said, “ We all respectfully
comply.” The small boy then awakened, and the illness
of the brash one abated.6

This episode provides a unique perspective on that repertory of in-

stitutions developed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by certain
enterprising officials to sustain their lineages and agnates. The most
famous of these, and the one most relevant here, was the “charitable
estate” (yitian or yiquan) founded by Fan Zhongyan and his son near
Suzhou during the latter half of the eleventh century. In addition to
the estate proper, which included large tracts of fertile land, the in-
come from which was used to cover marriage and funeral expenses,
there were “sacrificial fields” (yitian) to provide for the ancestral rites
performed by Buddhist monks in a private chantry, or “merit-cloister”
(gongde si ); “incense lands” (xianghuo tian) that guaranteed a stream
of Buddhist prayers for the dead; a “charitable residence” (yizhai ) that
served as a kind of hostel; various assembly halls; and provisions for
the hiring of teachers and the education of agnates that may be seen
as a kind of proto-lineage school.7 All these endowments remained
distinct from household property, thereby allowing those wealthy
households to meet their obligations to their less fortunate kin with-
out a significant redistribution of income.
Reviewing the work of Shimizu Morimutsu, Patricia Ebrey finds few
imitators of the charitable estate proper and “even more references
to unsuccessful attempts to found estates than to estates that survived
for over a century.” She goes on to say, however, that “if anything, Fan’s
example may have had a greater influence in areas outside kinship.
Endowments for charitable purposes became extremely common in
the Song, but if surviving references are any indication of their preva-
lence at the time, most were community-based activities. These in-
cluded charitable schools, charitable granaries, and estates to help de-
fray labor costs. . . . Sometimes these community services were seen
as particularly aiding the donor’s agnates, presumably because the
community was largely composed of agnates.”8
The “charitable school” founded by Li Zhongyong is just such an
164 Society and the Supernatural

example of an institution serving a community that was largely com-

posed of agnates. In any case, the school seems to have been restricted
to Li’s kin, whom he lectured each day on The Book of Changes. The
pedagogy of Li’s charitable school was carried out in an atmosphere
of religious cult. A temple to Confucius was built on the school
grounds and included an effigy of Confucius himself (Wenxuan
wang), the object of Li’s enthusiastic devotion. Daily instruction at the
school was supplemented by guest lectureships presented to the en-
tire lineage when its members gathered for the spring and autumn
sacrifices. Since the Five Dynasties period (i.e., tenth century), these
agricultural and ancestral sacrifices had become occasions for the ex-
pression of Confucian notions of family hierarchy and morality among
landowning families.9
Before Li Zhongyong’s death in 1160, his charitable school, Con-
fucian temple, and supporting lands were already suffering serious
depredation. The account of the students’ lack of enthusiasm and ra-
pacious activities is probably neither proverbial not hyperbolic. The
rules of Fan Zhongyan’s charitable estate, as they were amended in
the early thirteenth century, suggest that the managers of even a suc-
cessful lineage enterprise had to struggle with the less than respectful
activities of many of their kin.10 It is no wonder that estates that were
not as well-endowed, vigilantly managed, or protected by local officials
as Fan Zhongyan’s did not survive for more than a generation or two.
Obscurity, I suspect, was also the fate of Li Zhongyong’s school and
estate, despite the somewhat hopeful note struck at the end of the anec-
dote. The dismantlement of property began almost immediately with
Li’s endowment, and forty years later, hardly anything remained. It
was in this context that a particularly delinquent grandchild became
sick, although initially his illness was viewed and treated as a medical
matter. After the doctors proved unsuccessful, new interpretations of
the boy’s illness became inevitable, and as in so many other cases, a
Daoist priest was summoned to examine him.
The priest has a “small boy”—a spirit-medium—stand on top of a
table and gaze into space.11 We would like to know where this boy came
from and what means were used to induce his trance. That he was in
trance is indicated by the fact that he “awakens” or “becomes con-
scious” at the end. In any case, the boy envisions the arrival of Con-
fucius and his ten worthy disciples.12 Confucius, in turn, criticizes Li’s
descendants for their lack of devotion and for the destruction of his
Priests, Literati, Child-Mediums 165

effigy. In this view, cultic observance and reverence emerge as the foun-
dation of Li’s educational enterprise, while the grandchild’s illness is
interpreted as a residual aspect of a collective contempt. Guilt, in fact,
is so generalized that even Li Zhongyong comes to share in it, for fail-
ing to instruct his descendants in a sufficient manner.
Moreover, although it may appear that Li is being singled out for
censure, the temporary absence of the City God strikes me as a con-
venient trope for an unwillingness on the part of the Daoist priest
and/or spirit-medium either to impose punishment or to limit guilt
to a single individual. Rather, the vision of Li’s otherworldly fate is be-
ing dangled before his descendants as a poignant example of the con-
sequences of their actions. The priest, here, is working on their latent
feelings of filial remorse, and Li’s sons and grandsons now respond
eagerly to a call to renew their cultic devotions in exchange for con-
tinued beneficence. The group rededication results, almost inciden-
tally, in the grandchild’s recovery and the spirit-medium’s return to
consciousness; the two boys are, in a sense, alter egos.
The spirit-medium functions here as an embodiment of the voice
of moral criticism. In the name of restoring an individual to health,
he has been employed as the agent in the restoration of a moral and
cultic community. In the twelfth century, the use of spirit-mediums in
this way became indispensable in cases where the transgressions be-
longed to the Daoist priest himself. These mediums provided objec-
tive access to a clerical conscience too muddied for self-reflection.
One such priest was Ren Daoyuan, the uncle of Liang Hun, the
Daoist devotee of Ucchu3ma (on whom see the discussion in Chapter
6). Ren Daoyuan was the eldest son of Ren Wenjian, an Assistant
Chamberlain of Ceremonials (Taichang xiaoqing ).13 Daoyuan belonged
to that significant group of sons of official households who were at-
tracted by Daoist ritual, and we might speculate that his father’s work
in the Court of Imperial Sacrifices contributed to his interest. Daoyuan
studied with a Daoist master, Ouyang Wenbin, from whom he received
instruction in the rites of “salvation by smelting” (liandu), the climax
of the Retreat of the Yellow Register (Huanglu zhai ) in which the souls
of the dead are purified in an alchemical holocaust.14 The text I am
following adds that Ren Daoyuan also practiced the exorcistic Rites
of the Celestial Heart, a fact that should advise us again against draw-
ing too hard a distinction between practitioners of funerary and ther-
apeutic ritual.
166 Society and the Supernatural

At some point during or soon after the Qiandao reign period

(1165–1173), Daoyuan’s father passed away, and Daoyuan himself re-
ceived an official position. While in office, Daoyuan is said to have
become careless with respect to his religious devotion; each day he
would pass a spirit-hall (shentang )—the hall dedicated to his own spirit-
generals, perhaps—and send a small boy inside to take care of the
incense rather than doing it himself. Several members of his own
household thought this was serious enough to merit attention, but
Daoyuan ignored their warnings.
Lest we think that an official appointment was an obstacle to the
continuation of clerical functions in the Song period, Ren Daoyuan
was invited by the residents of the northern quarter of Fuzhou to serve
as the “Inspector of Merits” (gaogong)—the head priest—in a “Great
Offering of the Yellow Register” (Huanglu dajiao) sponsored by these
same residents. The offering was held on a New Year’s evening in 1186
at the Temple of Lord Zhang (Zhang jun an). The ceremony went
smoothly, but throughout it Daoyuan persisted in directing a stream
of lewd remarks and sexual puns, in dialect, to a pair of female ser-
vants among the spectators. At the end of the offering, a painful cyst
appeared on the back of his neck, and Daoyuan returned home in
misery.

After several days had passed, Daoyuan said to his nephew

Liang Hun, “I have been having extremely bad dreams.
Already I have secretly written the Ritual Master Shang
Rixuan, inviting him to come here and [perform a rite of]
examination and illumination (kaozhao).” Shang arrived and
said, “This is something I am unable to make out. I must
have a Holy Boy (shengtong ) come so that it can be solved.
After a while, a village youth (cuntong ) appeared outside
the gate and, jumping on top of a bridge, spoke in a spirit’s
voice: “Ren Daoyuan, all the gods have protected you for a
long time, yet you do not burn incense diligently and have
performed while acting licentiously—offenses that are
unpardonable.” Ren was deeply ashamed of his earlier
crimes and, knocking his head on the ground, confessed
his sins. Again the spirit said, “It is fitting that you explicate
the general outline by the fifteenth night.” Ren bowed one
hundred times. Begging for his life, he vowed to reform his
Priests, Literati, Child-Mediums 167

misconduct and renew himself. The spirit said, “If by now

you had responded to what I said, I would not deny you a
single service. You should receive the punishment of a
disciple who has received a ritual method. However, I will
grant you a leniency period of twenty days.” When the spirit
had finished speaking, the boy collapsed on the ground and
awakened. Muddle-headed, he was not at all aware of what
had transpired.

When a Daoist priest became ill, it is only to be expected that he

would consult a trusted colleague. That the colleague should require
a spirit-medium, however, is a reflection of the extent to which these
time-worn representatives of village religion now proved indispensable
even in matters of a most personal nature to Daoist priests. We may
recall the case of Zhao Zujian, the Daoist priest who practiced the Rites
of the Celestial Heart in Heng prefecture.15 When, mysteriously, Zhao
was no longer able to perform his rites, he immediately turned to a
possessed medium and thereby discovered that his access to the di-
vine realm had been blocked because of the venality of his own spirit-
general.
Here, in contrast, the priest is entirely to blame. Ren Daoyuan’s col-
league, the Ritual Master Shang Rixuan, was the teacher of Daoyuan’s
nephew Liang Hun, who had accompanied Rixuan on a therapeutic
visit to the Fuzhou magistrate.16 Baffled by Daoyuan’s illness, the Rit-
ual Master resorts to a “holy youth,” a designation that brings to mind
that divine oracle of the ave4a rites called the “Holy One”(see Chap-
ter 6). While also a divine oracle, this particular “holy youth” has
more in common with the rustic boys employed by the various prac-
titioners of the Rites of the Three Altars and of Ucchu3ma. Like them,
he is a village boy who appears seemingly out of nowhere and who
goes into a frenzied trance outside the patient’s home. There is little
to add to the ensuing exchange between the medium and Ren
Daoyuan, except to point out, once again, that the purpose of this
confrontation appears to be the guilty party’s reformation rather than
punishment.
In the twelfth century, the critique of a priest’s moral or ritual trans-
gression was not always a welcome event. When the criticism was un-
solicited, those who voiced it might even find themselves to be the ob-
ject of an exorcistic investigation:
168 Society and the Supernatural

In the spring of the year 1197, Liu Zhuhui of Leping sub-

prefecture in Nanyuan [ Jiangxi] set up a Daoist offering
within his household. When it was completed, his small son
Mingge suddenly began talking like a lunatic, as if he were
possessed by a demon (ru wu pingfu). He said, “The Jade
Emperor has ordered Zhenwu, Spirit-Lord of the North,
to bring down into our household an imperial edict [such
that] today’s offering-feast and memorials were completely
without sincerity, and we must again choose an auspicious
day for the entire household to purify themselves, construct
another 120 places for the spirits, increase the contributions
of gold coins, confess our sins, and pray for blessings. If it is
not done like this, then he will visit upon us a great misfor-
tune.” Liu was frightened and thought that this had been
brought on by the irreverence and contempt of the Yellow
Cappers [i.e., Daoist priests]. Bitterly, Liu blamed and
scolded them. The priests addressed the group, saying,
“How could we dare not be completely sincere and rever-
ent?! Moreover, the Lord on High is lofty and luminous;
would he be willing to manipulate fortune and misfortune
in order to intimidate and mislead the people below and
receive sacrifices by extortion? It must be a demonic sprite
(guaimei ) of trees and stones who has done this by bringing
a false charge ( jiatuo).” The priests elected their disciple,
Master Wang (Wang shi), to employ the rectifying rite to
summon [the demon] for investigation (kaozhao). A spirit-
medium (tongzi ) saw within the glow of a light the Earth
God, Lord of the She (Tudi sheling), being brought there.
They investigated him under restraint, and he responded,
“Three noncanonical spirits have caused this in a deceitful
fashion.” And then they chased the Earth God out of the
boundary. Moreover, they cut down a grove of trees near
the place. From a small hole under a large tree that had
been set on fire, three large pythons slithered out and died.
Liu took this tree and gave it to the monk of the Xingfu
monastery. That day, a Daoist priest (daoshi ) of the Chong-
xian abbey, Xie Shiting, was at a retreat-altar [i.e., was per-
forming a purification ceremony]. He went out to buy some
dog meat to eat. Mingge also said, “The [ Jade] Emperor is
Priests, Literati, Child-Mediums 169

aware that Xie Shiting has wantonly eaten a loathsome

animal. Tomorrow at noon he must die.” And when his
words were finished, the mad boy abruptly calmed down.
Shiting died at the designated time. Liu was even more
frightened and consequently set up another offering-feast.
However, during the first week of the fourth month, Liu
became slightly ill and died.17

With this anecdote we come up against the limits of the clerical re-
lationship with possessed juveniles. When trance was spontaneous and
was the vehicle for a direct and unsolicited assault on the moral basis
of clerical authority, the tolerance of the priest was necessarily strained.
Moreover, it is a matter of Daoist ideology that true gods, including
the Jade Emperor, do not receive offerings by threatening some fu-
ture misfortune. (Daoist “offerings” are not “sacrifices” with the ex-
pectation of a return.) The priests, therefore, interpret the exorbitant
demands of Mingge as pure extortion, perpetrated by a cabal of
demons that conspire to seek cultic recognition by possessing the child
and having him speak in the name of Daoist divinities.
For the priests, it is just a matter of uncovering the plot. They en-
trust this task to their disciple, Ritual Master Wang, who makes use of
the clarifying visionary capacities of a spirit-medium (a kind of coun-
terweight to the reckless and deluded trance of Liu’s son). As in pre-
vious examples of “rites of summoning for investigation” performed
by Daoist priests, it is the Earth God who is summoned, investigated
under torture, and unceremoniously expelled from the ritual area as
if he were an unsavory police informant. The tree that housed the three
demonic pythons is entrusted to the monk of a local monastery—an
acknowledgment, I suspect, of the Buddhist willingness to deal directly
with all forms of pollution.
Although this identification and disposal of the demonic serpents
may have satisfied the Daoist priests, it is hardly an adequate expla-
nation of the boy’s behavior. The entire exorcism seems less a serious
attempt at therapy than a political spectacle intent on shoring up the
shaken confidence and damaged reputations of the Daoist priests. The
boy, for his part, goes on much as before. On the very same day that
the matter is brought to a supposed resolution, Liu Mingge attacks an-
other Daoist priest, with dire consequences not only for the priest but
for Mingge’s father as well. The cycle of death certainly stretches the
170 Society and the Supernatural

narrative’s credibility, yet has the uncanny effect of restoring the boy’s.
We can only speculate about the deep motivation that led this child
on such a relentless moral crusade, abetted by an evidently neurotic
father intimidated by his son. The child and the priests are on a col-
lision course, and the former’s direct attack on the latter precluded
any symbolic communication between them.
The example here of a child’s involuntary trance during the per-
formance of a Daoist offering opens up an entirely new field of inquiry.
In the twelfth century, the most popular kinds of offerings sponsored
by individual households, as well as by larger communities, were
Daoist and Buddhist offerings for the dead. The compelling climax
of many of these ritual performances turns out to have been nothing
less than the possession of a child-medium. These mediums were not
normally brought along by the priest but were the sons and grandsons
of the deceased; they were possessed, moreover, not by gods or demons
but by ancestors or, more correctly, ghosts waiting to become ances-
tors. Chapter 8 is devoted to exploring the complex ways in which rit-
uals of exorcism and of the ancestral cult were converging around the
experience of possession in the twelfth century. Not only did posses-
sion emerge as the central drama in descriptions of exorcism and mor-
tuary ritual, but Daoist and Buddhist rites for the dead were actually
being annexed to exorcisms—or being performed as forms of exor-
cism in themselves.
 8
Spirit-Possession
and the Grateful Dead:
Daoist and Buddhist
Mortuary Ritual in the Song

n the Song, Buddhism had a monopoly on death, although Daoist

I priests increasingly demanded a share in this lucrative market. In
the twelfth century, both began to be challenged by the small but ar-
ticulate group of Neo-Confucians so exhaustively studied by histori-
ans. Though methodical and impassioned, these critics were not very
convincing. Yu Wenbao (fl. 1250), the Zhejiangese Confucian, tells the
following story with a palpable resignation:

Jiangxi tended toward Neo-Confucianism [lit., “the school

of principle”]. When the Vice-Minister Huang Lao of
Linchuan died, his son Huang E did not want to use the
Buddhist or Daoist priests. His relatives both inside and
outside the lineage collectively rose up and opposed this.
He [Huang E] consequently decided to follow methods that
conformed partly to the past and partly to the present. They
used an omnivorous [nonvegetarian] feast for the sacrificial
offerings and Daoist and Buddhist priests for the liturgy.
Now, these are filial sons and obedient grandsons who
remember and keep in mind [their ancestor] with great
sincerity; they call out in tears to Heaven. They have no
other way to express their grief. [These procedures,] though
conforming to common rituals and barbarian religion [i.e.,
though they were not ideal], did nevertheless express their
intent.1

171
172 Society and the Supernatural

This anecdote speaks volumes about ritual practice among the

Song-dynasty elite and about the isolation that greeted Confucian fun-
damentalists even within their own families.2 Moreover, by identify-
ing the use of Daoist priests and Buddhist monks as the “contempo-
rary” part of the ritual compromise reached by the Huang household,
this anecdote confirms the perception that the pervasive use of Daoist
and Buddhist practitioners was a “modern” phenomenon.
Indeed, since the beginning of the Song dynasty, the use of Bud-
dhist “merit-cloisters” (gongde si/yuan) had become a necessary staple
of filial expression, and a much sought-after privilege of China’s super-
elite, just as Buddhist monasteries had become the vehicle for the cult
to the Song emperor. In the eleventh century, as we have seen in the
case of Fan Zhongyan, these merit-cloisters also became the medium
for new experiments in the formation of descent groups, and contin-
ued to so function well into the fourteenth century, especially in the
Southeast, where Buddhist monasteries claimed up to a third of the
land and had been, since the tenth century, central to the creation of
an agricultural infrastructure (i.e., the reclamation of land, the cre-
ation of irrigation systems, and the construction of roads and bridges).
The most popular rites for the dead in the Song dynasty were the
Buddhist “Retreat of Water and Land” (Shuilu zhai ) and the Daoist
“Retreat of the Yellow Register” (Huanglu zhai ). Both liturgies had their
origin in the tenth century, but their textual elaboration and social
diffusion must be seen as a product of the twelfth and thirteenth. I in-
clude a detailed historical and structural analysis of these ritual com-
plexes in the Appendix. Among other things, this analysis reveals that
the Retreats of Water and Land and of the Yellow Register were con-
verging during this period of textual elaboration and social diffusion.
Both liturgies had come to share a similar tripartite structure that in-
cluded (1) the construction and purification of a ritual space; (2)
the summoning of the gods, saints, and souls of the dead, including
ancestors and hungry ghosts, into the ritual area; and (3) rites for
their deliverance. In the all-important central panel of this liturgical
triptych—the panel that forms the implicit frame for much of the
analysis in this chapter—the convergence of the two liturgies was even
more exact: both included rites for destroying the earth-prisons; for
opening the roads from purgatory; for releasing souls from sin or ig-
norance; for bringing souls into the ritual area; for washing, dressing,
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 173

and feeding them; and, finally, for subjecting the souls of the dead to
transformation and/or conversion.
Some of these rites were understood differently in the Buddhist and
in the Daoist context, while others found different relative positions
with respect to the larger liturgy. All these rites, moreover, might oc-
casion long discussions as to whether they were originally Buddhist or
Daoist contributions.3 The important point at present is the conver-
gence of both ritual complexes around the summoning of the soul
and the fact that this convergence appears to have been anticipated
by another convergence —namely, the focus of noncanonical accounts
of the performance of Buddhist and Daoist death ritual on the
epiphany of the dead. More precisely, it is the argument of this chap-
ter that the summoning of the soul, visible in the liturgical discourse
of the thirteenth century, and the appearance of the dead, visible in
the anecdotal discourse of the twelfth, were not unrelated events.

Daoist and Buddhist Mortuary Ritual in Song Society

If the Retreat of the Yellow Register and the Retreat of Water and Land
had both achieved a certain textual maturity by the thirteenth cen-
tury, this literary accomplishment came after several decades of im-
mense popularity. Not only were these Daoist and Buddhist mortuary
rites the most frequently mentioned in Hong Mai’s Yijian zhi but, as
these anecdotes (discussed below) reveal, by the twelfth century they
had achieved as wide a social diffusion and distribution as the exor-
cisms treated in previous chapters.
There are several ways we can gauge this social distribution. One,
obviously, is geographical. The anecdotal evidence shows that these
death rituals were performed in rural villages, market towns, and large
metropolitan neighborhoods.4 The actual sites of performances out-
side the home were normally Buddhist monasteries and Daoist abbeys,
or community temples dedicated to one or more divinities with a nom-
inally Buddhist or Daoist affiliation. Gold Mountain Monastery near
Nanjing, site of the original, pseudo-historical performance of the
Shuilu zhai in the reign of Liang Wudi, remained an important pro-
ducer of the ritual in the twelfth century,5 while the Huanglu zhai came
to be a fixture of the liturgy of Gezaoshan, the medieval pilgrimage
center of the Lingbao tradition of communal Daoism.6
174 Society and the Supernatural

Another social measure of Buddhist and Daoist death ritual involves

the degree of participation. Briefly, there were public rituals for the
dead and private rituals for the dead. But there were also private per-
formances that permitted the participation of non-kin,7 and public per-
formances in which there were designated special places for the pri-
vate dead.8 Whether there was a historical evolution from public to
private masses for the dead, as in medieval Europe, is questionable.
The variety of venues and nature of participation will continue to be
revealed in the course of a more detailed examination of the patrons
and beneficiaries of death-ritual performances.
Granted that Hong Mai’s Yijian zhi does not represent a random
sample of social practices, but it does seem to me significant that al-
though all social classes are represented among the sponsors and
beneficiaries of Buddhist and Daoist death ritual, officials and literati
are by far the most numerous. A number of anecdotes, for example,
refer to shuilu sponsored by shidaifu, or high officials: in one instance,
a group of shidaifu in Hangzhou invited a monk who was a specialist
in the shuilu rite to perform their ancestral sacrifices;9 in another, a
single shidaifu household sponsored a Shuilu zhai that was apparently
open to the participation of “commoners,”10 an eventuality we return
to below. At the other end of the social register, Chen Mao, a “culti-
vated talent” from Jianyang, habitually brought his several dozen stu-
dents to the Dizang Cloister in the Kai Fu Monastery, where its monk
would recite The Peacock Sutra and officiate at shuilu feasts.11 Experi-
ences such as this might last a lifetime as fellow students sponsored
shuilu rites for each other at death.12 After passing the examinations,
Liu Yanshi returned home and sponsored, with his brother, a Shuilu
zhai in the Xizhou Cloister of Yongning Monastery,13 an act of filial
piety equal to a visit to the ancestral shrine.
Between circles of local students and teachers and circles of the
pseudo-aristocrats of the Southern Song capital lay the entire range
of provincial officials. In 1167, the magistrate of Wujiang, Zhao Boxu,
gathered all the Daoist priests and had them perform a Nine Obscu-
rities Offering ( Jiuyu jiao) in the county seat to save the souls of the
community that were languishing unaided in purgatory. And just as a
private retreat might be open to the public, so a public retreat might
come to include a private aspect, for the magistrate reserved two spe-
cial seats in the ritual for the deceased friends of his current house
guest.14 The Daoist priests of the Tianqing Abbey were often called
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 175

upon to perform rites for the dead by magistrates, vice prefects, and
officials.15 At an unknown date in the twelfth century, the controller-
general (tongpan) of Dexing, Ren Boxian, chose a Buddhist monastery
on Zishan, north of the county seat, in which to have a shuilu per-
formed for his deceased son, bringing out the nearby villagers in the
middle of the night. Cemeteries are said to have covered the two slopes
of the mountain, while the corridors of the monastery were piled high
with coffins.16 Another magistrate sponsored a shuilu in a pagoda clois-
ter of a temple where his servant’s son was a monk.17
Sponsoring a shuilu could also function to mediate and mitigate the
tense relationship between officials and local cults. In Fuzhou, for ex-
ample, a chief minister and his household performed a shuilu to guar-
antee the return of treasure that had been buried on land under the
jurisdiction of a local Earth God.18 They did so upon the recommen-
dation of a spirit-medium who, we may infer, served the Earth God,
but who spoke for the resentment of the entire community about the
encroachment of private wealth upon public land. It is unclear in this
case whether the shuilu was meant to benefit the dead of the com-
munity or the Earth God, who may have been a dead soul as well.
In another case, in the district of Haimen (Tongzhou), the Salt
Superintendent promised to summon monks to perform a shuilu for
the otherworldly benefit of the gods of a small temple whom he ac-
cused of bringing bizarre visitations upon his young son. The su-
perintendent also threatened to destroy their effigies if they didn’t
respond to the shuilu by leaving his child alone. Yet we should not
take this as a representation of ideological rigidity: the superinten-
dent had been making offerings to these local deities since he had
taken office.19
In addition to officials and literati, “the people” often undertook
to sponsor these ceremonies on their own initiative. In 1174, for ex-
ample, a commoner named Xiao Chunli and a clerk named Ouyang
Xuan, among others, circulated throughout the villages and towns of
Ningyuan (Daozhou) collecting contributions for a “ Yellow Register
Offering” that was to be performed in the Jiuyi Abbey.20 Every year it
was customary for the people of Poyang in Jiangxi to perform a Daoist
exorcistic ritual, but on the fourth night of the ceremony they would
go to a Buddhist temple and have the monks perform a Water and
Land Retreat.21 And the people of Xiangzhou actually sponsored a “Re-
treat of the One Thousand Paths [of Rebirth]” (Qiandao zhai ) in which
176 Society and the Supernatural

Buddhist monks and Daoist priests would participate together.22 In

Jiangxi, the monk of a small cloister undertook to perform a Water
and Land Retreat for the people of Leping and Mingxi subprefec-
tures,23 while the people of Yingcheng subprefecture in Dean fu were
the beneficiaries of a Great Yellow Register Retreat sponsored by a par-
ticularly enterprising priest in the Abbey of Gathering Transcendents
(Zhixian guan).24
Buddhist and Daoist rites for the dead might also be sponsored sin-
gle-handedly by wealthy individuals, as when a commoner named Zou
paid for a shuilu in a Buddhist temple in Xinchang county.25 This “com-
moner” was most probably a rich peasant, for when the person in ques-
tion was a merchant, Hong Mai designated him as such: in Huating
county, a merchant sponsored a Water and Land Retreat in the Mon-
astery of Universal Enlightenment (Puzhao si) in gratitude for a
monk who had saved his boats;26 in Quanzhou (Fujian), a merchant
would call on the gods when anticipating a storm at sea and direct an
oath to Heaven, promising that he would adorn a pagoda temple
(tamiao) and sponsor a Water and Land Retreat in gratitude for his
safety;27 and finally, in Wuzhou, two merchant families sponsored and
bankrolled a general Yellow Register Retreat on the birthday of the
god Zhenwu.28
We could continue giving examples at some length, though it
seems to me that the popularity of these death rituals has been suf-
ficiently suggested, if not yet definitively established, by the preceding
enumeration. The following account of a conversation between the
Daoist priest Bo Yuchan and his disciple Peng Xiang will lead us to a
consideration of what was judged to be central in the performance
of Daoist and Buddhist mortuary ritual in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries:
On the day of Upper Prime in the renwu year of the Jiading reign pe-
riod [1222], the Patriarchal Master Haiqiong [i.e., Bo Yuchan], carry-
ing a letter received from Helin Peng, was traveling from Zhe to Min
to officiate at a Yellow Register Retreat for Gentleman Jue Fei, formerly
of the Board of Personnel and a friend of the Ordination Master He-
lin Peng; he arrived early in the morning of that day [i.e., Upper Prime.]
The Ordination Master, with incense in his sleeve, came forward,
touched his forehead to the ground [as one does with those who attend
the funeral of a parent], and then bowed deeply. He spoke the follow-
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 177

ing: “I, [Peng] Xiang, have remained in Min. Since Honored Teacher
(xiansheng) went away, I have been ‘Practicing the Way’ (xingdao) from
morning until evening and have not dared at all to engage in reckless
pleasure. How can Heaven have dictated that the one that I depend on
be taken away?! The letter that I submitted to you recently, offering my
regards and sending greetings, also touched on the one on whom I rely
[i.e., my friend the deceased], exhaustively begging Honored Teacher
to pity him. The fact is, at the moment when he [ Jue Fei] collapsed,
the wind swirled and howled, and the entire room was filled with a fra-
grant aroma. But outside the room, it was clear and bright, and no one
heard anything. Doesn’t this seem strange? When other people die, un-
til the time when they are buried, rain will fall for several days. A Re-
treat is hastily performed for them, and when the burial is finished, the
rain continues. Local people also are aware of this and think it strange.
I, [Peng] Xiang, have presumptuously [sought to] bother you with per-
forming a Yellow Register [Retreat]. But now Honored Teacher has ar-
rived here and the matter of the Yellow Register may be carried out!
How great is the fortune of the Three Worlds and the joy of the Ten
Thousand Spirits!”
The Patriarchal Master responded, “There is no need for my disciple
to be so excessively polite! Today happens to be the day of Upper Prime.
Hastily have a Peaceful Parish established, a Jade Hall constructed, and
the Office of the Yu Kui set in place. Then, mark off the location for
the Yellow Register Retreat. Between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 5:00
p.m., compose the written documents. Announce the oath [of alliance]
with Heaven and Earth and plant the giant pennants at the gates. Make
the xuyi Zhao Juhui act as the ‘Priest of High Merit’ (gaogong) . . . [and
so forth, listing other individuals and assignments]. I will perform the
role of the Emissary of the Yellow Register Retreat of [the Heaven of]
Highest Purity and Supervisor-General [of the Liturgy]. On the last day
of the first month [of the New Year], we will all assume our official ap-
pointments. On the first day of the second month, we will begin the
liturgy. On the fourth day, we will perform an Offering ( jiao) that is in
gratitude for divine mercy (xie’en). On the fifth day, we will worship thun-
der. With respect to the entire performance of the Retreat and the Of-
fering, the ancient style will be employed; the ordered libations of the
Nine Audiences will follow the Eternal Protocol.”
The Ordination Master said, “Agreed.”
At dawn on the day of genchen, the first day of the second month, a
great rain poured down. From this first through the third day, wind and
rain darkened the sky. For these three days and nights, all Nine Audi-
178 Society and the Supernatural

ences followed one upon the other continuously. At the moment when
they took their seats and had an audience [with the Emperor on High],
the rain stopped, and when the audience came to an end, the rain con-
tinued. All Nine Audiences were like this.
Between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on the day of xinsi, the second day
of the second month, [when they came to] the submission and pre-
sentation of the written memorial, everyone was anxious about the rain.
But just when they were about to submit the memorial, the rain stopped
all of the sudden. Clouds formed around the perimeter [of the ritual
area]. Only the Northern Dipper shone above the altar, while outside
the altar the rain came down in sheets. After a while, when the perfor-
mance was finished, the rain once again also poured down upon the al-
tar. The spectators were joyful.
The Patriarchal Master said, “ Whether it is cloudy or clear is of con-
cern only to astronomers [i.e., is a meteorological matter]; it is purely
a matter of chance. Why be anxious or happy?”
In the evening of the day of renwu, the third day of the second month,
something was made visible within the family temple ( jiamiao); they
knew that the ancestral spirit had come. The Ordination Master was ec-
static and went in to report [to the Patriarchal Master].
The Patriarchal Master abruptly stopped him and said, “Allow this to
be naturally so [i.e., leave the matter alone]. The Great Dao has no form
and does not esteem [i.e., put stock in] images. Ritual ( fa), as the prac-
tical effect of the Dao (dao zhi yong ), can cause the dark to become lu-
minous. Although today there was a vision, what is strange about
that?”29

I have included this entire passage from Bo Yuchan’s Recorded Con-

versations for two reasons: first, for the universal appeal of the con-
trast between the fawning, hyperbolic student attracted to mystical
explanations and the skeptical, even blasé teacher more impressed
by coincidence; and second, to suggest that it is Bo Yuchan’s very
matter-of-factness that makes all the more startling what we are led
to take as the ineluctable climax and terminus of the entire ritual
performance —the appearance of the dead! This appearance was not
like other events that so impressed the young Ordination Master; it
was, as the Patriarchal Master pointed out, a direct result of ritual prac-
tice and hardly deserving of comment (and certainly not of a report).
We, however, will spend the remainder of this chapter exploring the
nature of this integral relationship between the appearance of, and
rituals for, the dead.
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 179

Rites for the Dead and Child-Mediums

In the Yijian zhi, almost all the accounts of Buddhist and Daoist mor-
tuary ritual concern, in one way or another, the appearance of the
dead. Their appearance, normally but not exclusively in visions and
in dreams, captured the imagination of Hong Mai’s informants more
than any other aspect of these rituals, and it can be surmised that it
did so precisely because this aspect, again more than any other, best
expressed for them what the rituals were all about. The dead were wont
to appear as often at a Buddhist Retreat for the Spirits of Water and
Land as at a Daoist Yellow Register Retreat. In the case of the Buddhist
ceremony, however—befitting Buddhism’s universalist claims—the
dead would appear as a group as often as they would appear individ-
ually, whereas in the Daoist ceremony, even if it were open to all, the
dead would appear only individually. The following anecdote may be
taken as representative of the Yellow Register Retreat, on which I will
now focus:30

On the sixteenth day of the second month of 1198, a Yellow

Register Offering was held in the Tianqing Abbey in Rao
prefecture. It was offered for people who wanted to sum-
mon the dead. For each person it cost 1,200 copper cash.
Almost a thousand people participated in the ceremony.
Just at the end of the ceremony, the merchant Fu San
saw his mother, who had recently died. She was wearing the
clothes that she wore when alive. She was drenched from
top to bottom and had come from afar. She entered the
ritual area. Watching this was so painful that Fu couldn’t
bear it; he cried bitterly and immediately returned home.
His mother gradually followed him home. Their conversa-
tion was just as in earlier days. She said, “Because of the
effort of your paying the money at the sacrifice, my voice
is the same as when I was alive.” Fu wanted to ask in detail
about what had happened to her, but she disappeared
suddenly.
The daughter of the eye doctor, Wei Sheng, was married
to Zhou Si. In the first month she had died because of
something related to producing milk. She also participated
on the altar. When the priest summoned her, Zhou saw her
180 Society and the Supernatural

distinctly. Her body was covered in white clothes. She

walked through water in bare feet. He could still hear the
sound of the water. After she appeared before him, both her
feet were still wet. Suddenly fear came over him. He hur-
riedly left his wife and returned home. His wife also chased
after him. Zhou hid in the bathroom, and his wife entered
the kitchen. Zhou observed that his wife’s facial expression
was just like when she was alive. He became even more
frightened. He ran to his room and immediately took off
his clothes and went to bed. His wife also slept by his side.
She left at dawn.31

Anecdotes such as this evidently made compelling reading because

of the pathetic testimony they gave to the conflicting emotions with
which the living greeted the souls of their dead relatives. In the end,
the living usually attempted to flee the dead, not least because the un-
canny lifelikeness of the dead made their presence too difficult to bear.
This is not a moot point, for the anecdote’s emphasis on how similar
the deceased appears to when he or she was alive suggests that we are
dealing here not with “appearances”—with visions or hallucinations
on the part of the living—but, rather, with the ability of these rituals
to bring back and actually raise the dead. This much is suggested by
the fact that the “realness” of the dead, the degree of their material-
ization, is admitted to be in direct proportion to the amount of money
paid out by the surviving relative —in direct proportion, that is, to the
number of prayers and the elaborateness of the rite performed for
the deceased.
The “realness” of the dead is also suggested by the fact that the dead
are actually “summoned.” Not only do the priests summon the dead,
at designated times and for specific individuals, but the entire ritual
was apparently “offered for those who wanted to summon the dead.”
Whether this means that there was a special class of Yellow Register
Retreats especially dedicated to this end or that the summoning of the
dead was a characteristic of all Yellow Register Retreats, it does not seem
necessary to decide; indeed, I hope to show that, to the extent that
some Yellow Register Retreats emphasized the summoning of the dead,
this was the case because all Yellow Register Retreats included it. In
the meantime, this anecdote is indispensable for demonstrating be-
yond a doubt the integral relationship between the appearance of, and
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 181

rituals for, the dead. The dead were purposefully summoned during
Yellow Register Retreats, and these Retreats were defined, more often
than not, by this purpose. More often than not as well, the dead were
summoned not just anywhere, but into a very particular place:

Xu Dake, the “Gentleman for Fostering Temperance”

(Zheng jielang) from Lin’an, was keeping track of the inven-
tory in the Department of Trade and Business. He died in
1178, and his brother Bolu, who had loved him as a friend,
mourned him excessively.
Bolu invited to his home a Daoist priest from Mount
Gezao in Linjiang named Tan Shiyi, who performed a
Yellow Register Offering (Huanglu jiao). After the middle
of the night, Xu Dake possessed his small son, who got
hold of paper and brush and wrote on three sheets under
a lantern: the first said, “In life I, Dake, drank wine to the
point of delirium. . . . Availing myself of this merit-making
service, I return to my family to pay them a visit. The mercy
of the Emperor is so heavy one cannot contemplate it”; the
second said, “I have received the mercy of Heaven”; and
the third said, “In life I, Dake, had no regrets.” The Daoist
priests all looked upon his writings, while Bolu and the mem-
bers of his household tearfully held them up, noticing that
the characters were all in his handwriting. They had them
engraved on a block and shown to the people so that they
would know that the moving power of the Offering was
like this.32

The central event of this Yellow Register Retreat was the possession
of a child by the deceased and the child’s transformation into a spirit-
medium who transmitted messages from his father in writing. If the
text does not say explicitly that the priest actually summoned the soul
of the deceased into the body of the child, this does not mean that it
was not the case; indeed, the cumulative evidence of this chapter will
lead us to conclude that possession occurred at the precise moment
toward the end of the Retreat when the soul was summoned into the
ritual area, and that possession was a result of this summoning. In any
event, the son’s possession in this instance was most definitely seen as
a direct result of ritual action—“the moving power of the jiao.”
182 Society and the Supernatural

Unlike the case of the Fujianese children co-opted by and as spirit-

mediums (whom we examined in Chapter 6), the possession of this
child was not something that particularly worried family members.
Quite the contrary: it was a boon that glorified the family as well as
the efficacy of Daoist ritual, and that needed to be proclaimed before
the entire community. The eagerness with which upper-class families
greeted the possessed during funerary rites is made even more plain
in the following account:

In 1148, Zhang Xun, who styled himself Zigong, became

a Consulting Official to the Pacification Commission in
Zhedong (Zhedong Anwusi canyi guan). He lodged in the
Monastery of Great Delight (Daxi si). He rose early in the
morning and hastened to the prefectural office. [Once,]
when he had not yet gone halfway, some who were urgently
pursuing him compelled him to return; when they arrived
at his home, he was already dead.
After a hundred days, they had a Daoist priest (daoshi )
perform a Yellow Register Offering (Huanglu jiao). Sud-
denly, and without further consideration, his son took a
bath, changed his clothing, and donned a hat; his voice was
[exactly that of] Xun. His wife and children surrounded
him, in tears, and exclaimed, “In life you had many hidden
virtues. How is it that you died in your prime? Moreover, as
the end neared, there was not a word of parting, leaving us
to nurture a limitless sense of regret.” Xun said, “Summon
for me the Governor of the Abbey (zhiguan).” The Governor
of the Abbey was presiding over the performance of the
Offering; hearing about this, he came in haste. Xun said
to him, “I was in the Palace of Taiqing when I received your
summons and invitation. I am therefore visiting you for a
short time face to face. While traveling in the early morn-
ing, I received an urgent decree from the Emperor on High
and had no time to say goodbye to my family. It was not that
I died before my time.” Turning to his wife, Xun said, “ You
only should exert yourself to do good. Do not engage at all
in the business of deceiving people. In the event that a
single good deed can be recorded, then straightaway you
may be entered onto the rolls of the transcendents. For the
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 183

moment, do not inquire into the departments of famous

mountain-caverns. Even the Mansion of Penglai itself has
three thousand vacancies, which is not to say that it is
difficult to ascend [as an immortal], but rather to regret
that mortals who commit evil are legion!”
A moment later, Xun ordered that a bench and table,
a brush and inkstone be brought in. He wrote several
hundred characters, all “family words of spirits and tran-
scendents” (shenxian jiayu). The Daoist priest asked, “At
present, which office among the transcendents are you
occupying?” to which Xun responded, “I am in charge of
the four seasons and the wind and the rain. Anything more
you do not need to know.” Xun remained seated through-
out the night, observing the performance of the liturgy.
When he asked what time it was, and the response was that
it was already the fourth watch, he was about to leave. The
Daoist priest invited him to stay a little longer and set out
some sacrificial food. Angrily Xun said, “I am not a ghost.
How can you act in such a way?” [Xun] grabbed a brush,
outlined a circle on top of the table, and, making a hole
in the front[?], he wrote the four characters “Da zhen zhi
lu” [“the Path for Contacting the Perfected”]. He also
wrote the characters “Longche fengnian” [“Dragon Cart and
Phoenix Carriage”], and with his hands folded in front, he
bowed and said, “Make an effort to do good. This spring we
will see each other again.” Xun’s son subsequently took a
nap. When he awakened, they asked him about what had
transpired, but he wasn’t aware of having said anything.
From this time, the household placed a plaque in front
of the table which read, “Hall for Contacting the Perfected”
(Dazhentang).33

This anecdote conveys the extent to which possession by the de-

ceased came to be institutionalized in the Yellow Register Retreat dur-
ing the twelfth century. At some point during this particular perfor-
mance, the deceased was “invited and summoned” by the presiding
priest. It was then that the son bathed and changed his clothing as
preparation for becoming possessed by his father. Although the child’s
behavior is described as “sudden,” it can hardly be described as spon-
184 Society and the Supernatural

taneous. The bath and change of clothing are highly deliberate and
ritualized actions that recall nothing so much as the purificatory bath
and change of clothing described in the liturgical texts—actions (de-
scribed in the Appendix) that the soul was made to undergo imme-
diately after it was summoned to join the ritual assembly. The bathing
and clothing of the boy and the bathing and clothing of the soul were,
I would argue, not merely homologous events but alternative repre-
sentations of the same event. I return to this point below.
Zhang Xun, as incarnated by his son, now remains throughout the
performance of the liturgy as an observer and participant. His son’s
embodiment of his father, which is given pride of place within the
liturgy, also takes on a life of its own outside it. The area (inside the
home?) to which Zhang Xun descends is designated the “Hall for
Contacting the Perfected” and threatens to become the venue for a
permanent possession cult within the family. Indeed, Zhang Xun re-
turns to possess his son twice more, the first time to engage his wife
in further discussions about morality and to produce more written
testaments.
The second time, however, Zhang Xun’s voice has noticeably al-
tered, and he explains that this is because he is no longer the “Con-
sulting Official” (canyi ) but a “Perfected One” (zhenren). During the
autumn, apparently, Zhang Xun had participated in an oral exami-
nation given by the deified Laozi within the Palace of Great Purity—
a debate on the thesis that “there is substance within the vacuous” (xu
zhong yu shi ). Having received high marks, Zhang Xun had been pro-
moted and could no longer descend among human beings. In the end,
therefore, the distinction between the cult of transcendents and cult
of possession is maintained: possession is terminated precisely at the
moment when Zhang Xun becomes an immortal.
The institutionalization of the possession of the deceased during
Daoist funerary rituals in the Song requires explanation. What needs
to be explained—and what can in fact be explained—is not so much
why possession by the deceased appeared in funerary ritual in the Song
period as how its appearance in this context and at this time made
sense to the men and women of the twelfth century. The possession
of the children of the deceased, I would argue, was a particularly com-
pelling event to contemporaries precisely because of how it intersected
with—that is, resonated with, usurped, or encroached upon—other
religious forms and ritual spaces. Each of the forms or spaces I have
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 185

in mind has its own age and history, and each intersected with a dif-
ferent aspect of the liturgical moment we have been describing.
From one point of view, this liturgical episode marks the incorpo-
ration, even co-optation, of the traditional mediumistic seance by Daoist
ritual. Before the Song, the function of communicating with the dead
was left entirely to those who were described as spirit-mediums (wu).34
Even religious persons such as Buddhist monks or laymen would not
hesitate to go to a spirit-medium when they wanted to hear directly from
a beloved and recently deceased relative:

Xindu Yuanfang was from the subprefecture of Fuyang in

Xiangzhou. As a youth he was noted for his rectitude and
especially esteemed Buddhist books. In the first month of
674, in the spring, when Yuanfang was twenty-nine, he died.
For more than a month after his death, his brother Daojie,
a monk of the Faguan Monastery, mourned him continu-
ously. Daojie therefore led a spirit-medium (wu) to his
house and asked him to communicate with Yuanfang.
Daojie knew some magical techniques ( fashu) as well,
and he made a talisman ( fu) to assist Yuanfang. He ordered
the medium to ask Yuanfang where he had been sent. The
medium did not understand characters, so he sent for a
scribe to hold the brush. The medium transmitted Yuan-
fang’s verbal instuctions (koujue). He produced a page of
writing [consisting of] a statement about his life’s ambi-
tions, along with those of his fellow student Feng Xing ji,
together with two poems.
Also within the house his letters were preserved. Their
reasoning and arrangement were very logical, and their
words and phrases melancholy. For the most part these
letters were concerned with ascetic merit, the recitation of
the Buddha’s name, and the copying of sutras. He consid-
ered the karma associated with the killing of living things
to be the greatest crime, and that nothing surpassed this
[in evil].
In addition, the medium said, “ Yuanfang has not en-
tered an earth-prison, nor has he fallen among the pretas.
[Rather,] he relies entirely on the administrative divisions
of the officers of the underworld. Presently he is a male
186 Society and the Supernatural

servant in the household of Li Renshi of Shizhou. However,

there is a certain Shi Mingyuan of Wushan in Longzhou
who is praying for a son at Hua Yu. Yuanfang will be trans-
formed into a male of the Shi family. The day of his rebirth
is approaching. He is being compelled to quickly change his
residence. From the second month, when he enters the
womb, to the twelfth month, when he will be born, he
wishes that his brother and others will travel there and
visit him.” His words ended, and Daojie wept and left.35

A tag indicates that this anecdote was passed on to the editors of the
Taiping guang ji by two monks of the Zhili Monastery, Huiyong and
Fazhen—associates, I imagine, of the deceased or his circle. The
rather haphazard, even awkward, description of what transpired dur-
ing the seance suggests a certain authenticity and absence of literary
embellishment.
Be that as it may, there seems to be little doubt that, by the Song
period, what had been a discrete and distinctive space of the Chinese
spirit-medium had moved within the precincts of Daoist death ritual.
This space was defined not simply by possession by the deceased, but
by the written as well as verbal transmission of pronouncements about
his moral status and otherworldly location, and by a suggestion as to
the relation between the two. To see the incorporation of the mediu-
mistic seance within the Daoist Retreat of the Yellow Register is not,
however, to say that spirit-mediums ceased to perform their traditional
functions in the Song.36 Nor is it to ignore the fact that, in making a
place for these functions, Daoist rites were not necessarily or coinci-
dentally making a place for the person of the spirit-medium, even
though this appears to be the case in modern times and perhaps even
in the Song (for which see below). In the Song Retreat of the Yellow
Register, the one who took on the role of the spirit-medium was a young
child, a son of the deceased.37 From the perspective of exactly who
was allowed to incarnate the deceased, the possession of a young son
in the Daoist rites for the dead seems to represent the assimilation of
an entirely different religious space —namely, the space occupied by
the long-forgotten character known as the “shi.”
The shi, or “corpse,” actually designated the person who represented
the deceased during the “sacrifice of repose” performed in the an-
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 187

cestral temple by the Zhou aristocracy. Some scholars refer to him as

“the Personator.” The nature of his representation of the deceased is
a matter of interpretation, and has been since the early imperial pe-
riod. The point we need to emphasize from the outset is that the role
of the Personator, who had to be a child or adolescent, was invariably
played by a younger son or grandson of the deceased. (The eldest son
assumed the role of the Sacrificer, who had to be an adult.) Formal
music and poetic recitatives described and marked the Personator’s
entrance to and exit from the ancestral temple. Some of these songs
are preserved in the ancient Book of Poetry.38
Once inside the temple, the Personator took a seat, and it was at
this moment that he was actually addressed as the ancestor.39 The Per-
sonator remained seated throughout the liturgy, as a recipient of
sacrificial food and wine and as an observer of theatrical perfor-
mances.40 Recall the anecdote above in which the son of Zhang Xun,
as an incarnation of his father, took a seat during a Yellow Register Re-
treat and remained seated throughout the evening, receiving sacrifice
and enjoying the spectacle. It is difficult not to see in this child’s in-
carnation of the deceased a reenactment of the role of the ancient
Personator. But was the Personator also possessed?

The climax of the Sacrifice of Repose came with the ancestral bless-
ing: . . . The spirit-protectors (shenbao) will surely come and requite us
with great blessings. . . . The rites have been accomplished, the bells and
drums are ready. The pious son (xiaosun) goes to his seat, and the skill-
ful recitant (gongzhu) conveys the message, goes and gives it to the pi-
ous son. “The spirits are drunk.” The August Dead One (shi ) then rises
and is seen off (songshi ) with drums and bells: The spirit-protectors have
gone home.41

As I interpret this episode, a priestly figure called “the Invoker”

(= Skillful Recitant) transmitted a message from the Ancestor (= Spirit-
Protector) through the Personator (= August Dead One) to the
Sacrificer (= Pious Son), who has finally taken a seat himself.42 This is
a strong reading of this poem, and one that sees the relationship be-
tween Personator and Invoker as paradigmatic of all future historical
relationships between kinds of spirit-mediums and their officiants,
whether Ritual Masters, Buddhist monks, or Daoist priests. The in-
teresting question is the nature of the child’s impersonation of the de-
188 Society and the Supernatural

ceased. Was he possessed, as Arthur Waley suggests, or did he merely

represent the dead? To the first-century author of The Debate in the White
Tiger Hall (Bohutong), it was definitely a matter of theater, not trance:

The Personator is found in the ceremony wherein sacrifice is offered

to ancestors, because the soul emitting no perceptible sounds and hav-
ing no visible form, the loving sentiment of filial piety finds no means
of displaying itself. Hence, a Personator has been chosen to whom meats
are offered, after which he breaks the bowls, as if his own father had
eaten plenty. The Personator, drinking abundantly, imparts the illusion
that it is the soul which is satiated (Shi xiao ruo shen zhi zui ).43

Here the Personator “was an image of the soul” (shi shen xiang ye),
a representation but not a vessel that it inhabited. By the Tang, the in-
stitution of the Personator was not merely little remembered but was
vilified so that it would remain that way. In the ninth century, Du You
(735–812) wrote in The Continuing Canon (Tongdian):

The ancients employed a Personator. This rite deserves censure and has
been abolished by our great worthies. One vied with the other in prac-
ticing it. Now that an era of progress has set in and these silly customs
have disappeared, it is important not to revive them, common sense bids
to refrain from them. Some half-baked literati of our days would fain
reestablish this ceremony of the Personator. This is quite absurd.44

It is almost heartwarming to see the familiar appeal to “common

sense” and an “era of progress” in a medieval Chinese attack on su-
perstition. Such an appeal, however, destabilizes the distinction that
many Neo-Confucians and modern scholars make between custom
(su) and ritual (li ), between what people ordinarily do and what the
classics have determined that they should do, for the Personator was
considered absolutely indispensable by the ritual classics; moreover,
to offer a sacrifice to the dead adult without a Personator represent-
ing it—in a remark attributed to Confucius by the Liji —is like mis-
treating an adult as an adolescent.45 The point is that this ritual sanc-
tioned by the classics has become a “silly custom,” which is a symptom,
perhaps, of the fact that it had long ceased to be customary.
Given the disappearance of, and eventual disdain for, the institu-
tion of the Personator, it is startling that he should receive such a sen-
sitive reevaluation by Song Confucians. In the eleventh century, Cheng
Yi (1033–1107) offered the following:
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 189

When sacrificing to the dead the ancients employed the Personator, be-
cause the soul and the vital force of the dead person, after being sepa-
rated from the body, seek an agent of the same nature (bi qiu qi lei er yi ).
Now, men being all the same kind, the father and mother and the chil-
dren being all of one family and the same stock, the soul of the departed
person is requested to come and establish its seat in one of them as an
agent.46

And less than a century later, Zhu Xi (1130–1200) echoed Cheng Yi’s
interpretation even more emphatically:
In ancient times all employed a Personator when sacrificing to the dead.
Since the descendents continue the life of their ancestors, the Person-
ator shares, therefore, in the life of the departed person, and the an-
cestor’s soul descends necessarily into his descendent and reposes
therein to enjoy the sacrifice offered.47

Since neither Zheng Yi nor Zhu Xi actually revived the role of the
Personator in his own liturgical program, both would probably man-
age to avoid Du You’s list of “half-baked literati,” but they probably
wouldn’t qualify as “great worthies” either. Both men presented a se-
rious and positive reevaluation of the institution of the Personator.
Unlike the author of the Bohutong, who saw in the Personator a mere
representation on which the survivors could focus their feelings of
loss, Zheng Yi and Zhu Xi defended his presence in terms of meta-
physical necessity: the Personator was the seat or agent for the soul
that willfully seeks out one of its own kind to inhabit. Their argu-
ment binds biological continuity to religious identification so tightly
as to make the Personator’s possession by the soul of the deceased
not only a logical interpretation but an ontological inevitability. It
seems to me significant that these scholars should advance such an
original interpretation of the Personator at the very moment when
such an interpretation was essentially being played out regularly
within the context of Daoist mortuary ritual. Classical Confucian
scholarship and Daoist ritual enactment were converging around the
eagerness with which they greeted the return and embodiment of
the dead.
But the link between Daoist mortuary ritual and the ancient insti-
tution of the Personator was more conscious than has been suggested
thus far. In a Daoist text from the Southern Song, the Daoshu yuanshen
qi (HY 1221), the author includes a short essay on the notion of futi,
190 Society and the Supernatural

or “reliance on the body,” a technical term used in Daoist liturgical

manuals for the ritualized possession of a surrogate:

In the ritual sacrifice, which has come down to us since ancient times, it
is necessary to employ a Personator. And for the Personator, one em-
ployed a grandson who wore the clothing of the ancestor and was seated
on a mat before the spirit-tablet. The Personator was also called the “fe-
licitous one.” The Book of Rites says that the Invoker makes an an-
nouncement with words of filiality while the “felicitous one” makes an
announcement with words of compassion. Today’s practice of having the
dead borrow a body and tell its story originated in this ancient practice.48

Through his choice of vocabulary, specifically “borrowing a body to

tell its story” ( jieti tongzhuan), this Daoist priest designates the classi-
cal ritual as the basis not only of Daoist mortuary ritual but of the ex-
orcistic “rite of summoning for investigation” as well.
The implications of this passage, and of the text generally, go far
beyond our immediate concern. In his preface to the text, the author
argues that what is referred to in the Song as the “teaching of Laozi”
(i.e., Daoism) had its origins among the “classicists” ( ju) of ancient
times and was not understood as a “teaching” distinct from the “eter-
nal Dao,” which had been transmitted from the legendary sage-kings
(Yao, Shun, Yu, and Tang) to the founders of the Zhou (Wen, Wu, and
the Duke of Zhou) and, ultimately, to Confucius himself. Both Con-
fucius and Laozi, the author maintains, were equally concerned with
hierarchy and ritual; the former just happened to direct his inquiries
to ritual, while the latter devoted them to the Way. And what caused
this classical tradition to be understood as two separate “teachings”
was a problem of historical contingency rather than logical necessity.
As the “ Way of the Zhou” collapsed in the Warring States period and
classical ritual and music disappeared, the laity mistakenly came to see
the “ Way of Confucius” as distinct from the times in which they lived.
The Way of Confucius became, therefore, something to be taught and
transmitted by a succession of masters and students. These disciples,
moreover, adapted their dress to the changing fashions of the laity.
The disciples of Laozi, however, refused to conform to the taste or prac-
tices of commoners, and therefore even the Daoist priests of the Song
dynasty wear the ancient vestments of the “classicists” as described in
The Rituals of Zhou. Unfortunately, in the Southern Song, Daoism is
not only understood as a distinct teaching but is fraudulently classified
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 191

as belonging to the tradition of spirit-mediums. So claims the author

of our text.49
The thirty-four essays that make up the body of this text are meant
to demonstrate that the liturgies, spirits, altars, clothing, and clerical
paraphernalia of the Daoist religion all descend directly from what is
described in the various ritual canons and protocols of the Zhou dy-
nasty.50 This demonstration is compelling and makes a strong argu-
ment for viewing the Daoist priests of the Song dynasty as the priests
of the Chinese classical tradition. And it may be our modern prejudi-
cial identification with the Neo-Confucians of the Song that prevents
us from seeing this.

Daoist Liturgy and Possession

In the preceding pages, I suggested that the possession by the deceased
during Daoist mortuary ritual derived much of its energy from the way
it appropriated the postmortem seance of the medieval Chinese spirit-
medium and the role and interpretation of the ancient Chinese Per-
sonator. The argument here is not unlike that made in Chapter 5,
where I suggested that what made the Rite of Summoning for Inves-
tigation particularly compelling was the way it intersected with the the-
ater and the Song judicial process. Here, however, I have been talking
about the diachronic reoccupation of religious layers, whereas there
I was talking about a synchronic intersection of separate cultural do-
mains (religion, play, and the law). In the rest of this chapter, I bring
the argument full circle by suggesting that in the twelfth century there
was a convergence of the Daoist rites for the dead and the Rite of Sum-
moning for Investigation. We can demonstrate this convergence by lo-
cating the possession of the deceased more emphatically within the
structure of the Yellow Register Retreat.51
In connection with the Yellow Register Retreat performed for the
official Zhang Xun, described earlier in this chapter, I suggested that
the bathing and clothing of Xun’s son actually substituted for actions
to which the soul was subject in the canonical versions of the liturgy.
If this inference is correct, then we might expect to place the pos-
session by the deceased somewhere during the second act of the
Daoist “rites of deliverance”—that is, somewhere between “The De-
struction of the Earth-Prison,” which ends the first act, and “The
Refinement of the Soul,” which begins the third. When we turn once
192 Society and the Supernatural

again to the Song liturgical texts, we find that this expectation is not
unwarranted.
In Jiang Shuyu’s Protocols for Establishing the Great Purificatory Fast of
the Supreme Yellow Register (Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi, HY 508,
late twelfth-early thirteenth century), the central scene of the second
act is the summoning of the soul(s) of the deceased into the ritual
area52 and, more precisely, into a “Soul Banner” (lingfan) that is held
by two young boys before a small altar strewn with flowers and incense
and situated at the “Gate of Demons” (guimen) in the northeast cor-
ner of the ritual area.53 Several priests invoke the Divine Tiger, two
spirit-generals, and a host of soul-catchers, compelling them to bring
down the soul of the deceased. The commentary indicates that while
the soul is being summoned, the Ritual Master tranforms himself (bian-
shen) into the Celestial Venerable “Great Unity” (Taiyi tianzun). Mov-
ing through a succession of significant mudras, he finally punches in
the celestial stem and branch corresponding to the birth year of the
deceased, inhales the pneuma from the Gate of Demons, and blows
it onto the Soul Banner.54
Later versions of the Yellow Register Retreat seem to pick up where
Jiang Shuyu’s rite leaves off. In the corresponding chapter of Jin Yun-
zhong’s Grand Lingbao Methods of [the Heaven of] Highest Purity (Shangqing
lingbao dafa, HY 1213, early thirteenth century), there is a long de-
scription of something called the “Rites of Ascent and Deliverance of
the Grass Body.” The opening includes the following instructions:

First take some fresh grass and, following the form of either a man or
woman, create the former living body [of the deceased]. Dress it in its
former clothes. Around its waist secure “Secret Words of the Great
Brahma” (Dafan yinyu), while on its head it wears a “Great Contract for
Ascending to Heaven” (Shengtian dazhuan). Employ a balance and
frame and attach the “grass body” to the weighted hook so that it is sus-
pended in air and does not touch the ground. Proceed to take the bal-
ance and place it in the midst of the “Altar Where the Hun[-Soul] Re-
sides” (zhuhun tan) outside the gate. Then have a small boy hold the
“Banner for Summoning the Hun[-Soul]” made out of white silk. The
Master sings the “Dipper Stanzas” (douzhang) and summons the hun
[soul] to come. The “grass body” falls down while the weighted hook
becomes heavier than normal; the Soul Banner also falls down while
the pole also gets somewhat heavier. One therefore knows that the soul
has already arrived!55
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 193

Here the Soul Banner plays a complementary but subordinate role to

a straw puppet. The puppet is not merely a representation of the de-
ceased but a “substitute body” (tishen) into which his soul has been
summoned. We are but a short step from the possession of a human
body, whether that of a relative of the deceased or that of a spirit-
medium. The textual evidence strongly suggests, in fact, that both these
human figures played important roles at this point in the liturgy.
The same chapter of Jin Yunzhong’s text includes variant instruc-
tions for causing the hun-soul of the deceased to “immediately reveal
its true form and carry on a conversation with the living.” 56 All these
instructions involve, in one way or another, the ingestion by the priest
of water mixed with the ashes of burned talismans and the projection
of this charged fluid into some corner, or onto some wall, of the rit-
ual area. On one occasion this area is hidden from the public by a
screen, and the relatives are admitted one at a time to see and com-
municate with the dead.57 A corresponding moment can be identified
in Wang Qizhen’s Shangqing lingbao dafa. Again a curtain is drawn
around the ritual area to prevent “people from coming and going.”
Behind the partition, however, the talismanic water is rubbed on the
body of a young spirit-medium (tongzi ) who is ordered by the Master
to point out the beginning of any manifestation of the deceased. For
a long time it appears that the medium concentrates on its traces. The
text adds that “if there is a pious son who is loyal and filial and com-
passionate and sincere in intent, he will definitely be able to see the
form of the deceased and converse with him, and every detail can be
taken in.”58
An alternative and more revealing ritual involving a spirit-medium
is found in Wang Qizhen’s work in the explanation that follows in-
structions for creating a “Talisman for Apprehending the Celestial Eye”
(tong tianmu fu).59 This talisman is burned in a basin of water and sub-
sequently sprinkled around the altar. In front of the altar stands a “Flag
for Summoning the Soul” and the body of a young spirit-medium
(tongzi shen) of roughly the same height. The Master closes his eyes
and actualizes a spirit. Holding the “Seal of Ziwei” in his left hand and
forming the “Sword Mudra” with his right, he transforms his body into
the god Tai Yi. He also actualizes an array of Heavenly Soldiers to his
left and right and imagines the transformation of the remaining Daoist
priests or acolytes into “Perfected [Ones] Who Save from Distress.”
Next, the Master invokes various civil and military officials and the
194 Society and the Supernatural

local earth-spirits, and compels them “to bring the soul of the deceased
forward so that it will take possession of the banner and manifest its
form” ( fufan xianxing.). Forming the “Mudra of Shangdi,” the Master
inhales the pneuma from the northwest, blows it into the air, and imag-
ines the hypostasized perspicacity (i.e., the Heavenly Eye) of the god
Tai Yi suspended in the air before him. At this point the text provides
a “Spell for Transforming the Body” (bianshen zhou). The Master then
inhales the pneuma from the north and exhales it into the water basin.
He orders the spirit-medium to swallow a mouthful of the mixture
while the bystanders use some to rinse their eyes. Silently the Master
intones a “Spell for Opening the Light” (kaiguang zhou). As a result,
the spirit-medium becomes infused with a divine light that allows him
either to see, or to illuminate so that others may see, the form of the
deceased.
Although the spirit-medium is not actually possessed here by the
soul of the deceased, this does not appear to have been ruled out by
any means. The following commands close this chapter of Wang’s work
and appear in the text immediately after a demonic silhouette that de-
picts, I suspect, the Spirit-General Zhao Gongming, who is invoked in
the passage and who is ubiquitous in exorcistic ritual (as we have seen
in Chapter 6):

The Emperor on High has ordered that the soul of the deceased quickly
take possession! Child-Spirits of the Five Directions! Commanders Who
Lead the Hun-Souls! By the Regulations of the Golden Porte, order so-
and-so to come to the altar immediately, take possession of the body,
and communicate its spirit! Quickly, quickly, respectfully receive the laws
of the Most Venerable Tai Yi. Command the Spirit-General Zhao Gong-
ming to quickly reveal its form. Spitting water, immediately take pos-
session!60

Which body—or, better, whose body—is the soul of the deceased

being compelled to possess here? The term used for the possession of
the body—“futi”—is exactly the one used in the exorcistic invocations
for ordering the possession of a patient or spirit-medium. It is not, how-
ever, strictly necessary to dispel the ambiguity. Moreover, there is no
compelling reason to privilege the canonical versions of the Yellow Reg-
ister Retreat in our attempt to determine what actually and regularly
transpired during these rituals as they were performed in the twelfth
century. What I have been attempting to demonstrate is, first, that the
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 195

possession of a child by the deceased, as described in the Yijian zhi,

was not a serendipitous event; second, that it could only have occurred
at one moment during the Retreat; and third, that this event was sim-
ply another version or interpretation of the specific ritual actions de-
scribed in the canonical texts.
To re-characterize the second and central act of the Daoist “rites of
deliverance,” we might agree provisionally that it comprised two par-
tially overlapping scenes: (1) the summoning of the soul into the rit-
ual area, and (2) the appearance of and communication with the de-
ceased. The soul might be summoned into a flag, into a puppet, or
even into a human substitute; it might appear and talk directly to rel-
atives, or its appearance and conversation might be mediated by an-
other human being, whether a “divination youth” provided by the Mas-
ter or a child of the deceased.
I would add, parenthetically, that the use of a puppet to represent
the deceased, followed by the use of a spirit-medium to embody or com-
municate with him, is found in precisely the equivalent position within
the modern liturgy. At the moment that corresponds to the “destruc-
tion of the earth-prisons” (poyu) in the Song-dynasty Retreat of the
Yellow Register, the priest puts on the red turban of a fashi over his
Daoist headress and grasps a halberd with which he breaks open the
gate of a “fortress” (cheng), a paper and wood-framed model of the
earth-prison. At this point, according to the observations of Kristofer
Schipper,
The family members seize the fortress and shake it, wailing loudly and
calling the name of the deceased, inviting him to return home to be
washed, clothed and fed. When the officiant has opened the gate, the
sedan chair bearers come into action. The deity is called by the officiant,
the heavenly armies are marshalled again and again, until the chair
charges the fortress, and beats it to shreds. The puppet representing
the deceased is carefully taken out, tied on the back of the principal
mourner and brought inside the Mourning Chapel. The doors are
closed, and the family, after having presented bath water, clothes and
his favorite dishes to the soul of the deceased, interrogates him through
the intermediary of the medium. It is evident that this last part carries
the greatest interest to the family and the neighbors.61
Indeed, we have shown that the interrogation of the deceased
through an intermediary carried the greatest interest for Song-dynasty
families as well. Schipper goes on to argue that this is also “the most
196 Society and the Supernatural

original part of the entire ritual,” by which he means that it is bor-

rowed from vernacular rituals of exorcism, known as “guoluguan” or
“guan’ai,” in which the fashi undertakes a journey through the vari-
ous earth-prisons in an attempt to retrieve the soul of the deceased
that is blamed for the client’s illness. At the conclusion of the journey,
a fortress representing the earth-prison is destroyed and the deceased
is interviewed through a spirit-medium.62

Rites for the Dead as Rites of Exorcism

The intersection of mortuary and therapeutic ritual was already a fact
in the Song dynasty, and was so recognized by contemporaries. The
Record of the Numinous Efficacy of the Teachings of the Dao (Daojiao lingyan
zhi ), preserved in the eleventh-century Yunji qiqian, includes seven-
teen anecdotes about the Yellow Register Retreat.63 These anecdotes
constitute an incomparable record of the diffusion and populariza-
tion of this ritual complex in the late Tang and Five Dynasties period
(the ninth and tenth centuries). What is made eminently clear is that
an enabling mechanism of this process of diffusion and populariza-
tion was the ability of a group of itinerant priests to use, and to defend
their use of, the Yellow Register Retreat as a form of therapeutic rit-
ual! All make the argument, in one way or another, that this mortu-
ary rite is indispensable for treating illnesses caused by the souls of
the dead. As one priest explains to a patient,
Everything that has befallen the vengeful soul of the dead is reported
to the Celestial Emperor. Receiving a “Celestial Talisman,” the soul re-
turns for retribution. The ritual techniques ( fangshu) current among
human beings are unable to offer any way out. Only the Yellow Regis-
ter Retreat, by submitting a petition and memorializing Heaven (bai-
biao zoutian), can eliminate the crime.64

The claim here is that only the Yellow Register Retreat can provide
the necessary access to the source legitimating the soul’s retribution,
although this argument seems to be a typical conceit of ritual experts
whose analysis of a situation presupposes a solution that no one else
can provide. The argument offered by another traveling priest seems
more to the point:
When the karma of crimes committed by the living weighs heavily upon
them, nothing surpasses the Yellow Register Retreat (Huanglu daochang).
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 197

Supplicating, we proclaim it to Heaven and Earth. Then, for three days

and nights, we burn incense and scatter flowers, hang pennants and
suspend canopies, sing hymns and recite vows, confess sins and seek
their pardon. By saving and delivering the soul of the dead, we elimi-
nate the vengeful lawsuit (miandui ). How great is the power and sub-
limity of this rite!65

This explanation has the advantage of underscoring the perhaps ob-

vious point that in saving the dead, the dead are necessarily trans-
posed to an entirely separate plane of existence. Salvation entails the
permanent removal of the dead from the living, which is a form of
exorcism.
By the twelfth century, priests no longer needed to justify the use
of the Yellow Register Retreat as therapeutic ritual; the souls of the
dead return to remind the living that its performance would go a long
way to assuaging their feelings of revenge. Moreover—and this is the
point I have been working up to—mortuary ritual was not only used
as therapeutic ritual but also began to reflect its content:

The Xu family of Yugan lived in Fujia village. Early in the

Chunxi reign period [1174–1189], suddenly they were
haunted by a demon. A band of spirit-mediums arrived
together, but they weren’t the slightest bit successful. They
heard that in the neighboring county of Jinxian there was
a certain Grand Chamberlain Chuan (Chuan Taichang)
whose ritual power was so clever and lofty that he could
subdue and control spirits and demons. They invited him
to come to their home; he ordered them to set up a “Nine
Obscurities Offering” ( Jiuyou jiao) to exorcise (xirang) the
demon.
During the night that Chuan brought down the spirits,
he planted several dozen small yellow streamers in the
middle of the courtyard. Amidst flashing lights, strange
things moved up and down the flagpoles, striking each other.
Chuan said, sighing, “These demons will not be easy to get
rid of. Even in the presence of the Emperor on High and
his retinue of Perfected [Ones], they still have the audacity
to indulge themselves in such a manner; it is a sure indica-
tion that there is nothing that they fear. However, this gives
me the opportunity to test the efficacy of my magical power.”
198 Society and the Supernatural

Chuan had the master of the household put a small room

in order, and in extreme secrecy they placed a vase in the
middle of it. He selected four sturdy retainers to each hold
an effigy, and from outside the home he worked his magical
rite. After a long time he heard agitated sounds coming
from inside the vase. He took it and looked inside, [where]
there were over one hundred varieties of insects, all tame
and immobilized. They threw them all away in the water,
and from that moment the spooky transformations (guaib-
ian) gradually subsided. Up to now there has been no
recurrence.66

Here we have a Daoist ritual for the dead being employed quite
specifically and self-consciously to exorcise a demon. It is paradoxi-
cal, therefore, that what deserves the exorcistic label is an entirely dif-
ferent ritual performed when the Daoist one has been concluded—a
ritual in which the demons are magically reduced to a material and
vermin-like form and then disposed of in water. Rituals such as this
were part of the basic repertory of Chinese exorcisms; they were the
stock-in-trade of spirit-mediums and sorcerers and were borrowed, as
we saw in Chapter 6, by Daoist and Buddhist Ritual Masters. The Nine
Obscurities Offering, in contrast, is not an exorcism at all. The demon
is neither removed nor driven away, but summoned so that it might be
examined, identified, and characterized. That the demon is not even
a soul of the dead is a mark of the extent to which this rite had been
separated from its mortuary context—and of the extent to which Daoist
rituals for the dead had come to look exactly like the therapeutic rit-
uals of the twelfth century, which were not exorcisms either.
This anecdote is merely an instance of the convergence of Daoist
mortuary and therapeutic ritual in the twelfth century. At the most
general but also most basic level, the Daoist Yellow Register Retreat
was a “rite of summoning for investigation” (kaozhao fa), a rite in which
a demon or soul of the deceased was summoned and then investigated
(interrogated). More particularly, there was a convergence of consti-
tutive elements of the rituals. If we treat the canonical and non-
canonical descriptions of the Yellow Register Retreat as equally sug-
gestive of the range of elements that any given ritual performance
might encompass, then we can find a sequence of elements not un-
like the one that defined the Rite of Summoning for Investigation out-
Spirit-Possession and Grateful Dead 199

lined in Chapter 5. Recall that the second act of the “rites of deliver-
ance” opens with the “Metamorphosis of the Master” (A), usually into
Tai Yi, and closes with the “Possession of a Surrogate” (D), whether a
nonhuman substitute, a medium, or a child of the deceased. Between
these two events, one may also find “Rites of Detection” (B) and/or
“Rites of Seizure” (C). In the Yellow Register Retreat, however, the Rites
of Seizure (in which the Divine Tiger and other divinities are com-
manded to bring the soul into the ritual area or into some object or
person) are less prominent than in the Rites of Summoning for In-
vestigation, while the Rites of Detection are much more so.
As we have seen, considerable space is awarded to instructions for
making the dead appear to relatives or to a medium, while the
processes by which the Master makes this happen—principally through
the visualization and the exchange and projection of pneumas—are
exactly those found in the Rites of Summoning for Investigation. The
fact that the Rites of Summoning for Investigation and the Yellow
Register Retreat were performed in sequence or as substitutes for
each other, the fact that many priests who were expert in the thera-
peutic Rites of the Celestial Heart were also performing Yellow Reg-
ister Retreats—all this might also account for the exchange and as-
similation of the constitutive elements of therapeutic and mortuary
ritual in the Song.
 9
The Syncretic Field
of Chinese Religion

n my concluding remarks, I would like to talk explicitly about the-

I ory. Specifically, I want to discuss the current debate on civil society
among historians of modern China and its relevance to historians of
pre-twentieth-century China. This debate is relevant to us not because
it provides us with a model, but because the collective expertise of his-
torians of religion can and should make an important contribution to
the debate. What I hope to show is that this debate is not only about
the presence or absence of civil society in the late Qing, and the im-
plications of this for China’s present and future, but also about the
nature of the pre-modern state, elites, and local society, the relations
among them, and the role that religion plays in those relations.

From “Civil Society” to “Cultural Nexus”

In 1987 and in 1989, the world was struck by two images from the com-
monwealth of communist nations: in Poland, we saw a church and a
trade union successfully negotiate freedom from an imperial state,
while in China we saw a single person valiantly but hopelessly block-
ing the path of a tank. To historians of modern China, these con-
trasting images could not have been starker, and they seemed to bring
to a head the question of whether China has, or has ever had, any in-
stitutions that could legitimately mediate society’s demands on, or
from, the state. To some historians, the answer was yes; to others, a
clear no. As the debate matured, the yes people have continued to say

200
The Syncretic Field 201

yes but have added that these institutions were lost or destroyed,
whereas the no people have acknowledged the formal possibility of
such institutions but have continued to say no by emphasizing their
weakness and their permeability by the state or its representatives. I
will concentrate on these more nuanced versions of the debate and
take as its spokesmen Prasenjit Duara for the “yes, but no longer”
school of thought and Frederic Wakeman for the “perhaps, but not
really” contingent.
Duara locates a “potential” civil society in the Confucian tradition
of literati dissent and autonomy that developed in the Ming-Qing tran-
sition and that was revived in the late nineteenth century under the
rubric of “political feudalism” ( feng jian). Its purpose, in the late Qing,
was not to replace the imperial system ( junxian) and return to the
classical polity of the Zhou dynasty, but “to curb autocratic central-
ism and enhance the role of local elites and public opinion in national
decision-making,” carving out a “public realm” that would “preserve
the autonomy of local society and simultaneously bring this society
into the modernization project.”1
The qualification of this public realm (gong) as “potential” is
significant and is acceptable or not depending on whether one defines
“potentiality” as something that might be actualized in the future or
as something that must have been actualized, somewhere at some time,
in the past. Duara implicitly argues for both these definitions at one
and the same time. Yet what I find to be logically incoherent, Duara
finds to be discursively paradoxical. He writes:

The significance of civil society arose only with the European Enlight-
enment narrative of history. Because Chinese society until the late nine-
teenth century did not see itself within the European narrative of civil
society versus the state, the elements of civil society existed only as po-
tential history. . . . [These] very elements became retrievable as history
only when two narratives— . . . that of the Enlightenment and . . . of
Chinese feudalism—came together for a brief period in the late nine-
teenth century. In the unlikely space joining these two discourses, cer-
tain literati became positioned to actualize this potential history of so-
cietal autonomy—to mobilize a new history from the historical mosaic.2

In other words, the elements of feudal autonomy might be actual-

ized as civil society because China was now seen as participating in a
universal history in which civil society had been actualized at one point
202 Society and the Supernatural

and in one place (i.e., in the eighteenth-century West). Yet all this takes
place at the level of “discourse.” Whether a discursive potential space
positioned certain literati to actualize anything is as debatable as what
they discursively meant to actualize —and whether what they meant
to actualize would satisfy even our basic notions of civil society.
Wakeman is not so impressed by this discourse, and is prone to take
what these literati did actualize as a better indication of what they dis-
cursively meant. In several rigorous critiques of the proponents of a
late-Qing or Republican civil society (Rowe, Strand, Rankin), Wake-
man uses their own empirical evidence to demonstrate that even they
cannot mean what they say.3 Wakeman is willing to acknowledge an
expanding “public sphere” in the urban environment examined by
these proponents, but he shows that those activities of the urban elite
that can be classified as in the public realm (gong) collapse, more of-
ten than not, into official administration (guan) on the one hand and
into private interest (si ) on the other, and that they do not in any case
carve out a civil society.
Wakeman’s attribution of “cognitive dissonance” to these histori-
ans in the face of their own evidence produces a positive portrait as
well as a harsh critique. Rather than exhibiting the municipal bour-
geois autonomy of the public sphere, city life is riven by exclusions
and conflicts drawn along ethnic, provincial, native-place, and sec-
tarian lines. City life, in other words, is very close to rural life, and in
particular to what Duara has called “the cultural nexus of power” in
his book on North Chinese villages during the Republican period.4
Thus we are back to Duara. The concept of “the cultural nexus” is a
welcome addition to our analytic vocabulary, not least because it
finally gives some legitimacy to something that historians and schol-
ars of Chinese religion have long understood but that has been ig-
nored or deemed irrelevant by those who focus on the gentry and on
Confucianism.
“The cultural nexus” is defined as the set of segmentary hierarchies
(lineages, markets), territorial hierarchies (temple cults), interpersonal
networks (patron-client, master-disciple relationships), and volun-
tary associations (irrigation societies, guilds, spirit-writing cults). What
is striking about the cultural nexus is that however secular all these hi-
erarchies, networks, and associations may appear, they converge and
diverge among themselves around temples, altars, and monasteries.
The cultural nexus of power is more specifically a religious nexus, and
The Syncretic Field 203

might be so designated if the word “religious” were not thought to be

somewhat old-fashioned.
Duara’s conclusion—an important but not uncontroversial one —
is that this cultural nexus was effectively destroyed first by Nationalist
and then by Communist state-building during the second, third, and
fourth decades of the twentieth century. This is another point on which
Wakeman agrees with Duara: temples were replaced by police boxes.5
Whether this initial destruction of the cultural nexus also destroyed a
civil society is another matter (discussed below).
An emphasis on the cultural nexus, and on state-building, has many
great advantages from our point of view. The greatest of these is that
it gets us away from the gentry model of Chinese society that has
guided research in pre-modern Chinese history for so long. (More
accurately, it gets some of us historians away from this model, because
others of us have never subscribed to it.) The gentry model insists
that the gentry—consonant with their character as both a state-
derived status group and a local land-holding economic class—were
the mediators between state and society. And it insists that the gen-
try’s ideology, Confucianism—consonant with its character as both the
check on state autocracy and the source of a sense of responsibility for
social welfare —was the hinge on which the stability and coherence of
state-society relations depended.
The trouble with the gentry model (and not simply “the trouble
with Confucianism”) is not that it is wrong but that it is the view of
the Chinese order most hospitable to the gentry themselves, and to
their heirs—namely, the deracinated intellectuals of the Republic and
their modern-day descendants. For those historians who have focused
on the vagaries of gentry mediation ad nauseam, the trouble with this
view is that it has taken the nature of Chinese society entirely for
granted. Among these historians, Chinese society is of interest only
to the extent that members of the gentry elite are seen as arresting
or contributing to the private engrossment of land (and therefore to
the enrichment or impoverishment of the state on the one hand and
of the peasantry on the other). This is not an inconsequential mat-
ter, but in other respects the nature of society has remained largely
unexamined. According to these historians, religion manifests itself
only when debt-ridden tenants or hired laborers need a justification
for rebellion. The advantage of the cultural nexus is that it throws
the spotlight back on society and reveals that society to be what the
204 Society and the Supernatural

Chinese word for “society” once literally meant: an altar to the Earth
God (shehui ).
From our point of view, there are two weaknesses in Duara’s account
of the cultural nexus. The first is that Duara overstates the imperial
metaphor and extends it throughout the nexus. He argues that the
system of authority in the cultural nexus emanated not from one or
the other of two parallel bureaucracies—a supernatural bureaucracy
and a human one —but from “one cosmic universal bureaucracy,” such
that an official had power over the gods of a lower rank and performed
rites only to gods of a higher rank. In this one cosmic bureaucracy,
the supernatural and human bureaucracies interpenetrated each
other to such an extent that a magistrate might be seen thrashing an
uncooperative City God, just as villagers might neglect a Dragon God
who failed to answer prayers for rain.6
The problem here is that although Duara asserts that this one cos-
mic bureaucracy extended through all levels of the nexus, his only two
examples concern officials. It is not at all clear to me either that the
power of village divinities derived from their rank within a bureaucratic
hierarchy or that a magistrate’s public thrashing of an uncooperative
City God was the same thing as the neglect of a Dragon God who failed
to answer prayers for rain. In the first case, the City God is thrashed
because he failed to perform the role expected of its rank as an official.
In the second case, however, the people withdraw their support be-
cause the god lacks ling (magical power).
Duara does admit that “this interpretation of a common underly-
ing fount of authority in Chinese religion is not incompatible with
significant differences in meanings and beliefs, and we will soon see
how the various interpretations of a particular myth reflected as many
different social interests.” 7 In other words, there is one “fount of au-
thority,” the one cosmic bureaucracy, but many interpretations of it.
Yet this manages to finesse the problem of difference because it pre-
sumes that a single cosmic bureaucracy is indeed a given, or a fact,
when it may very well be one more meaning or belief or interpreta-
tion that differentiates one segment of society or one set of interests
from another.
There is a second weakness in Duara’s presentation of the cultural
nexus of power. Although Duara is always careful to put “the nation”
in quotation marks, to suggest, as he says, “that thinking of the nation
as pre-existing in this mode —as a carrier of values of modernity—is
The Syncretic Field 205

problematic,”8 he does not do the same for the “public sphere” or “civil
society.” Thus while he wants to “rescue history from the nation,” he
seems to want to restore civil society to history.
Duara strongly implies, if he does not state outright, that the cul-
tural nexus of power was a potential civil society, in that it shared with
an actual civil society the power to preserve the autonomy of society
with respect to, and to curb the autocratic centralism of, the state. I
agree that the cultural nexus shares this characteristic with civil soci-
ety. He also argues, following an essay by Charles Taylor, that a strong
but not autocratic state is necessary to guarantee the autonomy of civil
society, and that what destroyed the civil society in China in the early
decades of the twentieth century was not the state-building project per
se but “the absence of a strong state capable of providing legal guar-
antees for civil society that ultimately had the effect of excluding so-
cietal initiative.” Rather, a weak state that could not keep law and or-
der was replaced by a strong statist ideology that “ended up de-forming
and de-mobilizing civil society.”9 As a piece of historical analysis, I agree
wholeheartedly. What is troubling is the rhetoric—and, ultimately, the
logic.
Let us start from the last sentence. Duara has written an entire book
encouraging us to deconstruct the Hegelian concept of the nation as
the subject of History because the nation is a metaphysical entity that
assumes its self-same identity even as it is transformed. But now, when
he says that a strong statist ideology “ended up de-forming and de-mo-
bilizing civil society,” isn’t he assuming the existence of a civil society
that is to be de-formed and de-mobilized? And isn’t “civil society” also
one of Hegel’s central metaphysical concepts?
Moving backward, Duara claims that China “lacked a strong state
capable of providing legal guarantees for civil society,” but a few sen-
tences later he asks us to “qualify the determinist judgment that the
absence of a Western-style legal and individualist tradition denied the
possibility of an ideology of societal autonomy and initiative that
checked the untrammeled expansion of state power.”10 Yet if a strong
state that provides legal guarantees is necessary for a civil society, how
can these legal guarantees be unnecessary when it is a civil society that
one wants? Moreover, in the place of these legal guarantees, Duara of-
fers the Chinese “tradition of literary autonomy,” justified by “politi-
cal feudalism,” as precisely such an alternative “ideology of societal au-
tonomy that checked the untrammeled expansion of state power.” But
206 Society and the Supernatural

again, one could make a strong argument that it was precisely this tra-
dition of literary autonomy and political feudalism that cannibalized
the state in the late nineteenth century through gentry-led militias and
tax-farming, thus ensuring only that the state would not be able to guar-
antee anything, much less a legal protection of civil society.
Finally—and here we come to the central issue —“the cultural
nexus of power” does share with civil society the characteristic of de-
fending its autonomy against state power, but this similarity is entirely
formal. The fact that the two share this characteristic does not make
the cultural nexus a civil society or even potentially such a society. This
is why Duara makes no attempt to define civil society with any histor-
ical specificity or content, but merely considers it in its relation, both
dependent and oppositional, to the state, just as he guts modern na-
tionalism by modeling it on a relation between self and others. Thus
we should adopt enthusiastically Duara’s notion of the cultural nexus
but be very wary of its association with civil society, potential or actual.
Our notion of the cultural nexus can be refined by contrasting it
with civil society, but let me do this by first comparing it with what
Ernest Gellner has called “segmentary society,” and what I would call
more broadly “agrarian bureaucratic empires.” Segmentary societies
are characteristic of those agrarian empires that prevailed in river val-
leys where a sedentary, immobilized peasantry was easily vanquished,
disarmed, and subjected to a marked concentration of power and ex-
ploitation by a conquering ethnos or elite. But, as Gellner says, these
conditions do not prevail everywhere —nor, I might add, everywhere
equally or at the same time. Given the limitations of pre-modern tech-
nology and infrastructure, the imposition, and particularly the ex-
tension, of centralizing despotism is not a simple matter, and it is far
easier to allow local communities to administer themselves as long as
they supply produce and labor on pain of punishment. Therefore, in
these agrarian empires one finds “internally well-organized self-ad-
ministering and partly or wholly autonomous sub-communities” that
are also highly pluralistic and centralization-resistant.11
This high degree of pluralism and resistance to centralization is also
a characteristic of civil society, and it is this similarity, I believe, that
misleads those who argue for its potential or actual presence in China,
for here the similarities end. Although segmentary society can resist
centralization and the tyranny of kings, it does so (and can, perhaps,
only do so) at the cost of another tyranny: the subjugation of the in-
The Syncretic Field 207

dividual to obligations of a familial, social, economic, and military na-

ture in which all these spheres of obligation are superimposed on one
another in a single idiom—an idiom that is held together and con-
tinually reinforced by ritual and the proliferation of rules. It subjugates
the individual, in other words, to the cultural nexus of power.
For those who think that it is not a question of “subjugation,” or
even of “the individual,” and for those who offer an alternative, non-
individualist conception of the Chinese self (legitimately, I might add),
recall that such societies are equally characterized by a rampant cli-
entism and by the opportunistic cultivation of personal connections.
In such a society there are so many ways to go wrong, to fail to meet
one’s obligations of one kind or another, that it is essential to create
a private fund of goodwill that one can draw on in the face of inevitable
transgressions. Transgressions are inevitable not only because there
are so many obligations but because the spheres of obligation overlap
to such an extent that fulfilling one obligation brings one into conflict
with another. In such a society, the individual person is under extreme
pressure. This is why we also find a well-developed tradition of magic
and the proliferation of magical therapies in such societies. These ther-
apies are meant to defend the person against the sub-community and
to cure him or her of illnesses that, it can be conclusively demonstrated,
are a direct result either of the failure to meet one’s group obligations
or of harboring, even temporarily, a desire not to meet them. And just
as particular conceptions of the self generate particular illnesses, so
we might say that clientism, favoritism, and corruption are endemic
to traditional and modern Chinese society because the ideologies of
obligation refused, or were unable to find, a beneficial, legitimate role
for private interest. Private interest (si ) was always an illicit, partial,
and selfish invasion of the public domain (gong). The result, in Wake-
man’s felicitous phrase, was a “sensible hypocrisy” that tolerated
“moral speakeasies for officials on the take.”12

From “Cultural Nexus” to “Syncretic Field”

Let me now proceed directly to a consideration of how we might refine
the concept of “the cultural nexus of power.” Duara calls this a “cul-
tural” nexus because the nexus of hierarchies, networks, and associa-
tions converges and diverges around temples and is entirely under-
written by symbols (and, I would add, religious rituals). The problem
208 Society and the Supernatural

is with what I have indicated to be the first weakness in Duara’s

account—his collapse of two parallel bureaucracies into one, and its
extension throughout the nexus. These interpretive moves are made
on far too little evidence, and the evidence he does offer is flimsy at
best. If we were really dealing with one cosmic bureaucracy, we would
expect to find some peasants paying their taxes with spirit-money and
others burning copper coins for the gods. This is not trivial, but let
me return to Duara’s analogy between the magistrate publicly thrash-
ing the City God and the withdrawal of popular support from the
Dragon God. This, as I have said, is not really analogous: the City God
is punished because he failed to perform what was expected of his role;
the Dragon God is ignored because he lacks magical power. The dif-
ference is revealing and suggests the limits of the extension of the cos-
mic bureaucracy as well as the different principles by which segmen-
tary sub-communities defend themselves against the state.
Indeed, there was a supernatural hierarchy that extended from one
of various supreme divinities to the City Gods in the towns, and thence
to the “Altars of the Land and Grain” (sheji tan) and “Altars to Those
who Died [without Issue]” (li tan) in the countryside. This hierarchy
roughly corresponded to the territorial divisions of imperial adminis-
tration, and like its worldly counterpart, it was not really a bureaucracy
but a status hierarchy of roles and obligations. The emphasis, as
Stephan Feuchtwang has pointed out, was on conformity and harmony:
conformity to the duties or obligations germane to a particular status,
and harmony that is both a sign and result of such conformity.13
Now, I suggest, continuing to follow the work of Feuchtwang, that
the cults that define each of the various hierarchies, networks, and
associations of the cultural nexus are underwritten by a very differ-
ent principle —a principle based not on the moral obligations rela-
tive to a position within a status hierarchy, but on the efficacy of the
gods relative to boundaries that distinguish smaller from larger spa-
tial units. These spatial units include the household, wards, and
neighborhoods—areas defined by the division of domestic or tem-
ple incense, by festival processions, by regions of a town, and by re-
gion of origin. All these spatial units, which are also cult units, over-
lap to varying degrees, which is why they form a nexus, but there are
several features that distinguish them from a status hierarchy, not to
mention a bureaucracy:
The Syncretic Field 209

The boundaries that mark a cultic unit are not coterminous

with administrative or even marketing hierarchies. The princi-
ple of a god’s ling (magical power) is traced along pro-
cessional or pilgrimage routes that do not coincide with
administrative units and that are not extensions of the
lowest level of administration. In fact, the smallest units
of the cultural nexus are produced by the division of
household or temple incense, and more often than not
represent a new settlement beyond the administrative
or marketing area.
The nexus of cults lacks both ultimate centralization and
a single unified cult or territorial entity. Simply put, there
is no apex of the cultural nexus. The rituals and gods
of the nexus do not find their “fount of authority” in or
from a hierarchy, but appeal directly to the highest god
of the unit, regardless of whether that is an Earth God,
an apical ancestor, a salvational god, or even Heaven.
Thus the highest god of the unit is a territorial patron.
The magical power that protects a territory marked by a
festival, procession, or pilgrimage defines itself directly
in relation to its neighbors, not as a unit in a nested
hierarchy; it is considered aberrant and potentially
subversive by all regimes because its organization may
be substituted for the central political channels.
Finally, these gods define boundaries of inclusion and exclu-
sion that are produced by rituals of communion and exorcism
(rituals of alimentary sacrifice) and pervaded by a highly mili-
taristic structure of command. Territoriality in the nexus
is the marking of borders that distinguish inside from
outside and protection from invasion, whereas territori-
ality in the official system is a nested hierarchy of status
positions with boundaries (or responsibilities and juris-
dictions) that are not clearly defined.14

The militaristic, exorcistic nature of the gods, rituals, and festivals

of the cultural nexus has not been adequately recognized or explored.
History provides one reason for this. As Alexander Woodside re-
marks, the more richly developed and scholastic Confucianism be-
210 Society and the Supernatural

came, “the less capable it seemed to be of working out a legitimate

permanent role for military men in the Chinese political system. . . .
Emperors like Qianlong deliberately segregated soldiers from the
world of literacy and learning, thus reinforcing their moral margin-
ality.”15 This moral marginality, this preference for wen over wu, ac-
counts for the marginality of military men and ideas as a subject of
historical research, to the extent that historians have shared this lit-
erary bias. It also accounts for the overvaluation of the imperial or bu-
reaucratic metaphor with respect to the cultural nexus, and for the
misapprehension of the cultural nexus as a potential civil society.
One of the primary distinctions between civil and segmentary so-
cieties is the degree of military centralization. Coercive centralization
is just as necessary as political centralization to the functioning of civil
society, to guaranteeing its economic and ideological pluralism. The
pluralism of segmentary societies, however, also extends to the sphere
of coercion and order-maintenance.16 This is evident in the long Chi-
nese tradition of rural militias, gentry-led or not, in the peasant asso-
ciations of the protective/predatory type, and in such groups as the
Taipings and Boxers. The diffusion of coercion and order-mainte-
nance throughout the system is the correlative of the exorcistic mili-
tary nature of the gods, rituals, and processions of the nexus. In the
nexus, the power of the emperor and his officials, in addition to that
of the gods, may be viewed as more lethal than moral.
The status hierarchy, which seeks harmony through the interior-
ization of obligation, and the economy of magical power, which seeks
protection or the integrity of boundaries through the exteriorization
of exorcistic ritual, exist in a state of dynamic tension. Restricting our-
selves for the moment to our small repertory of examples, this ten-
sion is easily perceptible in the cult of the City God, one of a limited
number of points of convergence between the cosmic bureaucracy and
the economy of magical power.
As a point within the cosmic bureaucracy, City Gods are recognized
by their position or title, “God of Walls and Moats.” Their cults are
established automatically in every town, and their position within
an imperial purgatorial judiciary reflects their function of controlling
orphan-souls who are understood to be analogous to the subject masses.
As a point within the economy of magical power, however, City Gods
are identified with the name of a deified human being; their cults are
established by the division of temple incense; and their participation
The Syncretic Field 211

in a temple procession reflects their function as a territorial protec-

tor assisted by spirit-soldiers who are understood to be analogous to
local militiamen.
The tension between the cosmic bureaucracy and the economy of
magical power constitutes the context or framework of the cultural
nexus and should be carefully distinguished from the routine activi-
ties or repetitious practices of compromise and conflict that this con-
text helps reproduce. The failure to distinguish formative contexts and
formed routines helps explain why many interpreters (particularly
those beholden to a discursive, hermeneutic, or deconstructionist ap-
proach) mistakenly overvalue the extent of the cosmic bureaucracy
or view the two principles of the nexus as different interpretations of
the same data. In times of routine compromise, such as the anniver-
sary festival and temple procession of the City God, the principle of
magical power is rendered largely invisible because those local terri-
torial deities participating in the procession appear to be subsumed
within a hierarchy. This routine compromise is then mistaken for the
entirety of the formative context. In times of routine conflict, however,
the two principles are rendered highly visible —and visibly antagonis-
tic. For example, when a magistrate attempts to subsume a local tute-
lary divinity within the hierarchy—say by destroying the altar to an Earth
God or moving his effigy into the temple of the City God—these ac-
tions are successfully resisted by the irruption of spirit-possession,
which is a demonstration of the Earth God’s magical power.
Even in cases of routine compromise, our interpretation can go se-
riously wrong if we fail to distinguish such cases from the formative
context. For example, at the end of Chapter 3, I translated and com-
mented on a remarkable report of a village spirit-medium whose spirit-
soldier was called away by the City God to defend the region against
the invading Jurchens, resulting in the medium’s inability to practice
his therapeutic art. The temptation is to interpret this as an example
of the extension of the cosmic bureaucracy, or of bureaucratic con-
trol, to the lower level of the cultural nexus. But if we better appreci-
ated the distinction between the formative context and formed rou-
tine, we would be able to see in this episode that the City God himself
is occupying a point within the economy of magical power, not a point
within the cosmic bureaucracy. The magical power of the City God is
defending a region with boundaries larger than those of the spirit-
medium’s tutelary divinity. The magical power of the latter is mo-
212 Society and the Supernatural

mentarily trumped, but not permanently lost or sublimated or trans-

formed. The tutelary deity’s power is, in fact, conserved and returned
once the military crisis is over.
The formative context of the cultural nexus is therefore defined by
the tension between hierarchy and efficacy. In his recent exhaustive
monograph on the Three-in-One religion in Fujian, Kenneth Dean
presents the most sophisticated adumbration of this formative context
yet attempted by any student of Chinese society.17 Dean calls the for-
mative context the “syncretic field”—another happy addition to our
conceptual vocabulary. Like the earlier metaphor of a nexus, the
metaphor of a field has a number of advantages, not the least of which
is that it addresses the weaknesses in earlier formulations of the nexus
itself. As a description of the formative context, the syncretic field de-
mands that we set our sights on “ritual events” rather than on institu-
tions or texts. It argues that just as an inventory and typology of local
religious institutions, no matter how comprehensive, is inadequate as
a representation of the formative context, so an interpretation of re-
ligious discourse, however sophisticated, is neither transparently mean-
ingful nor an adequate reflection of the institutional typology. Rather,
between institutions and text, just as between things and words, there
will always be a gap of desire that is only actualized in ritual events and
that can only be captured in the study of actual performances.
By shifting our attention to ritual events, Dean implicitly puts the
lie to C. K. Yang’s still influential distinction between organized and
diffused religion, and to those who take this distinction as a model for
differentiating elite from popular culture.18 Popular religion is diffused
only in a precise and positive sense: it is characterized by a “multiplicity
of spiritual manifestations” and seeks to maximize the forms that su-
pernatural or magical power can take. As Dean remarks, in the syn-
cretic field, the more manifestations of supernatural power, the bet-
ter. But popular religion is not diffused in the sense of unorganized,
disorganized, or even less organized. Far from it: as a field of ritual
events, the syncretic field is both highly organized and, more impor-
tantly, self-organizing and autonomous.
Dean offers us a sketch of the parameters within which this self-
organization transpires. Briefly put, the parameters consist of spatial
planes and temporal flows that intersect at various points along a ver-
tical axis defined by its two poles. The two poles are sheng (Confucian
sagehood) and ling (magical power/immediate efficacious spiritual
The Syncretic Field 213

power), which correspond precisely to what we have defined as the

two principles of the cultural nexus.
Sheng is “the embodiment of cosmic hierarchies” and “the exem-
plification of moral conduct.” It seeks to channel all manifestations of
material/spiritual power, including desire and sexuality, within the
Confucian ideal of ren. I would like to translate ren, which is normally
rendered as “humanity” or “benevolence,” as “hierarchical solidarity,”
and offer it here for serious consideration as a supplement to the or-
ganic and mechanical forms of solidarity discovered by Durkheim.19
Ren denotes that substance, or substantial connectedness, that sub-
tends a vision of order and social regulation based on hierarchies
achieved through ritualized relationships (li ) and exemplified in filial
piety (xiao) and loyal devotion (zhong).
Ling, in contrast, is “the imposition of supernatural power or
efficacy into actualized resolutions.” These actualized resolutions are
ritual events, including dramatic acts of spirit-possession in which the
priest or medium channels supernatural power and concentrates it in
any spot in time or space. This “any spot” is not a position relative to
other positions within a hierarchy but “a center appropriately oriented
to a greater concentration of power on a transcendent plane.” 20
Where the polar attractor of Confucian sagehood is characterized
by differentiation and exemplification, that of magical efficacy is char-
acterized by nondifferentiation and identification. Where Confucian
sagehood represents the forces of fusion whereby the various levels of
the cultural nexus coalesce in a nested hierarchy of temples, magical
power represents the forces of fission whereby this nested hierarchy
is disrupted by everything from manifestations of supernatural power
to the division of incense, thus pulling the various levels of the nexus
toward the household or the she (altar of the Earth God), which are
the smallest units in the syncretic field. Where Confucian sagehood is
characterized by “hierarchical solidarity,” the economy of magical
power is characterized by an “organic hybridity” that we might describe
as the continual production of new forms of collective religious ex-
perimentation defined by doctrinal syncretism and joint worship.

The “Syncretic Field” in the Song Dynasty

My own field of exploration—therapeutic ritual and its practitioners
and clients in twelfth-century China—makes up a particular cross sec-
214 Society and the Supernatural

tion of the syncretic field. This cross section includes a set of cultic
units (spatial parameters) that can be situated along a vertical axis
defined by the poles of efficacy and hierarchy, and that consists, from
smaller to larger units, of (1) the she (but also rural monasteries), (2)
village temple cults (but also ancestral shrines), and (3) temple net-
works (but also higher-order lineages).
The she has appeared in the present volume in the guise of “altars
of trees and stones” (congci ), the name given since the mid-Tang to
the Earth God shrines of villages in South China. These shrines were
served by spirit-mediums, and their tutelary divinities were called “Spir-
its of the Five Penetrations” (wutong shen). Hong Mai gives us a classic
description:

South of the Great River [the Yangzi], the land is mountainous and the
popular custom is to worship demons—numinous prodigies that are
extremely treacherous and eccentric. Many people construct natural al-
tars (congci ) using stones and trees and all the villages have one. In Zhe-
jiang, the spirits are called wutong; in Jiangxi and Fujian, they are called
muxia sanlang or muke.21

The rest of Hong Mai’s long description lists the many forms of pos-
session induced by contact with these spirits. He states that all who be-
come possessed by these spirits initially become sad, emaciated, and
dilatory, but that some “turn around” and become spirit-mediums;
these are called “transcendents” (xian), and their initial symptoms are
termed the “illness of transcendents.” By the Southern Song, many of
these cults became linked with rural monasteries, a fact reflected in
the very name of these tutelary spirits, for the Spirits of the Five Pen-
etrations are gods, or those who embody them, who possess the five
supernatural powers of the Buddha.
Village temple cults have appeared here in the guise of territorial
cults to Daoist and Buddhist divinities. Sometimes we have encoun-
tered these temple cults in their institutional form, as site of devotion
or exorcism, but most often as they were inscribed in the scriptures
or rituals of Daoist and Buddhist exorcists. The scriptures and rituals
of all the Daoist and Buddhist Ritual Masters described in Chapters 2
through 7 were organized exclusively around the local temple cults to
one or more martial divinities—Zhenwu, the Black Killer, Ucchu3ma,
Nezha, and so on. The names and attributes of these martial deities,
along with instructions about how to manipulate or identify with them,
The Syncretic Field 215

formed the exclusive content of the scriptures. These instructions,

moreover, were passed down from a divine patriarch and a human
transmitter, the latter most often identified with the late Tang or Five
Dynasties period. The space occupied by village temple cults is also the
space of ancestral graves and halls, and of the creation of descent groups
through the production of genealogies and instructions. Although
these descent groups have not been a concern here, we might usefully
compare their genealogical focus on a distant mythical ancestor and a
more recent pioneering ancestor (again, most often associated with the
late Tang or Five Dynasties period) to the genealogies of the Daoist ex-
orcistic lineages.
Temple networks have appeared in this book in the guise of Daoist
and Buddhist rituals for the dead. My concern with these rituals has
been restricted, on the one hand, to the experience of individuals and
their families, and, on the other, to the broad structural features that
these rituals shared with exorcism. But these delimited concerns
should not blind us to the fact that these were ritual extravaganzas last-
ing several days, performed by dozens of priests and monks on the
anniversary of the god, in settings that ranged from large-scale com-
munity temples in cities and market towns to suburban monasteries.
The expenses incurred for such events were met by subscription and
overseen by a manager, a reflection of the fact that the temple net-
works occupy a space whose identity is largely determined by the flow
of capital.
These ritual events were also the occasion for processions in which
the gods, priests, and residents of outlying neighborhoods or villages
would make their way. These processions were in turn reflected in the
divine pantheons of the rituals themselves, which were characterized
by a vast hierarchy that extended from the high gods of Daoism and
Buddhism through the god of the temple or monastery itself, his ret-
inue of martial deities and spirit-generals, and thence to the Earth
Gods, water deities, orphan-souls, and ancestral spirits of the outlying
neighborhoods or villages. In such large-scale rituals we can see the
outline of the temple networks that are described more concretely in
the secular sources of the Yuan and Ming dynasties.
When we consider this cross section of cultic units within the tem-
poral parameters defined by the Southern Song, two overwhelming
facts deserve emphasis: the independence of local cultural forces, and
the mediation of Buddhism. The Earth God shrines and village tem-
216 Society and the Supernatural

ple cults were proliferating everywhere at the same time that the lat-
ter were extending beyond the village and beginning the long
process of individuation and alliance that produced overlapping
temple networks. This proliferation and process was autonomous and
self-organizing. The temple cults contested village cults to water
deities and other officially recognized shrines on the one hand, and
outgrew the village-based temples on the other.
These developments were, moreover, independent of the state. The
intensifying conflict between officials and “illicit cults,” described in
Chapter 3, is prima facie evidence for this independence, as is the South-
ern Song canonization process, which must be seen as the fortuitous
response of a regime (desirous of transforming religious control into
legitimation) to the local initiative of one or two rich patrons (desirous
of transforming their wealth into status). But the few cults that were
lucky enough to get themselves “hierarchically inscribed” were just the
tip of a cultural iceberg whose subsurface mass was burgeoning in re-
sponse to the flow of capital rather than to desires of the state. Much
later, the first Ming emperor would attempt to impose a hierarchy on
the temple networks as part of his comprehensive administrative reor-
ganization of local society. This effort collapsed within fifty years, how-
ever, and its cornerstone —the sheji tan that were to mediate between
the village cults and the City God temples—mutated from official
shrines into community temples (shemiao) that became the building
blocks of the temple networks.22
The independence of local cultural forces is also apparent in the
articulation of extended higher-order lineages that developed among
those who were experimenting with new forms of ancestor worship.
These higher-order lineages circulated around the worship of an api-
cal Tang-dynasty ancestor of the Central Plains, a pioneering or im-
migrant ancestor of the ninth, tenth, or eleventh centuries, and his
meritorious descendants. It was the literary distinction or examination
success of these descendants in the eleventh, twelfth, or early thirteenth
centuries that inspired such retrospective constructions. These con-
structions, in turn, sparked a Chinese version of the debate between
Ancients and Moderns—between, as Dean has suggested, those who
upheld the classical limitation of ancestor worship to five generations
and those who defended their ritual experiments by appealing to the
intentional, rather than normative, basis of ritual itself (li yi yi qi ).23
The appeal to intention can already be found among the innova-
The Syncretic Field 217

tors of ancestor worship, whose merit-cloisters and tomb worship were

mediated by Buddhist professionals. As we saw at the beginning of
Chapter 8, when the lineage members of the minister Huang Lao of
Jiangxi collectively rose up to oppose his son’s attempt to exclude Bud-
dhist and Daoist priests from his father’s funeral, the mid-thirteenth-
century Neo-Confucian Yu Wenbao remarked that, although the use
of Buddhist and Daoist priests was both foreign and vulgar, it never-
theless expressed the sincerity and filiality of their intent. Yu Wenbao
evidently hoped that this intent would be expressed in exclusively Con-
fucian terms. For the most part, his hopes were realized.
In the Ming, the higher-order lineages not only became disarticu-
lated from Buddhist or Daoist mediation (in contrast to the networks
of temple cults that were moving in the opposite direction), but be-
came the principal agents of land reclamation and irrigation mainte-
nance, and slowly but methodically took over the landholdings of the
Buddhist monasteries as well. By the end of the sixteenth century,
monastic estates had declined in large parts of the Southeast from
more than 30 percent of the total taxable property to less than 5 per-
cent of it. Dean argues that the ritual reconstruction of lineages had
achieved such a degree of consensus and confidence that these lin-
eages no longer needed Buddhist mediation to justify the breaches in
orthodoxy that such reconstruction had once entailed. If we appreci-
ate that Buddhist mediation was not viewed as a cover for unorthodox
practice at the time, this explanation seems perfectly sound. It does
not explain, however, how these lineages were able to commandeer
so much temple land. Certainly this did not happen overnight. The
explanation, I believe, must be sought in the changing relationship
between the sangha (monastic community) and local society after the
Tang.
By the Southern Song, Buddhist institutions were themselves pro-
liferating and becoming majority, if small-holding and tax-paying,
landowners in large parts of the Southeast.24 And each of the insti-
tutional and ritual foci of local society—the officially recognized cults
of the irrigation systems, the temple festivals and sacrificial halls of
single-lineage settlements, and the more isolated academies—reveals
links with the monastery: Kanai Noriyuki has described the link be-
tween water deities and monasteries, while he and other scholars are
now exposing those between Buddhist temples and the tutelary di-
vinities of the Earth God shrines and village-based temples; Buddhist
218 Society and the Supernatural

“merit-cloisters” and “stewards” were defining features of the new ex-

periments in ancestor worship, and extended from the eleventh cen-
tury well into the fourteenth, as has now been demonstrated by
Miyamoto Noriyuki; and finally, as we learn from a recent series of ar-
ticles by Linda Walton, the academies, while exclusively Confucian in
curriculum and nativist in spirit, borrowed their institutional and cul-
tic morphology directly from the monasteries and the Buddhist con-
struction of the spiritual lineage.25
Although Buddhism has not been an exclusive or even organizing
focus of my investigations, it has loomed progressively larger as these
investigations concentrated more and more on rural and suburban
practitioners and their clients. The exorcistic and mortuary rituals of
the Daoist therapeutic lineages of the Southern Song have testified to
the pull of Buddhism. When the Daoist missionaries of the Celestial
Master lineage of Grand Protector Wen set out from Jiangxi to Fujian,
they confronted an entirely Buddhist landscape. Allowing for hyper-
bole, the organizations encountered by these Daoists are evidence of
the mediation of village festivals and ancestor worship by Buddhism.
Buddhism provided a point of orientation that Daoist practitioners rec-
ognized not only through differentiation and demonization, but
through assimilation and hybridization as well. This is not to say that
this point of orientation was itself an unmoving center of gravity. The
relation of the sangha to local society was also changing, but this is bet-
ter addressed by taking a broader view of religious change.
The evidence is complex and would require a detailed exposition.
What seems clear to me at this point is that, in the Tang, the consti-
tution of Chinese Buddhism around the institution of the lineage and
its focus on speculative, mystical, and/or soteriological issues had rein-
troduced a marked distinction between monks and laity. One mani-
festation of this distance was that in matters of patronage —which is
to say, in matters that concerned the organization and solicitation of
funds for the construction of temple buildings and for the perfor-
mance of rituals—the abbots and monks took a decisive leadership
role with respect to their lay constituency. In the Song this lay defer-
ence to clerical direction begins to dissipate, if not reverse, and we find
over and over again not only that it is rural “landlords,” “elders,” or
“tax-paying households” who are taking the leadership role in monas-
tic reconstruction or the solicitation of funds, but also that these vil-
lage households refused to participate unless the monks themselves
The Syncretic Field 219

showed a willingness to fill monastic vacancies with monks who had

received their ordination locally.26 The monks, in other words, were
losing control over their own membership. The conclusion we must
reach, therefore, is that even the mediation of local temple cults and
lineage institutions by the monastery in the Song must be seen as part
of the deference of the monastery to the surrounding villages, and
that this shift laid the groundwork for regarding Buddhist media-
tion as ultimately dispensable —and Buddhist estates as ultimately
exploitable.
The colonization of the sangha by the village underwrites the prin-
cipal findings of my long chapter on Buddhist exorcists (see Chapter
6). In marked contrast to the exorcistic tradition of the Tang—the
refined and courtly rites of ave4a that also confirmed the distance of
monks from laymen—that tradition as practiced in the Song opened
itself wide to the influences of village religion. The children recruited
for Buddhist exorcism came from village households with which the
monks were on intimate terms. Moreover, the characteristic practices
of these village “divination youths” set the tone for the exorcisms. The
monks, for their part, were becoming indistinguishable from Daoist
Ritual Masters, either as foci of lay exorcistic associations of village
adults or as officiants and initiators of village boys. And finally, the Bud-
dhist involvement in village religion strongly influenced the village
cults and ritual practices of both the Daoist Ritual Master and the tra-
ditional village spirit-medium (wu).
Thus we might conclude our discussion of the temporal aspect of
the syncretic field by proposing that Song Buddhism was becoming
more akin to Daoism, in the sense that both monks and priests were
increasingly defined by their function as ritual experts responsive to
the tastes, and dependent on the needs, of their lay constituencies. If
there was a weakness to Buddhism in the Song, it was an institutional
one, and this was less a consequence of the persecution of the ninth
century than of an “institutional compromise” entailed in the con-
struction during the Tang of the great lineages of Sinitic Mahayana
(Tiantai, Huayan, Pure Land, and Chan)—a compromise that left the
monastic community unable to respond to the great persecution in
the same way that it had turned previous bans into opportunities.
The syncretic field is so named in part because it is subject to what
Dean terms “collective experimentation.” Dean has devised this cate-
gory to describe forms of religious organization, such as the Three-
220 Society and the Supernatural

in-One religion of Lin Zhao’en or the sectarian religions of the six-

teenth century, that transcended and traversed the temple networks.
But Dean also speaks of the plane of collective experimentation as a
plane of hybridization—of doctrinal syncretism and joint worship. Col-
lective experimentation would therefore be, by definition, a charac-
teristic of the syncretic field itself and, by logical inference, a charac-
teristic of any particular plane within that field. In the context of my
investigations, collective experimentation or hybridization has ap-
peared in several guises. The first and most obvious of these was the
creation of a milieu of lay exorcists, or Ritual Masters, in which ele-
ments of Daoism, Buddhism, and the village religion of spirit-mediums
all converged. From the perspective of ritual events, the Daoist Ritual
Master, the Buddhist monk, the village spirit-medium, and even the
Daoist priest all formed elliptical orbits around possessed children. The
trajectory of each individual orbit, moreover, was determined in large
part by the variety and frequency with which it intersected the other
orbits—points of cultural hybridization in which any given ritual ele-
ment of one type of religious practitioner has been shown to be a char-
acteristic of one or more of the others.
This form of cultural hybridization was reflected just as much in
the scriptures of these religious practitioners as in the local institutions
to which they were attached. The scriptures of the Daoist Ritual Mas-
ters or Tantric exorcists, for example, were saturated with the practi-
cal and discursive forms of the others (doctrinal syncretism), while the
pantheons of divinities and spiritual powers of any given lineage of
Daoist or Buddhist exorcists reflected the precise configuration of di-
vinities of local temple cults ( joint worship). We have encountered
numerous divinities, moreover, with three or even four forms, cor-
responding to the fact that the practitioner who called upon them
might be a priest, monk, ritual master, or spirit-medium. Moreover,
there is a direct link between these forms of cultural hybridization—
denigrated in the thirteenth century by Bo Yuchan as “mixed” or
“confused”—and the later appearance of such religious traditions as
the Sannai jiao, or of practitioners who will be called “neither Daoist
nor Buddhists.”
This cultural hybridization has been accompanied in my work by a
kind of methodological hybridization. Instead of viewing any given cul-
tural practice as exemplary of “Chinese culture,” instead of taking the
part for the whole, I have chosen to place one cultural practice in re-
The Syncretic Field 221

lation to another, to place a part in a certain relation to another part.

Thus, in Chapter 5, Daoist therapeutic ritual was placed in relation to
judicial trials and to theatrical performances, while in Chapter 8,
Daoist mortuary ritual was placed in relation to classical ancestral rit-
ual and to Tang- and Song-dynasty seances of spirit-mediums, and then
in relation to the Daoist Rites of Summoning for Investigation of Chap-
ter 5. In both these instances, chiasmus has replaced synecdoche as
my primary trope, in an attempt to avoid the twin faults of essential-
ism and totalization. In both instances as well, the relation between
the first cultural practice and the others—whether that relation is syn-
chronic or diachronic—is one in which the first may be said to “reoc-
cupy” the space of the others.
This reoccupation of space, a lesson learned from Hans Blumen-
berg, is meant to avoid the false choice between the continuity and
discontinuity of cultural forms in history. Blumenberg’s “reoccupation
thesis” was devised to counter the “secularization thesis” according to
which the modern Western idea of progress is simply a disguised ver-
sion of medieval Christian eschatology. Rather, the Moderns reoccu-
pied the position created by their inheritance of a set of medieval ques-
tions, although in answering these questions they attempted solutions
that were legitimately new. History is indeed discontinuous—if there
are re-occupations there are also vacancies—but these discontinuities
are not absolute.27 Blumenberg’s “reoccupation thesis,” by the way,
should prove attractive to historians of Neo-Confucianism who have
been locked in an unproductive debate between those who maintain
Neo-Confucianism’s radical discontinuity with China’s medieval reli-
gious past and those who dismiss it as nothing more than a Confu-
cianized Buddhism.
Before leaving the question of methodology, it should be admitted
that, by itself, the replacement of synecdoche by chiasmus does not
eliminate the threat of essentializing or totalizing views of culture. Let-
ting the part speak for the whole can easily return by the back door
if, along with Geertz, one goes on to read a given cultural practice as
revelatory of the behavioral codes or logic of “society,” or if, along with
the poststructuralists, one collapses history into the text or into dis-
course.
For those who follow the radical Foucault, the dream of increasing
emancipation in the “modern” narrative of progressive emergence is
simply replaced with a nightmare of increasing control in a “modern”
222 Society and the Supernatural

narrative of infinite containment. The costs of this kind of discourse

itself are too high. One must dispense with the possibility of an effec-
tive opposition and accept that power is everywhere but nowhere in
particular. Foucault has asked us to consider “power without a king,”
but even he has to acknowledge that the “humanity” that subjected
man to new forms of inhuman practices once denoted a new space of
power in opposition to the king. Must we always have to choose be-
tween the concentration of power and its dispersal? Must we always
have to infer causes from effects? If we do, then one result will be to
see the imperial metaphor everywhere in Chinese society, leaving the
opposition to pick up the shards of what this metaphor represses or
excludes. If we do, another result will be to construct a monological
narrative of Western modernity in which a very limited number of
texts, say of Hegel or Marx, are allowed to speak for the whole —a nar-
rative that can only be achieved by repressing what the poststruc-
turalists themselves owe to modernity.
What the poststructuralists, and indeed all of us, owe to moder-
nity, and particularly to the great social theorists of modernity, be-
ginning with Marx, is the idea that “society is made and imagined,
that it is a human artifact rather than an expression of an underlying
natural order.” 28 This discovery, which inspired the great projects of
social transformation of this century (liberalism, socialism, and com-
munism), was accompanied by another discovery, one that speaks to
us today with equal force in light of the widely shared perception that
these projects have been a disappointment, to say the least. This is
the discovery that although society is a human artifact, human activ-
ity is constrained by the very structures it individually and collectively
conspires to erect. As Marx wrote so eloquently, “Human beings make
their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do
not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under
circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the
past” (The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). The recognition that men
and women make history but not on their own terms is a recognition
that all human activity is conditioned and therefore contextual. It is
also a recognition that all contexts are also conditional, and that con-
texts should be treated for what they are —a context and not a nat-
ural order.
To say that all practical or conceptual activity is contextual is to say,
following Roberto Unger, that this activity depends on taking for
The Syncretic Field 223

granted, at least provisionally, many beliefs that define its nature and
limits—beliefs about validity, explanation, how the world really is, even
the structure of thought and language. To say, however, that a context
is a context and not a natural order is to say that all contexts can be
broken, that the incongruous insight or deviant experiment—which
seems only to be a distraction from, or to register some uncertainty
about, the fundamentals of the established context—may become con-
tagious, and the fundamentals go under.
As Unger reminds us, however, such context-breaking remains
both exceptional and transitory. Either it fails and leaves the context
in place, or it generates another context that can sustain it. Hence we
can never overcome context-dependence. But we can loosen it. The rea-
son we can do so is that all contexts of representation and relation-
ship differ in the severity of the limits they impose on human activity
(as in Sahlins’ cold and hot societies). The more severe the context,
or the more it is immunized from activities that bring it into question,
the greater the contrast between the context-preserving routines of
conflict and compromise and the kind of extraordinary transforma-
tive act that seems necessary to sweep it away. The less severe the con-
text, or the more the context is treated as the human artifact that it
is, the less the contrast between context-preserving and context-
breaking activities. “The more a structure of thought or society in-
corporates the occasion and instrument of its own revision, the less
you must choose between maintaining it and abandoning it for the
thing it excludes.”29
To gain a higher freedom from a context is neither to be free of a
context, which is impossible, nor to seek some meta-context, some con-
text of contexts, some context of universal scope that will only make
whatever it is you want to explain a prisoner of the social ideals and
ideal texts of the particular society in which you happen to be thrown.
In their attempt to see all contexts as broken, breaking, or breakable
under the aegis of a limited set of textual authorities, the postmod-
ernists manage to commit, at one and the same time, what Unger calls
the opposite sins—and theoretical errors—of iconoclasm and idola-
try. Rather, to gain a higher freedom from a context is to make the
context more malleable, to be reminded of the conditionality of all
contexts, and to incorporate into the context itself the principles and
provisions for its own revision. Only then can the contrast between con-
text-preserving and context-breaking activities be diminished, and only
224 Society and the Supernatural

then can a routine conflict within a context become the occasion for
the transformation of the context itself.
My discussion of the syncretic field has taken seriously the contrast
between the formative context and formed routines. It has also at-
tempted to enlarge what we understand to be the context of a partic-
ular historical society, and to do so by incorporating the principle of
the plasticity of the context. This plasticity is captured in the tension
between sheng and ling, Confucian sagehood and magical power, hi-
erarchy and efficacy, between fusion and fission, solidarity and hy-
bridity, wen and wu. This tension has manifested itself variously in the
course of this book. In Chapter 1, it was foreshadowed in the debate
between Strickmann and Schipper about the nature of Daoism, and
more explicitly adumbrated in the announcement of the focus of my
investigations—the relations between three groups of religious prac-
titioners (Daoist priests, Daoist and Buddhist Ritual Masters, and
spirit-mediums) arranged from top to bottom along a vertical axis.
In Chapter 3, I showed this axis to be defined by the poles of sheng
and ling. On the one hand, there is the sage —the Daoist priest, the
Gentleman of the Dao (daoshi ), the incarnation of the classical ru—
who concentrates in his person, through a regimen of ritual medita-
tion and ethical ascesis, the cosmic principle, the One. On the other
hand, there is the spirit-medium, who embodies in himself, through
a demanding regime of trance and martial prowess, the magical
power of a god. In one, the quotidian is transformed into a space of
the absolute that will identify the community with the values of cen-
trality and harmony; in the other, the quotidian is transformed into a
space of conditioned power that will identify the community with the
limits of that power, with defensible boundaries. In one we have texts
(wen), in the other we have weapons (wu).
From an abstract point of view, it was the creative tension between
sheng and ling that produced the Ritual Master, whose ritual practices
combined elements of Daoist meditation with the trances of spirit-
mediums, whose deities were humanized forms of cosmic and ethical
principles that subsumed the raw martial power of the gods of the
spirit-mediums, and whose recruitment came from both priests and
mediums. The tension between sheng and ling does not respect the
commonplace distinction between geographical centers and periph-
eries. In Chapter 4, we saw how the magical efficacy of a god, the Black
Killer, was harnessed at the Song court both to the Mandate of Heaven
The Syncretic Field 225

and to the defense of imperial borders. Nor does it respect the com-
monplace distinction among the Three Teachings or between elite and
popular culture or organized and diffused religion. In Chapters 5
through 8, rituals of therapeutic and ancestral adjustment were shown
to be rituals of possession or magical power, just as rituals of posses-
sion were brought under the hierarchical control of Ritual Masters,
Tantric monks, and Daoist priests and made to serve the values of the
Daoist or Confucian sage.
APPENDIX
HUANGLU JIAO
AND SHUILU ZHAI

The Daoist Retreat of the Yellow Register

The Daoist ritual for the dead, known everywhere else as the Huanglu zhai,
or “Retreat of the Yellow Register,” is consistently referred to in Hong Mai’s
Yijian zhi as an “offering” ( jiao) rather than a “retreat” (zhai ). Already, then,
we are confronted with an interpretive and historical problem that we can-
not hope to untangle without some familiarity with the distinction between
these two basic forms of Daoist ritual, the zhai and the jiao. This distinc-
tion is not easy to make because the zhai and the jiao were often performed
sequentially and developed very much in tandem. Ultimately, both ritu-
als came to include many of the same syntactical elements, so that by mod-
ern times the two can be fruitfully analyzed as a single all-encompassing
liturgy, distinguished primarily by the purpose for which it is performed:
when it is performed for the benefit of the dead, it is called a “zhai,”
whereas when it is performed for the benefit of the living, it is called a
“jiao.” Whether this was always the case, however, is not so clear, and there
are advantages to considering the two separately.
The jiao was a ritual of offering or libation in which the gods were sum-
moned to an altar where wine, fruit, silk, and other items were displayed
and were asked either to mitigate a particular danger or to reaffirm their
alliance with an individual or community by granting protection or bless-
ings. Several Tang and Song liturgists suggest that the jiao was just another
name for a sacrifice, though they also point out that what is sacrificed is
of a pure rather than bloody nature. Many scholars, however, question

227
228 Appendix

the appropriateness of this comparison with a sacrifice, because techni-

cally the only objects that are transformed during a jiao are written re-
quests, petitions, memorials, and talismans.1
The Daoist zhai was, above all, a ritual of purification and confession.
It has antecedents in pre-Daoist communal rites known as “kitchen
feasts” 2 and perhaps came to be influenced by the Buddhist uposatha, bi-
monthly assemblies of confession that date in China from the early fifth
century.3 The early development of the Daoist zhai is inseparable from
the history of the Lingbao tradition of Ge Chaofu (fl. 397) and Lu Xiu-
jing (406–477). It is a very complex subject that is still poorly understood.
The earliest enumeration of Daoist zhai is found in the single-chapter
Dongxuan lingbao wugan wen, composed by Lu Xiujing in 454 c.e. Here
we find the names and briefly stated functions of twelve different zhai, in-
cluding the Retreat of the Yellow Register for the salvation of ancestors.4
For a description of this Retreat, however, we must turn to a chapter of
the Northern Zhou Daoist encyclopedia, the Wushang biyao (HY 1130).
John Lagerwey includes an abstract of this chapter in his historical study
of the encyclopedia,5 while Henri Maspero has given us a stimulating, if
somewhat overdone, evocation of the ritual’s performance based on an
interpretation of the same material.6
The ritual is preceded by the construction of an altar (litan) within a
sacred space defined by the gates of the ten directions (four gates at the
sides, four at the corners, and one each at the northeast and the south-
east). At each gate are placed an incense burner and a lamp to attract the
spirits of the ten directions; nine lamps that illuminate, according to
Maspero’s interpretation, the gates for the souls of the dead; and a golden
dragon and various pieces of embroidered silk to redeem the souls of the
dead. Finally, at the center of the ritual space, a large incense burner and
a nine-foot lamp are situated; it is here, after the installation of the priests
and a triple offering of incense at each of the ten gates, that the main rit-
ual action occurs.
The ritual commences with the “Opening of the Incense Burner”
( falu), a rite of exteriorization (chuguan) in which the Master of Rites in-
vokes Lord Lao the Most High (Taishang laojun) and calls upon the spirit-
officials or messengers of his own body to leave in order to inform (guanqi )
the local earth-spirit of the priest’s desire to receive in his body the per-
fect and orthodox pneumas of the ten directions, enabling him to com-
municate his prayers to the Emperor on High.7 The Master of Rites then
invites the transcendent officials (qing xianguan) “to assist in the ritual for
Appendix 229

saving the souls of the dead (sihun) of nine generations of ancestors of

the host” and makes another circuit of the gates of the ten directions, this
time accompanied by the host and other mourners. At each gate, incense
is offered three times (san shangxiang) while the Master of Rites recites a
prayer directed to the Three Venerables (i.e., the Three Purities) asking
that the merits of the ceremony redound to the benefit of the ancestors
of the host. The climax of the retreat is the “Confession to the Ten Di-
rections” (xie shifang). The Master describes the torments of the ances-
tors in purgatory and then expresses the host’s wish to take refuge in the
divinities of each direction. He presents gifts of silk and gold to release
the souls of the ancestors and to have them ascend to the Celestial Hall.
This confession is followed by others to the divinities of the sun, moon
and stars, to the Five Sacred Peaks, to the Water-Official, and to the Three
Treasures of Daoism—the Dao, the Scriptures, and the Master (chaozhen).
The ritual concludes with the “Closing of the Incense Burner” ( fulu), a
rite of interiorization (naguan).
The sequence of rites from the opening to the closing of the incense
burner became known as the “Audience with the Spontaneous” (ziran
chao) and remained at the heart of the Retreat of the Yellow Register even
as it expanded over subsequent centuries. The late Tang Daoist Du
Guangting (850–933)8 remarked over and over again that the ziran chao
is the ancestor of the zhai, and indeed, we find that this sequence of rites
forms the skeletal structure of the various retreats described in the
Wushang biyao.9 It is clear, moreover, that in the early Tang and before,
this sequence was part of the daily routine of the Daoist priest, performed
both morning and evening in his private oratory or in a Daoist abbey.10
In Du Guangting’s major and lengthy contribution to the Daoist liturgy
for the dead, the Taishang huanglu zhaiyi,11 the ziran chao is repeated three
times a day—morning, noon, and evening—for three days. The daily cy-
cle of morning, noon, and evening audiences (zaochao, wuchao, and wan-
chao) is called “Practicing the Way” (xingdao yi ), while the three-day rep-
etition of this cycle constituted the “Orthodox Retreat” (zhengzhai ).12
Du Guangting also made some important additions to the ziran chao
itself. The “Opening of the Incense Burner” ( falu) is now introduced by
a sequence of recitations and visualizations of divinities and internal med-
itations that populate the ritual area with pneumas generated out of the
priest’s own body;13 the all-important Confession to the Ten Directions,
meanwhile, is succeeded first by a recitation of cosmic purification called
“Commanding the Demon[-King]” (mingmo zhou) and then by the famous
230 Appendix

celestial hymns and choreography known as “Pacing the Void” (buxu).14

After each “evening audience,” moreover, there is a “Ritual Homage to
the Lamps” (lideng yi ). Du Guangting’s most important elaborations on
the liturgy, however, concern the period both before and after the “Or-
thodox zhai.”
The “Nocturnal Announcement” (suqi ) is one of several rituals that,
by the Song period, came to constitute the construction and consecra-
tion of the altar. The others include the “Sealing of the Altar” ( jintan)
and “Distribution of the Lamps” ( fendeng). The central event of the suqi
was, and still is, the installation of the “True Writs of the Numinous Trea-
sure” (Lingbao zhenwen) in the Five Directions. These celestial talismans
and their ritual re-creation go back to the very origin of the Lingbao tra-
dition in the fourth century, though their historical relationship to the
Nocturnal Announcement is problematic. Du Guangting suggests that the
suqi was originally a sequence of four rites performed after a ziran chao:
an announcement of the purpose of the retreat (gaozhai ); an explanation
of the various precepts to the priests and disciples (shuojie); the conferral
of the documents of appointment on the six officials of the retreat
(bazhi); and, finally, a thorough explanation of 36 prohibitions related to
the performance of the retreat (xuanjin).15 The history of the suqi is very
complex and was perceived as such by Daoist liturgists.16 Suffice it to say
that, by the Song, the installation of the “true writs” and the rites related
to the installation of the priest-officials had become fully integrated in
descriptions of the Nocturnal Announcement.17
The “Announcement of Merit” (yangong) was performed on the morn-
ing after the last “evening audience.” The central event of this rite was
the submission of a memorial by the Daoist priest himself at the court of
the Celestial Emperor. This event was embedded within rites for exteri-
orizing and interiorizing the spirits residing in the body of the priest
(chuguan and naguan). The memorial was written in vermillion ink on yel-
low paper and was therefore referred to as the “huangzeng zhubiao.” It an-
nounced the completion of the retreat and requested that the merit ac-
cumulated thereby be applied to the salvation of the dead.18 The priest
reads the memorial out loud and, parenthetically, expresses his hope that
the Five Perfected Officials of his body correct any mistakes in the docu-
ment before submitting it.19 Then, in a dramatic meditation, the priest
visualizes himself mounting a feathered chariot that is born aloft by a
dragon in a purple pneumatic haze. The priest and his retinue pass
through the gates of the Mysterious Capital (xuandu) and, finally, the Gate
Appendix 231

of the Three Heavens (santian men), where the memorial and other peti-
tions are submitted for a detailed examination.20 At the conclusion of this
meditational journey, the various official messengers are returned to the
priest’s body, and the written memorials are burned.21 It appears, more-
over, that the True Writs of the Numinous Treasure that had been installed
at the five cardinal points during the Nocturnal Announcement are dis-
mantled and burned along with other documents.
Following the Announcement of Merit, a jiao, or “offering,” is per-
formed in which the spirits are summoned to take part in a common ban-
quet and to receive the gratitude of the priests and the host for the merit
created by the retreat. Offerings of wine, fruit, and vegetables are laid out,
and written requests are again read before the gods.22 At the conclusion
of the jiao, the various Daoist priests return their documents of official
appointment to the Inspector of Merits (nazhi), and the ritual con-
cludes.23 An auspicious day might be selected, however, when special doc-
uments of penance and confession were tied together with a jade disc and
golden dragon and deposited in the mountains, in the earth, and in water.
This ritual is known as the “toulongbi” (or toulong jian).24 It originated with
the Celestial Master sect, though it had long been absorbed and trans-
formed by the Lingbao tradition.25
Du Guangting’s Retreat of the Yellow Register can be considered the
culmination of the medieval Daoist ritual for the dead. With the South-
ern Song, we have a number of texts that are distinctly “modernist” in
their concern to address the ritual needs of a new and more complex
audience —and even “modern” in the sense that they form the basis of
the ritual as it is still performed today. The most important of these rit-
ual compendia include Jiang Shuyu’s (1162–1223) Wushang huanglu
dazhai licheng yi (HY 508); the Lingbao wuliang duren shang jing dafa (HY
219) and the Lingbao yujian (HY 547), both from the early thirteenth cen-
tury; Jin Yuzhong’s (fl. 1225) Shangqing lingbao dafa (HY 1212, early thir-
teenth century); Wang Qizhen’s Shangqing lingbao dafa (HY 1213, late thir-
teenth century); and Lin Tianren’s Lingbao ling jiao zhidu jinshu (HY 466,
dated to 1303).
These compendia are among the longest and most complex in the
Daoist canon. It is therefore impractical to analyze any one of these texts
in detail.26 Taken as a group, however, we can say that these texts all pre-
serve and even expand on Du Guangting’s ritual sequence while intro-
ducing an entirely new series of rituals that significantly shift the emo-
tional balance and change the character of the entire liturgy. These “new”
232 Appendix

rituals all concern, in one way or another, various trips to the other world
undertaken by the Daoist priest or his spiritual messengers in order to
gain the release of the souls of the deceased from the earth-prisons, bring
them into the ritual area, and then transform the deceased into a divin-
ity and/or ancestor. These rituals are generally referred to as “rites of de-
liverance” (kaidu), to distinguish them from the “rites of merit” (gongde)
that encompass the audiences, confessions, and recitations.
In the various summaries of the Yellow Register Retreat in the two texts
entitled Shangqing lingbao dafa, we find references to petitions and rites
for “Opening the Five Roads [of Taishan]” (Kaitong wulu).27 Although in
neither text is there a chapter devoted exclusively to the performance of
this rite, Wang Qizhen’s work includes a “Lamp-Chart for Opening the
Five Roads” (Kaitong wulu dengtu), a chart that is preceded by the insis-
tence that “when setting up a great retreat, one must first open the roads
to liberate the hun[-souls] of the deceased (shifang wanghun).” 28 The rit-
ual involved the installation of lamps and white flags in the five cardinal
directions and the use of talismans and incantations that called upon the
Great Gods of the Five Roads “to open up the dark roads of the five di-
rections, lead the souls of the deceased unimpeded by heterodox and evil
demons.” 29
The Lingbao yujian specifically compares these Great Gods of the Five
Roads to the fangxiang shi,30 the ancient Chinese exorcist and officiant at
funerals who descended into the tomb on the day of burial and struck its
four sides to drive away the fangliang-demons that sought to harm the
corpse.31 The apotropaic function of the fangxiang shi was played in Han
tomb ordinances by the “Envoy of the Celestial Thearch” (Tiandi shizhe)
and his guardian spirits of the four quarters, a function taken over more
generally by Daoist grave-quelling writs in the Six Dynasties period.
Among other things, these writs sought to compel the various spirits of
the mound and tomb and other terrestrial demons not to harm the de-
ceased.32
In addition to protecting the corpse from the wrath and depredations
of the spirits of the tomb, the other function of the Han tomb ordinances
and Daoist grave-quelling writs was to secure a pardon for the sins of the
deceased—a pardon that would, at one and the same time, gain the re-
lease of the souls of the deceased from the earth-prisons and protect the
living relatives from illness, which was thought to be caused by other-
worldly lawsuits brought against the deceased. The Almanac of Petitions of
Master Red Pine, for example, includes a petition addressed to the tomb-
Appendix 233

spirits requesting first that the deceased be pardoned and second that his
souls be reunited with the corpse so that he might reside in the “heavenly
bureaus.”33
Similar documents reemerge in the Song liturgical compendia, where
they constitute a discrete ritual within the Retreat of the Yellow Register.
This ritual was loosely referred to as “Rite for Pardon and Release” (Shiba
zhi fa). It involved the meticulous preparation of various orders and writs
of pardon and a ritual in which various documents were issued and re-
ceived from the celestial chancelleries (a rite known as “welcoming the
pardon,” or yingshe) and then dispatched by various agents and means to
the earth-prisons.34 In the modern period, the dispatch of the writ of par-
don is undertaken by a mounted messenger—the officer of pardon—
whose expedition to the other world is enacted in a piece of theater us-
ing a paper representation.35
In the Song period, “Opening the Five Roads” and “Sending the Writ
of Pardon” were preliminary to, and minor compared with, the extrava-
ganza that constitutes the “rites of deliverance” proper. The priest begins
this ritual sequence with a dramatic segment known as “Lighting the
Lamps and Destroying the Earth-Prisons” (randeng poyu ). In Jin Yun-
zhong’s version, the Daoist acolytes light the lamps at nine prison-altars
(yutan) in order to illuminate the Nine Obscurities ( jiuyou ) of purgatory
and reveal the souls within.36 Then the Daoist Priest, the “One of High
Merit” (gaogong), holding a “document-staff” (cezhang) in his hand and nine
talismans for destroying the prisons in his sleeve, transforms himself, much
like the Master of Rites of Summoning for Investigation, into the divine
Heavenly Worthy “Savior from Distress” (huashen wei Qiuku tianzun) and
walks the Dipper.37 Then, at each of the nine directions, he burns the ap-
propriate talisman while reciting a corresponding incantation; he also vi-
sualizes a light that floods the earth-prison, exposing thousands of prison
guards and interrogators who face the prison gate and receive the talis-
mans. These talismans break the locks and release the souls who will fol-
low the light and come to the ritual area (daochang ).38 At this point, the
priest burns a representation of Fengdu (Fengdu shanxing ) and lights the
prison lamps, this time with his staff, revealing that the prison itself is now
empty. The rite concludes with the lighting of incense and an expression
of gratitude for divine mercy.39 A very similar ritual can be found in a chap-
ter of Jiang Shuyu’s liturgy in which the priest again transforms himself
into the Heavenly Worthy “Savior from Distress” and destroys the earth-
prisons with a slightly variant use of lamps, talismans, and visualizations.40
234 Appendix

The second act in the deliverance of the deceased opens with a great
“ritual for summoning the soul” (zhaoling yi) into the ritual area. In the
various Song liturgical manuals, this rite comprises two episodes.41 One
focuses on the preparation and manipulation of a “soul banner” (lingfan),
a Daoist interpretation, perhaps, of that moment in the ancient “sum-
moning of the soul” (zhaohun) when the mourner mounted the house-
top and waved a piece of white clothing belonging to the deceased. The
second focuses on the priest’s use of various talismans to compel the “di-
vine tiger” (shenhu), the divinities in charge of the seven po-souls and the
three hun-souls, and a host of soul-catchers to bring the souls of the de-
ceased into the “ritual assembly” ( fahui) so that they might benefit from
the merit accumulated in the priest’s performance of the “orthodox re-
treat” (zhengzhai). This ritual shares a deep structure with the exorcistic
Rites of Summoning for Investigation and was the occasion for some
rather dramatic encounters between the living and the dead. (We will
return to all this below.) After the soul has been summoned, it is given
a ritual bath (muyu) to remove the pollution and impurities associated
with death and the corpse, and is then compelled to pay homage to the
Three Treasures of Daoism and magically fed with celestial nourishment
(zhoushi).42
All this is preparation for the soul’s ultimate transformation. In a rit-
ual of sublimation known as liandu, or “deliverance by refining,” a new
transcendent body is formed for the soul through a process of internal
or physiological alchemy undertaken by the Daoist priest. The complex
sequence of visualizations necessary to complete the transformation
varies with the cosmic elements involved. In Jin Yunzhong’s Shangqing
lingbao dafa, the soul is purified and refined by passing through water
and fire, “orthodox pneumas of yin and yang,” that have been absorbed
by the priest and assimilated with two organs in his own body.43 In the
fifty-seventh chapter of the early thirteenth-century Lingbao wuliang duren
shangqing dafa, the dominant elements are the pneumas of the Nine Heav-
ens.44 This chapter is a variant of a twelfth-century text for refining souls
produced by the Daoist lineage of Shenxiao.45
What is so interesting about both these versions is that they condense
in one long meditative exercise the entire sequence of discrete rites for
the soul’s deliverance found in the late Song Retreat of the Yellow Regis-
ter. The priest absorbs the nine celestial pneumas into his body and con-
centrates them to form an infant, a physical alter ego of the priest, who
is transported from the Aquatic Court (in the bladder) to the Nirvana
Appendix 235

Palace (of the brain). There the infant is transformed into the (Supreme
Emperor of ) Primordial Beginning. A ray of light is now emitted from
between the eyebrows of the Supreme Emperor, confirming the iden-
tity between priest and divinity, since the cranial chamber sits behind
the priest’s eyebrows. The light illuminates the entire microcosm and
smashes the Nine Obscurities of Fengdu (located below the navel), trans-
forming them into pure lands. Meanwhile, various golden lads and jade
lasses, among other divinities, descend with a talismanic decree from
the Supreme Emperor to pardon and release the souls of the deceased.
The souls then bathe in a great sea in the Aquatic Court, a boundless ocean
located in the priest’s bladder and fed by saliva from his mouth (i.e., the
huachi, or Flower Pool). This purification also marks the beginning of the
souls’ conversion to the Dao. After the bath, the souls dress themselves
in new white clothing, join the saints in singing a portion of The Scripture
of Salvation (Duren jing), and are fed with sweet dew. The same golden lads
and jade lasses reappear to lead the souls across the “Great Bridge of
the Law for Ascending to Heaven” (Shengtian dafaqiao), assimilated to the
priest’s spinal column. The souls now enter the Fire Pool (huochi) in
the priest’s heart, where they are melted down and refined, dressed in ce-
lestial vestments, and finally projected into the Heaven of Jade Purity, out-
side the priest’s head, by way of his trachea and brain.
This twelfth-century ritual meditation anticipates, as we have noted,
the sequence of distinct rituals that make up the Southern Song Daoist
liturgy for the dead: namely, the illumination and destruction of the earth-
prisons; the absolution and release of the souls of the deceased; the bath,
clothing, and feeding; and the souls’ purification by water and fusion by
fire. Even the souls’ conversion to the Dao, their “turning to the Correct
Way,” is given a more explicit and structured expression in the larger
liturgy. In Jiang Shuyu’s Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi, the rite of sub-
limation is followed by a rite of conversion and initiation.46 The embod-
ied soul is absolved from its sins by listening to sermons, by receiving in-
struction in the rules and prohibitions of the Daoist community, and by
the transmission of documents of initiation along with talismans that func-
tion as a kind of celestial visa. The passage to Heaven is also represented
in a final “Ritual for Crossing the Bridge” (duqiao keyi ), a rite that has taken
on a distinctly theatrical character in modern times.47 The “rites of de-
liverance” are brought to a conclusion with the performance of a ritual
for “the distribution of food and universal salvation” (shishi pudu), a rit-
ual of salvation not only for the hungry ghosts (Skt. preta, Ch. egui ) and
236 Appendix

orphan-souls (guhun) but also for all those who are, and have been, sub-
ject to rebirth.48
This Daoist pudu was obviously inspired by Buddhism. The question is
to what extent the content of the Daoist “rites of deliverance,” individual
as well as universal, was actually influenced by this assimilation of Bud-
dhist liturgy, to which we now turn.

The Buddhist Retreat of Water and Land

The Shuiluzhai, or “Purificatory Fast [for the Spirits] of Water and Land,”
was only one, if the most extravagant one, of the many Buddhist rites of
“universal salvation” (pudu) practiced in Song China. The Shuilu zhai was
a distinctively Song phenomenon. A full analysis, however, would have to
explore its continuities with the medieval ghost festival and with rituals
for “distributing food to the hungry ghosts” (shi egui).49 In a pioneering
investigation more than twenty years ago, Makita Tairyo assembled most
of the relevant historical references to the Shuilu zhai.50 Since that time,
at least one set of shuilu paintings used during monastic performances in
the fifteenth century has been reproduced and/or studied.51 More re-
cently, Michel Strickmann and now Daniel Stevenson have examined all
this textual and graphic material in greater detail and organized it in a
more chronological and coherent fashion. Strickmann has also provided
an interpretation of the rite that attempts to locate it within the context
of East Asian Tantric Buddhism.52
Buddhist tradition attributes the creation of the Shuilu zhai to the sixth-
century monk Baozhi, who was encouraged to do so by Emperor Wudi of
the Liang. The emperor personally attended the first performance at Gold
Mountain Monastery ( Jinshan si), just as he went, in 538, to the Tongtai
Monastery to take part in the first celebration of an Avalambana festival.53
The monk Daoying supposedly revived the ritual a century and a half later
in Chang’an.54 It is not, however, until the tenth century that we find in-
dependent confirmation of the performance of the retreat from non-
Buddhist sources,55 and it is only in the eleventh century that its popu-
larity becomes manifest. The monk Zunshi (964–1032) observed that
throughout the ancient kingdoms of Wu and Yue (i.e., throughout the
Southeast), monasteries maintained separate cloisters devoted entirely to
the performance of the shuilu and other rituals for feeding pretas, or hun-
gry ghosts.56 He suggests, parenthetically, that the name of the rite de-
rived from the fact that the food offerings for the gods were placed in
Appendix 237

running water and those for the ghosts were placed on land. This gloss is
repeated in a thirteenth-century Buddhist encyclopedia, although I have
yet to find any internal evidence in the extant ritual texts that would sup-
port it.57
The other center of shuilu practice was Szechwan. About 1071, a lay-
man named Yang E ( jinshi degree 1034) from Dongchuan composed a
manual for performing the shuilu, extracts of which are preserved in an-
other thirteenth-century Buddhist encyclopedia.58 The extracts reveal that
Yang E’s rite focused on invocations and offerings to sixteen categories
of beings, divided into two groups of eight. The first group, worshipped
at an upper altar, includes the buddhas, the Dharma, the Sangha, the bod-
hisattvas, pratyekabuddhas, arhats, and, interestingly, the Saints of the Five
Supernatural Powers (wutong shen) and the Dragons Who Protect the Law
(hufa longshen); the second group, worshipped at a lower altar, includes,
among others, those who are subject to the six modes of rebirth—
officials, gods, demigods (or asuras), people, hell-beings, and hungry
ghosts. Another extract involves a very brief inventory of the ritual’s high-
lights, including the interesting suggestion that the food offerings be sprin-
kled with water that has been transformed by the priest into the “sweet
dew” of immortality. (We will return to this below.) Twenty-two years af-
ter Yang E composed his manual, Su Shi, the most famous literatus of
Sichuan, had a shuilu ritual performed for his deceased wife. He person-
ally composed a poem for each of the sixteen classes of beings invoked
during the rite —the same sixteen classes as in Yang E’s manual—and even
created some of the paintings used to represent them.
The involvement of officials and wealthy laymen was crucial to the pop-
ularity and institutionalization of the shuilu ritual, even in the Southeast.
In the twelfth century, after witnessing a performance of the shuilu at Gold
Mountain Monastery, the official Shi Hao (1106–1194) returned home
to Zhejiang and donated 100 mu of land to a monastery on Yueboshan
so that it could perform the rite all year round. The ritual was called a
“Four Seasons Shuilu” (sishi shuilu) and was dedicated specifically “to
Heaven and Earth and to the lords and their kin” (tiandi zhunqin).59 Shi
Hao edited and published the ritual texts and recorded the fact that that
part of the monastery set aside for shuilu rituals had been graced with a
plaque from the Xiaozong Emperor (in the manner, we might add, of the
“merit-cloisters” commandeered by high Song officials). Meanwhile, in
response to the aristocratic and exclusive pretensions of Shi Hao’s dedi-
cation, upward of three thousand supporters of the nearby monastery of
238 Appendix

Zunjiao si collected contributions and donated land for the performance

of their own “Four Seasons Shuilu” and convinced the editor of our source,
Zhi Pan (ca. 1220–1275), to compose a new ritual for a more universal,
egalitarian audience. The text of Zhi Pan’s new ritual was revised and
edited by the sixteenth-century monk Zhu Hong (1535–1615) and has
come down to us in this form.60 The many continuities between Zhu
Hong’s text and both earlier descriptions and later versions of the Shuilu
zhai suggests an overwhelming conservatism; thus I am confident that we
can use this sixteenth-century manual as an accurate reflection of Song
practice.61
Zhu Hong’s revision (chongding) of Zhi Pan’s instructions is entitled
Liturgy for the Cultivation of the Purificatory Fast of the Victorious Assembly of
Water and Land for the Saints and Commoners of the Dharma-World (Fajie sheng-
fan shuilu shenghui xiuzhai yigui ). It is divided into six chapters that cor-
respond, more or less, to significant shifts in the ritual action. I summa-
rize the ritual as three movements. The entire liturgy occupied a couple
of days, and later versions, which lasted much longer, are quite specific
about the hour at which each ritual segment was to begin:

(A) Zhu Hong’s Retreat of Water and Land begins at dawn with the
construction and purification of the ritual area (kaiqi fa) [1.1a]. Guardian
deities are invited to occupy positions at the five cardinal points: the Va-
jra[-Being] of Impure Traces (Huiji jin’gang) in the center; the Ten Great
Kings of Light (shi da mingwang) to the left and the Celestial Dragons
(tianlong) to the right; to the sides of one of the doors sit the monastic
tutelary divinities (qielan shen), while to the sides of the other sit the City
God and the Dukes and Kings of the Various [Local] Temples (cheng-
huang zhumiao houwang) [1.4a].
After the purification of the ritual area with water and incense [1.6b],
the priest undertakes a rite of announcement known as “Sending the
Talismans” ( fafu fa) [1.13b]. On one table is placed the seat (or
effigies?) of the Emissaries of the Four Talismans (sifu shiwei ), along with
various offerings and paper money (caima); on another table are placed
the written invitations, memorials, talismans, decrees, and other docu-
ments [1.13b]. The Four Messengers are then invited to descend into
the ritual area [1.15a–b]. The various documents are read and the mes-
sengers dispatched, bearing the talismans that announce the Retreat
to the saints and spirits throughout the universe [1.18a–b]. Finally, all
the documents and paper money are burned [1.18b].
Appendix 239

(B) The second chapter of Zhu Hong’s manual is devoted to the sum-
moning of the saints to the upper hall, or inner altar (shangtang zhao-
qing fa) [2.1a]. There are ten classes of saints: (1) the buddhas; (2) the
Dharma; (3) the bodhisattvas; (4) the patyekabuddhas; (5) the 4ravakas;
(6) the patriarchs of the Tantric, Chan, and Vinaya lineages; (7) the
Saints of the Five Supernatural Powers; (8) various Protectors of the
Dharma, including the ten Vidyarajas and Ucchu3ma; (9) various tute-
lary divinities, including guardians of reliquaries, pagodas, monaster-
ies, feasts, the nation, and domiciles; and, finally, (10) the “ten great
gentlemen” identified with the creation, performance, and propagation
of the Shuilu zhai. The last of these gentlemen are none other than Su
Shi and Yang E. Each of these classes and constituents is called upon in-
dividually, and each invitation is accompanied by mantras and visual-
izations [2.3a–10b]. After the saints have assembled at the inner altar,
they all undergo a communal bath and receive a meal [2.11a–12a]. Food
and drink, sacralized by the sweet dew of Heaven, are offered to each of
the ten classes of saints, along with a new set of clothing and other of-
ferings [2.13a–29b]. The Ritual Master then presents a sermon on the
history and efficacy of the Retreat of Water and Land [2.29b–34b], while
an Announcer expounds on the purpose and significance of rites of uni-
versal salvation and goes on to enumerate the merit that will accrue —
to the living as well as to the dead—from the performance of the Re-
treat [2.35a–37a].

(C) The invitation to “the commoners” occupies the third, fourth,

and fifth volumes of Zhu Hong’s manual. Ten classes of commoners are
summoned to the lower hall of the inner altar (xiatang zhaoqing fa): var-
ious celestial and terrestrial deities (classes 1 and 2); various well-known
figures from China’s ancient past, including dynastic founders, classi-
cal philosophers, and Daoist ascetics (class 3); ordinary human beings,
differentiated by occupational and moral criteria, including diviners,
sorcerers, actors, and the ancestors of the ritual’s patron (class 4); asuras
(class 5); orphan-souls (class 6); gods of the underworld (class 7); hell-
beings (class 8); birds and beasts (class 9); and those in the forty-nine-
day limbo after death, waiting to be reborn (class 10). Each of these ten
classes of commoners encompasses ten subclasses, all of which are in-
voked [3.3a–10b]. The priest then summons two additional sets of com-
moners. The first comprises five classes: (1) the City Gods and gods of
the local temples of Hangzhou, site of Zhu Hong’s monastery; (2) the
240 Appendix

tutelary divinities of the monastery and its buildings; (3) all the ances-
tors of the patron and his relatives; (4) the spiritual ancestors of the
monks; and (5) various and sundry souls of the dead. The second set
comprises twelve classes of orphan-souls of those who have suffered vi-
olent deaths (hengsi guhun), from emperors and their consorts to those
who died in prison to those who were murdered by pirates or eaten by
tigers. Page after page is devoted to these unfortunates and their grue-
some deaths [3.10b–25a].
When the last of the hungry ghosts have been summoned (those that
died at the hands of hunters and fishermen), the Ritual Master begins
a series of recitations for releasing the hell-beings who have been in-
carcerated in the earth-prisons. The Ritual Master first recites a mantra
for the “Destruction of the Earth-Prisons” (po diyu), after which he vi-
sualizes that the doors of each of the ten subterranean prisons rattle
and open, and that the prisoners, overcome by the sound of the mantra
and the desire to be saved, rush out to join the assembly [3.25a–b]. There
follows a “Mantra for the Opening of the Roads” (kaidaolu zhenyan) and
a visualization in which the confused and disoriented prisoners find
their way along the roads that lead from purgatory [3.26a–b]. Having
been released from prison, the hell-beings are now divested of their emo-
tional shackles and physical handicaps. The Ritual Master recites three
mantras: one that “separates them from fear” (libuwei zhenyan), one that
“opens their throats” (kaiyanhou zhenyan), and one that “liberates them
from the bonds of resentment” ( jieshi yuanjie zhenyan) [3.26b–28b]. The
middle mantra refers to the needle-thin throats of the hungry ghosts,
which prevented them from eating. All these mantras were anticipated
in the scriptures for feeding the hungry ghosts translated by $ik3ananda
and Amoghavajra in the seventh and eighth centuries. Then, in a final
stage of purification, the hungry ghosts are joined by those subject to
rebirth in a great communal bath and change of clothing [3.28b ff.].
The spirits now sit around the periphery of the ritual area and lis-
ten attentively to the recitations and lectures performed by the priests
on their behalf. These include the singing of hymns, a lecture on the
Dharma, a recitation of the litanies of confession, an enumeration and
explanation of the ten grave precepts of Buddhism, and so forth
[4.1a–14b]. Throughout all this, the Ritual Master imagines the souls’
spiritual transformation and conversion. The souls join the priests in the
invocation and contemplation of the Buddha (nianfo) [4.15a–b], a rit-
ual that realizes the essential identity between the subjects and object of
Appendix 241

contemplation. The souls have now become the “Buddhas of the Six
Roads of Rebirth.” They are led by the Ritual Master before each of the
saints in a ritual of homage and communion. They enter and take their
seats within the ritual area, where the retreat will conclude in a great
feeding of the hungry ghosts [4.16a–17b]. Further purifications, lec-
tures, and a collective recitation of The Scripture of the Flaming Mouth
(Yankou jing) [5.1a–4b] preface the consecration of the food and drink
offerings and their transformation into amrta, the sweet dew that is “the
divine tonic of deathlessness” [5.4b–5a]. One by one, the commoners
are invoked and invited to take part in the feast [5.5b–23a]. As a result
of this and their dedication to the Dharma, the pretas, ancestors, and
all the commoners will gain liberation, though the text is somewhat am-
biguous as to whether this means immediate rebirth in the Western Par-
adise or progressive and improved rebirths that will ultimately lead to
such a blessed condition [5.23a].

The Retreat for the Souls of Water and Land was truly ecumenical, egal-
itarian, and universal in its promise of redemption. This promise was ex-
tended not merely to the nine generations of ancestors of the Avalam-
bana feast or to the hosts of hungry ghosts of the many “feeding rituals”
(shishiyi), but to notorious figures from China’s past and to representa-
tives of all the social classes of her present as well. The Retreat of Water
and Land was, in this respect, not unlike the Feast of All Souls established
by Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, in 998.62 The feast, inspired by the torments of
the dead in the other world,63 was dedicated literally to all souls who lived
“from the beginning of time to the end” (ab initio mundi fuerunt usque in
finem).64 It envisioned a totality in time that rivaled the totality of space
claimed by the Roman emperor. The feast, moreover, followed immedi-
ately upon All Saints Day and presaged the unity at the end of time, when
all the saints and all the souls would be joined in saecula saeculorum. The
unity of saints and souls in the Buddhist festival, in contrast, was less es-
chatological than ontological, based on the universal buddhahood of all
beings.
NOTES

Chapter 1: Introduction
1. Pingfu literally means “to lean on and adhere to” (compare with L. incubus).
2. Gibert Rouget, Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and
Possession (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), 25–28 and 325.
3. Gananath Obeyesekere, “The Idiom of Demonic Possession: A Case Study,”
Social Science and Medicine 4 (1970), 97–111 (esp. 105–106), and idem,
Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1981).
4. Piet van der Loon, “Les origines rituelles du théâtre chinois,” Journal Asia-
tique 265 (1977), 168.
5. Stephen J. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988), 145, note.
6. See Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press/Bollingen Series, 1974), 210–212.
7. Rouget, Music and Possession, 23.
8. In the debate on the evidence for and importance of shamanism in Shang
and Zhou religion, I find the arguments of David Keightley, “Royal Shaman-
ism in the Shang: Archaic Vestige or Central Reality?” a paper prepared for
the Workshop on Chinese Divination and Portent Interpretation (Berkeley,
June 20–July 1, 1983), much more compelling than those of K. C. Chang,
Art, Myth and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1983), 44–55. For a judicious analysis of the func-
tions and attributes of the Chinese spirit-medium in the Zhou-dynasty state,

243
244 Notes to Pages 4–7

see now Lothar von Falkenhausen, “Reflections on the Political Role of Spirit-
Mediums in Early China: The Wu Officials in the Zhou Li,” Early China 20
(1995), 279–300. For shamanism and/or spirit-possession in the state of Chu,
see John S. Major, “The Characteristics of Late Chu Religion,” in Constance
A. Cook and John S. Major, eds., Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient
China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), esp. 135–139.
9. Microhistory has been primarily associated with the Italian historians Carlo
Ginzburg and Giovanni Levi. For an English introduction to the theoretical
aspect of their approach, one might begin with Ginzburg’s article, “The Name
and the Game,” in Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, eds., Microhistory and
the Lost Peoples of Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1991), 1–10, and Levi’s article, “On Microhistory,” in Peter Burke, ed., New
Perspectives on Historical Writing (University Park: The Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity Press, 1991), 93–113.
10. Kristofer Schipper, Le corps taoïste (Paris: Fayard, 1982), 21. Also, John Lager-
wey, Le continent des esprits: La chine dans le miroir du taoïsme (Bruxelles: La Re-
naissance des Livres, 1991), 15.
11. Schipper, Le corps taoïste, 30.
12. Ibid., 31.
13. Ibid., 32.
14. Ibid., 21.
15. Schipper, Le corps taoïste, 29; John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and
History (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 276. I should mention parenthetically
that even those sinologists who see the historical relationship of the state to
Chinese religion in a more neutral light insist on the distinction between Bud-
dhism and Daoism, which are religions, and Confucianism, which is not: “The
oft-mentioned ‘Confucianism’ is . . . best seen as something else, not strictly
comparable —more a Paideia, a system of culture and its gradual inculcation,
rather than a faith professed by a guild of ritual technicians claiming other-
worldly authority. The paradigm later styled ‘Confucian’ was simply a broad
base of Sinic letters, a fundamental view of the cosmos and society which we
might better term ‘common Chinese,’ for it was also shared by Daoist priests
and Chinese Buddhist monks” (Michel Strickmann, “India in the Chinese
Looking Glass,” in D. Klimburg-Salter, ed., The Silk Route and the Diamond Path
[Los Angeles: UCLA Art Council, 1982], 55). I, too, would insist—along with
Strickmann and many before him, including C. K. Yang—that Confucianism
is not a religion. Strickmann’s identification of Confucianism with “the
broad base of Sinic letters” seems particularly germane to the Six Dynasties
period, although it would, I believe, leave us hard pressed to account for de-
Notes to Pages 8–9 245

velopments after the Tang and would certainly be rejected by daoxue schol-
ars. Strickmann’s use of the word “paideia” in the context of Confucianism
is fine as long as we do not press the comparison between Greek and Chi-
nese cultures too far. For some wise words on the difference, see Chris Con-
nelly, The Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China (Lan-
ham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 44.
16. I therefore disagree strongly with attempts to define the shi class in exclu-
sively Confucian terms. See, especially now, Peter Bol, ‘This Culture of Ours’:
Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1992), 18–19.
17. Michel Strickmann, “Magical Medicine: Therapeutic Rituals in Medieval
China,” unpublished ms. (Berkeley, 1987), chapter 1, “Disease and Daoist
Law,” 3. Strickmann’s manuscript has been edited by Bernard Faure and will
be published posthumously as Chinese Magical Medicine (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2001).
18. Ibid., 5. In keeping with his portrayal of Daoism as a religious revolution and
of the chasm that separated it from popular religion, Strickmann insists, “This
systematic bureaucratisation of the unseen world was not an adventitious evo-
lution of so-called ‘popular religion,’ but rather the conscious, studied cre-
ation of Daoism from its very beginnings” (ibid.). Yet this would seem hard
to maintain in light of an article by Anna Seidel which demonstrates that the
Daoist bureaucratization of the other world and of the means of dealing with
it were already a part of Han, pre-Daoist village religion: “It is clear that Dao-
ism, rather than opposing or reforming this religion, adopted all its features
without essential changes” (see her “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts
Found in Tombs,” in Akizuki Kan’ei, ed., Dokyo to shukyo bunka [Tokyo: Hi-
rakawa shuppan, 1987], 47). Seidel is thereby forced to ask, “ What was new
in Daoism?” though her answer—a “new soteriological paradigm” (the “sav-
ing grace of the Dao,” exclusively mediated by a divinized Laozi and an apos-
tolic priesthood, combined with a beatific vision of immortality)—is frus-
tratingly brief and noticeably Catholic.
Other scholars—notably Peter Nickerson, Angelika Cedzich, Stephen Bo-
kenkamp, Terry Kleeman, and Christine Mollier—are exploiting the creative
tension between the work of their teachers to produce an increasingly so-
phisticated dialectic between the old and the new in the formative period of
the Daoist religion. It should be mentioned, however, that the developmen-
tal model worked out by Strickmann, Seidel, Robinet, and others, and as-
sumed or elaborated on by their students—a model that identifies the for-
mation of Daoism with three distinct movements, traditions, or lineages
246 Notes to Pages 10–10

(Celestial Master, Highest Purity, and Numinous Treasure)—is being seriously

and forcefully contested in the work of Kobayashi Masayoshi. See, most re-
cently, his Chugoku no Dokyo (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1998). For a brilliant study
of the relationship between the Celestial Master organization and Highest
Purity texts in light of Kobayashi’s argument, see Shawn Eichman, “Con-
verging Paths: Highest Purity and Celestial Master Traditions of Taoism dur-
ing the Six Dynasties” (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawai‘i, 1999).
19. Kristofer Schipper, “Exposé de titres et travaux,” unpublished ms. (Paris,
1983), 31–32.
20. Kristofer Schipper, “Vernacular and Classical Ritual in Daoism,” Journal of
Asian Studies 45.1 (Nov. 1985), 21–51. Even the distinction between black-
head and red-head priests (between daoshi and fashi, between those who per-
form the large-scale rites of “offering” and “merit” and those who only per-
form the small-scale rites of exorcism) based on Schipper’s fieldwork in
southern Taiwan loses some of its paradigmatic value when we look to other
regions. In the Taibei basin of northern Taiwan, John Lagerwey found that
the daoshi perform “offering rituals” but not “merit rituals,” which were in
fact being performed by those claiming to be Buddhists, while the small-
scale exocistic rites were considered superior to the “offering rituals.” And
in several counties in Fujian, Guangdong, and Zhejiang, Lagerwey found
so-called Buddhists performing “offering rituals,” so-called Daoists who only
perform “merit rituals,” and individuals who do both but who change their
religion in order to do so. Lagerwey concludes that in these areas, the dis-
tinction between “red” (auspicious) and “white” (inauspicious) rituals trumps
the distinction between black-head and red-head priests, and even that be-
tween Daoism and Buddhism. For all of this, see John Lagerwey, “Questions
of Vocabulary, or How Shall We Talk about Chinese Religion?” in Lai Chi Tim,
ed., Daojiao yu minjian zong jiao yanjiu lunji (Hong Kong: Xuefeng wenhua
shiye gongsi, 1999), 165–191, especially 173–179 and his publications based
on recent fieldwork listed in the bibliography.
21. Kristofer Schipper, “An Outline of Taoist Ritual,” paper prepared for the In-
ternational Conference on Asian Rituals and the Theory of Ritual, Berlin
(Wissenschaftkolleg), June 1984, 1.
22. Schipper, “Vernacular and Classical Ritual in Daoism,” 45.
23. Schipper, Le corps taoïste, 29.
24. Mister Lu’s Abridged Codes for Followers of the Way (Luxiansheng daomen kelüe, HY
1119) is attributed to Lu Xiujing (406–477) but was most likely redacted by
his disciples. A partial translation and commentary by Peter Nickerson can
be found in Donald Lopez, ed., Religions of China in Practice (Princeton: Prince-
Notes to Pages 11–17 247

ton University Press, 1996), 347–359. The text tells us more about the con-
struction of the Celestial Master organization in the Liu Song dynasty
(420–479) than about Daoism’s historical relation to popular religion since
the end of the Han. As such, this text should be paired with The Great High-
est Scripture on the Inner Explanations of the Three Heavens (Taishang santian nei-
jiejing , HY 1196), which refers specifically to the legitimization of the Liu
Song dynasty and to its descent from the ruling family of the Han (see HY
1196, 1.8–9). The Inner Explanations takes Buddhism as its primary (but not
exclusive) rival, and at the very least complicates Strickmann and Schipper’s
programmatic definition of Daoism exclusively with respect to “popular re-
ligion.” For a partial translation and commentary of this text, see Stephen
Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997), 186–229. For Lu Xiujing, see Giovanni Vitiello, “Studio sul taoista Lu
Xiujing (406–477),” Annali dell’Instituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 47.3
(1987), 293–332.
25. Schipper, “Vernacular and Classical Ritual in Daoism,” 47.
26. See Tanaka Issei, Chugoku saishi engeki kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shup-
pansha, 1981), 18–31 and 269–277.
27. Subsequent references to the texts of the Daoist canon are by title number in
the Combined Indices to the Authors and Titles of Books in Two Collections of Taoist
Literature: Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series No. 25 (abbr., HY );
references to the scriptures of Buddhist canon are by title number in the Taisho
shinshu daizokyo (abbr., T.) and the Dai-Nihon Zokuzokyo (abbr., Z.); and refer-
ences to Dunhuang manuscripts are by Stein number in the Stein Collection
of Tun-huang Manuscripts (abbr., Stein). (See the List of Abbreviations in the
front matter of this volume.) References to the anecdotes of the Yijian zhi are
by page number in Hong Mai, Yijian zhi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981).
28. These scholars include John Lagerwey, Judith Boltz, Franciscus Verellen, and
Poul Andersen.
29. John Lagerwey, “Taoist Ritual: An Integral Part of Elite Culture,” paper pre-
sented at the Conference on the Rituals and Scriptures of Chinese Popular
Culture, Bodega Bay, California, Jan. 2–8, 1990.
30. Ibid., 2 and 6–7.
31. Ibid., 13–15.
32. Valerie Hansen, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127–1276 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 21.
33. Ibid., 21, note 25.
34. Ibid., 22. Despite my disagreements here, there is much to admire in
Hansen’s discussion of the Yijian zhi, esp. 18–21.
248 Notes to Pages 18–23

35. G. Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. J. E. Lewin (Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 1980), 244–245.
36. John J. Winkler, Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apulius’s The Golden
Ass (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 73–76.
37. Joel Fineman, “The History of the Anecdote: Fiction and Friction,” in H.
Aram Veeser, ed., The New Historicism (New York: Routledge, 1989), 64.

Chapter 2: Therapeutic Movements in the Song: Texts

1. Poul Andersen, “Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions” (Ph.D. diss., University
of Copenhagen, 1991), 81–131. For earlier but much more impressionistic
treatments of the Rites of Tianxin, see Michel Strickmann, “The Taoist Re-
naissance of the Twelfth Century,” paper presented at the Third International
Conference on Daoist Studies, Unterägeri (Switzerland), Sept. 3–9, 1979, and
Judith Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature, Tenth through Seventeenth Centuries
(Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987), 33–38.
2. For the relation of Chen Shouyuan and various mediums to the Min em-
perors, see Edward Shafer, The Empire of Min (Rutland and Tokyo: Charles
Tuttle, 1954), 96–109. For Tan Zixiao, see now John Didier, “Messrs. T’an,
Chancellor Sung, and the Book of Tranformation (Hua Shu): Texts and Trans-
formations of Traditions,” Asia Major 3rd ser., 11.1 (1998), 99–151 (esp.
117–124).
3. Nan-Tang shu, Lu You, 14. 3a–b (also in Lu You, Lu Fangwen quanji, vol. 1,
p. 72).
4. Nan-Tang shu, Ma Ling, 24. 2b–3a. The text says that Tan “performed ‘offer-
ings’ ( jiao) to the stars, served the Spirit-Lord Black Killer, walked the dip-
per, and exorcised demons.”
5. See Chapter 4, “The Four Saints.”
6. See Huagaishan Fouqiu-Wang-Guo san zhenjun shishi (HY 777) 5.4b–5b.
7. Shangqing tianxin zhengfa (HY 566) preface, 1a–b.
8. Poul Andersen, “Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions,” 82–83.
9. Shangqing tianxin zhengfa 3.1a–9a. For additional references to the heisha fu,
see Fahai yizhu (HY 1158), 6.10b, and Wushang xuanyuan santianwang yudang
dafa (HY 220), 25.3a–4a.
10. Shangqing tianxin zhengfa , 3.9b–21a.
11. Ibid., 3 passim.
12. For an analysis of all the Tianxian talismans from a literary as well as religious
point of view, see Monika Drexler, Daoistische Schriftmagie: Interpretatione zu den
Notes to Pages 23–24 249

Schriftamulleten Fu im Daozang (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), 24–85, and

the criticisms of Poul Andersen, “Taoist Talismans and the History of the
Tianxin tradition,” Acta Orientalia 57 (1996), 141–152.
13. Shangqing gusui lingwan guilü preface, 3a.
14. Ibid., preface, 2b.
15. Ibid., preface, 1b.
16. Poul Andersen has identified an impressive array of texts related to the
Rectifying Rites of the Celestial Heart. I see these texts as divisible into three
general groups, which I enumerate for future reference: (1) those texts that
derive directly or in part from the Tianxin tradition, such as the Wushang
xuanyuan santianwang yudang dafa (HY 220, composed in the second half of
the twelfth century by Lu Shizhong), the late Song Shangqing tianshu yuan
huiche bidao zhengfa (HY 549), the late fourteenth-century Guandou zhongxiao
wulei wuhou bifa (HY 585), and the Tianxin xiuzhen daochang shejiao (HY 806);
(2) those texts that influenced the Tianxin tradition, such as the ninth- or
tenth-century Jinsuo liuzhu yin (HY 1009), the tenth- or eleventh-century Tai-
shang yuanshi tianzun shuo beidi fumo shenzhou miao jing (HY 1401), and the
eleventh-century Yisheng baode zhuan (HY 1275), discussed in Chapter 3; and,
finally, (3) those texts that intersect with the Tianxin tradition by virtue of
the divinities invoked or the kinds of therapeutic methods employed. These
include the Taishang chiwen tongshen sanlu (HY 589), the Sanhuang nei biwen
(HY 854), the Guiguzi tiansui lingwen (HY 866), the Beidou zhifa wuwei jing
(HY 869), among others.
17. See Michael Saso, The Teachings of Daoist Master Chuang (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1978), 234–266. While enlightening on contemporary practice,
Saso’s historical sketch of Thunder Magic revolves around rather impene-
trable notions of orthodoxy. See also Liu Zhiwan, “Raishin shinkoto raiho no
tenkai,” Toho Shukyo (1990), 121. Liu has amassed an impressive array of ref-
erences to practitioners of Thunder Magic in the Song, Yuan, and Ming pe-
riods, but he makes little attempt to analyze these either in their own right
or with reference to any texts in the Daoist canon. Michel Strickmann, “So-
dai no raigi: Shinshoundo to doka nanshu ni tsuite no ryaku setsu” (Thun-
der Rites of the Song: Concerning the Divine Empyrean Movement and the
Southern School of Daoism), Toho Shukyo 46 (1975), 15–28, is not so much
about Thunder Rites as about the Divine Empyrean Movement. Matsumoto
Koichi, “Sodai no raiho,” Shakai bunka shigaku 17 (1979), 45–65, is still un-
surpassed as a judicious introduction but will soon be superceded by the work
of Lowell Skar, for which see “Administering Thunder: A Thirteenth-Century
250 Notes to Pages 24–27

Memorial Deliberating the Thunder Rites,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 9 (1996–

1997), 159–202.
18. From the third century b.c.e., we find references to a deity variously known
as “Leizi,” “Leishi,” or “Leigong,” and to a triad of other divinities—Tianmu,
Fengbo, and Yushi—with whom he is linked. All four retain their importance
in the Thunder Magic texts of the Song.
19. See Liu Zhiwan, “Raishin shinko,” 2 and 18, note 7.
20. A fangshi in Jiangsu, for example, summoned thunder and lightning to elim-
inate the plaintiffs in a land dispute with his disciples (Shenxian zhuan 5, “Liu
Ping,” as quoted in Liu, “Raishin shinko,” 4–5).
21. Shenxian ganyu zhuan 1.3a–4a.
22. See Yijian zhi 487–488.
23. Here I follow Matsumoto Koichi, whose early article on Thunder Magic is
still the best introduction to the subject.
24. For confirmation of this point in the Song, see Yijian zhi 71, 504, 633, 638,
732–733, 1447–1448, 1449.
25. See Miyakawa Hisayuki, “Rin Reiso to So no Kiso,” Tokai daigaku kiyo: Bungaku-
bu 24 (1975), 18; Michel Strickmann, “The Longest Taoist Scripture,” His-
tory of Religions 17 (1978), 331–354.
26. Shenxiao jinhuo tianding dafa is found in chapters 198–205 of the Daofa huiyuan
(HY 1210). For the identity of Liu Yu, see Judith Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Lit-
erature, 206, note 59. Lu Ye, otherwise known as Lu Boshan, may have played
the most important role as a textual transmitter. He is mentioned in con-
nection with the transmission of other exorcistic traditions, including the Taiyi
huo leifu Zhu jiang jun kaofu dafa (Daofa huiyuan 227), the Diqi fa (Daofa huiyuan
253), and the Beiyin fengdu taixuan zhimo heilu lingshu (Daofa huiyuan 265).
27. Wushang jiuxiao yuqing dafan zuwei xiandu leiting yujing (HY 15). Undated, but
attested in the early thirteenth century, this is one of the central texts of Shen-
xiao. Here the “Master of the Thunderclap” is identified with none other than
the Most High Monarch of Everlasting Life, Perfect King of Jade Purity of
the Divine Empyrean. The text seems intent on distinguishing this deity from
the one of the same name of which Huizong claimed to be an incarnation,
intent on integrating the overblown claims for Shenxiao within traditional
Daoist cosmology. In the Lin/Huizong scheme, the Monarch of Everlasting
Life was the eldest son of the Jade Emperor, the Divine Empyrean over which
he ruled was the highest Daoist heaven, and the teaching of Shenxiao was
the highest Dao, above even that associated with the Celestial Venerable of
Primordial Commencement (Yuanshi tianzun). In the present text, the
Monarch of Everlasting Life is the ninth son of Fuli yuanshi tianzun and Yuch-
Notes to Pages 27–30 251

ing shenmu yuanjun and the younger brother of Yuqing yuanshi tianzun (i.e.,
the Celestial Venerable of Primordial Commencement).
28. Gaoshang shenxiao yuching zhenwang zishu da fa (HY 1209).
29. Lishi zhenxian tidao tong jian xubian (HY 296) 53.1b–2a.
30. Ibid., 53.4b–5a.
31. Included in Daofa huiyuan 198.
32. I therefore find it difficult to accept the preference of Paul Katz “to treat the
Divine Empyrean movement as a local ritual tradition.” See his discussion in
Katz, Demon Hordes and Burning Boats: The Cult of Marshal Wen in Late Imperial
Chekiang (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 32–38 and
146–147.
33. Yijian zhi 487.
34. Ibid., 1049.
35. Ibid., 832.
36. See Yu Ji, Daoyuan xue gu lu 25.15a–18b, “Linghui zhongxu tongmiao zhen-
jun Wang Shizhen ji” (reprint ed., Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1937,
423–426.)
37. For the rather laconic biography of this legendary(?) figure, see Lishi zhen-
xian tidao tong jian xubian 5.10a–b.
38. Daofa huiyuan (HY 1210) 56, “Shangqing yufu wulei dafa yushu lingwen,”
1a–3b; 61, “Gaoshang Shenxiao yushu zhankan wulei dafa,” 1a–2a; 67, “Lei-
ting xuanlun,” 21a–25a; 69, “ Wang Shichen [= Wang Wenqing] qidao ba-
duan jin”; 70, “Xuanzhu ge,” 1a.
39. Daomen shigui (HY 1222) 11a.
40. Miyakawa Hisayuki, “Nanso no doshi Haku Gyokusen no jiseki,” in Uchida
Gimpu Hakushi shoju kinen toyoshi ronshu (Kyoto, Dohosha, 1978), 499–517;
Judith Berling, “Channels of Connection in Sung Religion: The Case of Pai
Yü-ch’an,” in Patricia Ebrey and Peter Gregory, eds., Religion and Society in
T’ang and Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993), 307–333;
and especially Lowell Skar, “Administering Thunder.”
41. See Xiuzhen shishu (HY 263) 47.10b.
42. Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji 5.13.
43. See, for example, Bo’s commentary to The Precious Scripture of the Jade Pivot in
Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji 7.1–22.
44. See Qingwei xianpu (HY 171) preface; Lishi zhenxian tidao tong jian xubian
5.9a–10a; and especially Daomen shigui (HY 1222) 11a.
45. Lishi zhenxian tidao tong jian xubian 5.11a–b.
46. Daofa huiyuan 111, 146, 188, 246.
47. For brief introductions to this compendium, see Piet van der Loon, “A Taoist
252 Notes to Pages 30–32

Collection of the Fourteenth Century,” in Wolfgang Bauer, ed., Studia Sino-

Mongolica, Festschrift für Herbert Franke (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1979),
401–405, and Judith Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature, 47–49. Several schol-
ars have suggested that the Qingwei lineage, and particularly Zhao Yizhen
and/or several of his students, were primarily responsible for this collection.
For the arguments, see Piet van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries of the
Sung Period: A Critical Study and Index (London: Ithaca Press, 1984), 63, note
50; Judith Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature, 47; and especially Kristofer Schip-
per, “Master Chao I-chen (?–1382) and the Ch’ing-wei School of Taoism,”
in Akizuki Kan’ei, ed., Dokyo to shukkyo bunka (Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppan,
1987), 720–719 (from the back).
48. For analysis of the cult to one such deity, see Barend J. ter Haar, “The Rise
of the Guan Yu Cult: The Taoist Connection,” in Jan A. M. De Meyer and Pe-
ter M. Engelfriet, eds., Linked Faiths: Essays on Chinese Religions and Traditional
Culture in Honour of Kristofer Schipper (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), 184–204 (esp.
199–202). For others, see Edward L. Davis, “Arms and the Tao, 1: Hero Cult
and Empire in Traditional China,” Sodai no shakai to shukyo: Sodai-shi kenkyukai
kenyu hokoku, 2 (Tokyo: Kyuko sho’in,1985), 1–56, and idem, “Arms and the
Dao, 2: The Xu Brothers in Tea Country,” forthcoming in Livia Kohn and
Harold Roth, eds., Daoist Identity in Practice (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i
Press, 2001); and the essays by Kleeman and Hansen in Ebrey and Gregory,
eds., Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 1993), 45–113. More generally, see now Lowell Skar, “Ritual
Movement, Deity Cults and the Transformation of Daoism in Song and Yuan
Times,” in Livia Kohn, ed., Handbook of Daoism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000).
49. Strickmann, “The Taoist Renaissance of the Twelfth Century,” 7.
50. A more fundamental criticism of Strickmann’s “shift” awaits elaboration. It
is by no means certain that those who specialized in Highest Purity (Shang-
qing) scriptures and practices, exclusive of Tao Hong jing (456–536), ever
formed a discrete entity that was separate from and/or dominant over the
Celestial Master organization. Many, if not most, of the prominent transmit-
ters of Shangqing scriptures in the Tang were Celestial Master Daoists (see
Kobayashi, Chugoku no Dokyo, 284–295). T. H. Barrett, Taoism Under the T’ang:
Religion and Empire During the Golden Age of Chinese History (London: Wellsweep,
1996), sheds little light on this issue.
51. See, for example, Sandong xiudao yi (HY 1227), passim.
52. Valerie Hansen argues that the rise of these lay exorcists, or “uneducated prati-
tioners” as she calls them, in the twelfth century was prompted by “doctrinal
changes and the suspension of government-administered examinations for
Notes to Pages 33–34 253

Buddhists and Daoists” (see her Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127–1276,
43). Her argument seems to be that with the eventual abolition in the South-
ern Song of examinations as the means for receiving official certification as
a Buddhist monk or Daoist priest, and with the sale of ordination certificates,
those who could not obtain these certificates—either because their number
was limited or because they couldn’t afford one —were forced to become lay
practitioners. I find this argument difficult to accept. The rise of “lay exor-
cists” or “uneducated practitioners” had nothing to do with what the gov-
ernment did or did not do with respect to certifying examinations, though
the growing and successful practice of an uneducated or lay exorcist might
lead him to buy a certficate (see Yijian zhi 989).
53. Christine Mollier, Une apocalypse taoïste du Ve siècle: Le livre des incantations di-
vines des grottes abyssales (Paris: Mémoires de L’Institut des Hautes Études Chi-
noises 31, 1990).
54. See ibid., 44–46, for Mollier’s arguments against the view that the use here
of the term “Three Caverns” refers to the divisions of the Daoist canon.
55. Christine Mollier, “La Méthode de l’empereur du Nord du Mont Fengdu:
Une tradition exorciste du taoïsme médiévale,” T’oung Pao 83, 4–5 (1997),
329–385.
56. Mollier, Une apocalypse taoïste, 86.
57. See, for example, Shizutani Masao, “Hoshi (dharma–bhanaka) ni tsuite,” In-
dogaku bukkyogaku kenkyu 3.1 (1954), 131–132, and idem, “Daijokyodan no
seiritsu, 1,” Bukkyo shigaku 13.3 (1967), 17–44; and Hirakawa Akira, Shoki daijo
bukkyo no kenkyu (Kyoto: Shunjusha, 1968).
58. Kristofer Schipper, “Taoist Ordination Ranks in the Dunhuang Manuscripts,”
in Gert Naundorf et al., eds., Religion und Philosophie in Ostasien: Festschrift für
Hans Steininger zum 65: Geburtstag (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann,
1985), 127–148 (esp. 140).
59. We may trace this influence already on Ye Jingneng, a prototype of the Song
Daoist Ritual Master, who lived during the first half of the eighth century.
His biography, preserved in a Dunhuang manuscript (Stein 6836, translated
by Arthur Waley, Ballads and Stories from Tun-Huang [London: George Allen
& Unwin, 1960], 124–144, and more recently by Alfredo Cadonna, Il Taoista
di sua Maesta [Venezia: Cafoscarina, 1984]), is, however, a product of the ninth
or tenth century. Ye was an acolyte of the Huiji Abbey in Zhejiang. At age
twenty he became a Daoist monk, but it was not as a monk that he built his
career. Through the intermediary of an unnamed spirit, the god Indra,
Monarch of the Daluo Heaven, conferred upon Ye a book of talismans ( fuben)
that allowed him to control all the demons, spirits, and sprites listed therein.
254 Notes to Pages 34–35

Ye set out for Chang’an to make his name as an exorcist and thaumaturge.
After his arrival in the capital, Ye Jingneng was invited by a commoner named
Kang Taiqing to cure his adolescent daughter, who had been possessed by a
fox-spirit. (Cadonna points out, following Pulleyblank, that the name “Kang”
suggests a person of Sogdian origin. It was derived from the Sogdian “Rwxsn,”
the name also of An Lushan [Middle Chinese: Lukshan]. “Rwxsn,” by the
way, meaning “light,” is the origin of the English name Roxanne.) Ye grasped
a sword, cut the girl into three sections, and placed her remains under a piece
of matting that was then nailed to the floor. After considerable hysteria on
the part of her family and the arrival of the chief of police, the matting was
finally removed to reveal the girl unharmed and a fox-spirit lying next to her,
cut into three pieces.
This rather dramatic piece of exorcistic theater represents a fictional lit-
eralization of the kind of exorcistic practices being performed at precisely
the same time not by Daoist priests but by Tantric monks. In the case of a
particularly persistent case of demonic illness, an eighth-century Tantric text
composed in China advises the practicant, the “Master of the Spell” (chizhou
ren), to have the patient sit down in the middle of a ritual space that has
been constructed out of mud. Next, the practicant makes an effigy or rep-
resentation of the patient out of rice flour and recites the Noose Dharani
while calling out the patient’s name. Finally, he grasps a sword and cuts the
effigy of the patient into several pieces. Hearing and witnessing all this, the
patient will become terrified, and the demon departs, never to return. (See
Bukong juansuo tuoluoni Zizai wang zhou jing [T. 1097], 426c, translated by
Bao Siwei [Skt. Ratnacinta], a Kashmiri monk who arrived in Luoyang in 693.
This comparison was first made by Ogawa Yoichi, “Dokyo setsuwa,” in Tonkoto
chugoko dokyo [Tokyo: Tokyo Shuppansha, 1983], 301–302.) Ye Jingneng’s
book of talismans and spells, we recall, was conferred on him by a Vedic god,
and Ye himself was venerated after his death by the popular devotees of a
therapeutic cult who invoked and summoned him along with various Tantric
and Buddhist divinities (see Stein 2615 and Ogawa Yichi, “Dokyo setsuwa,”
300–301).
60. See Miyakawa Hisayuki, “So no kiso to dokyo,” in Tokai daigaku kiyo: Bungakubu
23 (1975), 34.
61. Zizhi tong jian changbian jishi benmo (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1967), 127,
“Daoxue,” 6a.
62. For Wang Laozhi, Wang Zixi, and still others, see Jin Zhongshu, “Lun Bei
Song monian zhi chongshang daojiao,” in Songshi yanjiu ji 7 (Taibei: Taiwan
shuju, 1974), 297–302; and Miyakawa Hisayuki, “So no kiso to dokyo,” 45.
Notes to Pages 35–38 255

63. See Strickmann, “The Longest Taoist Scripture,” 331–354 (esp. 342–344).
64. Piet van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Period, 44.
65. Ibid., 58–59.
66. Ibid., 42, note 49.
67. See note 27.
68. These massive compilations of classical liturgy produced by the Ritual Ser-
vice include a Daguan lishu in 231 juan; a continuation (xubian) of the pre-
vious in 497 juan, renamed the Wuli xini; a Jifu zhidu in 16 juan; a Jifu tu; and
a Zhenghe wuli xini in 226 juan with prefaces.
69. Piet van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Period, 39.
70. Strickmann, “The Longest Daoist Scripture,” 349. (See 346–350 for more
on Huizong’s anti-Buddhist policies.)
71. Zizhi tong jian changbian jishi benmo 127, “Daoxue,” 5a. The restoration of this
“ancient and happy unity” also undergirds Huizong’s reform of the exami-
nation system. Huizong established Daoist schools in 1116, and two years later
these became part of the public school system envisioned by Wang Anshi as
a substitute for the civil service examinations and partially implemented by
Shenzong. The curriculum of these Daoist schools was divided between Dao-
ism (which initially included the Huangdi neipian, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Liezi, Kang
Sangzi, and Wenzi, but later dropped the first, leaving the five Daoist classics
established by Tang Xuanzong) and Confucianism (which included the Yi-
jing and Mencius.) In 1118, the Shenji jing—a work of medical prescriptions
and Daoist talismans—as well as the Laozi became required reading in all pub-
lic schools. For this and much more, see Chao Shih-yi, “Daoist Examinations
and Daoist Schools during the Northern Song Dynasty” (unpublished paper,
UCLA, 1995).
72. Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao (HY 1217) 4.1a, for example, states that
the nine Tianxin talismans that were collected under the rubric of the “Spinal
Numinous Writ” also derived from Zhang Daoling, while Zhang himself was
divinized in the Tianxin pantheon as the Commissioner of the Department
of Exorcism (1.2b; 2.6a); by the Southern Song, the Shangqing beiji Tianxin
zhengfa (HY 567), 1a quotes the thirtieth Celestial Master to the effect that
the Rites of Tianxin had descended from Heaven and were transmitted to
Zhang Daoling on Mount Guming in Sichuan.
73. See Wushang jiuxiao yuqing dafan zuwei xiandu leiting yujing (HY 15), 15a; Jiu-
tian yingyuan leisheng puhua tianzun yushu baojing (HY 16), 4b.
74. See Daofa huiyuan 227, “Taiyi xilei Zhu jiangzhun kaofu dafa,” 2b; Daofa
huiyuan 253, “Diqi fa,” 3a.
75. Lishi zhenxian tidao tong jian xubian 19.16b.
256 Notes to Pages 38–46

76. Yuanshi 202.8a.

77. For an analysis of one such exorcistic text in this way, see Chapter 6, note 14.
78. Shangqing lingbao dafa (HY 1213), 10.9a–b.
79. Ibid., 10.11a.
80. For an analysis of these anecdotes, see Chapter 3, note 55.
81. See Lishi zhenxian tidao tong jian xubian 18.8b–9a and Han Tianshi shijia (HY
1451), 2.3b–4a.
82. Michel Strickmann, “Magical Medicine: Therapeutic Rituals in Medieval
China” (unpublished ms., 1987; to be published as Chinese Magical Medicine,
Stanford University Press, 2001), 1. See also his “Therapeutische Rituale und
das Problem des Bösen im frühen Daoismus,” in G. Naundorf, ed., Religion
und Philosophie in Ostasien (1985), 185–200, which presents some of the ideas
explored more fully in “Magical Medicine.”
83. Santian neijie jing (HY 1169), 1.6b, quoted in Kobayashi Masayoshi, “The Ce-
lestial Masters under the Eastern Jin and Liu-Song Dynasties,” Taoist Resources
3.2 (May 1992), 24.
84. For the details of all this, see Strickmann, “Magical Medicine,” 8–13.
85. Nüqing guilü (HY 789).
86. I realize that there is a tension in The Demon Statutes of Nüqing between what
Peter Nickerson has called the moral and magical traditions of therapy, but
with the exception of a single, highly circumstantial reference to exorcism
(2.5b–6a: zhigui fa), the text gives no account of the actual therapeutic process.
This must be inferred from the text as a whole.
87. See Chapter 2, “The Rites of the Celestial Heart.”
88. Daofa huiyuan 151–152, “Taishang hundong chiwen nüqing zhaoshu tianlu,”
and 167, “Taixuan fengdu heilü yige.”
89. See Chapter 5, “The Daoist Rite of Summoning for Investigation.”
90. See Edward L. Davis, “ Women and Psychosomatic Illness in the Song,” pa-
per presented at the Triangle East Asia Colloquium, Durham, North Carolina,
Feb. 27, 1999.
91. Strickmann, “Magical Medicine,” 19–24.

Chapter 3: Therapeutic Movements in the Song: Practitioners

1. Yijian zhi 1458.
2. Ibid., 804–805.
3. Ibid., 1457–1458.
4. Ibid., 1751–1752.
5. Ibid., 54–55.
Notes to Pages 47–52 257

6. Ibid., 1180–1181. Kristofer Schipper has rendered this sentence differently,

and I suspect that he has brought his understanding of contemporary
nomenclature to bear too heavily upon the Song material: “But he was not
a daoshi; hence this appellation (of fashi).” See his “Vernacular and Classi-
cal Ritual in Taoism,” Journal of Asian Studies 45.1 (Nov. 1985), 37.
7. Yijian zhi 603: “Mei xiangshe zhu xi zuo yagu shi, ze wei daoshi; gu mu wei
Hu daoshi.”
8. The identification of exorcistic practices of certain Ritual Masters with
Maoshan is also found in present-day Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Taiwan. For
a discussion of this phenomenon, see John Lagerwey, “Introduction,” in Fang
Xuejia, ed., Meizhou Heyuan diqi di cunluo wenhua, vol. 5,Traditional Hakka So-
ciety Series, [Link] Lagerwey (Hong Kong: EFEO, Overseas Chinese Archives
of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1977), 1–48, especially “Conclud-
ing Remarks.”
9. Yijian zhi 1429–1430.
10. For a discussion of these eighth- or ninth-century texts, see Chapter 6.
11. See Chapter 6, note 50.
12. Yijian zhi 1101.
13. One may choose to dismiss this ending as generic moralizing, but one should
remember that the form of the ending itself derives its power from the very
real way in which biological death might follow upon the literal or internal-
ized social isolation that results from the breaking of communal or religious
norms.
14. I must respectfully disagree with Professor Schipper’s interpretation of
Wang’s punishment, which he describes as a result of his “wearing the stel-
lar crown and ritual vestments without being a daoshi” (Schipper, “Vernac-
ular and Classical Ritual,” 37). Clearly, such was not Wang’s transgression,
nor is there any indication that Wang’s clerical attire was anything more than
a social presumption. This is not to say that a Daoist priest might not have
seen things differently, even if the gods didn’t. Valerie Hansen believes that
because Wang relied on another to prepare the written documents, Wang
was himself illiterate (see Hansen, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 46). This
seems probable, though the possibility that there was simply a division of la-
bor here must be kept in mind.
15. Hansen, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 41.
16. See the Appendix to the present volume.
17. See above and Kristofer Schipper, “Taoist Ordination Ranks,” 139–141.
18. See Yijian zhi 1456 for a Tianxin fashi; 797, for a Hunyuan fashi; 1356–1357,
for a Tianxin zhengfa Wu daoshi; 1717, for “a fashi of the Tianqing Abbey”
258 Notes to Pages 52–54

(Tianqing guan yi fashi ), who must have been a Daoist priest; 1755–1756,
for “Liu Shouzhen, the fashi of the Zhengyi Palace” (Zhengyi gong fashi Liu
Shouzhen), who practices the “Rectifying Rites of the Five Thunder [Gods] of
the Celestial Heart of the Most High” (Taishang Tianxin wulei zhengfa), and
who must also have been a Daoist priest; 1198–1199, for “the Daoist priest
of Maoshan, Liu fashi ” (Maoshan daoshi Liu fashi ); 1342, for a notary (qian-
pan) who invites a “Daoist priest who practices rites” (xingfa daoshi ), which I
take to indicate a daoshi acting as a fashi.
19. Yijian zhi, 311–312.
20. Ibid., 1461; 1140.
21. Ibid., 1096.
22. Ibid., 1252–1253. For Ucchu3ma and his relation to lay exorcists, Buddhist
and Daoist, see Chapter 6, “The Rites of Ucchu3ma” and subsequent sec-
tions.
23. Ibid., 364–367. For more on Xue Jixuan, see Winston Lo, The Life and Thought
of Yeh Shih (Shatin N. T. : The Press of the Chinese University of Hong Kong,
1974), 43–44.
24. Lo, The Life and Thought of Yeh Shih, 308. See also Yijian zhi 695 for Muxia
sanlang.
25. If the fashi emerged in a mediating position between the Daoist priest and
the spirit-medium, then he also shared this plane with a series of lay religious
practitioners variously identified as fangshi, shushi, buzhe, xiangshi, and daoren.
Where the fashi has been seen primarily as an expert in exorcism, the others
were experts in various arts of ancient derivation. The source material is too
extensive and complex to adequately treat these practitioners here. The
shushi, or “occultist,” appears to have been primarily a geomancer whose ser-
vices were sought most often with respect to burial. Geomancy, however, by
no means exhausted the techniques (shu) in which someone designated by
this term might specialize. The buzhe and xiangshi were diviners and phys-
iognomists, respectively. The term “daoren” is less amenable to such limiting
definitions. It denotes a class of individuals who, to a greater or lesser degree,
had retreated from social life to pursue various arts of longevity, enlighten-
ment, or self-improvement. The term might be applied to some Daoist priests
and even immortals, but also to those who chose a Buddhist path. “Holy man”
might be an adequate translation. Yet, as if to confirm the plane they shared
with the fashi, or at least an elasticity of nomenclature, we find a daoren who
called himself “He fashi ” (Yijian zhi 1697–1698), another who specialized in
the Rites of the Five Thunders (ibid., 1315–1316), and still another whose
speciality was the Rites of the Celestial Heart (ibid., 1422–1424). The Rites
Notes to Pages 54–59 259

of Tianxin, moreover, found devotees among “occultists” (ibid., 1327), and

there were fangshi who were also called fashi.
26. See Yijian zhi 582.
27. Ibid., 1049.
28. Ibid., 65–66.
29. Ibid., 487–488.
30. Ibid., 832–833.
31. Ibid., 582–583.
32. Ibid., 232.
33. For Hong Mai’s assessment of conflicting accounts of Shizhong’s relation to
Lu Quan, see ibid., 479 and 684–685.
34. Ibid., 479.
35. Wushang xuanyuan santianwang yudang dafa.
36. Poul Andersen, “Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions,” 97–101.
37. Ibid., 100.
38. Yijian zhi 237.
39. Ibid., 1594.
40. Ibid., 1362–1363.
41. Ibid., 237–239.
42. Ibid., 684–685.
43. Ibid., 1362.
44. Ibid., 866–867.
45. Ibid., 1089–1091. For the translation and analysis of this anecdote, see Chap-
ter 7, “Confucian Literati and Child-Mediums.”
46. Yijian zhi, 244.
47. Ibid., 837–838.
48. Ibid., 347.
49. Ibid., 1191.
50. Ibid., 235–236. See also 504, where Zhao performs a Yellow Register Retreat;
111–112, where a Daoist priest employs the “Talismanic Register of the Six
Ding Spirits of the Celestial Heart” (Tianxin liuding fulu) in an exorcism; and
313, where a commoner serves the Six Jia and Six Ding spirits and is peti-
tioned by someone to exorcize a dragon-spirit that is capsizing boats on the
Wusong River.
51. Ibid., 653–654.
52. Ibid., 846. For a summary and analysis of this anecdote, see Chapter 7, “Daoist
Priests and Child-Mediums” (under the subsection “In an Official Compound
in Jiangsu”).
53. Yijian zhi, 419–420.
260 Notes to Pages 59–59

54. Ibid., 949–950.

55. Liu Zhugan from Hengzhou acquired the “Sublime Arts of Bajing” (Bajing
miaoshu) and the “Rectifying Rites of the Celestial Heart” while a student in
the capital, and went on to cure a man possessed by a wutong spirit after nu-
merous mediums had failed (Yijian zhi 1484–1486); also in Hengzhou, a lit-
eratus ( junshi ) named Xu Zhuzhan practiced the “Rites of the Great Cav-
ern” (dadong fa) and exorcized a woman possessed on the eve of her marriage
by placing a talisman in the stove and another in her mouth (ibid., 1191–1192);
in Yugan, a literatus (xiangshi ) practiced Thunder Magic (leibu fa) and there-
by disposed of a demon first identified by a Daoist priest (ibid., 1435–1436);
and in Chuzhou, another literatus (shiren), Ye Sheng, who had traveled to
Hangzhou to study at the Imperial University, received the “Ritual Registers
of the Divine Empyrean” (shenxiao falu) and performed exorcisms for com-
moners, among others (ibid., 1489–1490 and 1493–1494).
I should mention parenthetically, however, that the older lineages of Dao-
ism at Maoshan and Longhushan also still found a following among the elite.
Hong Xingzu, the uncle of Hong Mai and author of an influential com-
mentary on the Songs of Chu, became an initiate on Maoshan while acting as
a provincial judge (ibid., 91–92). The son of an official whose brothers had
all passed the jinshi examination personally received the “Register of High-
est Purity” on Maoshan from its twenty-fifth patriarch, Liu Hunkang (ibid.,
565), and officials both civil and military were also promoting and attend-
ing Daoist “offerings” on Maoshan (ibid., 330; 1197).
The Celestial Master sect seems to have attracted a much wider social
audience. While those who received the exorcistic services of the Celestial
Master himself or his priests on Longhushan were primarily courtiers and
ministers (ibid., 1438–1439; 1102–1103), laymen or commoners were often
favored with registers and spells (ibid., 406–407; 596–597; 674). In the
process of appropriating the new therapeutic rites of the Song, the Celestial
Master became the premier exorcist of all, and some twelfth-century demons
declared that they were not afraid of anyone but him (ibid., 328–330). En-
tire communities might turn to him in particularly desperate situations. Dur-
ing the Zhenghe reign period (1111–1118), in the administrative city of
Tongzhou, a demon had so devastated its residents, both official and com-
moner, that no bureaucrat would knowingly take up his post. It required an
edict from the emperor Huizong himself to bring the Celestial Master Zhang
Xuqing to this town, and in a dramatic and truly frightening piece of exorcistic
theater, the Celestial Master constructed a five-tiered altar and placed the
clerks of the yamen on top of it to act as bait (ibid., 1098–1100).
Notes to Pages 59–60 261

56. Ibid., 568. See also 320–321, where Song Ankuo was invited to exorcize the
daughter of another official and employed a bamboo pole held by a small
boy as a demonic conduit.
57. Ibid., 1070–1071. Cheng passed his technique on to Liu Dayong, a famous
doctor about whom we have several anecdotes (1072–1073, 1116–1117,
1117–1118). See also 1245, for another magistrate who sets up a Daoist “of-
fering” to rid his community of snakes.
58. Ibid., 745.
59. Ibid., 830.
60. Ibid., 853.
61. See below. For other examples of local functionaries, spirit-mediums, or land-
lords who advise officials to respect customary sacrifices at local temples, see
Yijian zhi 217–218, 945–946, and so forth.
62. Ibid., 995.
63. Based on a close reading of several stories in the Taiping guang ji, Jean Levi
has shown how, in the Six Dynasties and Tang periods, the magistrate’s mis-
sion to civilize or reform local customs and to transform the physical land-
scape for productive use often took the form of a personal confrontation with
local gods and their servants—spirit-mediums, or sorcerers, as he calls them
( Jean Levi, “Les fonctionnaires et le divin: Luttes de pouvoirs entre divinités
et administrateurs dans les contes des Six Dynasties et des Tang,” Cahiers
d’Extrême-Asie 2 [1986], 81–106; see also his “Les Fonctions religieuses de la
bureaucratie céleste,” L’Homme 101 [1987], 27 [1]: 35–37). In this con-
frontation, the magistrate adopted the profile of an exorcist: in some cases
he would function as a kind of double of the local god; in others he would
be put in the position of the sacrificial substitute, an archaic role once as-
sumed by the spirit-medium himself; in still other cases, the magistrate him-
self might be honored with a cult that would replace the one he had suc-
cessfully eradicated. (For some of these themes, see also David Johnson, “The
City-God Cults of T’ang and Sung China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
45:2 [Dec. 1985]: 363–457.)
For the historian, the endless play of thematic substitutions here manages
to finesse the complex reality of the spirit-medium’s position and functions
in Tang society, and gives a false impression of the infrequency with which
the magistrate’s civilizing mission might be seriously contested in that soci-
ety. In the subprefecture of Shanshi, for example, a spirit-medium, a monk,
and even the local earth-spirit all found common cause in the successful de-
fense of a rural cult against the depredations of an outgoing magistrate.
The magistrate was lectured on the necessity of upholding local customs
262 Notes to Pages 61–63

and criticized in precisely the same language with which officials criticized
local cults for being licentious and perverse. This lesson was not lost on
the magistrate’s successor, who personally honored the altar and thereby
quickly won over even the urban population (Taiping guang ji, 2433.) Still,
Levi’s subtle analysis is important for drawing attention here and there to
the parallel function of the Confucian magistrate and Daoist priest in con-
trolling forces of anarchy, both natural and supernatural (which often
amount to the same thing). And in particular, he demonstrates how the
official proclamations ( jiao, zhao, and xi ) of the magistrate work on the gods
in precisely the same manner as the talismans ( fu) and invocations (zhou)
of the Daoist.
64. See Daofa huiyuan 56, preface; 158, second preface; Qingwei shenlie bifa (HY
222), shang; Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji, 2; and so forth.
65. See, now, Judith Boltz, “Not by the Seal of Office Alone: New Weapons in Bat-
tles with the Supernatural,” in Ebrey and Gregory, eds., Religion and Society
in T’ang and Sung China (1993), esp. 269–283.
66. Nakamura Jihei, “Todai no fu,” Shien 105–106 (August 1971), 61–92.
67. Nakamura Jihei, “Godai ni okeru fu,” Toyo Bunka 55 (March 1975), 1–14.
68. Ibid., 10–11. This account, written on a stone tablet, is preserved in the Qing
gazetteer, Zhangqiu xian zhi 14, “Jinshi lu.”
69. Nakamura Jihei, “Godai ni okeru fu,” 4–6; Makita Tairyo, Godai shukkyoshi
kenkyu (Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1971), passim.
70. Nakamura Jihei, “Hokusocho to fu” Chuo daigaku kiyo; Bungakubu shigakka 88
(1978), 63–78, and “Sodai no fu no tokucho” Chuo daigaku kiyo ; Bungakubu
shigakka 104 (1982), 51–75.
71. Nakamura, “Hokusocho to fu,” 69.
72. Ibid., 74.
73. Kanai Noriyuki, “Sodai no sonsha to bukkyo,” Bukkyo shigaku kenkyu 18.2
(1976), 38.
74. See Sawada Mizuho, Chugoku no juho (Tokyo: Hirakawa, 1984), 290–304 and
305–310.
75. See Sawada Mizuho, Chugoku no minkan shinko (Tokyo: Kosakusha, 1982),
332–373.
76. See Chikusa Masa’aki, Chugoku bukkyo shakai shi kenkyu (Tokyo: Dohosha,
1982), 199–227.
77. Song huiyao jigao 20.14.
78. See Ursula Angelika Cedzich, “ Wu-Tong: Zur bewegten Geschichte eines
Kultes,” in Gert Naundorf, ed., Religion und Philosophie in Ostasien (Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 1985), esp. 44–46.
Notes to Pages 64–71 263

79. Chunxi Sanshan zhi 8.21a–22a (esp. 21b, lines 8–9) and 8.22b–23a (esp. 22b,
lines 2–6); Zhi-zheng Jinling xinzhi 11.16b–17a; Xiandun Lin’an zhi 71.13a–14a.
80. Yijian zhi 1074–1075.
81. Ibid., 1235–1236. See also 1437 for another anecdote about this temple.
82. Ibid., 1084–1085.
83. Ibid., 1034.
84. Liangxi manzhi, Fei Gun, 10.9b–10a.
85. Yijian zhi 780.
86. Ibid., 782.
87. Ibid., 585.

Chapter 4: The Cult of the Black Killer

1. This and the following three paragraphs are based on the texts collected by
Sun Kekuan, Song Yuan daojiao zhi fazhan (Taizhong: Donghai University,
1965), 71–93; Michel Soymié, Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études,
IVe Section (1975–1976), 997–1002, and (1976–1977), 1027–1034; and
Suzanne Cahill, “Taoism at the Sung Court: The Heavenly Text Affair of
1008,” Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies 16 (1980), 23–44.
2. See Songchao shishi 7, “ Wang Jie.”
3. Soymié, Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études (1976–1977), 10–33. At
the end of the Northern Song, the emperor Huizong , as we have seen, would
exploit the religious culture of another southerner to make claims for him-
self and his dynasty that exceeded even those of his predecessors.
4. Yunji qiqian 103.10b.
5. Ibid., 103.10b.
6. Yisheng baode zhuan (HY 1275). Zhenzong’s preface to this work is wrongly
attributed to his successor, Emperor Renzong. An earlier version, however,
is preserved in chapter 103 of the Daoist encyclopedia Yunji qiqian (HY 1026),
compiled by Zhang Junfang around 1028. It is this version to which I refer.
7. Yunji qiqian 103.2b–3a.
8. Ibid., 103.3b. The Tower Abbey in the Zhongnan mountains marked the holy
site where Laozi had revealed The Scripture of the Way and Its Power (Daodejing)
to the Guardian of the Pass Yin Xi. This tradition has been traced to a fifth-
century priest of the Tower Abbey, Yin Tong (398–499), who also claimed
descent from Yin Xi. The putative ancestry of the priests of the Tower Abbey
was strengthened in the Tang when its abbot, Yin Wencao (622–688), fur-
ther identified Laozi’s mother as the daughter of the Yin family of Tianshui,
Gansu—the family residence of Yin Wencao himself. Moreover, because of
264 Notes to Pages 71–72

the Tang dynasty’s own claim of descent from Laozi, the emperor Gaozu re-
built the Tower Abbey and renamed it the “Abbey of the Holy Ancestor.” In
679, in fact, Yin Wencao performed an “offering” ( jiao) in which Laozi him-
self descended before the imperial court, resulting in a commission to write
a new hagiography of Laozi (i.e., The Holy Record of the Emperor of the Mysteri-
ous Prime). The Daoist lineage of Tower Abbey took Laozi as its high god, with
Yin Xi as its “Ancestral Patriarch” and Yin Gui as its “High Transcendent.”
While religious practice focused on the soteriological value of the Daodejing,
the Tower Abbey Daoists also situated themselves within the reformed prac-
tices of Kou Qianzhi’s northern Celestial Masters and absorbed alchemical
and other practices associated with the southern traditions of Shangqing and
Lingbao. All this had already occurred by the fifth and sixth centuries.
In the Tang, the emphasis on genealogy so characteristic of the elite and
the ruling house seems just as crucial to the priests of Tower Abbey as to the
successful effort of the Zhang family in Jiangxi to reconstitute the Celestial
Master lineage on Longhushan. A comparison of these genealogies is in-
structive. The latter’s seems distinctly patriarchal and characteristic of a lin-
eage of married priests who claim direct descent from the Han founder of Ce-
lestial Master Daoism, Zhang Daoling. The lineage of the Tower Abbey priests,
in contrast, was based on an entirely different principle. These priests are re-
lated to Laozi through his mother, who is believed to have conceived Laozi
without the benefit of a male phallus. And even the abbot Yin Wencao’s own
birth was said to be the result of an exchange between Laozi’s mother and
his own, again excluding the phallus. This way of figuring descent seems char-
acteristic of a lineage of unmarried priests who seek to exclude male desire in
pursuit of a feminine (mystical) enjoyment. For the history of the Tower
Abbey before the Song, see now Otagi Hajime, “Todai rokan ko,” in Yoshi-
kawa Tadao, Chugoku kodokyo shi kenkyu (Kyoto: Dohosha, 1992), 275–322;
and Livia Kohn, “ Yin Xi: The Master at the Beginning of the Scripture,” Jour-
nal of Chinese Religions 25 (1997), 83–139, and idem, “The Northern Celes-
tial Masters,” in Kohn, ed., Handbook of Daoism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000).
For a biography of Liang Quan, who died in 978, see Zhongnan shan Shuo-
jingtai lidai zhenxian beiji (HY 955), 17a–b.
9. Yunji qiqian 103.3b–5a.
10. Ibid., 103.5b: “ Wu jianglai yunzhi Taiping jun Songchao di’er zhu.”
11. Ibid., 103.5b–6a.
12. Ibid., 103.6b.
13. For these rumors and the problem of imperial succession, see Chikusa
Masa’aki, So-no Taiso to Taiso (Tokyo: Shimizu sho’in, 1975), 134–147.
Notes to Pages 72–76 265

14. Yunji qiqian 103.6b. For the Qionglin yuan, see Zhou Cheng, ed., Song
Dong jing kao (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988), 193.
15. Yunji qiqian 103.6b–7b.
16. Jinshi cuibian 125.19a–25b, “Shangqing taiping gong zhong ji.”
17. See note 8 above. For this suggestion, see Otagi Hajime, “So Taiso satsugai-
setsu to joshintaiheikan,” Shirin (1984), 70–73.
18. See Yamauchi Koichi, “Hokuso no kokka to gyokko,” Tohogaku 62 (1981),
83–97.
19. Yunji qiqian 103.9a.
20. Xu Zizhi tong jian changbian, entry dated tenth month, ninth year of Kaibao
(976).
21. Huangchao shishi leiyuan 44. 9a.
22. Ibid., 44.9b.
23. Su Shi, Sushi shizhi (Beijing: Zhunghua shuju, 1982), 3.
24. Daofa huiyuan 156, “Shangqing fumo tianpeng dafa,” 3b.
25. Marc Kalinowski, Cosmologie et divination dans la Chine ancienne: Le compendium
des cinq agents (Wuxing dayi, VIe Siècle), (Paris: École Française d’Extrême Ori-
ent, 1991), 384–387.
26. Ibid., 386: “Tianfeng favorise la sécurité des frontières et la protection des
points stratégiques.”
27. Zhen Gao 10.10b–11a (See also Dengzhen yinque [HY 421] 2.11a.) For a trans-
lation of this spell, see Michel Strickmann, “The Taoist Renaissance of the
Twelfth Century,” 18–19. The spell, with certain variations, remains central
in the Song exorcistic “rites of Tianpeng,” for which see Daofa huiyuan 156.5;
157.18; 159.2, and the analysis in Liu Zhiwan, “Tenhoshin to tenhoju ni
tsuite,” in Akizuki Kanei, ed., Dokyo to shukyo bunka (Tokyo: Hirakawa shup-
pan, 1987), 403–424.
28. See Daojiao lingyan ji (HY 590) 13.11a–12a, and Yunji qiqian 120.14b–15b.
29. See Zhiqing zashuo, compiled by Wang Mingqing, as quoted in Liu Zhiwan,
“Tenhoshin to tenhoju ni tsuite,” 407–408. For the cult to Tianpeng in the
Song and its ubiquitous presence in the Yijian zhi, see Sawada Mizuho,
Chugoku no juho (Tokyo: Hirahawa, 1984), 478–480.
30. Nakano Miyako, Chugoku no yokai (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1983), 115–116
and illustration #35, a rubbing from Shanxi.
31. For Mount Wudang, see now John Lagerwey, “The Pilgrimage to Wudang
Shan,” in Susan Naquin and Chunfang Yu, eds., Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in
China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 293–332. There is dis-
agreement about the dating and interpretation of the Xuanting shangdi
qisheng lu. Chuang Huang-i has demonstrated the inaccuracy of many of the
266 Notes to Pages 76–76

historical references in the hagiography, for which see Chuang, “Les croy-
ances concernant la divinité taoïste Xuanwu, Xème-XIIIème siècles” (Ph.D.
diss., EHESS, Paris, 1994). This has inspired Pierre-Henri de Bruyn to in-
terpret the entire work as the invention of a Ming imperial propagandist
(see his “ Wudang Shan: The Origins of a Major Center of Modern Taoism,”
paper prepared for the International Conference on Religion and Chinese
Society, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., May 29–June 2,
2000). John Lagerwey, Judith Boltz, and others, myself included, believe
that despite the “historical mistakes,” many of the passages in juan 2–8
reflect the political as well as the religious importance of the cult to Zhenwu
in the Song dynasty, as suggested in this chapter. (See also John Lagerwey,
Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History, 257–258.) Still, de Bruyn’s work
on Wudangshan is authoritative, and we look forward to the publication of
his thesis.
32. Xuanting shangdi qisheng lu 1.19b–24a.
33. Ibid., 3.5b–6b. For over thirty years, Zhuan Hong had placed his personal
devotion to the Perfected Warrior at the disposal of others. Literati, in par-
ticular, made their way to Hong’s door in Yangzhou in the hope of exchanging
their poetry and prose for some auspicious words from the god. Ultimately,
Zhuan Hong grew tired of the market atmosphere created by the horses and
carriages always parked at his gate. He decided to enter the religious life (chu-
jia) and spend his last years “wandering like the clouds.” Actually, he was on
a pilgrimage, for he made his way to the Palace of Great Peace on Zhong-
nanshan, where he lived in a tiny hut, no doubt to be in close proximity to
the Palace’s western pavilions, which were dedicated to the Perfected War-
rior. There he attracted the attention of Zhang Shouzhen, who took him into
the Palace as a disciple and priest.
One evening three year later, Zhang Shouzhen heard Zhuan Hong talk-
ing in his sleep and then noticed a bright light emanating from Hong’s hut,
about which he inquired the next morning. Hong told Zhang that his life
was about to come to an end. He proceeded to bathe, change clothing, and
mount the main altar to the Perfected Warrior. There, in a trance from which
he never emerged, Hong became possessed by the Perfected Warrior, who
claimed that “the Mandate would be renewed and the Barefoot Transcen-
dent would be welcomed at the spring sacrifices.” Although these lines were
written down, no one knew what they meant.
With hindsight, we may perhaps understand the reference better than the
original witnesses. As late as the twelfth century, a rumor still persisted that
the emperor Zhenzong’s son and successor was the issue of a palace maid
Notes to Pages 76–78 267

and not of his officially designated mother, the empress Liu. The union, more-
over, was the result of conversations between the emperor and the maid in
which the latter confided that she had had a dream in which a Barefoot Tran-
scendent told her that he was destined to be her son. When the future em-
peror Renzong was born the following year, he liked to walk around the palace
grounds without shoes or socks and was nicknamed the Barefoot Transcen-
dent. For this rumor, see Wang Mingqing (1127–1214), Huizhu yuhua 2, sum-
marized in Ting Ch’uan-ching, A Compilation of Anecdotes of Sung Personalities
(Taipei: St. John’s University Press, 1989), 31.
34. Ibid., 2.12a–b.
35. Daofa huiyuan 171–178. See also 169–170.
36. See Xuanting shangdi qisheng lu 2.17b–18b.
37. See, for example, Xuanting shangdi qisheng lu 2.18b; 4.1a–2a, and many other
passages in juan 4; see also, Yijian zhi 250–251, 551, 905, 989, 1100,
1231–1232, 1397, 1538–1539, 1690–1692, 1769–1770.
38. Yijian zhi 1100.
39. Ibid., 777 and 996; Xuanting shangdi qisheng lu 4.21b–23b.
40. Xuanting shangdi qisheng lu 1a–15b. In view of the ancient iconographical rep-
resentation of Xuanwu as a turtle/snake (see above, note 30), the mytho-
logical representation of these animals as his defeated assistants suggests that
Xuanwu has overcome his own demonic nature.
41. Yijian zhi, 1425: “with loosened hair and bare feet, [the medium] defiantly
came forward, beating drums and blowing horns”; 364–369 (365, line 7);
705–706. For earlier examples, see, for instance, Song Shu 79.39 (p. 2040),
where several people who “diligently served spirit-mediums, often loosened
their hair and bared their feet and bowed their heads before the divinity of
the Northern Pole.”
42. For references, see Chapter 2, “The Rites of the Celestial Heart,” and notes
2–7 of that chapter.
43. The three fundamental talismans are the Talisman of the Three Luminosi-
ties (Sanguang fu), the Talisman of the Black Killer (Heisha fu), and the Tal-
isman of the Celestial Outline (Tiangang fu). See Shangqing tianxin zhengfa
(HY 566) 3.1a–9a.
44. Ibid., 3.5a–7a.
45. Ibid., 2.3a–b; 3.1a; 3.8b.
46. Ibid., 3.17a and 19a.
47. Yunji qiqian 103.14a–21b.
48. Jinshi cuibian 134.7b–13a, “Shengsong zhuanying da fashi xingzhuang” (see
9a.5 for the reference to Zhang Heisha).
268 Notes to Pages 78–82

49. See, for example, Yijian zhi 97.

50. The link between Zhang Shouzhen and the Celestial Master tradition is drawn
more tenuously in The Transmissions (see 28a, where the Perfected Lord in-
dicates to Zhang Shouzhen’s son that he should carry on the priesthood in
the same way that the office of the Celestial Master was passed on from fa-
ther to son.)
51. See Chapter 2. The relocation or, better, the assumption of the Celestial Mas-
ter lineage by a certain Zhang family of Jiangxi occurred sometime between
the end of the eighth and beginning of the tenth century. See Kristofer Schip-
per, Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études (1985–1986), 133–135, and
T. H. Barrett, “The Emergence of the Taoist Papacy in the T’ang Dynasty,”
Asia Major 3rd ser., 7.1 (1994), 89–106.
52. Wushang xuanyuan santianwang yudang dafa (HY 220), 28.7b.10–28.8a.1. See
Poul Andersen, “Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions,” 98. For Lu Shizhong
and the Yudang dafa, see ibid., 72–73. For spirit-writing as a point of con-
vergence between early Daoism and mediums, see R. A. Stein, “Un exemple
de relations entre Taoïsme et religion populaire,” in Fukui Hakase shoju kinen
Toyo bunka ronshu (Tokyo, 1969), 79–90.
53. For this process, see Sudo Yoshiyuki and Nakajima Toshi, Chugoku no rekishi
5: Godai-So (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1974), 29–44 and 55–64; Peter Bol, “This Cul-
ture of Ours,” 49–50.
54. Zhao is referring here to his spirit-general who has bribed “a spirit-general
in the law courts” and who is identified below. The spirit who has made the
bribe known to Zhao, the one who has possessed someone in order to be
questioned, is another spirit entirely.
55. Ibid., 831–832.
56. The ambivalence with which the Ritual Master approached these local spir-
its is mirrored here by the ambivalence of responsibility for their excesses.
Theoretically, the Ritual Master had not “presumed upon his authority”; the
responsibility for the bribe fell upon the spirits who offered and accepted it.
In fact, however, the Ritual Master’s identity was so bound up with that of his
spirit-general, his efficacy so tied to local worship, that he was forced to re-
form himself and give up his own commission rather than try to defend him-
self. What I am trying to argue here is that it was not simply a matter of the
priest being implicated in the transgression of a subordinate, nor was it sim-
ply a matter of his thinking that it was his fault for not having adequately paved
the way procedurally for the use of his spirit-general as a bureaucratic emis-
sary. All of this is probably true. The Ritual Master’s complex response must
be explained by the realization that his own integrity as a local exorcist de-
Notes to Pages 84–88 269

pended very much on the integrity of the local cult, which was now com-
promised.
57. See Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao (HY 1217) 3.7b–8a, where the Rit-
ual Master transforms himself into Tianpeng (hua shen wei Tianpeng dajiang)
before writing the talismans; 5.6a, where the Ritual Master visualizes his body
to be that of Zhenwu (xiang shen wei Zhenwu), with disheveled hair, weapons
in hand, and the demonic snake and tortoise at his feet; and so forth.
58. Gilbert Rouget, Music and Trance, 312.
59. Yijian zhi 617–618.

Chapter 5: The Daoist Ritual Master and Child-Mediums

1. Kristofer Schipper, “Vernacular and Classical Ritual in Daoism,” 27.
2. Ibid., 29. Schipper’s descriptions, here and in other places, of fashi rituals
are based on his personal observation and/or on manuscripts acquired dur-
ing fieldwork. For otherworldly journeys employing a spirit-medium, the
reader might begin with Kokubu Naoichi, “Taiwan ni okeru shamanizumu
no sekai—toku ni tanki no rakugoku tankyu o megutte,” Minzokugaku hyoron
6 (1971), 1–22. In the therapeutic rite known as “Luoyu tangong ke,” the Daoist
first dons a red turban and transforms himself (bianshen) into a divine per-
sonality; then, blowing on a water-buffalo horn, he commands one of his di-
vinities to descend and possess a “divination youth” (tong ji ). The entranced
medium spends the rest of the time immobile and covered under a table,
suggesting his absence. The medium is said to be traveling through the
courts of the twelve earth-prisons in order to retrieve the hun-soul of the
sick client, a journey and mission described in literary Hokkien by the fashi.
For the divine transformation of the Master, and its significance, see Poul
Andersen, “The Transformation of the Body in Taoist Ritual,” paper pre-
sented for the conference “Religious Reflections on the Human Body,” Cor-
nell University, Ithaca, N.Y., April 19–21, 1991. For other descriptions of
rituals of contemporary fashi and/or of their relation to spirit-mediums, see
Brigitte Baptandier-Berthier, “Enfant de divination, voyageur du destin,”
L’Homme 101 ( Jan.-Mar. 1987), XXVII (1): 86–100; John Lagerwey, “‘Les
têtes des démons tombent par milliers’: Le fachang, rituel exorcists du nord
de Taiwan,” L’Homme 101 ( Jan.-Mar. 1987), XXVII (1): 101–116; Ofuchi
Ninji, Chugokujin no shukyu girei (Tokyo: Fukutake shoten, 1983), 1008–1083;
James R. Wilkerson, “The ‘Ritual Master’ and His ‘Temple Corporation’ Rit-
uals,” in Lin Ru, ed., Minjian xinyang yu Zhongguo wenhua: Guoji yantao huilun
wenji 2 (Taibei: Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin, 1994), 471–522.
270 Notes to Pages 88–94

3. See discussion in Chapter 1, in the section “Historians, Sinologists, and the

Song Period.”
4. Yijian zhi, 1002.
5. N. H. Van Straten, Concepts of Health, Disease and Vitality in Traditional Chinese
Society (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983), 61.
6. Ibid., 62 and 145–164.
7. Ibid., 59.
8. Yijian zhi, 913.
9. Taiping guang ji 325: “Meng Xiang” (2577–2578), an anecdote from the
Fayuan zhulin.
10. See the anecdotes collected and paraphrased in Sawada Mizuho, “Kenkiko,”
reprinted in his Chugoku no juho (Tokyo: Hirakawa, 1984), 3–39 (esp. 13–22).
The Master Demon Seers flourished in market towns and villages.
11. Baopuzi neipian, Ge Hong, “Dengshe bian.”
12. For the magical as well as metaphorical use of mirrors in Daoism, one might
begin with Fukunaga Mitsuji, “Dokyo ni okeru kagami to tsurugi,” Toho
Gakuho 45 (1973), 59–120.
13. See Yunji qiqian 19.
14. See Sawada Mizuho, “Kokuki ko,” reprinted in his Chugoku no juho (Tokyo:
Hirakawa, 1984), 40–55.
15. Toward the end of the Tianbao reign period (742–756), the Prefect of
Yanzhou (Shandong), Su Shen, was hoping to marry his only son into a par-
ticular family named Lu. This family, however, had three nubile daughters,
and the prefect did not know which one was the most beautiful. He there-
fore asked a friend—a woman from Chang’an named Ma Erniang—to in-
tervene and bring the three girls for the perusal of the boy’s mother. Ma Er-
niang then proceeded to make the most extraordinary introduction. She
marked off a ritual space within a Buddhist hall and performed a rite of “sum-
moning for investigation.” After a while the hun-souls of the three girls ar-
rived, and the mother examined them up close. Lady Ma herself then made
an assessment of the relative merits of each girl, and Su Shen selected the
second eldest. See Taiping guang ji 358, under the title “Su Shen” (vol. 8, p.
2833), an anecdote from the Guangyi ji. Here kaozhao appears close to she-
hun (“controlling the hun-soul”).
16. See the section later in this chapter on “The Daoist Rite of Summoning for
Investigation.”
17. See Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao (HY 1217), 7.1a.
18. Jinsuo liuzhu yin, preface, 2a–b.
19. See biographies in Jiu Tangshu 79.5b–7a, and Xin Tangshu 204.1a–b.
Notes to Pages 94–95 271

20. For the early date, see Michel Strickmann, Mantras et mandarins: Le bouddhisme
tantrique en Chine (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), and David Johnson, “The City-
God Cults of Tang and Song China,” 436; for the later date, Judith Boltz, A
Survey of Taoist Literature (1987), 262.
21. For the arguments, subtle but persuasive, see Poul Andersen, “Taoist Ritual
Texts and Traditions,” 73–77, and T. H. Barrett, “Towards a Date for the Chin-
So Liu-Chu Yin,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 53.2 (1990),
292–294.
22. Jinsuo liuzhu yin 23.8a–9a and 11.2a–b.
23. Ibid., 4.5b.
24. Ibid., 4.5b–6a.
25. Ibid., 4.6a–7b.
26. Ibid., 4.7b–8b.
27. Ibid., 28:2a–b.
28. Ibid., 29:3b–4a.
29. What I would call proto-kaozhao rites can also be found in the Protocols for the
Precious Memorials from the Jade Records and Golden Book of the Most High (Tai-
shang jinshu yudie baozhang yi, HY 805, 1b, 7a–b, 9b–10a, 12b–13a). John
Lagerwey, who dates this Zhengyi text to the Tang, has succinctly described
the content relevant to the issue of kaozhao fa: “the master, after he has ex-
teriorized the relevant officers on his registers, tells them ‘to report’ (guanqi )
the problem which made the ritual necessary to the local ‘prefect officer’ of
the soil, as well as to the officers and clerks on his staff who are in charge of
‘investigating on the four sides’ and ‘of searching out and summoning’
(kaozhao) those guilty of causing the problem” (“Introduction to Taoist Rit-
ual through the Tang,” unpublished ms., 1985, 16). On the one hand, the
term “kaozhao” appears in this text exclusively in apposition to various officers
(HY 805, 1b, “sanyuan kaozhaojun,” and 4a, line 10 through 4b, line 1, “zhuqi
jiancha kaozhao jiazi zhuguan”). On the other hand, the work clearly antici-
pates the kaozhao rites of the Song in the critical role it gives to the god of
the soil and his minions, who are to “search out and summon” the guilty spir-
its—a role that is demonstrated in many of the anecdotes that I translate in
Chapters 6 and 7 (though, as is more charactertistic of the Song, the god of
the soil is often abused).
30. In another Daoist text attributed to the seventh-century official Li Chunfeng,
the Taishang chiwen dongshen sanlu (HY 589), Michel Strickmann has discov-
ered, summarized, and analyzed a set of ritual procedures in which a child-
medium is employed in a form of “dream therapy” (see Strickmann, “Dream-
work of Psycho-Sinologists: Doctors, Daoists, Monks,” in Carolyn Brown, ed.,
272 Notes to Page 95

Psycho-Sinology: The Universe of Dreams in Chinese Culture [Lanham: Univer-

sity Press of America, 1988], 36). The use of a child-medium in a seventh-
century Daoist exorcism would appear to present a serious qualification
to my argument that the use of such mediums was a characteristic of Song-
dynasty Daoism. There are grounds, however, for questioning the assignment
of this text to the seventh century. Because I also have a rather different in-
terpretation of this passage, I offer first a translation (which nonetheless
benefits from Strickmann’s “tentative reading,” as he calls his summary):

Method of the Patriarch [ for Treating] Hun-Souls Which, Having

Roamed to Various Regions during a Night Dream, Have Been Beguiled
by Jade Maidens: In the first stage, the priest has a small child go
to sleep. First, he twice intones the spell, “The Immovable, Ven-
erable Saint [i.e., Acala vidyaraja], take control!” and takes a piece
of paper, folds it in half, and has the child hold it between his
teeth. After he wraps the head of the child with two pieces of silk
cloth, he first takes two mouthfuls of pneumas from the sleeping
one [i.e., the patient] and intones the spell, “I send the Four Great
Spirit-Generals to capture the Jade Maiden who has beguiled the
hun-soul!” After the spell is finished, he exhales into the mouth of
the sleeping small child. Then, using the thumbs of his two hands,
the priest presses them above the temples of the sleeping person
[i.e., the patient]. While this person remains asleep, the priest takes
the pneumas of the five directions and blows them onto his body.
After the time it takes to drink two cups of tea, the priest sits still
in a formal manner and intones, “The Immovable, Venerable
Saint, take control!” and he goes off searching for the hun-soul.
After he has seen it, he intones again, “I send the Four Great Spirit-
Generals to capture the hun-soul which has been beguiled by a Jade
Maiden! I call upon the soul to quickly return!” Then he calls out
the patient’s personal name and causes him to awaken. (HY 589,
6a–b)

Strickmann accurately and insightfully calls this a treatment for “pathologi-

cal dreaming,” and more specifically either for “debilitating erotic dreams”
or for “a more serious instance of soul-loss and consequent disorientation,
even delirium.” However, Strickmann also characterizes the treatment per
se as “ a case of ‘setting a dream to catch a dream,’” which seems to me in-
accurate. On my reading, the action involves two steps. In the first, the priest
Notes to Pages 96–97 273

inhales the patient’s pneumas that embody the Jade Maiden (i.e., his erotic
thoughts and delirium), mixes them with his own pneumas that embody the
command to capture the Jade Maiden, and finally exhales them into the
mouth of the medium. The paper is meant to absorb the erotic delirium/Jade
Maiden embodied in the pneumas, while the silk cloth wrapped around the
child’s head was probably intended to prevent anything (another Jade
Maiden?) from getting in. With the transfer of the Jade Maiden to the child-
medium, the patient is now an empty vessel. In the second step, the hun-soul
is located, captured, and restored to the patient.
Strickmann concludes, “This particular seventh century text reveals Bud-
dhist influence. I know of no other cases from so early a period in which
Daoists use a child-medium. But such practices are found at the time in Tantric
Buddhism.” While it is true, as Strickmann has shown elsewhere, that Tantric
Buddhists were performing such practices in the Tang (for which see Chap-
ter 6), Poul Andersen has argued, based on various internal references in
the text, that the date of this scripture cannot be earlier than the middle of
the tenth century and is probably later (see Andersen, “Taoist Ritual and Tra-
ditions,” 61–62). The attribution to Li Chunfeng, as in the case of the Jinsuo
liuzhu yin, is pseudo-epigraphical. I would argue, moreover, that the use of
a medium in this text is evidence of its Song provenance. And, as we shall
see, the transfer of breaths from the patient to a medium is precisely the
method employed in Song Daoist exorcisms.
31. This symptomatic behavior is described in the Daoist ritual texts as diankuang
(“deranged and mad”) or dianxie (“deranged and deviant”). See, among other
texts, Shangqing tianxin zhengfa (HY 566), 4.1a.
32. See Michel de Certeau, La Possession de Loudun (Paris: Julliard, 1970), 61 and
207.
33. For the Tianxin tradition, see Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao 2.2a–b
(the earliest occurrence of the bianshen spell used by the Daoist priest in the
modern jiao liturgy), and especially, 7.9a: “At the time when you perform the
rite above, first visualize a fire within your heart enveloping your entire body.
The fire cleanses and refines your form and spirit. Then envision your body
becoming the Envoy of Summoning for Investigation (kaozhao shi ), an awful
spirit, fiery with rage and booming like thunder.” The Ritual Master’s trans-
formation here occurs almost incidentally within the context of “Rites of En-
trapment,” for which see the end of this section of Chapter 5. For a more ex-
plicit reference to bianshen within the same text, see 7.34b, where “the Ritual
Master lights incense and transforms himself into the Envoy of the Depart-
ment of Exorcism,” who is none other than Zhang Daoling, the founder of
274 Notes to Pages 97–100

the Celestial Master tradition. (For Zhang’s connection to the Tianxin tra-
dition, see toward the end of Chapter 2.) See also Shangqing tianxin zhengfa
(HY 566), 3.1a, where the Master again transforms himself into Zhang Dao-
ling before he copies the three talismans of the Tianxin tradition; and 4.1b,
4.2b, 4.9a, and especially 5.1a, where he transforms himself into the god
Zhenwu, for which see also Chapter 6, under “Tantric Cults and Village Spirit-
Mediums.” In addition, see Daofa huiyuan (HY 1210), 227, “Taiyi huoxi leifu
Zhujiang jun kaofu,” 6b; 228, “Leifu Zhushuai kaoxie dafa,” 1b; and many
other texts in this collection. See also Fahai yizhu 1.12b: “My spirit enters the
Master’s spirit; the Master’s spirit enters my spirit / My body is Lord Xin, Lord
Xin is my body.” An interesting and perhaps very early reference to bianshen
is found in a text identified with the Celestial Master tradition, The Scripture
for Spell-Binding Demons, of Orthodox Unity of Taishang (Taishang zhengyi zhougui
ching, HY 1184). See especially 2a–b: “The Celestial Master says, ‘On behalf
of Heaven and Earth, I drive away myriad disasters; transforming my body as
a human being, I become the Demon King (bianshen renjian zuo guiwang);
my body is six zhang in length, and my head faces all directions.’” Kobayashi
Masayoshi has dated this text to the Eastern Jin (Rokucho dokyo shi kenkyu
[Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1990], 378–379), although I suspect a later date. The sub-
stance of the text is purported to have been transmitted to the Celestial Mas-
ter by Lord Huang-Lao, not in Sichuan, but on Taishan (2b.4).
34. See Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao 7.9a–10b, “Zhaogui xianxing fa”;
7.11a, “Shuizhao fa”; 7.12a, “Anchu zhaogui xianxing fa.”
35. Obeyesekere, Medusa’s Hair, and Chapter 1, passim.
36. See Michel de Certeau, “Discourse Disturbed: The Sorcerer’s Speech,” in
idem, The Writing of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988),
244–268.
37. Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao 7.12b–13b, “Shi’er shenjiang zhuogui
jiafu kaoze”; 7.13b–14b, “Dali tianding zhuizhuo xiemo egui fa.”
38. Ibid., 7.24a–b, “Siling zhuogui fa”; 24b–25a, “ You zhuofa,” where the inhaled
pneumas are exhaled into a basin of water from which the patient is then
compelled to drink, the reverse of the “rites of reflection”; 25a–b, “Fugui fa.”
39. Ibid., 7.24b.45 (commentary): “Shen zhan shi yen ye.”
40. Ibid., 7.31b, “ Yijiang fa,” or “Rites of Descent and Transference.” For “Rites
of Transfer” and the possession of a medium in the Shenxiao tradition, see
Gaoshang shenxiao yuqing zhenwang zishu dafa (HY 1209), 3.20b–25a.
41. Ibid., 7.32a, “ Youfa,” or “Additional Rites [of Descent and Transference].”
42. Daofa huiyuan 138, “Taiyi tianzhang yanglei bili dafa,” 12b; 196, “Hunyuan
Notes to Pages 100–103 275

yiqi bagua dongshen tianyi wulei dafa,” 13b ; 222, “Zhengyi hum shen ling-
guan huoxi daxian kaozhao bifa,” 25b–30a; 224, “Jinbi yuanguang huoxi da-
xian zhengyi lingguan Mayuanshuai bifa,” 19a–24b; 227, “Taiyi huoxi leifu
Zhujiang jun kaofu fa,” 22b–23b; 229, “Lingguan Chen-Ma-Zhu sanshuai
kaozhao dafa,” 23b–24a, esp. “Bamowang menghun zhou” and “ You meng-
zhou.” This list is not exhaustive. For mediums in the Thunder Magic tradi-
tion, see Daofa huiyuan 101, “ Wulei qidao xingchi bifa,” 10a–b. See also Fa-
hai yizhu 33, 7b–10b; 34, 3b–4a; 36, 12–13; and 37, 22b–end.
43. Ibid., 243, “Nanji huolei lingguan Wang yuanshuai bifa,” 3b–4a: “Pu daomeng
fa.”
44. Ibid., 196, “Hunyuan yiqu bagua dongshen tianyi wulei dafa,” 13b–14b; 229,
“Lingguan Chen-Ma-Zhu sanshuai kaozhao dafa,” 22b–26a; and so forth. Poul
Andersen reports that during certain exorcisms on Taiwan, the hun-souls of
the actor who will transform himself into the exorcistic Zhongkui must first
be removed through the ears (= jiao’er) and deposited either in the incense
burner or into the character for “well” ( jing), which has been written on the
ground (= zanghun).
45. Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao 7.12a, “Rites for Illuminating Demons
and Manifesting their Forms in a Dark Place” (Anchu zhaogui xianxing fa).
46. Ibid., 7.12b–13b, “Rites of the Twelve Spirit-Generals for Seizing, Yoking,
Binding, Investigating, and Accusing the Demon” (Shi’er shenjiang zhuogui
jiafu kaoze fa).
47. Shangqing tianxin zhengfa 4.3a, “Zhuofujiakao sizhou jue.” See also Daofa
huiyuan 59, “Shangqing yuchu wulei zhenwen,” 5a–10b, for a complete rit-
ual sequence in the Thunder Magic tradition.
48. Daofa huiyuan 157–168, “Shangqing tianpeng fumo dafa.” For the ashes and
boiling sesame oil, see esp. 157.21a–b, 166.2b, and passim.
49. Ibid., 166,1b–2a and 16a.
50. Ibid., 166, 15a–b.
51. Ibid., 167, esp. 16a on.
52. For Song prisons see Brian McKnight, Law and Order in Sung China (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 353–384; Michael Dutton, Polic-
ing and Punishment in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),
131–134.
53. Miyazaki Ichisada, “The Administration of Justice during the Sung Dynasty,”
in Cohen, Edwards, and Chen, eds., Essays in China’s Legal Tradition (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 61.
54. Xu Daoling, “Songlu zhongde shenpan zhidu,” Dingfang zazhi fukan 4.4.
276 Notes to Pages 103–112

55. Li Yuanbi, Zuoyi zizhen (preface dated 1117). Reprinted in Sibu congkan xu-
bian, vol. 48 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1984). For the treatment of tri-
als and criminals, see esp. juan 2 and 3.
56. See John A. Evans, “Chinese Criminal Law in All Men Are Brothers,” paper pre-
sented at the conference on “The History of Chinese Law,” Bellagio, 1969.
57. Taiping guang ji 470, “Xue Erniang” (vol. 10, p. 3872), an anecdote from the
Tongxuan ji.
58. See note 57 above.
59. This is particularly true among the Muslim brotherhoods of medieval Mo-
rocco and Iraq. For the link between fakirism and possession, see Rouget,
Music and Trance, 273–279.
60. For the role of anger and violence here, compare with an exorcism described
in the sixth-century Tantric text, Scripture of Dharanis Presented to the Buddha by
Atavaka, the General of Demons and Spirits (Azhapoju guishen dajiang shangfo tuolu-
oni jing, T. 1238), 183c–184d: “Rites of Dispersal and Exorcism.” The master
sits before an effigy of Atavaka and forms the mudra of Great Anger with his
hand. Then the person afflicted with a demonic illness is brought in, and the
master tells him to sit down. “Beside himself with anger, the master reviles the
patient, hoping to strike fear into him. Then he yells, ‘How much longer must
the gods wait?! Quickly, tie him up!’ His assistants respond immediately and
bind the afflicted, and the master intends to beat the demon out of him. All
the while he uses few words. This is the method of dispersing demons of the
Great General. There is no need to recite spells.” In view of this, one wonders
what is meant by the reference to the “barbarian fashion” in which Xue Er-
niang “cried out . . . commanding the patient to bind herself.”
61. See the end of Chapter 2.
62. Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao 7.28a.7–8.
63. Ibid., 7.26a–b, “Additional Rite [for Yoking Demons].”
64. Ibid., 7.26b–27a, “Additional Rite [of the Five Dippers for Flogging
Demons].”
65. Yijian zhi 814.
66. Ibid., 908.
67. See Wilt Idema and Stephen H. West, Chinese Theater 1100–1450: A Source-
book (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1982), 188 ff.
68. A translation of this anecdote, told to Hong Mai by a military inspector and
native of Kaifeng, can be found in Idema and West, Chinese Theater, 124.
69. Stephen Greenblatt, “Shakespeare and the Exorcists,” in idem, Shakespearean
Negotiations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 94–129 (esp.
111–114).
Notes to Pages 113–118 277

70. See Zhouli 31; Liji 15; Houhan shu 15.5.

71. See Meng Yuanlao, Dong jing menghua lu 10, and Wu Zimu, Mengliang lu 6.
72. See Tanaka Issei, Chugoku saishi engeki kenkyu , 186–254.
73. See Tanaka Issei, Chugoku fukei engeki kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shup-
pansha, 1993), 139–141.
74. See Jiangxi shiwei 24, “Observing a Nuo” (Guannuo) by Liu Tang, as repro-
duced in Tanaka Issei, Chugoku fukei engeki kenku, 43–46.
75. One may also demonstrate this shift at the level of the Daoist “offering”
( jiao). By the Song, the cause of pestilence and drought has been attributed
to “orphan-souls,” an attribution revealed in, and effected by, the Daoist Re-
treat of the Yellow Register. On this point, see Tanaka Issei, Chugoku fukei
engeki kenkyu, 359–367. The character, function, and history of Daoist and
Buddhist rites for the dead are explored in Chapter 8 and in the Appendix.
The anonymous Song manual, Huanglu jiuyou jiao wu’ai yezhai cidi yi (HY
514), lists ten categories of orphan-souls, the first of which are the souls of
heroes who have died in battle. On this score, see the commemorative poem
by Zhang Jinyan (Yijian zhi 394–396), in which the illness and deprivation
of the population of Liyang (Huainan West Circuit) are attributed to the pow-
erful souls of the magistrates and members of the local elite, who were cut
down defending the region against the invading Jurchens. The author rec-
ommends that their spirits become the focus of a shehui and Daoist “offer-
ing” ( jiao) as a means of reconstituting a regional community: “the rule of
the city (zhunzhi) will become peaceful”; “the sovereignty of the region
(bang jun) resides in the people’s altars (minshe)”—a form of nonethnic Land-
espatriotismus, which seems a better description than incipient nationalism of
the Chinese response to the Jurchen invasions.
76. See the four volumes by Tanaka Issei: Chugoku saishi engeki kenkyu (Tokyo:
Tokyo daigaku shuppansha, 1981), Chugoku zonso to engeki (Tokyo: Tokyo dai-
gaku shuppansha, 1985), Chugoku goson saishi kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
shuppansha, 1989), and Chugoku fukei engeki kenkyu (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shup-
pansha, 1993); Wang Qiugui, Minsu quyi congshu, vols. 1–80 (Taibei: Minsu quyi,
1993–).

Chapter 6: Tantric Exorcists and Child-Mediums

1. Yijian zhi, 1396–1397.
2. In fact, Xu Jia, a disciple of Laozi and putative originator of red-head rituals,
is described in a legend as the “Ritual Master of the Three Altars.” Kristofer
Schipper, to whom this legend was orally transmitted by a fashi in southern
278 Notes to Pages 118–120

Taiwan, remarks that the “Three Altars (Santan) is yet another common name
for the traditions of the fashi in Taiwan and among the daoshi from Quanzhou
in Singapore. Nothing is known about the origin or significance of this name”
(Schipper, “Vernacular and Classicial Ritual in Daoism,” 41, note 73.)
3. Among the many accounts, see Liu Zhiwan (Riu Shiman), “Taiwan no shya-
manisumu,” in Sakurai Tokutaro, ed., Shyamanisumu no sekai (Tokyo: Shun-
jusha, 1979), 91–94.
4. Ibid., 94–99.
5. Ibid., 99.
6. The use of three boys (or rather two sets of three boys) seems unusual. Can
we conclude from this anything about the nature of the Rite of the Three Al-
tars? For instance, did the rite involve a cult to three different divinities or
fierce bodhisattvas, each represented by a different altar, each possessing a
different boy? And if the first set of boys was to be possessed by divinities, was
the second set to be possessed by demons? (One of the boys in this second
group claims that the demon had descended into his hand, an eventuality
that is anticipated in certain Tantric texts mentioned below.)
7. Kenneth Dean (Ding Hesheng) and Zheng Zhenman, “Group Initiation and
Exorcistic Dance in the Xinghua Region,” in Wang Qiugui, ed., Zhongguo
Nuoxi: Nuo wenhua gouji yantaihui lu wenli (Minsu quyi 85.2, 1993), 105–214.
See also Brigitte Baptandier-Berthier, “The Kaiguan Ritual and the Con-
struction of the Child’s Identity,” in Lin Ru, ed., Minjian xinyang yu Zhongguo
wenhua: Guoji yantao huilun wenji 2 (Taibei: Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin, 1994),
523–596; Ye Mingsheng, “Fujiansheng Longyanshi Dongxiaozhen Lushan-
jiao Guang jitan keyiben huibian,” in Wang Qiugui, ed., Zhongguo chuantong
keyiben huibian (Taibei: Xinwenfeng, 1998); Wu Yongmeng, “Penghu gong-
miao xiaofa de Pu An Zushi zhi shenyuan,” in Donfang zong jiao yanjiu 4,
165–181; and Kenneth Dean (Ding Hesheng) and Zheng Zhenman, “Min-
Tai daojiao yu minjian zhushen chongbai chukao,” Bulletin of the Institute of
Ethnology, Academia Sinica 73 (1993), 33–52.
8. Dean and Zheng, “Group Initiation and Exorcistic Dance in the Xinghua Re-
gion,” 116–117.
9. Daofa huiyuan (HY 1210), 253, “Diqi fa.”
10. Ibid., 254, “Dongyue Wen taibao kaozhao bifa.”
11. Ibid., 255–256, “Diqi Wen yuanshuai dafa.”
12. Ibid., 254.7b–8a.
13. Ibid., 253.10a–12a.
14. Diqi shang jiang Wen taibao zhuan (HY 779. For a more comprehensive treat-
ment of this text from a very different point of view, see John Lagerwey, Taoist
Notes to Pages 121–121 279

Ritual in Chinese Society and History , 241–252, and Paul R. Katz, Demon Hordes
and Burning Boats: The Cult of Marshal Wen in Late Imperial Chekiang, 80–88.
Grand Protector Wen was born Wen Qiong in the subprefecture of Pingyang,
Wenzhou, during the Tang dynasty. Wen was a soldier and suppressor of ban-
dits, until, that is, he quarreled with his commander, the general Guo Ziyi,
and fled to Taishan. There he became a butcher and wine merchant (Diqi
shang jiang Wen taibao zhuan, 1a). The story of how Wen Qiong abandoned
these unsavory and paradigmatically impure professions and became, first,
a “master of transformations” in the Temple of the Eastern Peak and, then,
after his own transformation (i.e., death), a subordinate divinity in the ser-
vice of the Dao is an absolute masterpiece of Daoist revisionism. Everywhere,
Wen Qiong is seen refusing the fruits of cultic worship that he clearly enjoyed;
everywhere, the text attempts to efface the traces of a local spirit-medium
cult supported by the citizens of a city whose identity and rising fortunes found
expression in a hero and protector, one who perhaps even gave that city Wen-
zhou its name. In 961, according to the Biography, during a drought, Wen
Qiong graced these citizens with rain. Wen Qiong then possessed a commoner
named Wang Jiu’er, only to say that he had little interest in temple sacrifices
or imperial enfeoffments because he hoped for nothing but to enter the Dao
and become a minor clerk in “the assemblies of rites” ( fahui, ibid., 3a). That
a self-respecting local hero would want to become a minor clerk seems the
height of Daoist presumption.
And one presumption is then followed by another. In the twelfth cen-
tury, Wen Qiong’s cultic indifference attracts the attention of the thirtieth
Celestial Master, Zhang Xujing, who makes Wen an earth deity in charge of
the talismans, spells, and hand-seals of the rectifying rites (zhengfa, ibid., 4a).
The presumption lies in the portrayal of Zhang Xujing as the crucial figure
in the dissemination of “Grand Protector Wen’s Secret Rites of the Earth-
Spirits.” The Celestial Master transmits these rites to a Daoist, Wang
Zong jing, who passes them on to his disciple, Wu Daoxian, who in turn
passes them on to 532 disciples, whereupon “ Wen’s Secret Rites” come to
be considered “an inferior degree of the Orthodox Rites” and lose their
efficacy (ibid., 10a–b). This tale of popularization and degeneration, I be-
lieve, masked a self-serving bid on the part of the Celestial Master lineage for
control over a local ritual tradition that originated among precisely those prac-
titioners (lay exorcists?) who had supposedly contributed to its demise.
15. Ibid., 8a.
16. Ibid., 8b–9a.
17. Ibid., 11a–12b, though these two individuals are first mentioned at 3b, where
280 Notes to Pages 121–123

they are said to have struck terror into the hearts of officially recognized earth
deities, and where their religion is called the “Teaching of the Three Altars.”
18. Weinan wenji 5.7b–8b, quoted in Éd. Chavannes and P. Pelliot, Un Traité
manicheén retrouvé en Chine (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1913), 305–310.
19. Xueshan ji 3.26, quoted in Samuel Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Em-
pire and Medieval China (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 240.
20. See Chavannes and Pelliot, Traité, 315–324.
21. Chikusa Masa’aki, Chugoku bukkyo shakai shi kenkyu , 203–204.
22. The various dictionaries and encyclopedias of Esoteric Buddhism do, in fact,
include entries for “Rites of the Three Altars” (Santan fa), as well as for “Rites
of the Five Altars” (Wutan fa), which are in some accounts an elaboration and
expansion of the former. We must be extremely cautious in exploiting these
entries, however. First, there is no reason to suppose that the types of altars,
divinities, and rituals described therein correspond at all to those employed
by our Buddhist Ritual Masters. Second, these dictionaries and encyclope-
dias are Japanese and are heavily weighted toward ritual practices specific to
the Japanese Shingon and Tendai traditions. In fact, the Rites of the Three
or Five Altars (sandanho, godanho) as described appear to have formed part
of the repertoire of “imperial rites” (mishuho—large-scale, occasional, and
solemn rituals performed by dozens of monks for the benefit of the imper-
ial family). See, especially, Mochizuki Bukkyo daijiten, p. 1613a–b, “Sandan
mishuho,” and p. 1246, “Godanho”; Koji ruien, pp. 329–335, quoting at length
historical references to the “Rites of the Three Altars” and “Rites of the Five
Altars.” See also Mikkyo jiten, p. 816b, “Sandan gamae,” and p. 620b–c, “Go-
danho,” which includes discussion of “Sandanho”; Mikkyo daijiten, p. 619b–c,
“Godan gamae,” and p. 620b–c, “Godanho.”
23. Yijian zhi, 1437–1438.
24. Sun Wei, Huanyi zhi, paraphrased in Sawada Mizuho, Chugoku no juho, 148.
25. T. 2057. Gaoseng zhuan, 712a, quoted in Zhou Yiliang, “Tantrism in China,”
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 8 (1945), 284.
26. See T.2057, 711c, and Zhou, “Tantrism in China,” 278–279.
27. The following account of the ave4a ritual is based on:

T. 1277 (vol. 21) Su ji li Yanmoxishouluotian shuo aweishe fa, 329b–331a

T. 895 (vol. 18) Supodi tongzi qingwen jing, zhong, 725a–c; xia, 741c–742c
T. 867 (vol. 18) Jingangeng louge yiqie yujia yuqi jing, xia, 268c–269c
T. 896 (vol. 18) Miaobi pusa suo wen jing, 3.754b–755b.
T. 1202 (vol. 21) Budong shi zhe tuoluoni bimi fa, 24b ff.
T. 1217 (vol. 21) Miaojixiang zuisheng gen ben da jiao jing, xia, 92a.
Notes to Pages 124–124 281

For an introduction to the subject, see Hobogirin (Dictionnaire encyclopédique

du bouddhisme), vol. 1, p. 452, “avesá,” and now Michel Strickmann, Mantras
et mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine, “Exorcisme et spectacle,” where
long passages from several of the above-mentioned Chinese texts are trans-
lated. Strickmann also comments on two historical references to the practice
of ave4a-like rituals at the Tang court: the first was performed by the Indian
Tantric master Vajrabodhi for the benefit of emperor Xuanzong’s daughter
(T. 2061, 711c, referred to above), and the second was performed by the Chi-
nese Tantric master Huiguo for emperor Taizong (T. 2057, 295a). Although
neither performance is explicitly referred to as an ave4a ritual, Strickmann
makes an argument for why the first should be so considered (and the first
was apparently so considered by Japanese Buddhist exegetes, who included
this anecdote in discussions of ave4a [see Nihon Daizokyo, vol. 38, 531a–b]).
The second performance is called an “enchantment of summoning for in-
vestigation,” though its content better conforms to what we will come to ex-
pect from ave4a rituals as they are described in the canonical texts.
For ave4a ( J. abisha) in Japan and other rituals employing child-mediums
(yorimashi ), consult Minakata Kumagusu zenshu (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1973), vol.
9, 186–187, and Teihon Yanagida Kunio shu (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1962),
vol. 9, 238–248. Yanagida also discusses yorimashi in the contexts of Shinto
and Shugendo (see vol. 5, 133; vol. 7, 280; vol. 9, 54–55, 76–77, 313; vol.
10, 258–260, 264, 404–406). Among Japanese Buddhist canonical sources,
ave4a is formally treated in Nihon Daizokyo vol. 38, 531–533; vol. 36, 84–85;
vol. 17, 322; Taisho Daizokyo Zuzohen vol. 7, 355b–356a; vol. 8, 677a–678a;
Shingonshu zenshu vol. 3, 107b–108a. Performances of Buddhist exorcisms
employing child-mediums are described in The Tale of Genji and The Pillow
Book of Sei Shonagon. See also William H. McCullough, “Spirit Possession in
the Heian Period,” in Studies on Japanese Culture, vol. 1 (Tokyo: The Japan
P.E.N. Club, 1973), 91–98, and Doris Bargen, A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Pos-
session in the Tale of Genji (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997).
28. T. 895, 728a, lines 19–21 and 728c, lines 11–12; T. 867, 268c, line 24, and
269b, line 28; T. 1202; 24b, line 18.
29. T. 895, 728a, 297–298b, line 13; 742a, lines 19–22; T. 1202, 24b. For catop-
tromancy and the ritual or divinatory use of child-mediums in the Greek, Late
Antique, and Byzantine worlds, see A. Delatte, La catoptromancie grecque et ses
dérivés (Liège-Paris: Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de
l’Université de Liège, Fasc. XLVIII, 1932); E. R. Dodds, The Ancient Concept
of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1988), 185–210; idem, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley:
282 Notes to Pages 124–129

University of California Press, 1951), 295–299; Richard Greenfield, Tradi-

tions of Belief in Late Byzantine Demonology (Amsterdam: Adolf Hakkert, 1988),
262–268; and now, especially, Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in
Translation, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 5, line 86;
p. 14, lines 55–56; p. 108, line 376; p. 133, line 544, and so forth.
30. T. 895, 728c, lines 20–21, and 742c, line 15.
31. See, especially, Taiping guang ji 346; “Li Xiang” (2739–2740), an anecdote
taken from the Xu yuguai lu. Daoism, too, had similar divinatory seances in
the late Tang. See the eighth- or ninth-century text of the Sanhuang tradi-
tion, Dongshen badi yuanbian jing (HY 1202), 25b–27b, where one or more of
the Eight Archivists (bashi ) are summoned, seen, and interrogated by the
practitioner (shushi ). Here, however, there is no possession of a medium, and
the elaborate rules and instructions that surround the seance were clearly
intended to maintain a strict boundary between gods and men. For more on
this text, see Poul Andersen, “Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions,” 58–60, and
idem, “Talking to the Gods: Visionary Divination in Early Taoism (Sanhuang
Tradition),” paper prepared for the Western Conference of the Association
of Asian Studies, University of Arizona, Oct. 23–24, 1992.
32. T. 1277. 330a, line 4.
33. Ibid., 330a, lines 15 ff.
34. Ibid., 330a, lines 24–25.
35. Yijian zhi 171.
36. Ibid., 525. I am tempted here to compare these young boys to the temple medi-
ums (to doji ) of late Heian Japan who became possessed by several tutelary di-
vinities collectively known as “ Youths Who Protect the Dharma” (gohodoji ), so
called, it has been surmised, because they were conceived of in terms of the
young mediums who embodied them. See Teihon Yanagida Kunio shu vol. 9,
407–416 and Wada Akio, “Goho doji,” Mikkyo Bunka 104 (1973), 19–41.
37. For this description of the ave4a mediums both before and during trance, see
T. 895, 728b–c and 742b–c.
38. Marie-Thérèse de Mallman, Introduction à l’iconographie du tântrisme bouddhique
(Paris: Maisonneuve, 1986), 297.
39. Iyanaga Nobumi, “Récits de la soumission de Mahésvara par Trailokyavijaya—
d’après les sources chinoises et japonais,” in Michel Strickmann, ed., Tantric
and Taoist Studies, vol. 3 (Bruxelles: Mélanges Chinois et Bouddhiques,
1985), 693–694.
40. T. 1225, 1226, 1227, 1228, and 1229.
41. Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji, Bo Yuchan (Taiwan: Committee to Publish
Bo Yuchan’s Works, 1976), 424 (Yulu 6a–b).
Notes to Pages 129–131 283

42. T. 1228, Huiji jin’gang shuo shentong daman tuoluoni fashu ling yaomen.
43. Iyanaga, “La soumission de Mahésvara,” 697.
44. Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji 424 (Yulu 6b).
45. M. Walleser, The Life of Nagarjuna from Tibetan and Chinese Sources (Dehli: Nag,
1979), 25–30.
46. Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji 424 (Yulu 6b).
47. Snowy Mountain has been identified with Mount Sumeru in the Himalayas,
and Incense Mountain with a peak or range in the Transhimalayas. The
two are associated in Buddhist scripture (see the passage from the Guan fo
san wei jing cited in Morohashi, Dai kanwa jiten, 44518.134). The impor-
tant point is that Incense Mountain is identified as being to the north of
Snowy Mountain.
48. The Two Great Lords Swine Head and Elephant Trunk are to be understood
not simply as a pair, but as the bifurcation of a single deity known as the
“Heaven of Felicity and Joy” or the “Deva of Bliss” (Huanxi tian), which was
represented iconographically by male and female elephants or by elephant-
and swine-headed divinities (male and female, respectively) in sexual em-
brace. The single elephant-headed figure is none other than Gane4a, from
whom the ecstatic, bifurcated divinity derived. Gane4a is the child of Parvati
and $iva. He is also known as “Ganapati” ( Jia’nabodi), the “Lord of the Ganas”
(a group of demigods and attendants of $iva) and as “Vinayaka” (Binayejia),
the “Lord [or Remover] of Obstacles.” In the Chinese canonical scriptures
from the fifth century on, Gane4a reveals himself most often as Vinayaka, the
Lord of Obstacles, a quasi-demonic figure who prevents the practitioner from
attaining his vows and who must be propitiated and controlled. See Lewis
Lancaster, “Gane4a in China,” in Robert L. Brown, ed., Ganesh: Studies of an
Asian God (Albany: State University of New York Press. 1991), 277–288. The
dual Gane4a (Huanxi tian), however, is predominant in a strand of the Chi-
nese Esoteric Buddhist tradition and Japanese Shingon. The important
scriptures of this strand are T. 1266, 1267, 1268, 1270, 1271, and 1275.
The female half of the dual Gane4a—here appearing in the form of a
swine-headed divinity—has been identified with, among others, Avalokite4-
vara (Guanyin). See, for example, the opening of T. 1270, Da Sheng Huanxi
shuangshen Dazihai tian Pinayejia wang guiyi niansong gongyang fa. Some pas-
sages on the dual Gane4a in the Japanese Besson manuals of the Heian pe-
riod have been clearly inspired by this text. Here Avalokite4vara takes the form
of a female vinayaka in order to seduce and thereby convert the demonic
Gane4a (Vinayaka); see James Stanford, “Literary Aspects of Japan’s Dual-
Gane4a Cult,” in Brown, Ganesh, 297–298. It is uncertain, however, whether
284 Notes to Pages 131–131

we can identify the swine-headed figure of our dual Gane4a with Avaloki-
te4vara. The swine-headed divinity certainly brings to mind the “Diamond
Sow” of the Hevajra Tantra; in the Tibetan Tantra of the Great Ganapati, more-
over, Gane4a’s consort is Arcikari, the adamantine pig-faced woman. (See
Christopher Wilkinson, “The Tantric Gane4a: Texts Preserved in the Tibetan
Canon,” in Brown, Ganesh, 247.) Yet James Stanford doubts this association,
and suspects that “the female of the dual [Deva of Bliss] represents, not a
borrowing of a Buddhist form of Gane4a, but a fairly direct amplification of
or adoption of the attendant devi of the boon-giving Ucchi3ta Ganapati form
of Hinduism” (see Stanford, “Literary Aspects” in Brown, Ganesh, 313). For
more on these Hindu devotees of an “Impure” (Ucchi3ta) Gane4a, see Paul
Courtright, Gane4a (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 218–220. The
association with the ucchi3ta-form of Gane4a is suggestive, given our dual
Gane4a’s association with Ucchu3ma.
We may learn more about the Song conception of the Two Lords, Swine
Head and Elephant Trunk, from the fact that, in the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries, this bifurcated divinity had found its way into the texts of
certain Daoist exorcistic lineages. The Secret Rites of Prime Marshal Zhao of the
Dark Altar (Xuantan Zhao yuanshuai bifa) offers a list of divinities subordi-
nate to the eponymous Zhao Gongming, an early medieval grave demon (see
Zhen Gao 10.17a.9 and 17b.5) who has now become a powerful Daoist spirit-
general. These secondary divinities include the Swine Head and Elephant
Trunk gods, here identified as the Two Spirit Lords, Yang and Zhu (Zhutou
xiangbi Yang-Zhu shenjun), as well as another who, it turns out, is a permuta-
tion of, or substitute for the first: “the Saintly Monk Wan Hui, the Old Man,
Detached from Affairs, of Harmony and Unity (Wanhui shengseng hehe san-
shi laoren)” (Daofa huiyuan 231.7a). As Rolf Stein has pointed out, the hyper-
active monk Wan Hui (“He who comes and goes a thousand times in an in-
stant”) was worshipped in China as a single person, “Harmony-Unity
(hehe)”—usually a comic and obese monk like Budai—or as two persons, “Har-
mony” (he) and “Unity (he)”—usually two young monks called “Felicitous
Heaven and Joyous Earth” (Hantian xidi ); see R. Stein, Annuaire du Collège de
France (1972–1973) 62. Other texts related to the cult of Zhao Gongming and
this Daoist exorcistic lineage reinterpret the concept of “Harmony-Unity” in
terms of Daoist cosmological notions and meditational operations, identifying
“harmony” and “unity” with two discrete divinities corresponding to different
directional pneumas united by the Master (Daofa huiyuan 232, “The Secret Rites
of Prime Marshal Zhao of the Dark Altar of Orthodox-Unity,” 14b–15b).
49. The Bodhisattva Flower Radiance (Huaguang pusa) is the protagonist of the
Notes to Page 131 285

Ming novel Journey to the South (Nanyou ji ), where he is described as an em-

bodiment of fire. (The first incarnation of Huaguang, in fact, was nothing
but an incarnation of the Buddha who had transformed the radiance of a
lamp that had intensified, while he preached, into the deity Miao Jixiang.)
In the twelfth century, Flower Radiance was the object of popular cult, though
our main source for this is Daoist. In the addenda to The Biography of Grand
Protector Wen, Commander of the Earth-Spirits, Flower Radiance is identified as
the fourth of the five divinities worshipped in the Temple of the Five Mani-
festations (Wuxian miao) in Jizhou (Anhui). This identification was made in
the course of a “Rite of Summoning for Investigation” performed in the mar-
ketplace by a Daoist fashi named Cao Kefu for the benefit of a concubine of
the local Prefect. The woman had become utterly transfixed by the beauty
of the god’s temple effigy and had wasted away. Cao raised the corpse of the
concubine and then caused her to become possessed by the god of the effigy,
who identified himself as Flower Radiance (Diqi shang jiang Wen taibao zhuan,
buyi [addenda] 1b–2a).
The identification of Huaguang as one of the Five Manifestations (Wu-
xian) is revealing. The Five Manifestations—whose main temples were built in
the subprefectures of Wuyuan and Dexing in Jiangxi during the latter half of
the twelfth century—were none other than semiofficial and urban transfor-
mations of the “Spirits of the Five Supernatural Powers” (Wutong shen)—the
gods par excellence of the spirit-medium cults in southern villages in the Song.
For the history of the cult to these divinities in the Song, Yuan, and Ming, see
Cedzich, “ Wu-T’ung: Zur bewegten Geschichte eines Kultus,” and idem, “The
Cult of the Wu-t’ung/Wu-hsien in History and Fiction: The Religious Roots
of the Journey to the South,” in David Johnson, ed., Ritual and Scriptures in Chi-
nese Popular Religion: Five Studies (Berkeley: Chinese Popular Culture Project,
1995), 137–218; and Richard Von Glahn, “The Enchantment of Wealth: The
God Wutong in the Social History of Jiangnan,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Stud-
ies 51.2 (1991), 651–714. These Spirits of the Five Supernatural Powers were
most often conceived as latter-day versions of the ancient mountain sprites
(shanxiao), who were now thought to reside primarily among rocks and trees.
Their gradual association with the five supernatural powers (Skt. abhijña) of
the Buddha and Buddhist monks is evidence of the abiding links being formed
in the Song between rural monasteries and village religion. I suspect that, on
the one hand, gods of the villages and of village spirit-mediums were becom-
ing guardian deities of Buddhist monasteries and temples; on the other hand,
there appears to have been an assimilation of the Buddhist magical powers to
the transformational powers of the Wutong shen and their spirit-mediums.
286 Notes to Page 131

Specific evidence for the identification of Flower Radiance with a Spirit

of the Five Supernatural Powers appears in a discussion of the latter found
in a Daoist legislative text of a lineage of Ritual Masters specializing in the
“Secret Rites of Fengdu”:

All Wutong are evil demons (mogui ) who have attained spiritual
efficacy (ling). The upper class of Wutong are formed from the
pneumas (qi ) of [the five elements]: metal, wood, water, fire, and
earth. Among the middle class of Wutong is none other than
Flower Radiance (Huaguang). He is formed from the pneuma of
mountains, streams, and the Five Peaks. He usurps the halo of the
Buddha and takes the title “Head of the Gods” (shenshou). The “Nu-
minous Officers” (lingguan) of the middle class are gods who have
attained spiritual efficacy and take the title “Transcendent Saints”
(xiansheng). The lower class of Wutong are formed from the
pneuma of grass and trees. Some take the appellation “Muxia,”
and they reside in grasses and trees, out of which their altars are
made. These gods let fly misfortune upon human beings and crave
blood sacrifices. (Daofa huiyuan 267, “The Ritual Models and Black
Codes of Taixuan Fengdu,” 14b.)

This passage recapitulates synchronically the history of the cult to these re-
markable gods. The lower class of Wutong corresponds to the village gods
of the spirit-mediums (indeed, as we learn from the Yijian zhi, they lived in
trees and many were known as “muxia”). The upper class of Wutong corre-
sponds to the rarefied saints (wuxian or wusheng ) of the urban temples. Fi-
nally, the middle class of Wutong corresponds to the gods of Tantric and
Daoist Ritual Masters, who mediated between these other worlds. This mid-
dle class is said to include “Numinous Officers” (lingguan), the appellation
by which the Daoist Ritual Master or Ritual Officer referred to his spirit-
generals and cultic divinities. One of these Numinous Officers, Ma Sheng
(the “Horse Vanquisher”), was the focus of his own cult and Daoist lineage.
He was a god of the south and of fire, and none other than the Daoist ver-
sion of the Bodhissatva Flower Radiance (for exorcistic texts belonging to
the Daoist cult of Ma Sheng, see Daofa huiyuan 222–226).
The “Ritual Models and Black Codes of Taixuan Fengdu” has one more
thing to say about this middle class of divinities:

Among the worldly [i.e., the vernacular, nonclerical world], there

are the “Three Martial Spirits of the Penetrations” (Sanxiong tong-
Notes to Page 131 287

shen), who are those in whom the hexagrams qian and kun have
attained spiritual efficacy. They are called Xiongwei, Huaguang, and
Nezha [my italics]. Although these spirits have received the man-
date from the Jade Emperor of the Divine Empyrean (Shenxiao
yudi ) and are unable to harm human beings, their natures are
difficult to control. (Daofa huiyuan 267.15a)

There can be no better statement of the mediating nature and function

of the gods of Buddhist and Daoist Ritual Masters than the description of
these gods, whose volatile nature betrays their popular origin but who have
been tamed and enfeoffed by the high god of Song Daoism as his fierce lieu-
tenants and protectors of the faith. Moreover, there can be no better state-
ment of the interpenetration of the cults of Daoist and Tantric Ritual Mas-
ters. This triad of worldly Daoist divinities—Xiongwei, Huaguang, and
Nezha—has been taken over unchanged from Ucchu3ma’s pantheon, though
the latter represents the triad in the expanded form of two pairs: the Two
Great Lords Xiongwei and Huaguang, and Prince Nezha and the Saintly King
Dinglun. I have been unable to identify Xiongwei.
50. Nezha (abbreviated transliteration of Nalakubara, son of Kubera, from the
Mahabharata) is the third and youngest son of Vai4ravana (Pishamen),
guardian of the north and one of the Four Maharaja Devas (Si da tianwang).
The cult to Nezha, like that to his father, originated in Khotan in the eighth
century; see Da Tang Xihuo ji (T. 2087), Xuanzang, 12.943ab; Da Song seng
shi lüe (T. 2126), Zanning, 254b. As mentioned in Chapter 3, their cult in-
spired a number of scriptures attributed to but originating several gener-
ations after the death of Amoghavajra; for the dating of these scriptures,
probably to the mid-ninth century, see Yoritomi Motohiro, Chugoku mikkyo
no kenkyu (Tokyo: Daito shuppansha, 1979), 152. The central text, the
Pishamen yigui (T. 1249), describes Amoghavajra’s successful effort to en-
list the aid of Vai4ravana in defending the Western Protectorate (Anxi
cheng), which had been surrounded by various Central Asian kingdoms in
742. In the presence of Emperor Xuanzong himself, Amoghavajra’s con-
tinuous mantra recitations produced the epiphany of over two hundred sol-
diers led by the second son of Vai4ravana, Du Jian. Two months later, a re-
port arrived from the Western Protectorate that, shortly after this ritual had
been performed, the enemy had been forced into retreat by the thunder-
ous sound of drums and horns, and that their weapons had been cut in
half by, of all things, a band of golden-haired desert rats; for the link be-
tween these desert rats and Khotan, see Da Tang Xihuo ji (T. 2087),
288 Notes to Page 131

12.944a–b. Vai4ravana, moreover, finally appeared atop the city’s northern

tower in a flash of light.
Almost as an afterthought, the scripture interjects, somewhat later, that
Vai4ravana’s third son, Nezha, had accompanied his father during the city’s
defense, carrying the pagoda that was Vai4ravana’s signature. Nezha, how-
ever, is the central focus of another scripture in this series, the Beifang Pishamen
tianwang suijun hufa yigui (T. 1248). Here, Nezha appears to replace his el-
der brother as Vai4ravana’s principal lieutenant. This short and fragmentary
text includes a list of various rites and homa offerings whose purpose is over-
whelmingly aggressive, resulting in the defeat of one’s enemies, both human
and demonic. Nezha assumes the function of Vai4ravana as protector of the
emperor, his ministers, and the bureaucracy, and the rites decribed therein
are said to have been instrumental in the defense of the empire during the
reign of Xuanzong. Among the iconographical instructions, moreover, we
find Nezha depicted with a yak3a at his feet.
In the late Tang and Five Dynasties period, the cult to Vai4ravana spread
beyond the Tantric milieu of the Tang court, particularly among military men
(see Jiu Wudai shi 25 and 47). In 947, for instance, artisans of the Later Jin
dynasty were instructed by a member of the staff of the Military Commissioner
Who Returns to Righteousness, Yuan Zhong, to construct a Buddhist mural
in which Vai4ravana was featured along with his army of prairie rats; see Yorit-
omi, Chugoku mikkyo no kenkyu, 153.
By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Nezha had been fully absorbed
into the pantheons of a number of therapeutic lineages of Daoist Ritual Mas-
ters. Among some, he was invoked as a kind of multivalent figure with three
forms, identified with the Daoist Prime Marshals (yuanshuai ), Chen Danian,
Ma Sheng, and Zhu Luqi (see Daofa huiyuan 229, esp. 27b–28a; 224; 4b; 230,
1a). Among others, he had become an assistant commander of the demon
devotee Zhao Gongming (see Daofa huiyuan 231, 8a–9b; 232, 3a; 233, 5b;
234, 14a–b; 235, 1a and 1b; 236, 6b). As we have seen in Chapter 3, Hong
Mai offers a brief sketch of a lay Daoist Master of the “Rites of Maoshan” who
employed a “Spell of Nezha’s Fireball.” In the Yuan and Ming, Nezha became
a demon-quelling protagonist in several plays; see W. L. Idema, The Dramatic
Oeuvre of Chu Yu-tun (1379–1439), (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 33; Sawada
Mizuho, “Shakkyogeki joroku,” Tenri daigaku gakuho 44 (1964), 39–43. In
the play Erlang shen zui she suo mo jing, Nezha even claims to have been in-
vested by the Jade Emperor as commander of an army that included Tian-
peng and Heisha; see Liu Zhiwan, “Tenhoshin to tenhoju ni tsuite,” 410. In
the Ming, Nezha became the subject of a full-blown myth as well as the ob-
Notes to Page 131 289

ject of ritual. His story occupies several chapters of the Romance of Divine In-
vestiture (Fengshen yanyi ); see Liu Tsun-yan, Buddhist and Taoist Influences on
Chinese Novels, 1 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1962), 217–242; and Ho
Kinchung, “Nezha: Figure de l’enfant rebelle,” in Études Chinoises 7.2 (1988),
726. In the Journey to the West and Journey to the South, he plays confrontational
roles with respect to the main protagonists, Sun Wukong and Huaguang, re-
spectively. In modern times, Nezha’s cult (both myth and ritual) has become
central to the practices of spirit-mediums and Daoist Ritual Masters; see Schip-
per, “Classical and Vernacular Ritual,” 28; Cheu Hock Tong, The Nine Emperor
Gods: A Study of Chinese Spirit-Medium Cults (Singapore: Times Books Inter-
national, 1988), 28–51; and David K. Jordan, Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors: The
Folk Religion of a Taiwanese Village (Berkeley, University of California Press,
1972), 71–72. The association, in Ucchu3ma’s pantheon, of Nezha with
Dinglun shengwang escapes me. The Sagely King Dinglun is an hyposticiza-
tion of the Buddha’s cognitive powers. He appears to have been at the cen-
ter of his own mandala and sequence of Tantric rituals in the Tang (see, for
example, T. 959).
51. The God of Deep Sands was represented iconographically as a serpentine
monster who presided over the semi-mythical River of Flowing Sands (Liusha
he). His very name recalls the desert terrain west of Gansu. By the ninth
century, at the very latest, this fierce demon became the object of Tantric
cult and was identified as an incarnation of none other than Vai4ravana, fa-
ther of Nezha. All this we learn from a bibliography brought from China in
the ninth century by the Japanese Shingon monk Jyogyo (see T. 2163,
1070c–1071d). The God of Deep Sands was perhaps the model for one of
Xuanzang’s three companions, Sha Wujing, in The Journey to the West. He is
best remembered, however, as an opponent, and then protector, of the monk.
The God of Deep Sands is paired here with a divinity I have yet to iden-
tify to my satisfaction: Jiedi shen (lit., “God who Manifests the Truths
[satya]”?). In The Journey to the West, we find mention of the “ Wufang jiedi,”
or “Fierce Protectors of the Five Quarters” in Anthony Yu’s translation. Yu,
most likely, is following Morohashi, who identifies Jiedi as the name of a “fierce
divinity who protects the Dharma” (Dai kanwa jiten, 12389.35, also citing
Shuihu zhuan 4). Nakano Miyako, in contrast, asks us to compare these five
divinities with a rather enigmatic spell found toward the end of the scripture
Boruo xinjing: “Jiedi; jiedi; boluo jiedi; boluoseng jiedi; pudiseng jiedi”; see
Nakano Miyako, Seiyuki no himitsu (Tokyo: Fukutake shooten, 1984), 207. In
the Ming play Menglie Nezha sanbian hua, we find four Jiedi gods who aid Nezha
in a battle with female demons. They are called Jintou jiedi, Yintou jiedi,
290 Notes to Pages 132–134

Boluo jiedi, and Boluoseng jiedi. (See Sawada Mizuho, “Shakkyogeki joroku,”
40.) Similarly, in Zhu Yudun’s Xiang shizi, Mañju4ri leads four Jiedi gener-
als in capturing a green lion after Nezha has failed. See Idema, The Dramatic
Oeuvre of Chu Yu-tun, 33.
52. For the meaning and significance of these names and epithets, see T. 310,
Da baoji jing 10.52c.
53. Rolf Stein, Annuaire du Collège de France (1973–1974), 513. Elsewhere, Stein
refers to two paintings from Dunhuang, dated by inscription to the tenth
century, which depict a doubled form of Ucchu3ma on the right and a dou-
bled form of Vajrapani on the left. At their feet, moreover, lie an elephant-
headed demon and a pig-headed demon, respectively—Vinayaka/Vinakaya,
the dual form of the demonic Gane4a; see Stein’s “The Guardian of the
Gate: An Example of Buddhist Mythology, from India to Japan,” in Yves Bon-
nefoy and Wendy Doniger, eds., Asian Mythologies (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993), 129. See also the early fourteenth-century T. 1688,
Miji lishi daquan shenwang jing jiesong, 778a–779c, where the story of Uc-
chu3ma’s suppression of Brahma $ikhin is repeated and Ucchu3ma is des-
ignated by the appellation of Vajrapani—the “Stalwart of Mysterious Traces”
(Miqi lishi).
54. Rolf Stein, Annuaire du Collège de France (1972–1973), 61.
55. Ibid., 63. For an expanded version of these ideas, see Stein’s essay, “The
Guardian of the Gate,” referred to in note 53 above.
56. The Great Lord of Incense Mountain, Nezha, and the God of Deep Sands
can all be safely identified with the north, suggesting that all first terms of
the pairs may be so identified as well; the Great Lord of Snowy Mountain and
Flower Radiance, gods in the second position, have so far been identified
with the south.
57. See notes 48, 49, and 50 above.
58. Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji 424 (Yulu 6b).
59. T. 1229, Huiji jingang jin baibian fa jing.
60. For the illustrations of the talismans, as well as instructions for their appli-
cation and function, see T. 1229, 160a–c. See also Strickmann, “Magical
Medicine.”
61. T. 1420, Longshu wuming lun. For a preliminary study of this text, see Osabe
Kazuo, To-So mikkyoshi ronko (Kyoto: Nagada bunshodo, 1982), 234–247.
Other texts worthy of comparison include T. 1238, Azhapoju guishen dajiang
shangfo tuoluoni jing (esp.184a–185b); T. 1265, Changqulidu nü tuoluoni jing;
T.1275, Sheng Huanxitian shi fa (esp. 324 for Daoist talismans); and so forth.
62. Longshu wuming lun, 956, note 1.
Notes to Pages 134–145 291

63. Omura Seigai, Mikkyo hattatsushi (Tokyo: Bussho kankokai zuzobu, 1918), vol.
5, Furoku (appendix), “Kyokishosho ichiran,” p. 17.
64. T. 1420, 957a, lines 710.
65. Ibid., 961–962.
66. Ibid., 957b–958b.
67. Ibid., 958b–961a.
68. Ibid., 963a–967a.
69. Ibid., 964b, lines 19–20; 964c, lines 17–18; and passim.
70. Ibid., 966a, lines 78, lines 19–20, and so forth. See also Strickmann, “Magi-
cal Medicine.”
71. Ibid., 963c, lines 12–23.
72. Asvagho3a was traditionally taken to have been the teacher of Nagarjuna.
73. Two incense burners for the bodhisattvas, two for the vajra-beings (i.e.,
Vajrapani in bipartite form), two for the eight spirit-kings, and one for the
practitioner.
74. T. 1420, 967b–c.
75. Osabe Kazuo, To-So mikkyoshi ronko, 150–181.
76. T. 1420, 963b, lines 1416.
77. Ibid., 956b.
78. Yijian zhi, 304–305.
79. See Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji 436 (Yulu 18b), where Bo Yuchan is de-
scribing “ritual-studying literati of his day” ( jin zhi xue fa zhi shi ), who take
neither the Dao nor self-cultivation seriously; who are autodidacts and self-
proclaimed Masters (shi ); who take “the opening of light and bodily posses-
sion” to be the most sublime of arts; who pollute orthodox rituals with the
instructions of spirit-mediums; and who receive secret transmissions through
the automatic writing of spirits. Bo is describing here that group of lay Daoist
Ritual Masters who had close connections with spirit-mediums, and whom
we described in Chapters 3 and 4.
80. Yijian zhi, 195.
81. Ibid., 1713.
82. Ibid., 1252–1253. (For Liang Hun’s relation to Ren Daoyuan, see ibid., 1089).
83. HY 575, buyi (addenda), 4a–b.
84. Daofa huiyuan 253, 10b–11a.
85. Yijian zhi, 814–815.
86. Daofa huiyuan 243, “Nanji huolei lingguan Wang yuanshuai bifa,” 3b.
87. Ibid., 243, 1a–b and 4a.
88. Ibid., 417. With this anecdote, we may surmise that the cult to Ucchu3ma
had spread from southern Fujian (from Zhang and Quan prefectures) in two
292 Notes to Pages 147–151

directions—overland, in a northwesterly direction into Jiangxi, and along

the coast, in a northeasterly direction to Fuzhou. Below we will consider other
anecdotes that show the cult had extended to Poyang in Jiangxi and as far
north as Yangzhou in Jiangsu.
89. Ibid., 919.
90. Ibid., 1172.
91. See the tenth-century account of a medium discussed in Chapter 3, note
68.
92. See Wang Yucheng (954–1001), Xiaochu ji (Taipei: Sibu congkan ji, 1936),
3.7a–b, “He yayi jiao”; the discussion of the medium’s “child underlings”
(tongli ) in the 1023 memorial of Xia Song, requesting permission to elimi-
nate sorcery in Hongchou (Xu Zizhi tong jian changbian 101, “Hongzhou qing
duan yaowu zou”); and Yijian zhi 986, where a medium in Fuzhou arrives at
an exorcism with a “boy-retinue” (putong) numbering several dozen.
93. See Jiannan shikao: 37, “Qiu Han,” Lu You (1125–1210), reprinted in Lu Fang-
weng quanji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), vol. 2, 571; the poem by Liu
Yun (971–1031), quoted in Nakamura Jihei, “Socho no kiu ni tsuite,” Ajia no
kyoiku to shakai (Tokyo: Fumaito shuppan, 1980), 111, which distinguishes
between ten-odd “elderly mediums” (laoxi ), and a group of “child-mediums”
(tongwu) and “actors and actresses” (lingchang); and, from the Tang, Quan
Tang Shi 396, “Han Shen” by Yuan Zhen.
94. Yijian zhi 996.
95. Consider, in the context of Tantric Buddhism, T. 1246, Mo he fei shi luo mo
na ye ti po he luo she tuoluoni yigui, 221a–b, “Dao Tang jinhuo fa” (“Rites for
Walking Through Boiling Water and Exorcising Fire”). At Yijian zhi 1299, a
Daoist priest of the Tianqing Abbey in Leizhou “walks through boiling water
without being aware,” evidently in trance, but he is suffering from a demonic
illness.
96. See Ofuchi Ninji, Chugokujin no shukyo girei , 1008–1044, passim.
97. John Lagerwey, most recently, has found in the counties of Ninghua, Tain-
ing, and Jiangle (West Central Fujian) the same divinities to be central to
offering rituals of the Buddho-Daoist ritual masters of the Pu’an jiao: Uc-
chu3ma (Miji jingang), Nagarjuna and Zhenwu, and Nezha, but also the
Four Saints (Tianpeng, Tianyou, Yisheng, and Yousheng), Huaguang, var-
ious luo-spirits, etc. In Taining county, these ritual masters are called
“Molangxian” (Demon-Son Transcendents). Lagerwey writes: “According
to [the priest] Chen [Shengzhong], Molangxian . . . do both ‘light’ and
‘dark’ rituals, but primarily the latter. They cannot be called ‘monks’ be-
cause they marry and know magic ( fashu), but they are at once Buddhist
Notes to Pages 153–163 293

and Taoist. [The priest] Xiao [Fujian] added: ‘We are Taoists. Taishang lao-
jun taught the ancestral master Pu’an, so it can be called the Pu’an school.’
There is another type of priest in the area who belong to the Three-Altar
school (Santan jiao). Their specialty is crossing barefoot on beds of hot coals
(guohuolian)—‘if this needs to be done, we must invite them’—and ‘call-
ing down the Wulang’ ( jiang wulang) (both of these are normally Lüshan
rituals): ‘The Wulang can catch demons. In addition they blow buffalo
horns (niujiao), but otherwise their rituals are the same as ours, and we can
work together. We are both called Molangxian. They are Taoists with an
admixture of Pu’an teachings; we are Taoist with Buddhist scriptures.’” For
this and much more, see John Lagerwey, “Popular Ritual Specialists in West
Central Fujian (Taibei: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on
Chinese Society, Ethnicity, and Cultural Performance, 2000), 1–33. The
commitment to Tantric Buddhism of Linshui furen—the putative founder
of the Lüshan sect who lived in the eighth century in Putian, Fujian—is
emphasized in Ofuchi Ninji, Chugokujin no shukyo girei, 1013, line 22
through 1014, line 1. See also Brigitte Baptandier-Berthier, La Dame au bord
de l’eau (Nanterre: Societé d’ethnologie, 1988), and idem, “The Lady Lin-
shui: How a Woman Became a Goddess,” in Meir Shahar and Robert P.
Weller, eds., Unruly Gods: Divinity and Society in China (Honolulu: Univer-
sity of Hawai‘i Press, 1996), 105–149.

Chapter 7: Daoist Priests, Confucian Literati,

and Child-Mediums
1. Yijian zhi, 1198–1199.
2. Ibid., 846.
3. For these Daoist rites for the dead, see Chapter 8.
4. This, by the way, is further proof that, despite later criticism, twelfth-century
priests who practiced the funeral liturgy of the Lingbao dafa also practiced
exorcisms.
5. Yijian zhi, 1759–1761.
6. Ibid., 1382–1383.
7. Denis Twitchett, “The Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate, 1950–1760,” in David
Nivison and Arthur Wright, eds., Confucianism in Action (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1959), 97–133, and idem, “Documents on Clan Adminis-
tration 1: The Rules of Administration of the Charitable Estate of the Fan
Clan,” Asia Major 3rd ser., 8 (1960), 1–35.
8. Patricia Ebrey, “Early Stages of Descent Group Organization” in Ebrey and
294 Notes to Pages 164–171

Watson, eds., Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000–1940 (Berke-

ley: University of California Press, 1986), 42–43.
9. See, for example, the Dunhuang document (Stein 6537v) translated and
analyzed by Chikusa Masa’aki, Chugoku bukkyoshakai shi kenkyu, 497–500
(document #7).
10. Twitchett, “The Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate,” 116. The list of familial en-
croachments continues at some length.
11. Compare with the temple-medium of Ucchu3ma (Chapter 6), who also
stands on a table.
12. In 720, statues and offerings to the “ten wise” disciples of Confucius were
dedicated by imperial decree in the Confucian Temple at Yanzhou. See David
McMullen, State and Scholars in T’ang China (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1988), 45.
13. Yijian zhi, 1089–1091.
14. For liandu and the Yellow Register Retreat, see Chapter 8 and Appendix.
15. See Chapter 4, under the section “Spirit-Mediums and Daoist Revelation.”
16. See Chapter 6, under “Tantric Cults and Daoist Ritual Masters,” and this chap-
ter, under “Confucian Literati and Child-Mediums.”
17. Yijian zhi, 1260.

Chapter 8: Spirit-Possession and the Grateful Dead

1. Yu Wenbao, Chuijian silu, as reproduced in Matsumoto Koichi, “Sorei-sairei
ni miru Sodai shukyoshi no ichi keiko,” in Sodai no shakai to bunka (Tokyo:
Kyuko shoin, 1983), 172.
2. The tendency of many historians to examine mortuary ritual from the per-
spective of Song Neo-Confucianism at best grossly simplifies a very complex
religious situation, and at worst seriously distorts the actual state of religious
practice in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Typical of this perspective
is Evelyn Rawski’s introduction to the recent conference volume, James Wat-
son and Evelyn Rawski, eds., Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 20–40. Her article is enti-
tled “A Historian’s Approach to Chinese Death Ritual,” though Rawski has
a very narrow view of what counts as ritual and what constitutes a historian’s
approach to it. In contrast to the anthropologist, she writes, “The historian’s
understanding of death ritual . . . is dominated by the texts that are con-
stantly cited in writings on ritual, beginning with the Li ji (Treatise on cer-
emonial usages), a work from the fourth century b.c., which was one of the
‘Five Canons’ (Wujing), and the Yili (Rites and ceremonial usages), dating
Notes to Page 171 295

from the same period. These texts were the reference points for subsequent
compilations of ritual into the late Qing period, and for historians one ma-
jor question is To what extent were these texts the guide to actual ritual
practice?”
The historian’s understanding of and approach to mortuary ritual are lim-
ited here to classical Confucian texts and their historical permutations. The
relation of these texts to actual ritual practice is indeed an important ques-
tion, but Rawski makes no attempt to answer it. Rather than posing the ques-
tion of their relation to different historical periods, the development of Chi-
nese mortuary ritual is read entirely in terms of the supposed convergence
of classical text and ritual practice in the Ming and especially Qing dynasties.
Rawski appears to divide pre-Qing China into two periods. Before the Song,
death ritual and the ancestor cult were denied to commoners, and “the ef-
fect of limiting the audience for classical ritual prescriptions to the ruling
elite was to permit other belief systems, notably Buddhism and Daoism, to
dominate popular practice” (ibid., 20). Buddhism and Daoism, therefore,
managed to dominate popular practice by default.
In addition to being a completely inadequate explanation for the preva-
lence of non-Confucian mortuary ritual, the implication of this view is that,
as historians, we might have been spared the necessity of even mentioning
Buddhism and Daoism had the audience for classical ritual not been so cir-
cumscribed. That this is indeed an implication of Rawski’s view is borne out
by the fact that she goes on to attribute the same mechanism to the decline
of Buddhist and Daoist influence as she does to its rise: “In the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, a newly vigorous Confucian officialdom began to look
closely at and to correct popular mores through reform of marriage and
mourning customs” (ibid., 30–31). In particular, “the Neo-Confucian philo-
sophical attack on Buddhism and Daoism . . . sought to replace errant prac-
tices among commoners with approved classical rites and signaled an im-
portant reorientation toward the propagation of standards that would cover
commoners as well as gentleman-officials” (ibid., 30). Rawski believes that
“the impact of the Neo-Confucian concern with the social transformation of
commoners” was facilitated by two long-term secular trends: first, the devel-
opment of printing, which was both cause and effect of the dissemination of
Confucian norms, and, second, the central government’s reliance on indi-
rect means of social control through the educational efforts of “a group of
degree-holders educated in the Confucian curriculum, committed to the dy-
nasty, and strategically placed throughout China.” Once, in other words, the
Neo-Confucian elite decided in the Song to expand the audience for classi-
296 Notes to Page 171

cal ritual, Buddhist and Daoist ritual progressively collapsed under the
weight of compelling philosophical argument and a rising tide of books and
lectures that left no social shore of the empire uncovered. The history of Chi-
nese religious practice since the Song is a linear narrative of standardization
and normalization driven exclusively by the paternalistic instincts of a uni-
form and monovocal elite such that, “by the Qing, one could truly say that
the mourning observances for an emperor were in their essentials the same
as the mourning observances for commoners” (ibid., 32).
A number of unfortunate consequences follow from this approach. By
limiting the historian to classical ritual, we not only deny the historian a
significant body of textual evidence but we will never see that, long before
the Qing, the death rituals of emperors were often the same as those of com-
moners, only these rituals were not Confucian. By linking the fortunes and
fate of Buddhist and Daoist death ritual with the ritual prescriptions of the
state or the elite, we miss what was compelling about these rituals in them-
selves: how they came to satisfy individual needs or familial aspirations that
the very nature of classical ritual precluded it from addressing; how they
emerged and flourished within a particular society and gave shape to a par-
ticular configuration and historical vision of social and economic relations;
and how they functioned as the vehicle for the transmission and perpetua-
tion of archaic Chinese ritual practices and for the dissemination of distinctly
Chinese, even Confucian, values.
Most importantly, by maintaining a hard distinction between elite and com-
moners, and by further identifying the elite with the practice of classical rit-
ual and the espousal of Neo-Confucianism, we blind ourselves to the fact that
through the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, and to a more differentiated
extent in the Qing, the most ardent practitioners of Buddhist and Daoist
death ritual were members of the bureaucratic class and local gentry. A “com-
mon Confucian curriculum” did not guarantee that the elite spoke with a
single voice on this issue, nor did the label “popular” (su), applied by Neo-
Confucians to nonclassical rituals, guarantee that those who practiced them
were primarily commoners.
It has been argued, furthermore, that Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals did not be-
come historically significant or influential until the sixteenth and, especially,
the seventeenth century, when the gentry began to ensure their dominance
of local society—and to undermine the horizontal, economic ties of class—
by organizing their less fortunate kin along the vertical lines of lineage. See
Timothy Brook, “Gentry Dominance in Chinese Society: Monasteries and Lin-
eages in the Structuring of Local Society, 1500–1700” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard
Notes to Page 171 297

University, 1984), esp. ch. 8, 262–295, and idem, “Funerary Ritual and the
Building of Lineages in Late Imperial China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Stud-
ies 49 (1989), 465–499, esp. 483–489; for Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals, see also
Patricia Ebrey, trans., Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals: A Twelfth-Century Manual for the
Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals and Rites (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1991), and Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial
China: A Social History of Writing About Rites (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1991), esp. ch. 6 and 7. Ebrey wants to indicate the success of Zhu Xi’s
book as a guide to actual practice by enumerating the many editions, abridg-
ments, and commentaries it spawned from the Song through Ming dynas-
ties, a success that seems to be contradicted by the evidence analyzed by
Brook.
In the Song and Yuan dynasties, we do find what Robert Hymes has called
a “lineage orientation” among elite families—what from a slightly different
point of view Patricia Ebrey has called “group consciousness.” See Hymes,
“Marriage, Descent Groups, and the Localist Strategy in Song and Yuan
Fuzhou,” in Ebrey and Watson, eds., Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China,
1000–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 133; and Ebrey,
“The Early Stages of Descent Group Organization,” also in Ebrey and Wat-
son, eds., Kinship Organization, 23. More often than not, however, the desire
of individuals to express their descent from a common apical ancestor was
made within the context of Buddhist institutions and observances.
At a more abstract level, the problem with examining death and other rit-
ual practices from the perspective of Neo-Confucianism is that it necessarily
tends to marginalize Buddhism and Daoism and to distract us from the ex-
tent to which the Neo-Confucians represented an extremely radical, minor-
ity position within the Song-dynasty elite. In a recent conference paper on
the “State Response to Popular Funeral Practices in Song China” (presented
at the Symposium on Religion and Society in China, Urbana-Champaign, Nov.
1988), Ebrey defines these popular practices as those that were “perceived
as objectionable by the educated elite or state officials.” Her evidence for the
position of the educated elite, however, is drawn entirely from the writings
of a small group of (Neo-)Confucian writers, most notably Sima Guang,
Cheng Yi, and Yu Wenbao. In her final paragraph, at the end of a long analy-
sis of their objections to Buddhist death ritual, geomancy, and the exorcism
of the sha spirits, Ebrey does admit that “the educated elite” were not uni-
form in their attitudes to these popular funerary customs and that some ac-
tually left poems commemorating their participation in Buddhist rituals, yet
she draws no conclusions from this.
298 Notes to Page 173

When Ebrey turns to the state, she finds that, for the most part, it not only
took a very tolerant attitude toward the popular practices criticized by the
Neo-Confucians but actually engaged in these practices itself. Yet again, Ebrey
draws nothing positive from this. Instead of offering a historical and cultural
analysis of what the state actually did, she feels compelled to explain how the
Song state could possibly tolerate or adhere to such a contradictory and frag-
mented set of practices (Confucian, Buddhist, geomantic, and folk) at one
and the same time. Ebrey offers a series of “sociological explanations” for
how each and every one of these practices served state interests in a differ-
ent and special way. In the end she writes, “As a historian I would prefer to
look at the issue historically, analyzing why particular practices spread when
they did. Unfortunately it is difficult to date with any confidence the pene-
tration of grave geomancy and Buddhist services throughout the population.
Certainly geomantic theories were known and discussed by the elite in the
early Tang; whether typical peasants in that period consulted geomancers is
not so clear. Buddhist services and the related idea of Buddhist purgatories
and transferring merit seem to have spread during the Tang, but there is not
enough evidence to estimate the proportion of the population performing
Buddhist services in mid-Tang and mid-Song” (ibid.)
While it is certainly true that we cannot attach a numerical figure to the
proportion of the Tang and Song population that performed Buddhist ser-
vices for the dead, we can chart with a fair degree of confidence and
specificity, I believe, the historical development and social diffusion not only
of Buddhist but also of Daoist, and other, death rituals. We cannot do this,
however, by relying on the writings of Song Neo-Confucians or state edicts.
3. Examples of what would appear to be indisputable Buddhist influence on
the Daoist ritual are the “bathhouse” (wenshi or mushi ), where the souls are
washed, and the “sweet dew” on which they feed. Compare, for example, Fa-
jie shengfan shiulu shenghui xuizhai yigui, Zhu Hong, 2.12a and 3.28a with
Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi 26.8a and 29.6a, and with Shangqing ling-
bao dafa, Jin Yunzhong, 37.3b and 38.23a. In the Daoist pudu, moreover, the
souls of the dead line up and are bathed by gender, a detail borrowed di-
rectly from the shuilu. Michel Strickmann, by the way, in his attempt to place
the shuilu within the Tantric tradition, found parallels to the bathing of the
saints in the devotional bathing of icons, and parallels to the bathing of the
commoners in the purificatory use of water to exorcise demons (Mantras et
mandarins, 308). I find these parallels unconvincing, as I do the entire pro-
ject of identifying the shuilu as a Tantric ritual. A more significant compari-
son would be with the bathhouses (mushi ) maintained and sponsored by
Notes to Pages 173–174 299

Song-dynasty monasteries in which over a thousand monks and laymen

(= the saints and commoners of the shuilu) might be washed at the same time.
These bathhouses had their origin in the Tang, when they were restricted to
monks. (See Huang Minzhi, Songdao fojiao shehui jing ji shi lunji, 432–434.)
Be that as it may, it is difficult to know how to assess these examples of
Buddhist influence on Daoist rites for the dead. At a deep level, the bathing
and feeding and even clothing of the soul resonates with the ancient Chi-
nese funerary practice of bathing, clothing, and feeding the corpse. See the
passages from the Liji and Yili translated and analyzed in J. J. M. de Groot,
The Religious System of China (Taipei reprint, 1976), vol. 1, ch. 2–3. Moreover,
in a Daoist context, the bathing, clothing, and feeding of the soul can already
be seen in a text that belongs to the original corpus of Lingbao scriptures re-
vealed at the end of the fourth century, The Marvelous Scripture of Salvation
through Extinction by Revivification of Corpses through Fivefold Refinement (Tais-
hang dongxuan lingbao miedu wulian shengshi miaojing , HY 369). This scripture
contains “talisman-orders” ( fuming) addressed to the Spirits of the Five Di-
rections. They were to be painted on stone and buried in the tomb. One of
these has been translated by Stephen Bokenkamp (“Death and Ascent in
Lingpao Daoism,” Taoist Resources 1.2 [1989], 8–9) and, more recently, by Pe-
ter Nickerson: “Let Taishan, the Eastern Marchmount, open to the light the
Offices of the Long Night of the Nine Stygia, and let out the hun-spirit of (so-
and-so). Shampoo, bathe, cap and gird him, and send him to the southern
mansion. Supply him with clothing and food, and let him be eternally in the
light” (Nickerson, “Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval
China,” [Ph.D. diss., Berkeley, 1996], 224). Similar instructions are made to
the spirits of the tomb in the fifth-century Daoist tomb ordinances translated
and analyzed by Nickerson, (ibid., 17): “All the divinities of the mound and
tomb should . . . open and show the deceased the passage, putting to rest his
cadaverous form, shampooing and bathing, capping and girding him.”
4. See Yijian zhi 416, for a shuilu performed in a village near Wenzhou, osten-
sibly for those who died at sea. Examples of urban shuilu will be encountered
below.
5. Yijian zhi 1149 and 1209.
6. Ibid., 326, for a Huanglu jiuyou jiao performed at the Yusi Abbey on Gezao-
shan.
7. For the shuilu, see ibid., 465; for the huanglu, see ibid., 1422.
8. Ibid., 443.
9. Ibid., 1237. This monk, befitting his elite clientele, was also expert in
Sanskrit.
300 Notes to Pages 174–185

10. Ibid., 1259.

11. Ibid., 589.
12. Ibid., 988.
13. Ibid., 456–457.
14. Ibid., 443.
15. Ibid., 761, 983, and so on.
16. Ibid., 461.
17. Ibid., 750.
18. Ibid., 162.
19. Ibid., 560.
20. Ibid., 746.
21. Ibid., 1398.
22. Ibid., 471.
23. Ibid., 774.
24. Ibid., 1528–1529.
25. Ibid., 545.
26. Ibid., 1405–1406.
27. Ibid., 588–589.
28. Ibid., 1100.
29. Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji 428–429 (Yulu 6.10b–11a.)
30. For the appearance of the individual or collective dead at Buddhist funerary
ritual, see Yijian zhi 360, where the dead return during a Yulanpen zhai fol-
lowing a funeral; 385–386, where a vision of the dead following Buddhist
rites leads a community to replace a Daoist Huanglu luohan zhaihui; 457, where
Buddhist nuns appear in a dream during a shuilu performed by neighbor;
497, where a dead wife appears to her husband following a shuilu, and his
appearance is identified by monks as a “Living Heavenly Image” (sheng-
tianxiang); 742, where a monk summons the orphan-soul during a shuilu and
causes it to appear; 916, where a dead uncle appears during a Buddhist Sanqi
zhaihui sponsored by his niece and her husband, and converses with relatives;
1142, where dozens of roaming dead appear during a shuilu; 1209, where a
shuilu performed at Gold Mountain Monastery has the power not only to
cause the dead to appear but actually to restore the dead to life(!); and 1415,
where a dead husband appears at a Jiqi daochang performed by monks forty-
nine days after his death.
31. Yijian zhi 1319.
32. Ibid., 767.
33. Ibid., 1704–1705.
34. The Rites of Zhou specifies that in funerals one should have performed “the
Notes to Pages 186–189 301

ritual of the spirit-medium (wu) bringing down [or being possessed by] the
ancestral spirit” (Zhouli zhengyi 26.9a–b).
35. Taiping guang ji 388 “Seng Daojie” (p. 3096).
36. See, for example, Yijian zhi 739: “Xiang Ming, a commoner from Mount Kang-
liang in the canton of Hongyayi, Yugan subprefecture, took a singing girl,
née Hu, as a wife. Over ten years later, she died giving birth to a daughter.
In 1164, a spirit-medium arrived from another canton, claiming that (s)he
could cause the hun- and po - souls of the dead to return. Xiang had the
medium summon his wife. As soon as the medium commanded it, she came,
but Xiang couldn’t see anything; only the daughter, who was then already
twelve years old, saw that she was truly her mother. . . . All her demands she
would announce through the girl.”
37. For other examples of sons or grandsons who play the role of spirit-medium
during a Yellow Register Retreat, see Yijian zhi, 188–189 and 448–449.
38. See, for example, Shi jing 248: “The wild ducks are on the King river; the rep-
resentative of the (dead) princes comes and feasts and is at peace and (ap-
proves =) finds it good; your wine is clear, your viands are fragrant; the rep-
resentative feasts and drinks; felicity and blessings come and (achieve,
complete you =) make you perfect,” translated by Bernhard Karlgren, The
Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1974), 204.
39. See C. H. Wang, From Ritual to Allegory: Seven Essays in Early Chinese Poetry (Hong
Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1988), 47.
40. See, for example, Li ji 2, “Ki Thung,” 9: “of the pantomimic evolutions there
was none more important than representing (King) Wu’s (army) on the night
(before his battle).” James Legge, trans., Li Chi: Book of Rites (New Hyde Park:
University Books, 1967).
41. Arthur Waley, trans., The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry (New
York: Grove Weidenfield, 1988), 211.
42. This interpretation would seem to be supported by Li ji 2, “Kiao Theh Sang”
26: “The shi personated the spirit; the officer of prayer was the medium of
communication between him and the sacrificer” (Legge, Li Chi, 446).
43. As translated by Henry Dore, Researches into Chinese Superstitions, vol. 1 (Taipei:
Chengwen, 1966), 100.
44. Ibid., 99.
45. Legge, Li Chi, 337–338.
46. Dore, Researches into Chinese Superstitions, 101–102.
47. Ibid., 102. The words that are translated here by “reposes therein” were
often used in the Song to designate bodily possession. The passage, not
specified by Dore, can be found in Zhuzi yulei 90.18a–b. I am pleased to see
302 Notes to Pages 190–193

that this passage has been discussed recently by Julia Ching under the fine
heading “Spirit-Possession Reinterpreted by Philosophy.” See her Mysticism
and Kingship in China: The Heart of Chinese Wisdom (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 117–118.
48. Daoshu yuanshen qi (HY 1221), 5a.
49. Ibid., 1a–b.
50. Ibid., 2a–7a.
51. Possession within the Yellow Register Retreat, I would argue, should be con-
trasted with nonstructural/spontaneous possession following death. See Yi-
jian zhi 561–562, concerning the Record-Keeper of Haimen subprefecture
in Tongzhou who died while assisting in police matters: “The coffin was
lodged in a nunnery. The wife had not overcome her fear and hired two
nuns to keep her company during the night. Just as they passed by the spirit-
curtain, one of the nuns agitatedly got up and then calmly sat down. She as-
sumed the voice of the deceased, ordering them to summon the magistrate
of the subprefectural office, Sun Su. Sun arrived and engaged in very detailed
questions and answers with the deceased. The deceased begged Sun to have
several clerks named so-and-so flogged for their transgressions. Sun followed
his advice. Thereupon he proclaimed on matters of ethics, ‘Your sincerity
has not attained favor, and your death has been fated. If it is the same for
those whom you hold dear [i.e., your relatives], how will you attain tran-
scendence?’ And he had the monk Hui Yu invited to explain the Dharma. A
day passed, and the nun regained consciousness. But with the funeral, the
deceased returned, and the nun again assumed his voice, commanding his
wife, ‘If you want to marry, then go ahead; not at all will you bring shame
and pollution upon the affairs of our household, nor will I be angry with
you!’” See also Yijian zhi 1693–1694, where a concubine becomes possessed
by her dead master during ancestral sacrifices and addresses his son.
52. See Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi (HY 508), 25 and 26.
53. Ibid., 26.1a and 26.3a.
54. Ibid., 26.3b. For more detailed instructions see the early fourteenth-century
Lingbao ling jiao jidu jinshu (HY 466), 283.6b–16b.
55. Shangqing lingbao dafa ( Jin Yunzhong), 36.14b–15a.
56. Ibid., 36.12a.
57. Ibid., 36.16a; also, Shangqing lingbao dafa (Wang Qizhen), 38.9b–10a.
58. Shangqing lingbao dafa (Wang Qizhen), 35.9b–10a. The rituals that bring the
soul to the altar and cause it to reveal its form and/or to speak are collec-
tively referred to as “Rites of Attracting and Summoning” (shezhao fa.) See
Lingbao ling jiao jidu jinshu 260 for the instructions for “The Rites of Attract-
Notes to Pages 193–205 303

ing and Summoning [as explained in the] Numinous Book of the Purple
Flower of the Great Rites of Lingbao,” prefaced by a fascinating account of
their historical transmission and alteration.
59. Shangqing lingbao dafa (Wang Qizhen), 38.18b–19b.
60. Ibid., 38.25a.
61. Kristofer Schipper, “Mulien Plays in Daoist Liturgical Context,” in David John-
son, ed., Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual (Berkeley: Chinese Popular Culture Pro-
ject, 1989), 139–140. Much more detailed accounts of the destruction of the
fortress can be found in Ofuchi Ninji, Chugokujin no shukyo girei, 502–510,
and Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History, 221–228.
62. Schipper, “Mulien Plays,” 140. Tanaka Issei has found references to the in-
clusion of nuo-type rituals already in the Song-dynasty jiao. These rituals,
found in the Lingbao ling jiao jidu jinshu 256–258, were performed by falei
deng (the Ritual Masters and their entourage). See Tanaka Issei, Chugoku fukei
engeki kenkyu, 40–44.
63. Lingbao ling jiao jidu jinshu 120 and 121.
64. Ibid., 120.25a.
65. Ibid., 120.24a.
66. Yijian zhi 1536.

Chapter 9: The Syncretic Field of Chinese Religion

1. Prasenjit Duara, “State and Civil Society in the History of Chinese Moder-
nity,” in Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Wang Xi, eds., China’s Quest for Modern-
ization (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California at
Berkeley, Research Papers and Policy Studies 41, 1997), 300–324.
2. Ibid., 304–305.
3. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., “Civil Society in Late Imperial China,” in Wakeman
and Wang, eds., China’s Quest, 325–351.
4. Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 5.
5. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., “Models of Historical Change: The Chinese State and
Society, 1839–1989,” in Lieberthal et al., eds., Perspectives on Modern China:
Four Anniversaries (Armonk: Sharpe, 1991), 68–102, esp. 81–87.
6. Duara, Culture, Power, and the State, 134–135.
7. Ibid., 135.
8. Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Mod-
ern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 7.
9. Duara, “State and Civil Society in the History of Chinese Modernity,” 316.
304 Notes to Pages 205–212

10. Ibid.
11. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Pen-
guin reprint, 1996), 6–9.
12. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., “Boundaries of the Public Sphere in Ming and Qing
China,” Daedalus 127.3 (Summer 1998), 182; Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No
Significance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981) is still the best study of
this “sensible hypocrisy.”
13. Stephan Feuchtwang, The Imperial Metaphor: Popular Religion in China (Lon-
don: Routledge, 1992), 56–57.
14. Ibid., 56, 81–85, 91–125.
15. Alexander Woodside, “Emperors and the Chinese Political System,” in
Lieberthal et al., eds., Perspectives on Modern China, 10–11. In the Song, es-
pecially, the shi came to define themselves more specifically in contrast to the
military. See Peter Bol, “This Culture of Ours,” 55.
16. I would argue that pluralism in China, in contrast to historical examples of
civil society, must be characterized as exclusive rather than inclusive. Reli-
gious syncretism notwithstanding, membership in one cultic unit was exclu-
sive of membership with respect to a neighboring cultic unit. Such units were
invariably defined by rituals of alimentary sacrifice —performative rituals of
communion (feasts) and exclusion (exorcisms).
17. Kenneth Dean, Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 30–63 and 273–295.
18. Recently, for example, Patricia Ebrey and Peter Gregory have tried to pro-
duce a “metaphor for Chinese religion” derived from the picture of three
mountains, each representing one of the “Three Religions,” all sitting on
a base of “popular religion” (Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China,
Introduction). What is defended as “only a metaphor” is nonetheless pre-
sented as a model. It is the Buddhist mountain, and not reality, that in fact
provides the model for the other two mountains. The Buddhist mountain
includes a celibate clergy at the summit, lay believers in the middle, and a
broad base of laymen who do not identify themselves as Buddhist yet who
on occasion worship a Buddhist deity. (This broad base appears to merge
with the base of popular religion.) Corresponding to the celibate clergy of
Buddhism are Daoist priests and Confucian officials, scholars, and teach-
ers, despite the facts that Daoist priests were neither celibate nor monas-
tic and that Confucian officials were neither clerics, celibates, nor monks.
Corresponding to the Buddhist lay believer are the lower ranks of the Daoist
priesthood and those who merely read a Confucian book, despite the fact
that the lower ranks of the Daoist priesthood were priests and not laymen,
Notes to Pages 213–218 305

while those who read Confucian books included many priests and priests-
to-be.
At this point Ebrey and Gregory even question whether there was such a
thing as a Confucian lay believer. Corresponding to the Buddhist worshipper-
but-nonbeliever are those who do not identify themselves as Daoists yet sup-
plicate a Daoist divinity in a Daoist temple, as well as those who do not iden-
tify themselves as Confucian but who either accept certain Confucian values
(e.g., filiality), practice Confucian rituals such as ancestor worship, or simply
refuse to practice non-Confucian rituals. Yet there were no Daoists in Chi-
nese society except for Daoist priests and Ritual Masters, so the contrast be-
tween believing Daoist laymen and nonbelieving supplicants of Daoist di-
vinities is meaningless. Furthermore, those who accepted Confucian virtues
included Buddhist monks and Daoist priests; those who practiced ancestor
worship included Buddhist monks, Daoist priests, and Buddhist laymen; and
those who refused to practice non-Confucian rituals were, sad to say, only a
small group of Confucian officials, at least in the Song.
This house of cards is all built on the firm base of popular religion—the
repository for everything that does not quite fit into the “Three Religions,”
including divination, ancestor worship, and spirit-mediumship, despite the
fact that these three (and almost everything else that is mentioned) have an-
cient and very learned pedigrees. For a very fine historical introduction to
Chinese religions—one that is still organized along the lines of the traditional
categories but that manages to avoid such incoherence, see Stephen Teiser’s
introduction to Donald Lopez, Jr., ed., Religions of China in Practice (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 3–37.
19. Here I am combing different suggestions of François Jullien and Marshall
Sahlins.
20. Dean, Lord of the Three in One 26, note 29, quoting Stephan Feuchtwang.
21. Yijian zhi 690.
22. Kenneth Dean, Lord of the Three in One, 50; idem, “Transformations of the She
(Altars of the Soil) in Fujian,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asia 10 (1998), esp. 33–41;
and Romeyn Taylor, “Official and Popular Religion and the Political Orga-
nization of Chinese Society in the Ming,” in Liu Kwang-ching, ed., Orthodoxy
in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), esp.
143–148.
23. Dean, Lord of the Three in One, 49.
24. See Chikusa Masa’aki, Chugoku bukkyo shakai shi kenkyu, 145–198 and 261–
319; Huang Minzhi, Songdai fojiao shehui jing ji shi lunji , 119–200.
25. See Kanai Noriyuki, “Sodai-no gosha-to dojishin,” Nakajima Satoshi-sensei
306 Notes to Pages 219–223

koki kinen ronshu (Tokyo: Kyuko shoin, 1980–81), esp. 401–403, and idem,
“Nanso saishi shakai-no tenkai” Shukyo shakaishi kenkyu (Tokyo: Yuzan-
kaku,1977), esp. 594–597, on monasteries and the “altars to the spirits of
the land and grain”; Miyamoto Noriyuki, “So-Gen jidai ni okeru fun’an-to
sosen saishi,” Bukkyo shigaku kenkyu 35.2 (1992), 112–135; Linda Walton,
“Southern Sung Academies as Sacred Places,” in Ebrey and Gregory, eds.,
Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China, 335–363. In the recent and
most sophisticated study of Buddhism and literati in the Tang and Song,
Mark Halperin explores the partnership between the Song state and Bud-
dhist church whereby selected Buddhist monasteries served as memorials
for the war dead, as religious spaces to mark imperial birthdays and death-
days, as repositories of imperial calligraphy, and as galleries of imperial
portraits. See his “Pieties and Responsibilities: Buddhism and Chinese
Literati, 780–1280” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1997),
186–259.
26. Kanai Noriyuki, “Sodai-no sonsha-to bukkyo,” esp. 50–53. Mark Halperin
makes a similar point from a different perspective: “Literati, not the sangha,
came to determine how Buddhist institutions should be presented. The dis-
tance separating sangha and lay people had diminished markedly after the
T’ang. First many of the eminent monks of the time such as Tsan-ning (919–
1001), Tsun-shih (964–1032), Ch’i-sung (1007–1072), Te-hung (1071–1128)
and Ta-hui (1089–1163) cultivated close ties with the state and scholar-
officials. Although they largely continued old patterns of clerical-lay ties, the
search for patrons amid partisan debates within the Buddhist church might
have intensified the level of this association. To a much greater degree than
in the T’ang, elite clergy composed work with lay audiences in mind. More-
over, Sung administrative changes granted prefects the power to appoint the
abbots of large, public monasteries. Shi thus were obliged in their govern-
ment duties to know something about monks. Given the sangha’s great di-
versity, this new familiarity might at times have bred contempt, but it often
led to considerable admiration. In many cases, lay and religious elites treated
each other as peers” (“Pieties and Responsibilities: Buddhism and Chinese
Literati, 780–1280,” 37–38).
27. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert Wallace
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 37–51 (esp. 48–50).
28. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Politics: The Central Texts: Theory Against Fate (Lon-
don: Verso, 1997), 3.
29. Ibid., 22.
Notes to Pages 228–228 307

Appendix
1. Schipper, Le corps taoïste, 122–125; Cedzich, “Das Ritual der Himmelmeister,”
137–141.
2. Rolf Stein, “Les fêtes de cuisines du taoïsme religieux,” Annuaire du Collège
de France 69 (1968–1969): 431–440; and idem, “Spéculations mystiques et
thèmes relatifs aux ‘cuisines’ du taoïsme,” Annuaire du Collège de France 72
(1971–72): 489–499.
3. Michel Soymié, “Les dix jours de jeûne du taoïsme,” in Dokyo kenkyu ronshu,
Dokyo no shiso to bunka (Tokyo: Kokushokankokai, 1977), 1–21.
4. Dongxuan lingbao wuganwen (HY 1268), 5b–7a. The twelve zhai include two
associated with the Shangqing tradition, nine with the Lingbao tradition, and
one with the Celestial Master tradition (the zhai of the Three Primordials of
Mud and Soot). The nine Lingbao zhai are distinguished by function. Some,
like the Retreat of the Golden Register, are dedicated to the salvation of the
state; others, like the Yellow Register Retreat, are dedicated to “banishing the
sins of nine generations of ancestors”; and still others appear to be particu-
larly concerned with the salvation and immortalization of the Taoist master
or practicant. All nine of these Lingbao zhai, however, may be specific adap-
tations of the zhai described in the earlier Taiji zhenren fu lingbao zhaijie weiyi
zhujing yaojie (HY 532), as suggested by Catherine Bell. This zhai includes (a)
an opening sequence in which the priest enters the oratory and makes an
announcement before the incense burner, (b) a rite for exteriorizing the spir-
its who will announce the zhai to all corners of the universe, (c) a rite of pe-
tition, three of which are read and burned in the incense burner, and, finally,
(d) a rite of supplication performed in each of the ten directions. See Cather-
ine Bell, “Medieval Taoist Ritual Mastery: A Study in Practice, Text and Rite”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1983), 111–114. The three petitions in-
clude one for the deliverance of ancestors, another for the salvation of the
state (the emperor, dynasty, and ministers), and a third for the salvation of
the master. These three petitions, therefore, anticipate the tripartite func-
tions of the nine Lingbao zhai.
5. John Lagerwey, Wu-shang pi-yao, Somme taoïste du VIe siecle (Paris: EFEO, 1981),
163–165.
6. Henri Maspero, Taoism and Chinese Religion (Amherst: The University of Mass-
achusetts Press, 1981), 293–298.
7. For the differentiation between and elaboration of the falu and chuguan rites
in the Tang and Song, see Jiao santong zhenwen wufa zhengyi mengwei lu licheng
308 Notes to Pages 229–231

yi (HY 1202), 6b–8b, and the Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi (HY 508),
16.3a–5a and 32.11a–13a, respectively.
8. See Franciscus Verellen, Du Guangting (850–933): Taoïste de cour à la fin de la
chine médiévale (Paris: Mémoires de l’Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises 30,
1989).
9. Wushang biyao (HY 1130), 49–57.
10. See the Dongxuan lingbao sandong fengdao kejie yingshi (HY 1117), 6: “Chang-
chao yi.” For different and earlier procedures, see Dengzhen yinjue (HY 421),
3, and Strickmann, “Magical Medicine,” 8–11.
11. HY 507, in 58 juan.
12. Taishang huanglu zhaiyi 1–9. For different zhai of varying length, see juan 10
through 40.
13. These meditations, and those of the falu that immediately follow, are based
partly on Tao Hong jing’s (456–536) Dengzhen yinjue (HY 421). See especially
3.5b–10a, “Rujing.” For the importance of this Shangqing text as a reposi-
tory of ritual practices of early Daoism and the Celestial Master sect, see
Cedzich, “Das Ritual der Himmelmeister im Spiegel früher Quellen Über-
setzung und Untersuchung des liturgischen Materials im dritten chuan des
Tengchen yinchueh.”
14. See, for example, Taishang huanglu zhaiyi, 1.10a–11a, “Buxu shiyuan”; 2.4a–b;
3.3a–b; and so forth.
15. See Taishang huanglu zhaiyi 53, “Zanzun,” 3a–4a.
16. See the comments at Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi (HY 508), 16.12a–13a,
and Shangqing lingbao dafa (HY 1213), 56.1a–3a, both Song compilations. The
suqi deserves its own historical monograph, including an analysis of these very
passages. One might begin with Wushang biyao 35 and 48, and the comments
found in Lagerwey, Wu-shang pi-yao, 31.
17. See Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi 16, “Gufa suqi jianzhai yi,” passim. This
text purports to go back to Lu Xiujing (406–477) and then to have been re-
worked by Tang and Song exegetes.
18. The “Announcement of Merit” (yangong) may have originally applied to the
merit acheived by otherworldy officials in carrying out their duties, and was
subsequently extended, under Buddhist influence, to the living and dead.
See the “announcements of merit” that conclude many of the petitions in
the Chisongzi zhangli (HY 615).
19. See Taishang huanglu zhaiyi 49, “ Yangong baibiao,” 6a–b.
20. Ibid., 49.7b–8a. For a dramatic account of the meditational journey under-
taken during the submission of the petition, see the account of a jiao per-
formed in 1174 in Huzhou at Yijian zhi 1765–1766. In the Song dynasty, what
Notes to Pages 231–232 309

transpired during this ritual moment might have momentous consequences

for cultural politics. See Yijian zhi 1765, where Hong Mai gives the real rea-
son for the lifting of the ban, instituted by the minister Cai Jing, on the works
of Su Shi. According to Hong Mai, everyone believed that the relaxation oc-
curred at the insistence of Su Shi’s son Liang Shicheng, but this in fact was
not true: “At that time the Abbey of the Precious Registers of Shangqing
(Shangqing baolu gong) had been built and ‘Offerings’ ( jiao) and ‘Retreats’
(zhai ) were being performed there with great sincerity and reverence. Very
often the emperor Huizong personally attended these ceremonies. One
evening, the emperor ordered the priest to send up a memorial to Heaven.
After many hours, the priest got up, and the emperor asked why he had taken
so long. The priest answered, ‘At the moment when I arrived at the palace
of the Celestial Emperor, the gui constellation was memorializing. After a long
time he finally finished, and I was just now able to submit my own petition.’
Huizong was amazed and asked who was this gui constellation and what did
he memorialize about. The priest answered, ‘I heard nothing of his memo-
rial; however, this constellation is none other than the former scholar of the
Duanming Palace, Su Shi!’ The facial expression of the emperor changed
noticeably. Subsequently he relaxed the former restrictions.” For yet another
example, see the anecdote about the fashi Li Mingwei translated in Chapter
3, in the section “The Ritual Master as Exorcist.”
21. Taishang huanglu zhaiyi 49.8a.
22. Ibid., 50, “Santan shejiao.”
23. For the nashi, see Taishang huanglu zhaiyi 50.7b.
24. See Taishang huanglu zhaiyi 55.
25. In the Celestial Master tradition, writs of penance were sent to the Three
Officials (sanguan shoushu) in the event of illness. For the early Lingbao tra-
dition, see the “burial of the documents” (maijian) in the Taishang dongxuan
lingbao chisu yujue miaojing (HY 352), 3. The toulongbi has been studied by
Edouard Chavannes, “Le Jet des Dragons,” Mémoires concernant l’Asie orientale,
vol. 3 (Paris, 1919).
26. For such a detailed analysis, see the entries by John Lagerwey in Kristofer
Schipper and Fransciscus Verellen, eds., Catalogue raisonné du canon taoïste
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).
27. See Wang Qizhen’s Shangching lingbao dafa 54, “Zhaifa zong ji men,” and Jin
Yunzhong’s Shangching lingbao dafa 16, “Huanglu zixu,” 4b. See also Taishang
jidu zhangshe 2.6b–7b, for a representative petition.
28. Shangching lingbao dafa (Wang Qizhen), 34.14a.
29. Lingbao yujian 29.11b.
310 Notes to Pages 232–234

30. Ibid., 29.8a, “ Wushen bing ru Fangxiangshi.”

31. Zhouli 31.12b.
32. See Anna Seidel, “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs,”
esp. 34–39; for a translation and analysis of five Taoist tomb documents dat-
ing from the fifth and sixth centuries, see Peter Nickerson, “Taoism, Death,
and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China,” chapters 2 and 3; see also
Chisongzi zhangli (HY 615), 4.7a–9b. For a Southern Song example from
Jiangxi, see Zhang Xunliao, “Jiangxi Gao’an chutu Nan-Song Chunxi liu-
nian Xu Yong mu ‘Fengdu luoshan baku chaosheng zhengui shenxing’ tu
shike,” Daojiao wenhua yanjiu 6 (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1995), 300–311.
33. Chisongzi zhangli 6.1b–2a.
34. Shangching lingbao dafa (Wang Qizhen), 44 (entire) and 54.14b–15a; Wushang
huanglu dazhai licheng yi 44.6a–b; Lingbao ling jiao jidu jinshu 6a; and esp. Tai-
shang jidu zhangshe 2.14a–15b.
35. See Ofuchi Ninji, Chugokujin no shukyo girei , 496–502 (esp. 500), and John
Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History, 202–215 (esp. 206–207).
36. See Shangqing lingbao dafa ( Jin Yunzhong), 34.3a–6b. This lamp ritual was
already the centerpiece of the earliest Taoist text for the salvation of souls,
the Dongxuan lingbao changyezhifu jiuyu yukui mingzhen ke (HY 1400, fifth to
sixth century), for which see John Lagerwey, Wu-shang pi-yao, 158–159. At
34.1a and 34.9b, Jin Yunzhong compares the Lighting of the Lamps to the
Lideng zhi fa of Du Guangting, mentioned above.
37. Shangqing lingbao dafa ( Jin Yunzhong), 34.7a.1–6. The staff embodies the Di-
vine Soldiers of the Five Peaks and is prepared in a rite that precedes the de-
struction of the earth-prisons (see juan 33).
38. Shangqing lingbao dafa ( Jin Yunzhong), 34.7a.-67b.1.
39. Ibid., 34.7b.1–4.
40. Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi 24, “Rites of the Divine Lamps for Destroying
the Earth-Prisons.”
41. See Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi 25 and 26; Shangqing lingbao dafa ( Jin
Yunzhong), 36; and Shangqing lingbao dafa (Wang Qizhen), 35, 36, 37, and 38.
42. Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi 26.8a–11b, “Muyu wangling yi”; 26.11–b12a,
“Fen chaozhen yi deng”; 26.12a–17b, “Zhushi yi”; Shangqing lingpao tafa ( Jin
Yuzhong), 37.3b–7b, “Zheng jian muyu yi”; 37.7b–9a, “ Yinhun chaoye”;
37.9a–14a, “Zhushi.”
43. Shangqing lingbao dafa ( Jin Yuzhong), 37, “Shuihuo liandu,” 14b–34a.
44. This chapter, entitled “ Yuanshi lingbao ziran jiutian shenghua chaodu yin-
lian bijue,” has been translated and copiously annotated by Judith Boltz,
“Opening the Gates of Purgatory. A Twelfth-Century Taoist Meditation Tech-
Notes to Pages 234–236 311

nique for the Salvation of Lost Souls,” in Michel Strickmann, ed., Tantric and
Taoist Studies , vol. 2 (Bruxelles: Mélanges Chinois et Bouddhiques 21, 1983),
487–511.
45. Lingbao dalian neizhi xingchi jiyao (HY 407). This version has been translated
by John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History , 233–235.
46. Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi 28, “Lingbao tazhai zhuanshou jiefu
shengdu wang lingyi”; Shangqing lingbao dafa ( Jin Yunzhong), 37.34a–39a.
47. See the historical discussion at Shangqing lingbao dafa ( Jin Yunzhong),
37.39a–b; also Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi 28.12a–b.
48. See Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi 30 and 31; Shangqing lingbao dafa ( Jin
Yunzhong), 38.
49. For the ghost festival, or Yulanpen zhai (Skt. Avalambana), see Stephen F. Teiser,
The Ghost Festival in Medieval China, and idem, “The Ritual Behind the Opera:
A Fragmentary Ethnography of the Ghost Festival, a.d. 400–1900,” in David
Johnson, ed., Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual (Berkeley: Chinese Popular Cul-
ture Project, 1990), 191–223. With respect to the feeding rituals, see the nine
scriptures translated in the Tang by Amoghavajra and/or his school and oth-
ers, T. 1313–1321; Marinus de Visser, Ancient Buddhism in Japan: Sutras and
Ceremonies (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1935) for the Sino-Japanese and tantric tradi-
tions; and Hirai Yukei, “Tonko no shigakiho,” Buzan kyogaku taikai kiyo 8
(1980): 135–151, for Dunhuang. On Chinese tantrism and rites for the dis-
tribution of food, see now Charles Orzech, “Esoteric Buddhism and the Shishi
in China,” in Henrik H. Sorensen, The Esoteric Buddhist Tradition, SBS Mono-
graph Series 2 (Copenhagen Seminar for Buddhist Studies, 1994), 51–72.
For a more exacting comparison of the pre-shuilu Buddhist esoteric rituals
for the dead and the Daoist rites of universal salvation (pudu), see Orzech,
“Fang yen-k’ou and P’u-tu: Metaphor and Translation,” to appear in Livia Kohn
and Harold Roth, eds., Daoist Identity in Practice (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 2001).
50. Makita Tairyo, “Zuiriku-e koko,” in Chugoku kinsei bukkyoshi kenkyu (Kyoto:
Heiryakuji shoten, 1957), 169–193.
51. See Wu Liansheng, Baoning si Mingdai shuilu hua (Peking: Wenwu chuban-
she, 1985); Wang Hailang and Chen Yaolin, Pilu si he Pilu si bihua (Shijia-
zhuang: 1984); Caroline Gyss-Vermande, “Démons et merveilles: Vision de
la nature dans une peinture liturgique de XVe siècle,” Arts Asiatiques 43
(1988): 106–122; and idem, “The All Chinese Pantheon of the Shuilu chai,”
paper presented at JCCS conference on “The Rituals and Scriptures of Chi-
nese Popular Culture,” Bodega Bay, California, 1990.
52. Michel Strickmann, Mantras et mandarins, 369–411; Daniel B. Stevenson, “The
312 Notes to Pages 236–241

Buddhist Rite for the Creatures of Water and Land: Text and Image in the
History of the Shuilu fahui ” (unpublished ms., 1997).
53. Fozu tong ji, edited by Zhi Pan, 33. Makita Tairyo, “Hoshi osho denko,” in
Chugoku kinsei bukkyoshi kenkyu (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1957), 31–63.
54. Strickmann, Mantras et mandarins, 292; Makita, “Zuiriku-e koko,” 177–178.
55. Makita Tairyo, Godai shukyoshi kenkyu , 89, 97, and 147.
56. Zun Shi, “Shishi zhengming,” quoted in Makita, “Zuiriku-e koko,” 177.
57. Shimen zhengtong (1237 c.e.), quoted in Strickmann, Mantras et mandarins, 297.
58. Shishi tonglan, “Shuilu da zhai lingqiji.” See Makita, “Zuiriku-e koko,” 178;
Strickmann, Mantras et mandarins, 293.
59. Fozu tong ji 33.
60. Fajie shengfan shuilu shenghui yigui, Zhu Hong, Yunxi fahui, vols. 18 and 19.
For intellectual background, consult Zhunfang Yu, The Renewal of Buddhism
in China: Chuhung and the Late Ming Synthesis (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1981).
61. For late nineteenth-century versions based on Zhu Hong’s work, Makita
Tairyo mentions Zhi Guan’s (fl. 1864), Jiyuan shuilu tonglun, and his Falun
baochan; for another version, also based on Zhu Hong and compiled by the
early nineteenth-century abbot Yi Run, see Yi Run, Shuili yigui (Yangzhou:
Yangzhou zang jing yuan, 1917) and idem, Shuilu yigui huiben (Yangchou:
Yangzhou zang jing yuan, 1924). For the contemporary ritual, see now Shuilu
yizhe huiben (Shanghai: Shanghao foxue shuju, n.d.).
62. See Robert G. Heath, Crux Imperatorum Philosophia: Imperial Horizons of the
Cluniac Confraternitas, 964–1109 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1976), 87–108.
63. Compare the authorizing legend of the Cluniac All Souls in Jotsald’s Life of
Saint Odilo (Vita S. Odilonis, Patrologia Latina 142, 926–927) with the legend
justifying Buddhist offerings to hungry ghosts in $ik3ananda (652–710), Jiu
mianran egui tuoluoni shengzhou jing (T. 1314) and referred to repeatedly dur-
ing the Shuilu zhai.
64. Jotsald, Vita S. Odilonis, Patrologia Latina 142, 1037–1038.
G L O S S A RY

An Lushan wSs Beiji sisheng guan _•|t[

Anxi cheng wË∞ ben miao ªq
aweishe ¸¿¯ benxin ªfl
baban KZ bi @
baibiao zoutian Ù̵— bi qiu qi lei er yi ≤D‰˛”Ã
Baishi ’¤ bianshen ‹≠]´^
Baitian ’– bianshen renjian zuo guiwang ‹≠
baizhang fuci ÙπÒ¸ H°@≠˝
Bali shenwang KO´˝ bianshen zhou ‹≠G
bang jun πg bishu µ—
baoan jiao OwÁ Bo Yuchan ’…?
Baofu ge _≈’ Budai heshang ¨UM|
Baojian _C bugang B\
Baozhi _x bugang nianjue B\…Z
bazhi }æ buxu BÍ
bei O buzhe RÃ
Beidi _“ Cai Jing ≤?
Beidi gong _“c caima ]®
Beidi sanmei fashi _“TNkv Caizhou ≤{
Beidi shagui zhi fa _“Ÿ≠ßk canyi —≥
Beifang Rengui jinhuo dafa _Ë Cao Kefu ‰i_
–—Tıjk chan I

313
314 Glossary

Changbaishan ¯’s Chuzhou °{

Changsheng dadi ¯Õj“ ci ¸
Changshu `Ù cizhang Î˙
Changtian ˜– congci O®
changxiao ¯S cun s
Changzhou `{ cunmin ¯¡
chaozhen ¬u cuntong ¯£
Chen Danian Øj~ cunwei s∞
Chen Daoyi ØD@ Da zhen zhi lu FußÙ
Chen Guoqian ØÍÁ dabei jd
Chen Mao ØZ Dafan yinyu jÎÙy
Chen Shouyuan Øu∏ daizhi ›Ó
Chen Tiebian ØK@ dairen NH
Chen Wei ج Dayizhen xunjian jˆuµÀ
Chen Yuancheng Ø∏” dangki £‰
Cheng { danuo j¿
Cheng fashi {kv dao tang jinhuo fa –ˆTık
cheng ∞ dao tanghuo –ˆı
Cheng Yi {Ï dao zhi yong Dߌ
Chenghuang ∞™ daochang Dı
chenghuang miao ∞™q Daojie D«
chenghuang shemiao ∞™¿q daoliu Dy
chenghuang zhumiao houwang daoren DH
∞™—qJ˝ daoshi Dh
Chenzhou Ø{ daosu DU
chizhang ™π daozhe DÃ
chimei ^y Daozhen tang DuÛ
Chizhou ¿{ Daozhou D{
chizhou ren ˘GH dawu j≈
Chong’an Rw Daxi si jflx
chongding ´q dazhai jN
Chongxian guan RP[ Dean fu ww≤
Chuan Taichang «”` deng n
chuguan Xx Deng Yougong H≥\
chujia Xa Deqing wM
Chuzhou B{ Dexing w≥
Glossary 315

Dezhou w{ fashi kv
diankuang ˆg fatang kÛ
Dinglun ª¸ fawen kÂ
Dizang yuan a√| fayin kL
Dizhou –{ fayuan k|
Dong Shen ≥¬ fayuan shenjiang k|´N
Dong Song ≥Q fei daoshi DDh
Dong jia zidi ≥alà fendeng ¿O
Dongyue F® feng ?
Dongyue xingmiao FÆÊq Fengdu Z£
Dongyue jun FÆg Fengdu shanxing Z£sŒ
douzhang Êπ Fenghua ^∆
Du Guangting ˘˙x Fengxiang Òæ
du jian £? Fenglin si ÒLx
Du You ˘ˆ Fengwang ci ¡˝®
duanqi daochang _CDı Feng Xing ji æÊÚ
dunjia jiushen P“E´ Fouliang BÁ
duqiao keyi ◊Ùψ Fu San ≈T
egui j≠ Fu Xuan ≈Ô
ernü ‡k fuben ≈ª
Ezhou k{ fufan xianxing ˛Ÿ{Œ
fa k fugu _j
fafu fa o≈k Fujia li I“Ω
faguan kx Fujian ÷ÿ
Faguan si k[x fujiang ∆N
Faguang ks fulu _l
fahui k| furen ˛H
falei deng k˛• futi ˛È
falu ol Fuyang Xß
Fan An Sw Fuzhou ÷{
Fan Songnian øQ~ gaogong ™\
Fan Zhongyan SÚT Gaoshang Shenxiao lu ™W´]¸
fangshi Ëh gaoshi ™h
fangshu ËN gaozhai iN
fangxiang shi ˤv Gezaoshan ◊ms
Fanyang fß genchen ∞∞
316 Glossary

godanho ≠¬k Helin Peng bL^

gohodoji @k£l Hong Gua xÏ
gong Ω Hong Jinggao x∫™
gongde \w Hong Mai x⁄
gongde si \wx Hong Xingzu x≥™
gongzhu u¨ Hong Xun x≥
guaibian «‹ Hongzhou x{
guan ˆ Houguan Jx
guan tong ji ˆ£‰ Housheng ·t
guan’ai ˆi Hu jialuo ͘π
guanci [¯ Hu Wu J≠
guanfu x≤ huachi ÿ¿
Guang Fu Yuan s÷| Huagaishan ÿ\s
guanjie ˆŸ Huaguang pusa ÿ˙–ƒ
guanqi ˆ“ Huaidong zongling aF`‚
guanren xH Huang E ¿Æ
guantong ˆ£ Huang Gong jin ¿Ω@
gudu ¤r Huang Shunshen ¿˛”
guhun tÓ Huangcheng si ¿∞q
Guiji (Kuaiji) guan |][ huangguan ¿a
guimen ≠˘ Huanglu dajiao ¿¸jÁ
guilü ≠fl Huanglu daochang ¿¸Dı
Guo ¢ Huanglu jiao ¿¸Á
Guo Ziyi ¢lˆ Huanglu zhai ¿¸N
guoluguan LÙˆ huangzeng zhubiao ¿π∂Ì
Gusui lingwen ©ËFÂ Huantian xidi w—fla
Haikou xian ¸f§ Huanxitian wfl—
Haimen ¸˘ huashen wei Tianpeng dajiang
Haiqiong ¸£ ∆≠∞—¥jN
Hao Bian q‰ huashen wei Qiuku tianzun ∆≠
He Niang M] ∞DW—L
hechang b˚ Huating ÿF
Hehe MX hufa longshen @ks´
Heisha ¬˛ Huiji fa ©Òk
Heisha fu ¬˛≈ Huiji jin’gang ©Ò˜Ë
Heisha jiang jun ¬˛Nx Huiji jin’gang fa ©Ò˜Ëk
Glossary 317

Huiji shengbing ©Ò´L jieshi yuanjie zhenyan —¿Ë≤

Huiji zhou ©ÒG u•
Huilan Daoren zıDH jietan fa ≤¬k
Huili si zOx jietian …–
Huizong ≤v jieti tongzhuan …Èq«
Hukou Úf jiewen ¢›
hun Ó jieyin ≤L
huochi ı¿ jijiu Ωs
huoshi ıv Jin ˜
hutiao hanwu Jı~R jitian Ω–
Huzhou Ú{ Jin Yunzhong ˜π§
Jialu wang ˜∆˝ jin zhi xue fa zhi shi µß«k
Jialuo wang ˜π˝ ßh
jiamiao aq Jin Zhongshu ˜§œ
jianfa Ck jing ´
jiang ∞ Jin’gang chan ˜ËI
Jiang Yanyan ∏?• Jin’gang lishi ˜ËOh
jiangbi ∞ß Jin’gang shou ˜Ë‚
Jiangdong øF Jinlun huiji zhou ˜¸©›G
jiangui shi £≠v Jinshan si ˜sx
jiang jun Nx jinshe TD
jiangli NO Jinsuo liuzhu ˜Íy]
Jiangnan øn jintan T¬
jiangui £≠ Jintou luo ˜Yπ
jiangling ∞F Jinwang ?˝
Jiangxi øË Jinxian iÂ
jiangyan ∞• Jiuhuashan Eÿs
Jianyang ÿß jiuxiao E]
Jiangzhe ø˝ Jiuyi guan E√[
Jiankang ÿd jiuyou E’
Jianning ÿÁ Jiuyou jiao E’Á
Jianzhou ÿ{ Jixian guan ∞P[
jiao Á Jizhou N{
jiao’er Õ’ Jogyo `Â
jiaoxi Áu jue Z
Jiedi shen ¶Õ´ jue ±
318 Glossary

juedixi §”∏ Li Chunfeng ıE∑

Jue Fei ±D Li Henglao ı≈—
junxian p§ Li Mingwei ı˙L
kaidaolu zhenyan }DÙu• Li Renshi ıØv
kaidu }◊ Li Sheng ıÕ
Kaifeng }? Li Shimei ıQ¸
kaiguang }˙ li yi yi qi ßHq_
kaiguang zhou }˙G Li Yuanbi ı∏]
kaiqi fa }“k Li Zhongyong ıÚ√
Kaitong wulu }q≠Ù liandu m◊
Kaitong wulu dengtu }q≠Ù Liangcuo ÁÌ
Oœ Liang Hun Ál
kaiyanhou zhenyan }|Ôu• Liang Quan Á˛
Kang Taiqing d”M Liang Shicheng Áv®
kaofu “˛ Liang Wudi ÁZ“
kaogui zhaoshen “≠l´ libuwei zhenyan ˜∆»u•
kaowen zuosui zhi zhe mingzi “” lideng yi ßOˆ
@©ßÃWr limin Ω¡
kaozhao “l Lin Lingsu LF¿
kaozhao “” Lin’an {w
kaozhao fa “lk Linchuan {t
kaozhao shi “lœ ling O
kaozhao suihuo “”©b ling F
kaozhi “v Lingbao F_
ke Ï Lingbao dafa F_jk
Kong Guipin ’Qß Lingbao zhenwen F_uÂ
Kou Zhun F« lingfan FŸ
koujue fZ lingguan Fx
laoxi —D Lingbi F¿
leibu fa p°k Linjiang {ø
leifa pk Linshui furen {Ù“H
Leigong pΩ lisu ΩU
Leizhou p{ litan F¬
Leping ÷≠ Liu Cunli Bsß
li Ω Liu Dayong BjŒ
li ß Liu fashi Bkv
Glossary 319

Liu Hunkang BVd Ma Huaguang ®ÿ˙

Liu Yanshi B¤A Ma jialuo ®˜π
Liu Yu B… Ma Sheng ®”
Liu Zhuhui B~‚ maijian I≤
liujia liuding ª“ªB Maming ®Ô
Liusha he yFe Maoshan Ts
liwu Ω≈ Maoshan fa Tsk
Liyang ˙ß Maoshan zhengfa Tsøk
lizhe ren flÃH mei y
Long fashi skv miandui KÔ
Longche fengnian sÆÒ˚ Miji lishi KÒOh
Longhushan sÍs Miji jin’gang KÒ˜Ë
Longshu yiwang s½ Mile ±«
Longshu wang s˝ ming tongzi futi R£l˛È
Longshu zhou sG ming tongzi guan yan R£l[j
Louguan ”[ ming zhuling Jiangnan daojiao
lu ¸ RD‚ønD–
lü fl Mingge ˙Ù
Lu c mingmo zhou R]G
Lu Boshan cBΩ Mingshan miao Ôsq
Lü Chunnian fœ~ Mingxi ˙À
Lü Deqing fwÎ Mingzhou ˙{
Lü Dongbin f}´ Minqing ‘M
Lu Guan Ù minshe ¡¿
Lu Shizhong Ù…§ minsu ¡U
Lu Xiujing ∞◊R mishuho s◊k
Lu Yanghao ciE Mizhu jin’gang KD˜Ë
Lu Ye c± mo ]
Lu You ∞ Mo Yueding ˆÎ©
Lu Zhenguan Ùux mogui ]≠
lüe shengtong ∞Õ£ Mowang ]˝
luji Ù[ muke Ï»
Luoyu tangong ke ®Æ¥cÏ Muping sanlang Ï≠T¶
Lüshan jiao [s– mushi N«
Lushi canjun ˝∆—x muxia ÏU
Ma Erniang ®GQ muxia sanlang ÏUT¶
320 Glossary

muyu ND Qiandao zhai dDN

naguan «x qianhe ˛
Nanchang n˜ Qianlong Erlang ˙ŒG¶
nanfa nk qielan shen E≈´
Nanjing n? qing xianguan –Px
Nankang nd qingci C¸
Nanyang nß Qinghua dijun Cÿ“g
Nanyuan nÏ Qingwei ML
nazhi «æ Qingxi maobao yflfl¯
Nezha ∫\ qingxin dizi MHÃl
Nezha huoqiu zhou ∫\ıAG Qionglin yuan £Lb
Nezha taizi Dinglun shengwang Qiongzhou £{
∫\”lª¸t˝ Qiu Xian C˝
nianfo ¿Ú Qiyuan C∏
Ningming dian ÆRµ Qizhou Ù{
Ningming lou ÆR” Quan Qing ˛M
ningmo zhou Á]G Quan Shi ˛v
Ningyuan Á∑ Quanzhou u{
Niutou luo ˚Yπ Quxie yuan fl∏|
nuo ¿ randeng poyu UO}ª
Ouyang Wenbin ⁄ßÂl Rao Dongtian «}—
Ouyang Xuan ⁄ßy Raozhou «{
Pan Jiangui Ô£≠ ren Ø
Peng fashi ^kv Ren Boxian ØBÂ
pifa xianzu ‹vn¨ Ren Daoyuan ÙD∏
Piling sÆ Ren Wenjian ÙÂÀ
pingfu Ã˛ renwu –»
Ping jiang ≠ø Renzong Øv
Pingyang ≠ß ru wu pingfu p´Ã˛
Pishamen sF˘ Ruochong YR
Poyang Iß Sa Shoujian ƒuÌ
poyu }ª san shangxiang TWª
Puan jiao ∂g– sandanho T¬k
pudu ∂◊ Sandong fashi T}kv
Puzhao si ∂”x sanguan shoushu Tx‚—
qi  Sanguang fu T˙≈
Glossary 321

Sannai jiao T§– Shen Anzhi Hwß

sanqi zhaihui TCN| shen zhan shi yen ye ≠‘OÁ]
Sanshan fulu Ts≈¸ shenbao ´O
Santan fa T¬k shenci ´®
Santan seng jia zhi dao T¬¨˜ sheng t
ßD Sheng Qiniang tCQ
Santan wubu fa T¬≠°k shengmu Õ¿
Santan zhengfa T¬øk Shengtian dafaqiao …—jkÙ
santian men T—˘ Shengtian dazhuan …—jf
Sanwu dougong lu T≠£\¸ shengtianxiang Õ—H
Sanxiong tongshen TØq´ shengtong t£
sanyue ≤÷ shengzhe tÃ
Seng jia ¨˜ shenhu ´Í
sengshe ¨Ÿ shenjiang ´N
Sha Wujing F©R shenmiao ´q
Shang Rixuan ”È≈ Shensha shen Jiedi shen `F´
Shangdi W“ ¶Õ´
Shangqing WM shenshou ´∫
Shangqing baolu gong WM_ shentang ´Û
¸c shenxian jiayu ´Pay
Shangqing lu WM¸ Shenxiao ´]
Shangqing taiping gong WM” shenxiao falu ´]k¸
≠c Shenxiao leishu ´]p—
shangshu |— Shenxiao yudi ´]…“
shangshu sheng |—Ÿ shezhao fa ·lk
Shangshui ”Ù shenzhi ´È
shangtang zhaoqing fa WÛl shi r
–k shi egui Ij≠
shangtian W— Shi Hao vE
shanxiao si Shi Jiang jun ¤Nx
sharen jigui ˛HΩ≠ shi shen xiang ye r´H]
she ¿ shi tongzi zhaoshi œ£l”¯
sheba zhi fa jfißk Shixiao ruoshen zhi zui r√Y´
shehui ¿| ßK
shehun ·Ó shi zhe Qı
sheji tan ¿^¬ shi da mingwang Qj˙˝
322 Glossary

shidaifu hj“ Tai Yi ”A

shifang wanghun ¿Ò`Ó Taichang si ”`x
shigui ¯≠ Taichang xiaoqing ”`pÎ
Shili cun ¤Ω¯ Taibu shu ”Rp
shiren hH Taishan ıs
shishiyi Iπˆ Taishang daode fashi ”WDo
shiwu v≈ kv
shiyi œ– Taishang laojun ”W—g
shiyushi Õsv Taishi ling ”vO
shouban ‚O taishou ”u
shu N Taixiao dijun ”]“g
Shu Xindao ŒHD Taiyi tianzun ”@—L
shuaishou ”u Taizong ”v
shuiguan |x Taizu ”™
Shuilu zhai Ù∞N tamiao q
shuojie °Ÿ Tan fashi ”kv
shushi Nh Tan Shiyi ”v@
Si da tianwang |j—˝ Tan Zhenren ”uH
Sichuan |t Tan Zixiao ”µ]
sifu shiwei |≈œÏ Tang Xianzu ˆ„™
sihun ∫Ó Tang Xuanzong »v
Siming zhenjun qRug tangki £‰
Siniang miao |Qq tangnuo Û¿
sishi shuilu |…Ù∞ Tao Hong jing ≥∞∫
Sizhou yuan r{| ti D
Song Anguo ∫wÍ Tianchang —¯
songshi er Tiandi shizhe —“œÃ
su U tiandi junqin —agÀ
Su Shi ¨˝ Tiangang fu —\≈
suqi J“ tianguan —x
Sui fei daoshi, er de ci cheng ˆD tianlong —s
Dh”oπŸ Tianpeng —¥
Sun Gu ]j Tianpeng da yuanshuai —¥j
Sun Wukong ]©≈ ∏”
suren UH Tianqing guan —y[
sushi Uv tianshu ——
Glossary 323

Tianxin —fl Wang Zhi ˝Ë

Tianxin fa —flk Wang Zihua Llÿ
Tianxin zhengfa —fløk Wang Zixi ˝Jı
tianyin —L Wang Zong jing ˝vq
Tianyou —fl Wanhui U^
Tianyuan kaozhao Deng Wei Sheng QÕ
jiang jun —∏“ln Weituo ≥˚
Nx wen Â
tishen ¿≠ Wen fashi Âkv
to doji Û£l Wen Huigong ÂfΩ
tong tianmu fu q—ÿ≈ Wen Qiong ≈£
Tongchu dafa £Ïjk Weng Jishi ŒNv
tong ji £‰ wenshi ≈«
Tongling xiansheng Zhang Wenxuan wang Â≈˝
Heisha qF˝Õi¬˛ Wenzhou ≈{
tongpan qP wu ≈
tongwu £≈ Wu Daoxian dD„
tong xingming qmW Wu jianglai yunzhi Taiping jun
Tongzhou q{ Songchao di’er zhu ^N”B»”
tongzhuan q« ≠g∫¬ƒGD
tongzi £l wubu ≠°
tongzi shen £l≠ wubu fa ≠°k
toulongbi Îs¿ wuchao »¬
toulong jian Îs≤ Wuchusema Q˙flÚ˛Qœ
tudi shen ga´ ÊÚ
waidao ~D Wudangshan ZÌs
wanchao fl¬ Wufang jiedi ≠˶Õ
Wang Chang ˝Î wugong daifu Z\j“
Wang Fu ˝I Wujiang dø
Wang Jiu’er ˝EG wulei fa ≠pk
Wang Laozhi ˝—” wulei shu ≠pN
Wang Qinruo ˝‹Y Wulei yuanshuai ≠p∏”
Wang Shan ˝Ω Wu shen bingru Fangxiang shi
Wang Shi ˝v ^´√pˤÛ
Wang Shichen ˝Õ· Wushang dongxuan fashi LW}
Wang Wenqing ˝ÂÎ »kv
324 Glossary

Wushang sandong fashi LWT} xiaowu p≈

kv xiatang zhaoqing fa UÛl–k
wusheng ≠t xie shifang ¬QË
wushi ≈v Xie Shiting ¬……
wutan fa ≠¬k xie’en ¬¶
wutong ≠q xieshi ∏v
wutong shen ≠q´ Xijiang Ëø
wuxian ≠„ ximin ”¡
Wuxian miao ≠„q Xin Ø
Wuyishan Zis Xinchang s˜
Wuyuan ∏Ω Xinding sw
wuzhe ≈à Xindu Yuanfang H£∏Ë
wuzhu ≈¨ xing Huiji fa tongling Ê©Òk
xi D qF
xian P xingdao ÊD
xiang Q xingdao yi ÊDˆ
xiang shen wei Zhenwu Q≠∞ xingfa daoshi ÊkDv
uZ xingfa guan Êkx
Xiangshan yunshan er dasheng Xingfu si ≥÷x
ªs≥sGjt xinghua daitian famiao quxie Ê∆
Xiangdun ªŸ N—Ôq£∏
xianghuo tian ªı– xingsu PJ
xiangnuo m¿ xingzhe ÊÃ
xiangren mH xinsi Øx
xiangshe m¿ Xinzhou H{
xiangshi ¤h Xiong µ
Xiang Tong µq Xiongwei ج
Xiangzhou ¤{ Xiongwei Huaguang er dasheng
xianshe §Ÿ جÿ˙Gjt
xiansheng ˝Õ Xishan Ës
xianwei ling „¬F Xu Baowen \_Â
Xiao Chunli ΩEß Xu Chaofeng }¬^
xiao’er p‡ Xu Dake }Fi
xiaofa pk Xu Shisan }QT
xiaosun µ] Xu Wen \≈
xiaotong p£ Xu Yuquan \Pv
Glossary 325

Xu Jixian \N˝ Yingcheng ≥∞

Xu Zhongshi }Ú… yingshe Ôj
xuandu »£ yinshi ±h]Ùh^
xuanjin ≈T yiren ∂H
Xuanwu »Z Yisheng baode ˆtOw
Xuanwu fashi »Zkv Yisheng jiang jun ˆtNg
Xuanwu fushi »Z≈œ Yisheng zhenjun ˆtug
Xuanyuan huangdi a’¿“ yishi q°
Xuanzhou ≈{ yitian q–
Xue Erniang ßGQ yiwu Â≈
Xue Jixuan ßu≈ yizhai qv
Xun ≥ yizhuang q¯
xuyi Íi Yong jin Gate Ș˘
yamen ≈˘ Yongning si √Áx
Yan Fu F∞ yorimashi r£˛H§
Yang Jingchang ®—` youcong zhenglang kqø¶
Yang E ®Ó You Da ßj
Yang Zhonggong ®§} Yu Kui …º
yangong •\ Yu miao Íq
Yangzhou ≠{ Yu Ronggu Eaj
Yanzhou O{ Yuan Fuyi K_@
Yao Jiangshi ¿NK Yuan Miaozong ∏Æv
yaoshu ØN Yuan Zhong ∏Ú
Ye Dao ≠D yuanben |ª
Ye Daoshi ≠Dh Yuanshi tianzun ∏l—L
Ye Jingneng ≠b‡ yuanshuai ∏”
Ye Qianshao ≠E‡ Yubu ÍB
Yi q Yugan lz
Yihuang y¿ yuge …Ê
Yili ju ˆßΩ Yuhuang …”
Yin Gui ®y Yuhuang shangdi …”W“
Yin Tong ®q Yulanpen zhai sı÷N
Yin Wencao ®Âfi Yuqing zhaoying gong …M”
Yin Xi ®fl ≥c
yinbing ±L Yusi guan …Œ[
yinci ]® yutan ª¬
326 Glossary

Yuzhang ›π Zhao Ziju Øl|

zaijia ba Zhao Zujian Ø™Ì
zaju ¯@ zhaofa nk
zanghun √Ó zhaohe l
Zanning ŸÁ zhaohun ¤Ó
zaochao ≠¬ zhaoling yi lFˆ
zhai N zhaotiao chuzhan ”¯BŸ
Zhan ‚ Zhe ˝
Zhan Cong ‚o Zhedong Anwusi canyi guan ˝F
Zhang i wæq—≥x
Zhang Daoling iDF Zhejiang ˝ø
Zhang Dexiang iw∞ Zheng Daoshi GDh
Zhang Jinyan i?¤ zhengfa øk
Zhang Junfang ig– Zhengyi ø@
Zhang Keda iij Zhengyi daoshi ø@Dh
Zhang Lihua iRÿ Zhengyi mengwei lu ø@˘¬¸
Zhang Ruhui ip‚ zhengzhai øN
Zhang Shouqing iuM zhenren uH
Zhang Shouzhen iuus Zhenwu uZ
Zhang Xujing iÍt Zhenwu yin uZL
Zhang Xun i‘ Zhexi ˝Ë
Zhang Xuqing iÍM zhi Ó
Zhang Yuanduan i∏Á Zhi Pan ”L
zhang jiao πÁ zhiguan æ[
Zhang Jixian i~˝ Zhiquan æv
Zhang jun an igg Zhong Kui ÈP
Zhangqiu πÙ zhongsong ‡^
Zhangzhou s{ Zhongnanshan ◊ns
Zhang Zifang il– zhongcheng §‡
Zhao Boxu ØBÍ Zhou P
Zhao Gongming ØΩ˙ zhou G
Zhao Ruhui غ¯ Zhou Si P|
Zhao Rui Ø∫ Zhoujin boshi GT’h
Zhao Shandao ØΩ– Zhoujin gong GTu
Zhao Sheng Ø@ Zhoujin shi GTv
Zhao Yuanlang Ø∏¶ zhoushi Gπ
Glossary 327

Zhoutian dajiao P—jÁ ziran chao ¤M¬

Zhouzhi y∑ Zishan ¤s
Zhu Bajie fiKŸ Ziwei µL
Zhu Hong Ȼ Ziyi jv
Zhu Sengqi ∂¨_ Zizhou d{
Zhu Xi ∂Q Zong jian v≤
Zhu Yan ∂¤ Zou Q
Zhu Yancheng ∂¤¤ Zu Shu ™Œ
zhuhun tan ~Ó¬ Zunjiao si L–x
Zhutou xiangbi er dasheng fiY Zunshi L°
HÛGjt zuodao ™D
Zhutou xiangbi Yang-Zhu shenjun zuoshi ıœ
fiYHÛ®∂´g zushi ™v
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andersen, Poul. “Taoist Ritual Texts and Traditions.” Ph.D. diss., Uni-
versity of Copenhagen, 1991.
———. “The Transformation of the Body in Taoist Ritual.” Paper pre-
pared for the conference “Religious Reflection on the Human Body,”
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., April 19–21, 1991.
———. “Talking to the Gods: Visionary Divination in Early Taoism (San-
huang Tradition).” Paper prepared for the Western Conference of the
Association of Asian Studies, University of Arizona, Oct. 23–24, 1992.
———. “Taoist Talismans and the History of the Tianxin Tradition,” Acta
Orientalia 57 (1996): 141–152.
Azhapoju guishen dajiang shangfo tuoluoni jing ¸\CÎ≠´jNWÚ˚π
ßg Anonymous (early sixth century). T. 1238.
Baopuzi neipian Rµl∫g. Ge Hong Øx (283–343). HY 1177.
Baptandier-Berthier, Brigitte. “Enfant de divination, voyageur du destin.”
L’Homme 101 ( Jan.-Mar. 1987) XXVII (1): 86–100.
———. La Dame au bord de l’eau. Nanterre: Societé d’ethnologie, 1988.
———. “The Kaiguan Ritual and the Construction of the Child’s Iden-
tity.” In Lin Ru Lp, ed., Minjian xinyang yu Zhongguo wenhua: Guoji
yantao huilun wenji 2 ¡°HıP§ÍÂ∆Í⁄„Q|◊Â∞2. Taibei:
Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin, 1994: 523–596.
———. “The Lady Linshui: How a Woman Became a Goddess.” In Meir
Shahar and Robert P. Weller, eds., Unruly Gods: Divinity and Society in
China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996: 105–149.
Bargen, Doris. A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale of Genji. Hono-
lulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997.

329
330 Bibliography

Barrett, T. H. “Towards a Date for the Chin-So Liu-Chu Yin.” Bulletin of

the School of Oriental and African Studies 53:2 (1990): 292–294.
———. “The Emergence of the Taoist Papacy in the T’ang dynasty.” Asia
Major 3rd ser., 7.1 (1994): 89–106.
———. Taoism Under the T’ang: Religion and Empire During the Golden Age
of Chinese History. London: Wellsweep, 1996.
Bell, Catherine. “Medieval Taoist Ritual Mastery: A Study in Practice,Text
and Rite.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1983.
Berling, Judith. “Channels of Connection in Sung Religion: The Case of
Pai Yü-ch’an.” In Patricia Ebrey and Peter Gregory, eds., Religion and
Society in T’ang and Sung China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press,
1993: 307–333.
Beifang Pishamen tianwang suijun hufa yigui _ËiF˘—˝Hx@kˆy.
Attributed to Amoghavajra (705–744). T. 1247.
Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1986.
Blumenberg, Hans. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Robert Wallace, trans.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983.
Bokenkamp, Stephen. “Death and Ascent in Lingpao Taoism.” Taoist Re-
sources 1:2 (1989): 1–20.
———. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997.
Bol, Peter. “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung
China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.
Boltz, Judith. “Opening the Gates of Purgatory. A Twelfth-Century Taoist
Meditation Technique for the Salvation of Lost Souls.” In Michel
Strickmann, ed., Tantric and Taoist Studies, vol. 2. Bruxelles: Mélanges
Chinois et Bouddhiques XXI, 1983: 487–511.
———. A Survey of Taoist Literature, Tenth through Seventeenth Centuries.
Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, China Research Monograph
32, 1987.
———. “Not by the Seal of Office Alone: New Weapons in Battles with
the Supernatural.” In Patricia Ebrey and Peter Gregory, eds., Religion
and Society in T’ang and Sung China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i
Press, 1993: 241–305.
Brook, Timothy. “Gentry Dominance in Chinese Society: Monasteries and
Lineages in the Structuring of Local Society, 1500–1700.” Ph.D. diss.,
Harvard University, 1984.
———. “Funerary Ritual and the Building of Lineages in Late Imperial
China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 49 (1989): 465–499.
Budong shi zhe tuoluoni bimi fa £?œÃ˚π߶Kk. Attributed to Vajra-
bodhi (?–751). T. 1202.
Bibliography 331

Bukong juansuo tuoluoni Zizai wang zhou jing £≈π¡˚πߤb˝Gg.

Attributed to Ratnacinta (?–721). T. 1097.
Cadonna, Alfredo. Il Taoista di sua Maesta. Venezia: Cafoscarina, 1984.
Cahill, Suzanne. “Taoism at the Sung Court: The Heavenly Text Affair of
1008.” Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies 16 (1980): 23–44.
Cedzich, Ursula-Angelika. “ Wu-T’ung: Zur bewegten Geschichte eines
Kultes.” In G. Naundorf, ed., Religion und Philosophie in Ostasien. Fest-
schrift für Hans Steininger zum 65. Geburstag. Würzburg: Königshausen
& Neumann, 1985: 33–55.
———. “Das Ritual der Himmelmeister im Spiegel früher Quellen Über-
setzung und Untersuchung des liturgischen Materials im dritten chuan
des Tengchen yinchüeh.” Ph.D. diss., Würzburg, 1987.
———. “The Cult of the Wu-t’ung/Wu-hsien in History and Fiction: The
Religious Roots of the Journey to the South.” In David Johnson, ed., Rit-
ual and Scriptures in Chinese Popular Religion: Five Studies. Berkeley: Chi-
nese Popular Culture Project, 1995: 137–218.
Certeau, Michel de. La Possession de Loudun. Paris: Julliard, 1970.
———. “Discourse Disturbed: The Sorcerer’s Speech.” In idem, The Writ-
ing of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988: 244–268.
Chang, K. C. Art, Myth and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient
China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Changqulidu nü tuoluoni zhou jing `£Qrk˚πßGg. Attributed to Qu
Duo £h (Skt. Gupta?). (Tang, before 865). T. 1265.
Chao Shih-yi. “Daoist Examinations and Daoist Schools during the North-
ern Song Dynasty” (unpub. paper; UCLA, 1995).
Chavannes, Édouard. “Le jet des dragons.” Mémoires concernant l’Asie ori-
entale 3. Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux, 1919.
Chavannes, Éd., and P. Pelliot. Un Traité manicheén retrouvé en Chine. Paris:
Imprimerie Nationale, 1913.
Cheu Hock Tong. The Nine Emperor Gods: A Sudy of Chinese Spirit-Medium
Cults. Singapore: Times Books International, 1988.
Chikusa Masa’aki. So no Taiso to Taiso ∫Ô™”v. Tokyo: Shimizu
sho’in, 1975.
———. «FÆπ Chugoku bukkyo shakai shi kenkyu §ÍÚ–¿|v„s.
Tokyo: Dohosha, 1982.
Ching, Julia. Mysticism and Kingship in China: The Heart of Chinese Wisdom.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Chingwei xianpu MLP–. Compiled by Chen Cai ؈ (1293). HY 171.
Chisongzi zhangli ™Qlπ˙. (Six Dynasties to Tang). HY 615.
Chunxi Sanshan zhi E≥Ts”. Song-Yuan difang zhi congshu, vol. 12.
Taibei: Dahua shuju, 1980.
Combined Indices to the Authors and Titles of Books in Two Collections of Taoist
332 Bibliography

Literature: Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series No. 25. Weng

Tu-chieh, ed. (Peking, 1925). Taipei: Ch’eng-wen reprint, 1966.
Connelly, Chris. The Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imper-
ial China. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.
Courtright, Paul. Ganesa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Da baoji jing j_ng. Bodhiruci (572–726). T. 310.
Da Sheng Huanxi shuangshen Dazizhai tian Pinayejia wang guiyi niansong
gongyang fa jtwfl˘≠j¤b—i∫]{˝kÿw—ik. T.
1270.
Da Song seng shi lue j∫¨v§. Zanning ŸÁ (919–1001). T. 2126.
Da Tang Xihuo zhi jËÏO. Xuanzang »N(602–664). T. 2087.
Dainihon kotei zokyo jȪ’q√g. Kyoto: Zokyo shoin, 1902–1905.
Dai-Nihon Zokuzokyo jȪÚ√g. Kyoto: Zokyo shoin, 1905–1912. Ab-
breviated herein as Z.
Daofa huiyuan Dk|∏. Compiled by Zhao Yizhen Øyu(?–1382). HY
1210.
Daojiao lingyan ji D–FÁO. Du Guangting ˘˙x (850–933). HY 590.
Daomen shigui D˘QW. Compiled by Zhang Yuchu itÏ (1361–1410).
HY 1222.
Daoshu yuanshen qi. HY 1221.
Davis, Edward L. “Arms and the Tao, 1: Hero Cult and Empire in Tradi-
tional China.” In Sodai kenkyu no shakai to shukyo. Sodai-shi kenkyukai
kenkyu hokoku, 2. Tokyo: Kyuko sho’in, 1985: 1–56.
———. “Arms and the Dao, 2: The Xu Brothers in Tea Country.” In Livia
Kohn and Harold Roth, eds., Daoist Identity in Practice. Honolulu: Uni-
veristy of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.
———. “ Women and Psychosomatic Illness in the Song.” Paper presented
at the Triangle East Asia Colloquium, Durham, North Carolina, Feb.
27, 1999.
Dean, Kenneth. Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast
China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.
———. “Transformations of the She (Altars of the Soil) in Fujian.” Cahiers
d’Extrême-Asia 10 (1998): 19–75.
Dean, Kenneth (Ding Hesheng), and Zheng Zhenman. “Group Initiation
and Exorcistic Dance in the Xinghua Region.” In Wang Qiugui, ed.,
Zhongguo Nuoxi: Nuo wenhua gouji yantaihui lu wenli. In Minsu quyi 85.2
(1993): 105–214.
———. “Min-Tai daojiao yu minjian zhushen chongbai chukao ‘xD–
P¡°—´RÙÏZ.” Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia
Sinica 73 (1993): 33–52.
Delatte, A. La catoptromancie grecque et ses dérivés. Liège-Paris: Bibliothèque
Bibliography 333

de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège 48,

1932.
Dengzhen yinjue nuÙZ. Tao Hong jing ≥∞∫ (456–536). HY 421.
Didier, John. “Messrs. T’an, Chancellor Sung, and the Book of Tranforma-
tion (Hua Shu): Texts and Transformations of Traditions.” Asia Major
3rd ser., 11.1 (1998): 99–151.
Diqi shang jiang Wen taibao zhuan aÈWN≈”O«. Huang Gong jin
¿Ω@ (fl. 1274). HY 779.
Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1951.
———.The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and
Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Dongshen badi yuanbian jing }´K“∏‹g. HY 1202.
Dongxuan lingbao changyezhifu jiuyou yukui mingzhen ke }»F_¯]ß≤
E’…º˙uÏ (fifth–sixth century). HY 1400.
Dongxuan lingbao sandong fengdao kejie yingshi }»F_T}^DÏŸÁl.
HY 1117.
Dongxuan lingbao wuganwen }»F_≠PÂ. Lu Xiujing ∞◊R (dated
454). HY 1268.
Dore, Henry. Researches into Chinese Superstition, vol. 1, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen
reprint, 1966.
Drexler, Monika. Daoistische Schriftmagie: Interpretatione zu den Schriftamul-
leten Fu im Daozang. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994.
Duara, Prasenjit. Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–
1942. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
———. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern
China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
———. “State and Civil Society in the History of Chinese Modernity,” In
Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Wang Xi, eds., China’s Quest For Modern-
ization. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of Cali-
fornia at Berkeley, Research Papers and Policy Studies 41, 1997:
300–324.
Dutton, Michael. Policing and Punishment in China. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
Ebrey, Patricia. “Early Stages of Descent Group Organization.” In Patri-
cia Ebrey and James Watson, eds., Kinship Organization in Late Imperial
China, 1000–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986:
16–61.
———. “State Response to Popular Funeral Practices in Sung China.” Pa-
per presented at “The Symposium on Religion and Society in China,
750–1300,” Urbana-Champaign, Nov. 1988.
334 Bibliography

———. Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China: A Social History

of Writing About Rites. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
———, trans. Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals: A Twelfth-Century Chinese Manual
for the Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals and Rites. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991.
Ebrey, Patricia, and Peter Gregory, eds., Religion and Society in T’ang and
Sung China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993.
Eichman, Shawn. “Converging Paths: Highest Purity and Celestial Mas-
ter Traditions of Taoism during the Six Dynasties.” Ph.D. diss., Uni-
versity of Hawai‘i, 1999.
Evans, John A. “Chinese Criminal Law in All Men Are Brothers.” Paper pre-
sented at the conference on “The History of Chinese Law,” Bellagio,
1969.
Fahai yizhu k¸Ú]. HY 1158.
Fajie shengfan shuilu shenghui xiuzhai yigui k…tZÙ∞”|◊Nˆy. Zhu
Hong »ª(1535–1615). Yunxi fahui ≥œkJ, vols. 18–19. Nanjing:
Jingling kejing chu, 1897.
Fengshen yanyi ?´tq. Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1985.
Feuchtwang, Stephan. The Imperial Metaphor: Popular Religion in China. Lon-
don: Routledge, 1992.
Fineman, Joel. “The History of the Anecdote.” In H. Aram Veeser, ed.,
The New Historicism. London: Routledge, 1989.
Fozu tong ji Ú™ŒO. Edited by Zhi Pan ”L (thirteenth century). T. 2035.
Fukunaga Mitsuji ÷√˙q. “Dokyo ni okeru kagami to tsuguri π≥…®ØÈ
æ∆ö.” Toho Gakuho 45 (1973): 59–120.
Gaoshang shenxiao yuqing zhenwang zishu da fa ™W´]…Mu˝µ—jk
(fourteenth century). HY 1209.
Gellner, Ernest. Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals. London:
Penguin reprint, 1996.
Genette, G. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by J. E.
Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.
Ginzburg, Carlo. “The Name and the Game.” In Edward Muir and Guido
Ruggiero, eds., Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe. Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991: 1–10.
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Shakespeare and the Exorcists.” In idem, Shake-
spearean Negotiations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988:
94–129.
Greenfield, Richard. Traditions of Belief in Late Byzantine Demonology. Am-
sterdam: Adolf Hakkert, 1988.
Groot, J. J. M. de. The Religious System of China. Taipei: Ch’eng Wen Pub-
lishing Co. (reprint ed.), 1976.
Gyss-Vemande, Caroline. “Démons et merveilles: Vision de la nature dans
Bibliography 335

une peinture liturgique du XVe siècle.” Arts Asiatiques 43 (1988): 106–

122.
———. “The All Chinese Pantheon of the Shuilu chai.” Paper presented
at the JCCS conference on “The Rituals and Scriptures of Chinese Pop-
ular Culture,” Bodega Bay, 1990.
Haiqiong Bai Zhenren yulu ¸£’uHy˝. Bo Yuchan ’…? (fl. 1209–
1224). HY 1296.
Halperin, Mark. “Pieties and Responsibilities: Buddhism and Chinese
Literati, 780–1280.” Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley,
1997.
Han Tianshi shijia ~—v@a (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries). HY
1451.
Hansen, Valerie. Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127–1276. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990.
Heath, Robert G. Crux Imperatorum Philosophia: Imperial Horizons of the
Cluniac Confraternitas, 964–1109. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1976.
Hirai Yukei ≠´…y “Tonko no shigakiho ∞◊ÃIj≠k.” Buzan kyo-
gaku taikai kiyo 8 (1980): 135–151.
Hirakawa Akira ≠t¸. Shoki daijo bukkyo no kenkyu Ï¡jºÚ–Äs.
Kyoto: Shunjusha, 1968.
Ho Kinchung. “Nezha: Figure de l’enfant rebelle.” Études Chinoises 7.2
(1988): 726.
Hobogirin: Dictionnaire encyclopédique du bouddhisme d’après les sources chinoises
et japonaises. Fascicule annexe. Tokyo: Maison Franco-Japonaise, 1931.
Hong Mai. Yijian zhi. See under Yijian zhi.
Huagai shan Fouqiu-Wang-Guo san zhenjun shishi ÿ\sBC˝¢Tug
∆Í (fourteenth century). HY 777.
Huang Minzhi ¿”K. Songdai fojiao shehui jing ji shi lunji ∫NÚ–¿|
gŸv◊∞. Taibei: Xuesheng shuju, 1989.
Huang, Ray. 1587: A Year of No Significance. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1981.
Huangchao shishi leiyuan ”¬∆Ͳb. Jiang Shaoyu ø÷∑ (?–after
1145). Kyoto: Chubun shuppansha, 1981.
Huanglu jiuyou jiao wu’ai yezhai cidi yi ¿¸E’ÁLL]N∏ƒˆ. HY 514.
Huiji jingang jin baibian fa jing ©Ò˜ËT?‹kg. T. 1229.
Huiji jin’gang shuo shentong daman tuoluoni fashu ling yaomen ©Ò˜Ë°
´qj°˚πßkNFn˘. T. 1228.
Hymes, Robert. “Marriage, Descent Groups, and the Localist Strategy in
Sung and Yuan Fuchou.” In Patricia Ebrey and James Watson, eds., Kin-
ship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000–1040. Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1986: 95–169.
336 Bibliography

Idema, W. L. The Dramatic Oeuvre of Chu Yu-tun (1379–1439). Leiden:

E. J. Brill, 1985.
Idema, Wilt, and Stephen H. West. Chinese Theater 1100–1450: A Source-
book. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1982.
Iyanaga Nobumi. “Récits de la soumission de Mahésvara par Trailokyavi-
jaya—d’après les sources chinoises et japonaises.” In Michel Strick-
mann, ed., Tantric and Taoist Studies, vol. 3. Bruxelles: Mélanges Chi-
nois et Bouddhiques, 1985: 633–745.
Jiannan shigao Cn÷Z. Lu You ∞ (1125–1210). Lu Fangweng quanji
∞ÒŒ˛∞ vol. 2. Beijing: Zhongguo shuju, 1986.
Jiao sandong zhenwen wufa zhengyi mengwei lu licheng yi ÁT}uÂ≠kø
@˘¬¸fl®ˆ. Zhang Wanfu. HY 1202.
Jin Zhongshu ˜§œ. “Lun Bei Song monian zhi chongshang daojiao
◊_∫Ω~ßR|D–.” Songshi yanjiu ji ∫v„s∞ 7–8. Taibei: Tai-
wan shuju, 1974: 291–392 and 207–278.
Jingangfeng louge yiqie yujia yuqi jing ˜Ëp”’@¡Ï˜ÏÈg. Attributed
to Vajrabodhi (?–741). T. 867.
Jinshi cuibian ˜¤—s. Compiled by Wang Chang ˝Î. (1725–1806).
Jingxun tang, 1872.
Jinsuo liuzhu yin ˜Íy]fi (ninth or tenth century). HY 1009.
Jiu mianran egui tuoluoni shenzhou jing œ±Mj≠˚πß´Gg. Attributed
to $ik3ananda (652–710). T. 1314.
Jiu Tangshu ¬—. Liu Xu BÛ (887–946). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,
1975.
Jiu Wudai shi ¬≠Nv. Xue Juzheng ß~ø(912–981). Beijing: Zhong-
hua shuju, 1976.
Jiutian yingyuan leisheng puhua tianzun yushu baojingE—≥∏pn∂∆—
L…œ_g (early thirteenth century?). HY 16.
Johnson, David. “The City-God Cults of T’ang and Sung China.” Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies 45:2 (Dec. 1985): 363–457.
Jordan, David K. Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors: The Folk Religion of a Taiwanese
Village. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
Jotsald. Vita S. Odilonis, Patrologia Latina 142. Paris: J. P. Migne, 1884–1864.
Reprint edition. Turnhout: Brepols, 1977.
Journey to the West. Translated and edited by Anthony C. Yu. 4 vols. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Kalinowski, Marc. Cosmologie et divination dans la Chine ancienne: Le com-
pendium des cinq agents (Wuxing dayi, VIe Siècle). Paris: Ecole Française
d’Extrême-Orient, 1991.
Kanai Noriyuki ˜´wØ “Sodai no sonsha to bukkyo ∫Nï¿Ú–.”
Bukkyo shigaku kenkyu 18:2 (1976): 31–57.
Bibliography 337

———. “Nanso saishi shakai-no tenkain∫Ω¡¿|Ãi}.” In Shukyo

shakaishi kenkyu. Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 1977: 591–610.
———. “Sodai-no gosha-to dojishin ∫NÃm¿ga´.” In Nakajima
Satoshi-sensei koki kinen ronshu. Tokyo: Kyuko shoin, 1980–1981: 385–
407.
Karlgren, Bernhard. The Book of Odes. Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern
Antiquities, 1974.
Katz, Paul R. Demon Hordes and Burning Boats: The Cult of Marshal Wen in
Late Imperial Chekiang. Albany: State University of New York Press,
1995.
Keightley, David. “Royal Shamanism in the Shang: Archaic Vestige or Cen-
tral Reality?” Paper prepared for “The Workshop on Chinese Divina-
tion and Portent Interpretation,” Berkeley, June 20–July 1, 1983.
Kobayashi Masayoshi pLø¸. Rokucho dokyo shi kenkyu ª¬D–v„s.
Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1990.
———. “The Celestial Masters under the Eastern Jin and Liu-Sung Dy-
nasties.” Taoist Resources 3:2 (May 1992): 17–44.
———. Chugoku no Dokyo ÜëÃπ≥. Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1998.
Kohn, Livia. “ Yin Xi: The Master at the Beginning of the Scripture.” Jour-
nal of Chinese Religions 25 (1997): 83–139.
———. “The Northern Celestial Masters.” In Livia Kohn,ed., Handbook of
Daoism. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000.
Koji ruien j∆˛b. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1967.
Kokubu Naoichi. 뙺Í. “Taiwan ni okeru shamanizumu no sekai—
toku ni tanki no rakugoku tankyu o megutte ‰s…®ØÈVÉ[}jY
ÄâE—‰ÃéñT{flÆ¡ƒ.” Minzokugaku hyoron 6 (1971): 1–22.
Lagerwey, John. Wu-shang pi-yao: Somme taoïste du VIe siècle. Paris: Ecole
Française d’Extrême-Orient, 1981.
———. “Introduction to Taoist Ritual through the Tang” (unpub. ms.,
1985).
———. “‘Les têtes des démons tombent par milliers’: Le fachang, rituel
exorcists du nord de Taiwan.” L’Homme 101 ( Jan.–March 1987) XXVII
(1): 101–116.
———. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: Macmillan,
1987.
———. “Taoist Ritual: An Integral Part of Elite Culture.” Paper prepared
for the Conference on the Rituals and Scriptures of Chinese Popular
Culture, Bodega Bay, Jan. 2–8, 1990.
———. Le continent des esprits: La chine dans le miroir du taoïsme. Bruxelles:
La Renaissance des Livres, 1991.
———. “The Pilgrimage to Wutang Shan.” In Susan Naquin and Chun-
338 Bibliography

fang Yu, eds., Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992: 293–332.
———. “Introduction.” In Fang Xuejia, ed., Meizhou Heyuan diqi di cun-
luo wenhua (vol. 5, Traditional Hakka Society Series, ed. John Lagerwey).
Hong Kong: EFEO, Overseas Chinese Archives of the Chinese Uni-
versity of Hong Kong, 1997: 1–48.
———. “Questions of Vocabulary, or How Shall We Talk about Chinese
Religion?” In Lai Chi Tim, ed., Daijiao yu minjian zong jiao yanjiu lunji.
Hong Kong: Xuefeng wenhua shiye gongsi, 1999: 165–181.
———. “Popular Ritual Specialists in West Central Fujian.” Taibei: Pro-
ceedings of the International Colloquium on Chinese Society, Ethnicity,
and Cultural Performance, 2000: 1–33.
Lancaster, Lewis. “Ganesa in China.” In Robert L. Brown, ed., Ganesh: Stud-
ies of an Asian God. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991):
277–286.
Legge, James, trans. Li Chi: Book of Rites. New Hyde Park: University Books,
1967.
Levi, Giovanni. “On Microhistory.” In Peter Burke, ed., New Perspectives on
Historical Writing. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1991: 93–113.
Levi, Jean. “Les fonctionnaires et le divin: Luttes de pouvoirs entre divinités
et administrateurs dans les contes des Six Dynasties et des Tang.” Cahiers
d’Extrême-Asie 2 (1986): 81–106.
———. “Les Fonctions religieuses de la bureaucratie céleste.” L’Homme
101 (1987), XXVII (1): 35–57.
Li Yuanbi ı∏]. Zuoyi zizhen @∂¤e. Sibu congkan xubian, vol. 48.
Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1984.
Liangxi manzhi Á∆©”. Fei Gun OO( jinshi in 1205). Xuehai leibian
«¸˛s, vol. 6. Zhexi: Wenyuan shuju, 1920: 3604–3669.
Lieu, Samuel. Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.
Liji jijie ßO∞—. Edited by Sun Xidan ]∆π. Shanghai: Shangwu yin-
shu guan, 1930.
Lingbao dalian neizhi xingchi jiyao F_j“∫ÆÊ˘˜n. HY 407.
Lingbao ling jiao jidu jinshu F_‚–Ÿ◊˜—. Edited by Lin Tianren L
—Ù(1303). HY 466.
Lingbao yujian F_…≤ (early thirteenth century). HY 547.
Lishi zhenxian tidao tong jian ˙@uPÈDq≤. Zhao Daoyi ØD@(fl.
1294–1307). HY 296.
Liu Tsun-yan. Buddhist and Taoist Influences on Chinese Novels, 1. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1962.
Liu Zhiwan BKU. “Taiwan no shyamanisumu ‰sÃVÉ[}jYÄ.” In
Bibliography 339

Sakurai Tokutaro, ed., Shyamanisumu no sekai VÉ[}jYÄâE.

Tokyo: Shunjusha, 1979.
———. “Tenhoshin to tenhoju ni tsuite —¥´∆—¥G…¡°ƒ.” In A-
kizuki Kanei HéVÛ, ed., Dokyo to shukyo bunka D–v–Â∆. Tokyo:
Hirakawa shuppan, 1987: 403–424.
———. “Raishin shinko to raiho no tenkai p´Hı∆pkÃi}. Toho
Shukyo (1990): 121.
Lo, Winston. The Life and Thought of Yeh Shih. Shatin, N.T.: The Press of
the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1974.
Longshu wuming lun s≠˙◊. T. 1420.
Loon, Piet van der. “Les origines rituelles du théatre chinois.” Journal Asi-
atique 265 (1977): 141–168.
———. “A Taoist Collection of the Fourteenth Century.” In Wolfgang
Bauer, ed., Studia Sino-Mongolica, Festschrift für Herbert Franke. Wiesbaden:
Franz Steiner, 1979: 401–405.
———. Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Period: A Critical Study and
Index. London: Ithaca Press, 1984.
Lopez, Donald, ed. Religions of China in Practice. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1996.
Lu xiansheng daomen kelüe ∞˝ÕD˘Ï§. Lu Xiujing B◊R (406–470).
HY 1119.
Major, John S. “The Characteristics of Late Chu Religion.” In Constance
A. Cook and John S. Major, eds., Defining Chu: Image and Reality in An-
cient China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999.
Makita Tairyo T–ÕG. “Hoshi osho denko _”M|«“.” Chugoku kin-
sei bukkyo shi kenkyu Üë°¢≈≥j§Ü. Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1957:
31–63.
———. “Zuirikue koko Ù∞|@“.” Chugoku kinsei bukkyo shi kenkyu Üë
°¢E≈≥j§Ü. Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1957: 169–193.
————. Godai shukkyo shi kenkyu ≠Nv–v„s Kyoto: Heirakuji
shoten, 1971.
Mallmann, Marie-Thérèse de. Introduction à l’iconographie du tantrisme
bouddhique. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1986.
Maspero, Henri. Taoism and Chinese Religion. Translated by Frank A. Kier-
man, Jr. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1981.
Matsumoto Koichi QªE@. “Sodai no raiho ∫NÃpk Shakai bunka shi-
gaku 17 (1979): 45–65.
———. “Sorei-sairei ni miru Sodai shukyoshi no ichi keiko íÁ’Á…›
Èv„@≥jÃÍX¸.” In Sodai no shakai to bunka ∫Nÿ|∆Â∆.
Sodai-shi kenkyukai kenkyu hokoku. Tokyo: Kyuko shoin, 1983: 169–194.
McCullough, William H. “Spirit-Possession in the Heian Period.” In Studies
on Japanese Culture, vol. 1. Tokyo: The Japan P.E.N. Club, 1973: 91–98.
340 Bibliography

McKnight, Brian. Law and Order in Sung China. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1992.
McMullen, David. State and Scholars in T’ang China. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988.
Meng Yuanlao s∏—. Dong jing menghua lu F?⁄ÿ˝ (1147).
Miaobi pusa suo wen jing Æu–ƒ“›g. Faxian k (?–1001). T. 896.
Miaojixiang zuisheng genben da jiao jing ÆNªÃ”⁄ªj–g. Faxian
kÂ(?–1001). T. 1217.
Mikkyo daijiten ß≥´T. 6 vols. Mikkyo Jiten Hensenkai, 1966.
Mikkyo jiten ß≥´T. Kyoto: Hozokan, 1975.
Miji lishi daquan shenwang jing jiesong KÒOhjv´˝gU|. Edited by
Guangfu dashi s÷jv (early fourteenth century). T. 1688.
Minakata Kumagusu zenshu n˵£˛∞. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1973.
Miyakawa Hisayuki ct|”. “Rin Reiso to So no Kiso LF¿∆∫Ã≤v.
Tokai daigaku kiyo: Bungakubu 24 (1975): 1–8.
———. “So no kiso to dokyo ∫Ã≤v∆D–. Tokai daigaku kiyo: Bun-
gakubu 23 (1975): 1–10.
———. “Nanso no doshi Haku Gyokusen no jiseki n∫ÃDh’…?Ã
∆›.” Uchida Gimpu Hakushi shoju kinen toyoshi ronshu ∫–u∑’h|
ÿO¿Fvv◊∞. Kyoto: Dohosha, 1978: 499–517.
Miyamoto Noriyuki cªhß. “So-Gen jidai ni okeru fun’an-to sosen saishi
∫∏…N…®ØÈXg∆™˝Ω¡.” Bukkyo shigaku kenkyu 35.2 (1992):
112–135.
Miyazaki Ichisada. “The Administration of Justice during the Sung Dy-
nasty.” In Cohen, Edwards, and Chen, eds., Essays in China’s Legal Tra-
dition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Mo he fei shi luo mo na ye ti po he luo she tuoluoni yigui ØFp«oº∫•£
C‹oG˚π߈y (ninth century). T. 1246.
Mochizuki Bukkyo daijiten ]é≈≥´T. 10 vols. Tokyo: Sekai seitan
kanko kyokai, 1960–1966.
Mollier, Christine. Une apocalypse taoïste du Ve siècle: Le livre des incantations
divines des grottes abyssales. Paris: Mémoires de l’Institut des Hautes
Études Chinoises 31, 1990.
———. La méthode de l’empereur du Nord du Mont Fengdu: Une tra-
dition exorciste du taoïsme médiévale.” T’oung-Pao 83, 4–5 (1997):
329–385.
Morohashi Tetsuji —Ù·∏. Dai kanwa jiten Âøa´T. Tokyo: Taishukan
shoten, 1955–1960.
Nakamura Jihei §¯vL√. “Todai no fu NÃ≈.” Shien 105–106 (Au-
gust 1971): 61–92.
———. “Godai ni okeru fu ≠N…®ØÈ≈.” Toyo Bunka 55 (March
1975): 1–14.
Bibliography 341

———. “Hokusocho to fu _∫¬∆≈.” Chuo daigaku kiyo; Bungakubu shi-

gakka 88 (1978): 63–78.
———. “Socho no kiu ni tsuite ∫¬Ã¬B…¡°ƒ.” Ajia no kyoiku to
shakai. Tokyo: Fumaito shuppan, 1980: 102–113.
———. “Sodai no fu no tokucho ∫NÃ≈ÃSx.” Chuo daigaku kiyo: Bun-
gakubu shigakka 104 (1982): 51–75.
Nakano Miyako §•¸Nl. Chugoku no yokai ÜëÃdˆ. Tokyo: Iwanomi
shoten, 1983.
———. Seiyuki no himitsu ËCOõK. Tokyo: Fukutake shoten, 1984.
Nan-Tang shu n—. Lu You ∞ (1125–1210). Sibu congkan xubian, vol.
15. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1984.
Nan-Tang shu n—. Ma Ling ®O (early twelfth century). Sibu congkan
xubian, vol. 15. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1984.
Nanyou ji nCO. In Zhongguo gudian wenxu: Si you ji §Íj«G|
CO. Taibei: Wenhua tushu gongsi, 1984.
Nickerson, Peter. “Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval
China.” Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1996.
Nüqing guilü kC≠fl (third century). HY 789.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. “The Idiom of Demonic Possession: A Case
Study.” Social Science and Medicine 4 (1970): 97–111.
———. Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Ofuchi Ninji jW‘∏. Chugokujin no shukyo girei ÜëlÃ@≥VÁ. Tokyo:
Fukutake shoten, 1983.
Ogawa Yoichi ptß@. “Dokyo setsuwa D–°‹.” Tonko to chugoku dokyo
÷ä∆Üëπ≥. Tokyo: Tokyo shuppansha, 1983: 291–304.
Omura Seigai j¯ËV. Mikkyo hattatsushi K–oFv. Tokyo: Bussho
kankokai zuzobu, 1918.
Orzech, Charles. “Esoteric Buddhism and the Shishi in China.” In Hen-
rik H. Sorensen, The Esoteric Buddhist Tradition. SBS Monograph Series
2. Copenhagen Seminar for Buddhist Studies, 1994: 51–72.
———. “Fang yen-k’ou and P’u-tu: Metaphor and Translation.” In Livia
Kohn and Harold Roth, eds., Daoist Identity in Practice. Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawai‘i Press, 2001.
Osabe Kazuo ¯°MØ. To-So mikkyoshi ronko ∫K–v◊“. Kyoto: Na-
gada bunshodo, 1982.
Otagi Hajime RX∏. “So Taiso satsugai-setsu to joshintaiheikan ∫”™
˛`°∆WM”≠c.” Shirin (1984): 51–79.
———. “Todai rokan ko N”[“.” In Yoshikawa Tadao jtæ“, ed.,
Chugoku kodokyoshi kenkyu §ÍjD–v„s. Kyoto: Dohosha, 1992:
275–322.
Pishamen yigui iF˘ˆy. Attributed to Amoghavajra (705–744). T. 1249.
342 Bibliography

Quan Tang Shi ˛÷. Compiled by Tsao Yin ‰G. Shanghai: T’ungwen,
1898.
Rawski, Evelyn. “A Historian’s Approach to Chinese Death Ritual.” In
James Watson and Evelyn Rawski, eds., Death Ritual in Late Imperial and
Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988: 20–40.
Rouget, Gilbert. Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations Between Music
and Possession. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Sandong xiudao yi T}◊Dˆ (Song). HY 1227.
Saso, Michael. The Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang. New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1978.
Sawada Mizuho A–ÁJ. “Shakkyogeki joroku ¿–@‘˝.” Tenri daigaku
gakuho 44 (1964): 39–43.
———. Chugoku no minkan shukyo ÜëÃØ‘@≥. Tokyo: Kosakusha,
1982.
———. Chugoku no juho ÜëÃÓ@. Tokyo: Hirakawa, 1984.
———. “Kenkiko £≠“.” In Sawada, Chugoku no juho. Tokyo: Hirakawa,
1984: 3–39.
———. “Kokukiko ≠k.” In Sawada, Chugoku no juho. Tokyo: Hirakawa,
1984: 40–55.
Schipper, Kristofer. Le corps taoïste. Paris: Fayard, 1982.
———. “Exposé de titres et travaux,” (unpub. ms., Paris, 1983).
———. “An Outline of Taoist Ritual.” Paper prepared for the “Interna-
tional Conference on Asian Rituals and the Theory of Ritual,” Berlin,
June 1984.
———. “Taoist Ordination Ranks in the Tunhuang Manuscripts.” In G.
Naundorf, ed., Religion und Philosophie in Ostasien: Festschrift für Hans
Steininger zum 65. Geburstag. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann,
1985: 127–148.
———. “Vernacular and Classical Ritual in Taoism.” Journal of Asian Stud-
ies 45:1 (Nov. 1985): 21–51.
———. Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études (1985–1986): 133–
135.
———. “Master Chao I-chen (?–1382) and the Ch’ing-wei School of Tao-
ism.” In Akizuki Kan’ei HéVÛ, ed., Dokyo to shukyo bunka D–∆v–
Â∆. Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppan, 1987: 1–21 (from the back).
———. “Mulien Plays in Taoist Liturgical Context.” In David Johnson, ed.,
Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual. Berkeley: Chinese Popular Culture Pro-
ject, 1989:126–154.
Seidel, Anna. “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs.”
In Akizuki Kan’ei HéVÛ, ed., Dokyo to shukyo bunka D–∆v–Â∆.
Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppan, 1987: 21–57 (from the back).
Bibliography 343

Shafer, Edward. The Empire of Min. Rutland: Charles Tuttle, 1954.

Shangqing beiji Tianxin zhengfa. HY 567.
Shangqing gusui lingwen guilü WM©ËFÂ≠fl. HY 461.
Shangqing lingbao dafa WMF_jk. Jin Yunzhong ˜π§ (early thir-
teenth century). HY 1213.
Shangqing lingbao dafa WMF_jk. Wang Qizhen ˝¥u (late thirteenth
century). HY 1211.
Shangqing tianxin zhengfa WM—fløk. Deng Yougong H≥\ (early
twelfth century). HY 566.
Sheng Huanxitian shi fa twfl—°k. T. 1275.
Shenxian ganyu zhuan ´PPJ«. Du Guangting ˘˙x (850–933). HY
592.
Shimen zhengtong ¿˘øŒ. Zong jian v≤ (Song). Z. 2B, 3:5.
Shishi tonglan Iπq˝. Zongxiao v (thirteenth century). Z. 2A, 6:3.
Shizutani Masao R¶øØ. “Hoshi (dharma-bhanaka) ni tsuite kv
(dharma-bhanaka)…¡°ƒ.” Indogaku bukkyogaku kenkyu 3.1 (1954):
131–132.
———. “Daijo kyodan no seiritsu ni tsuite, 1 jº–ŒÃ®fl…¡°ƒ.”
Bukkyo shigaku 13.3 (1967): 17–44.
Shuilu yigui huiben Ù∞ˆy|ª. Shanghai: Shanghao foxue shuju, n.d.
Skar, Lowell. “Administering Thunder: A Thirteenth-Century Memorial
Deliberating the Thunder Rites.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 9 (1996–1997):
159–202.
———. “Ritual Movement, Deity Cults and the Transformation of Dao-
ism in Song and Yuan Times.” In Livia Kohn, ed., Handbook of Daoism.
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000.
Snellgrove, D. L. The Hevajra Tantra. London Oriental Series, vol. 6. Lon-
don: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Song Bai zhenren Yuchan quanji ∫’uH…?˛∞. Bo Yuchan. Taiwan:
Committee to Publish Bo Yuchan’s Works, 1976.
Song Gaoseng zhuan ∫™¨«. Zanning ŸÁ(919–1001). T. 2061.
Song huiyao jigao ∫|nËZ. Compiled by Xu Song }Q. Reprint edition.
Taibei: Shijie shuju, 1964.
Songchao shishi. Li You (early twelfth century). Siku quanshu. 1698–1699.
Reprint edition. Taipei: Commercial Press, 1971.
Soymié, Michel. Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, IVe Section
(1975–1976): 997–1002.
———. Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, IVe Section (1976–
1977): 1027–1034.
———. “Les dix jours de jeûne du taoïsme.” Dokyo kenkyu ronshu, Dokyo no
shiso to bunka. Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1977: 1–21.
344 Bibliography

Stanford, James. “Literary Aspects of Japan’s Dual-Ganesa Cult.” In Robert

L. Brown, ed., Ganesh: Studies of an Asian God. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1991: 287–335.
Stein, R. A. “Les fêtes de cuisines du taoïsme religieux.” Annuaire du Col-
lège de France (1968–1969): 431–440.
———. “Un exemple de relations entre Taoïsme et religion populaire.”
Fukui Hakase shoju kinen Toyo bunka ronshu. Tokyo, 1969: 79–90.
———. “Spéculations mystiques et thèmes relatifs aux ‘cuisines’ du
taoïsme.” Annuaire du Collège de France (1971–1972): 489–499.
———. Annuaire du Collège de France (1972–1973): 60–65.
———. Annuaire du Collège de France (1973–1974): 512–515.
———. “The Guardian of the Gate: An Example of Buddhist Mythology,
from India to Japan.” In Yves Bonnefoy and Wendy Doniger, eds., Asian
Mythologies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993: 122–136.
Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Buddhist Rite for the Creatures of Water and
Land: Text and Image in the History of the Shuilu fahui” (unpub. ms.,
1997).
Strickmann, Michel. “Sodao no raigi: Shinsho undo to doka nanshu ni
tsuite no ryaku setsu ∫NÃpˆG´]B?∆Danv…¡°ƒÃ
§°.” Toho Shukyo 46 (1975): 15–28.
———. “The Longest Taoist Scripture.” History of Religions 17 (1978):
331–354.
———. “The Taoist Renaissance of the Twelfth Century.” Paper prepared
for the Third International Conference of Taoist Studies, Unterägeri,
September 39, 1979.
———. “India in the Chinese Looking Glass.” In D. Klimburg-Salter, ed.,
The Silk Route and the Diamond Path. Los Angeles: UCLA Art Council,
1982: 53–63.
———. “Therapeutische Rituale und das Problem des Bösen im frühen
Taoismus.” In G. Naundorf, ed., Religion und Philosophie Ostasien:
Festschrift für Hans Steininger zum 65. Geburstag. Würzburg: Königshausen
& Neumann, 1985: 185–200.
———. “Magical Medicine: Therapeutic Rituals in Medieval China” (un-
pub. ms., Berkeley, 1987, forthcoming in 2001 as Chinese Magical Med-
icine from Stanford University Press, ed. Bernard Faure).
———. “Dreamwork of Psycho-Sinologists: Doctors, Taoists, Monks.” In
Carolyn Brown, ed., Psycho-Sinology: The Universe of Dreams in Chinese Cul-
ture. Lanham: University Press of America, 1988.
———. Mantras et mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine. Paris: Gal-
limard, 1996.
Su ji li Yanmoxishouluotian shuo aweishe fa teflÁ]Q∫π—°¸¿¯k.
Amoghavajra (705–774). T. 1277.
Bibliography 345

Su Shi ¨˝. Sushi shiji ¨˝÷∞. Annotated by Wang Wengao ˝Â¢.

Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982.
Sudo Yoshiyuki P√Nß and Nakajima Toshi . Chugoku no rekishi 5: Godai-
So ÜëÃj vol. 5: ≠N–∫. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1974.
Sun Kekuan ]Je. Song Yuan daojiao zhi fazhan ∫∏D–ßoi. Tai-
zhong: Donghai University, 1965.
Supodi tongzi qingwen jing ¨CI£l–›g. T. 895.
Taiji zhenren fu lingbao zhaijie weiyi zhujing yaojue ”•uH≈F_NŸ¬ˆ
—gnZ (Six Dynasties). HY 532.
Taiping guang ji ”≠sO. Compiled by Li Fang ıƒ (978). Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju, 1961.
Taishang chiwen dongshen sanlu ”W™Â}´T¸. Attributed to Li Chun-
feng (seventh century). HY 589.
Taishang dongxuan lingbao miedu wulian shengshi miaojing ”W}»F_¿
◊≠ÂÕrÆg (Six Dynasties). HY 369.
Taishang huanglu zhaiyi ”W¿¸Nq. Du Guangting ˘˙x(850–933).
HY 507.
Taishang jidu zhangshe ”WŸ◊πj (early fourteenth century). HY 316.
Taishang santian neijiejing ”WT—∫—g (early fifth century). HY 1196.
Taishang zhengyi zhougui jing ”Wø@G≠g (Six Dynasties?). HY 1184.
Taishang zhuguo jiumin zongzhen biyao ”WUÍœ¡`u¶n. Yuan Miao-
zong ∏Æv(1116). HY 1217.
Taisho shinsu daizokyo jøs◊j√g. Takakusu Jinjiro and Watanabe
Kaikyoku, eds. (Kyoto, 1905–1912). Tokyo: Daizokyo, 1924–1935. Ab-
breviated herein as T.
Tanaka Issei –Ú@®. Chugoku saishi engeki kenkyu Üë’JâħÜ.
Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppansha, 1981.
———. Chugoku no zonso to engeki ÜëÃ@≥∆âÄ. Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
shuppansha, 1985.
———. Chugoku goson saishi kenkyu ÜëΩ∫’J§Ü. Tokyo: Tokyo dai-
gaku shuppansha, 1989.
———. Chugoku fukei engeki kenkyu ÜëfinâħÜ. Tokyo: Tokyo dai-
gaku shuppansha, 1993.
Taylor, Romeyn. “Official and Popular Religion and the Political Orga-
nization of Chinese Society in the Ming.” In Liu Kwang-ching, ed., Or-
thodoxy in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991: 126–157.
Teihon Yanagida Kunio shu qªh–Ík∞. Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1962.
Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1988.
———. “The Ritual Behind the Opera: A Fragmentary Ethnography of
the Ghost Festival, a.d. 400–1900.” In David Johnson, ed., Ritual
346 Bibliography

Opera, Operatic Ritual. Berkeley: Chinese Popular Culture Project, 1990:

191–223.
ter Haar, Barend J. “The Rise of the Guan Yu Cult: The Taoist Connec-
tion.” In Jan A. M. De Meyer and Peter M. Engelfriet, eds., Linked Faiths:
Essays on Chinese Religions and Traditional Culture in Honour of Kristofer
Schipper. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000: 184–204.
Ting Ch’uan-ching. A Compilation of Anecdotes of Sung Personalities. Trans.
Chu Djang and Jane Djang. Taipei: St. John’s University Press, 1989.
Twitchett, Denis. “The Fan Clan’s Charitable Estate, 1050–1760.” In David
S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright, eds., Confucianism in Action. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1959: 97–133.
———. “Documents on Clan Administration 1: The Rules of Adminis-
tration of the Charitable Estate of the Fan Clan.” Asia Major 3rd ser., 8
(1960): 1–35.
Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Politics: The Central Texts: Theory Against Fate.
London: Verso, 1997.
Van Straten, N. H. Concepts of Health, Disease and Vitality in Traditional Chi-
nese Society. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983.
Verellen, Franciscus. Du Guangting (850–933): Taoïste de cour à la fin de la
chine médiévale. Paris: Mémoires de l’Institut des Hautes Études Chi-
noises 30, 1989.
Visser, Marinus de. Ancient Buddhism in Japan: Sutras and Ceremonies. Lei-
den: E. J. Brill, 1935.
Vitiello, Giovanni. “Studio sul taoista Lu Xiujing (406–477).” Annali dell’-
Instituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 47.3 (1987): 293–332.
Von Falkenhausen, Lothar. “Reflections on the Political Role of Spirit-
Mediums in Early China: The Wu Officials in the Zhou li.” Early China
20(1995): 279–300.
Von Glahn, Richard. “The Enchantment of Wealth: The God Wutong in
the Social History of Jiangnan.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51.2
(1991): 651–714.
Wada Akio M–L“. “Goho doji @k£l.” Mikkyo Bunka 104 (1973):
19–41.
Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. “Models of Historical Change: The Chinese State
and Society, 1839–1989.” In Lieberthal et al., eds., Perspectives on Mod-
ern China: Four Anniversaries. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1991: 68–102.
———. “Civil Society in Late Imperial China.” In Frederic Wakeman, Jr.,
and Wang Xi, eds., China’s Quest for Modernization. Berkeley: Institute
of East Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, Research Pa-
pers and Policy Studies 41, 1997: 325–351.
———. “Boundaries of the Public Sphere in Ming and Qing China.”
Daedalus 127.3 (Summer 1998): 167–189.
Bibliography 347

Waley, Arthur. Ballads and Stories from Tun-Huang. London: George Allen
& Unwin, 1960.
———. The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry. New York:
Grove Weidenfield, 1988.
Walleser, M. The Life of Nagarjuna from Tibetan and Chinese Sources. Delhi:
Nag, 1979.
Walton, Linda. “Southern Sung Academies as Sacred Places.” In Ebrey and
Gregory, eds., Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China. Honolulu:
University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993: 335–363.
Wang Haihang ˝¸Ë and Chen Yaolin Ø£L. Pilu si he Pilu si bihua
scxMscx¿e. Shijiazhuang: 1984.
Wang Qiugui ˝Ó¤. Minsu quyi congshu ¡U±¿O—, vols. 1–80. Taibei:
Minsu quyi, 1993–.
Wilkerson, James R. “The ‘Ritual Master’ and His ‘Temple Corporation’
Rituals.” In Lin Ru Lp, ed., Minjian xinyang yu Zhongguo wenhua: Guoji
yantao huilun wenji 2 ¡°HıP§ÍÂ∆Í⁄„Q|◊Â∞. Taibei:
Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin, 1994: 471–522.
Wilkinson, Christopher. “The Tantric Ganesa: Texts Preserved in the Ti-
betan Canon.” In Robert L. Brown, ed., Ganesh: Studies of an Asian God.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991: 235–275.
Winkler, John L. Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apulius’s The
Golden Ass. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Woodside, Alexander. “Emperors and the Chinese Political System.” In
Lieberthal et al., eds., Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries.
Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1991: 5–30.
Wu Liancheng ds∞. Baoning si Mingdai shuilu hua _Áx˙NÙ∞e.
Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1985.
Wu Yongmeng d√r. “Penghu gongmiao xiaofa de Pu An Zushi zhi
shenyuan ÍÚcqpk∫∂{™vߥΩ.” In Donfang zong jiao yanjiu
4: 165–181.
Wu Zimu d¤™. Mengliang lu ⁄Á˝ (1274).
Wushang biyao LW¶n (late sixth century). HY 1130.
Wushang huanglu dazhai licheng yi LW¿¸jNfl®ˆ. Jiang Shuyu ±˚
÷ (1156–1217). HY 508.
Wushang jiuxiao yuqing dafan zuwei xiandu leiting yujing (twelfth century?).
HY 15.
Wushang xuanyuan santianwang yudang dafa LW»∏T—˝…Ûjk. Lu
Shizhong Ù…§ (fl. 1158). HY 220.
Xianchun Lin’an zhi wE{w”. Song-Yuan difang zhi congshu, vol. 7.
Taibei: Dahua shuju, 1980.
Xiaochu ji pb∞. Wang Yucheng ˝ÍW (954–1001). Wang Huangzhou
Xiaochu ji …¿{pb∞. Taibei: Sibu congkan (reprint ed.), 1936.
348 Bibliography

Xin Tangshu s—. Song Qi ∫¬and Ou Yangxiu ⁄ß◊. Beijing:

Zhonghua shuju, 1974.
Xiuzhen shishu ◊uQ—. Anonymous (thirteenth century). HY 263.
Xu Daoling \D÷. “Songlu zhongde shenpan zhidu.” Dongfang zazhi
fugan 4.4.
Xu Zizhi tong jian changbian ÚÍvq≤¯s. Li Tao ıv. Taibei: Shijie
shuju, 1961.
Xuantian shangdi qisheng lu »—W““t˝. Anonymous (late thirteenth–
fourteenth century). HY 957.
Yamauchi Koichi s∫ª@. “Hokuso no kokka to gyokko kvÃë∆∆
?c.” Tohogaku 62 (1981): 83–97.
Ye Mingsheng ≠˙n. “Fujiansheng Longyanshi Dongxiaozhen Lüshan-
jiao Guang jitan keyiben huibian ÷ÿŸs…´FvÌ[s–sŸ¬Ï
ˆªJs.” In Wang Qiugui ˝Ó¤, ed., Zhongguo chuantong keyiben hui-
bian §Í«ŒÏˆªJs. Taibei: Xinwenfeng, 1998.
Yi Run ˆÌ. Shuilu yigui Ù∞ˆy. Yangzhou: Yangzhou zang jing yuan,
1917.
———. Shuilu yigui huiben Ù∞ˆy|ª. Yangzhou: Yangzhou zang jing
yuan, 1924.
Yijian zhi iÌ”. Hong Mai x⁄ (1123–1202). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,
1981.
Yisheng baode zhuan ˆtOw«. Wang Qinruo ˝‹Y (1016). HY 1275.
Yoritomi Motohiro ‡Iªª. Chugoku mikkyo no kenkyu Üëß≥çÜ.
Tokyo: Daito shuppansha, 1975.
Yu Ji ∑∞(1272–1348). Daoyuan xue gu lu DÈ«j˝. Shanghai: Shangwu
yinshu guan, 1937.
Yü Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-Hung and the Late
Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Yuanshi ∏v. Song Lian ∫¸(1310–1381). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976.
Yunji qiqian ≥DC“. Zhang Junfang ig–(1028). HY 1026.
Zhang Xunliao i‘R. “Jiangxi Gao’an chutu Nan-Song Chunxi liunian
Xu Yong mu ‘Fengdu luoshan baku chaosheng zhengui shenxing’ tu
shike øË™wXgn∫E≥ª~}√”•Z£πsfiWWÕÌ≠u
Œ¶œ¤Ë.” Daojiao wenhua yanjiu 6. Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1995:
300–311.
Zhen Gao u¢. Tao Hong jing ≥∞∫ (456–536). HY 1010.
Zhengtong daozang øŒD√ (1444–1445). Taibei: Xin Wenfeng chuban
gongsi, 1990.
Zhi-zheng Jinling xinzhi ‹ø˜Æs”. Song Yuan difang zhi congshu, vol.
3. Taibei: Dahua shuju, 1980.
Zhiqing zashuo TC¯°. Compiled by Wang Mingqing ˝˙M (1127–ca.
Bibliography 349

1215). Longwei bishu s¬¶— vol. 4, fasc. 13 (1794). Baibu congshu

jicheng. Taibei: Yiwen yin shu guan (reprint ed.), 1965–1970.
Zhongnan shan shuojingtai lidai zhenxian beiji ◊ns°gO˙NuPOO.
Compiled by Zhu Xiangxian ∂H˝ (fl. 1279–1308). HY 955.
Zhou Cheng P∞, ed. Song Dong jing kao ∫F?“. Beijing: Zhonghua
shuju, 1988.
Zhou Yiliang. “Tantrism in China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 8
(1945): 241–332.
Zhouli zhengyi Pßøq. Edited by Sun Yirang ]fl˝. Taibei: Shangwu
yinshu guan, 1965.
Zizhi tong jian changbian jishi benmo Ívq≤¯sˆ∆ªΩ. Taibei: Wen-
hai chubanshe, 1967.
INDEX

Ajitasena, 129, 134 Celestial Master Daoism, 24, 31,

Amoghavajra (Bukong), 48–49, 32, 33, 34, 37–41, 60, 78–
287n. 50 79, 94, 260n. 55, 264n. 8,
Anderson, Poul, 21, 22, 56, 94, 279n. 14
273n. 30, 275n. 44 charitable schools, 162–163
A4vagho3a (Maming), 135 Cheng Yi, 53, 188–189
Cluny, Abbot of, 241
Blumenberg, Hans, 221 Confucius, 161, 162, 164, 190
Bo Yuchan, 28, 29, 129–134, 136, congci, 12, 214
150, 176–178, 220
Buddhist rituals: Daoist canon (Daozang), 16, 23, 27,
Avalambana (Yulanpen zhai), 236, 241; 28, 35–36
Retreat [for the Spirits] of Water Daoist priest (daoshi), 31–32, 168–
and Land (Shuilu zhai), 15, 172– 170
173, 173–176, 236–241; Daoist rituals: distinctions among,
Retreat of the One-Thousand 16, 227–228; and theater, 16,
Paths [of Rebirth] (Qiandao 113–114, 277n. 75;
zhai), 175–176; Great Rites of Youth’s Incipience
Rites of Ave4a (Aweishe fa), 123–125, (Tongchu dafa), 77;
128, 136, 140, 229, 280–281n. 27; Great Rites of the Jade Hall
Rites of Ucchu3ma (Huiji fa), (Yutang dafa), 56–57, 80;
126–152; Great Rites of the Numinous
Rites of the Five Divisions (Wubu Treasure (Lingbao dafa),
fa), 122–123; 159;
Rites of the Three Altars (Santan Nine Obscurities Offering ( Jiuyou
fa), 115–123, 142–143, 145– jiao), 174, 197–198;
146, 293n. 97. Offerings ( jiao), 78, 169,
See also rituals for the dead 277n. 75;

351
352 Index

Daoist rituals (continued) Steps of Yu (Yubu), 55, 133, 159,

Retreat of the Yellow Register 230.
(Huanglu zhai), 15, 56, 163, 166– See also rituals for the dead
167, 172–173, 179–184, 191– daoren, 27
197, 277n. 75; and Bo Yuchan, Dean, Kenneth, 118–120, 212–213,
176–178; history of, 227–236; 216, 219–220
and Song society, 173–176; demon codes, 23, 40–42, 158
Rites [for the] Destruction of demon seers, 91–92, 101
the Earth Prison (poyu), 191, Diamond Dhyana ( Jin’gang chan),
194–195, 233; 121–122
Rites of Deliverance (kaidu), 171, divinities: Acalavidyaraja, 272n. 30;
192, 231–236; Atavaka, 276n. 60; Black killer
Rites of Deliverance by Refining (Heisha), 14–15, 22, 23, 27, 73,
(liandu), 165, 234–236; 74, 75, 79–80, 86, 214, 224–
Rites of Investigation by Illumina- 225, (see also below Perfected
tion (Kaozhao fa), 100–101, 116, Lord “Protector of Sageliness”);
143; Budai, 132, 284n. 48; City God,
Rites of Maoshan (Maoshan fa), 157, 158, 163, 165, 204, 208,
47, 48; 210–211, 216; Deep Sands, 131,
Rites of Summoning for Investi- 289n. 51; Dongyue, 22, 156,
gation (Kaozhao fa): 15, 151, 158–159; Door gods, 132–
158, 159, 190, 234; antecedents 133; Earth God, 154, 156, 158,
of, 93–95, 103–106, 270n. 15, 168–169, 175, 204, 209, 211,
271n. 29, 271–273n. 30; descrip- 213, 215, 216, 217, 261–262n.
tion of, 96–102, 105, 198–199; 63; Four Saints (Sisheng), 58,
and judicial trials, 101–106, 76–77, 292n. 97; Gane4a, 132,
108–109; practitioners of, 57, 133, 283–283n. 48; Heavenly
60, 80–83, 88–89, 107–108, Worthy “Savior from Distress”
109–110, 120, 136, 141, 156– (Qiuku tianzun), 233; Hua-
158, 168, 285n. 49; and Retreat guang, 131, 150–151, 284–
of the Yellow Register, 198–199; 287n. 49, 292n. 97; hungry
and Rites of Ave4a, 125; and ghosts (egui, pretas), 235, 236,
theater, 106–107; 240, 241; Jade Emperor, 70,
Rites of the Celestial Heart (Tian- 71, 72, 73, 168–169; Jiedi, 131,
xin fa), 14; history of, 21–24, 289–290n. 50; Ma Sheng, 150,
29; practitioners of, 56, 57, 58, 286n. 49, 288n. 50; Mahe4vara,
59, 60, 80–84, 156, 165; talis- 125, 132; Nagarjuna (Longshu),
mans of, 23, 77; 130–131, 140–141, 149–150;
Rites of the Earth Spirits (Diqi fa), Nezha (Nuocha), 48–49, 131,
120, 142–143, 279n. 14; 150, 287–289n. 50, 292n. 97;
Rites of the Five Thunder [Gods] Northern Emperor (Beidi),
(Wulei fa ), 14; history of, 24– 75, 76, 78; Perfected Lord “Pro-
30; and magistrates, 26; practi- tector of Sageliness” (Yisheng
tioners of, 54, 58, 59, 60, 80– zhenjun), 69–74, 79, (see also
82, 107–108, 156; above Black Killer); Purple
Index 353

Tenuity (Ziwei), 74, 76, 193; Fujian, 22, 29, 30, 31, 50, 53, 54–55,
Six Ding and Six Jia, 58; Skanda 62, 65–66, 68, 77, 118, 120–
(Weituo), 132; Spirit-Kings of 121, 122, 126, 139, 142, 144,
the Eight Powers (Bali shen- 166, 176–178, 212, 214, 218,
wang), 135; Taiyi, 192, 193, 194; 291–292n. 88, 292n. 97
Tianpeng, 23, 72, 74, 78; Two
Great Lords Incense Mountain Ge Hong, 134
and Snowy Mountain, 131, 150, Geertz, Clifford, 221
283n. 47; Two Great Lords Swine Gellner, Ernest, 206
Head and Elephant Trunk, 131, Genette, G., 18
283–284n. 48, see also Gane4a; Gezaoshan, 31, 32, 173, 181
Ucchu3ma (Huiji jin’gang), 53, Greenblatt, Stephen, 112
128–136, 141–142, 150, 165, gu, 90–91
214, 238, 287n. 49, 290n. 53,
292n. 97; Vai4ravana, 132, 287– heresy, 62–63, 121–122
288n. 50; Vajramalla ( Jin’gang Hermes Trismegistus, 131
shou), 132; Wan Hui, 284n. 48; homa, 124
Wen Qiong, 120, 218, 278– Hong Mai, 17, 58, 59, 149, 157
279n. 14; Wutong, 12, 53, 214, Huizong (Song emperor), 26, 31,
237, 239, 285–287n. 49; yak3as, 34–37, 113; anti-Buddhism, 37;
131, 151; Zhao Gongming, 194, anti-cult edict, 63–64; and ritual
284n. 48, 288n. 50; Zhenwu, reform, 36, 255n. 71
23, 72, 74, 75–77, 78, 80, 81,
168, 176, 214, 266–267n. 33, illness, 39–44, 106, 161
274n. 33 Iyanaga Nobumi, 129–130
Duara, Prasenjit, 201–208
Du Guangting, 25, 229–231 Jiangnan, 25, 153, 156, 173, 174
Jiangxi, 22, 23, 25, 27, 30, 45, 46, 47,
Ebrey, Patricia, 19, 163, 297–298n. 2, 52, 53, 62, 64, 76, 79, 107, 113,
304–305n. 18 115, 120, 127, 136, 149, 161,
Enoch, 131 168, 171, 175, 176, 214, 218,
exorcism, 96; terms for, 93. See 285n. 49
also Buddhist rituals, Daoist Jin Yunzhong, 31–32, 38–39, 192–
rituals 193, 231, 233, 234
exorcists: as Daoist priest, 14; as
layman, 23; as Ritual Master, Khotan, 129, 287n. 50
14; as Tantric Buddhist Monk,
15, 115–143, 254n. 59, 276n. Lagerwey, John, 16, 49, 228,
60. See also Ritual Master 246n. 29, 265–266n. 31,
271n. 29, 292–293n. 97
Fan Zhongyan, 163 Li Chunfeng, 94, 271–273n. 30
fangxiang shi, 34, 232 Lin Lingsu, 26–28, 29, 33, 35–36, 54
Feuchtwang, Stephan, 208–209 Lu Shizhong, 56–57
Fineman, Joel, 20 Lu Xiujing, 10, 228
Foucault, Michel, 221–222 Lüshan jiao, 118, 119, 150–151
354 Index

Manichaeism, 121 and spirit-mediums, 87–89,

Maoshan, 31, 32, 56; and Ritual 99–100, 219, 220, 269n. 2;
Master, 153–156 as spirit-mediums, 52–53, 59,
Marx, Karl, 222 60, 149–150; as term, 32–34,
merit-cloisters, 163, 172, 218, 237 45, 51–52, 78, 80
methodology, 16–20 ritual surrogates, 99, 193
rituals for the dead, 113, 163, 170,
Nagarjuna, 130–131. See also divinities 171–199; and the appearance
Neo-Confucianism: and personator, of the dead, 178, 179–181, 193–
188–189; and Song culture, 17, 194, 300n. 30; as exorcisms, 16,
191; and Song dynasty, 4–6 196–199; private and public,
Nickerson, Peter, 299n. 3 174; and rites of universal salva-
nuo, 113–114, 120 tion ( pudu), 236, 239; and social
elite, 171–172. See also Buddhist
Omura Seigai, 134 rituals (Retreat [for the Spirits]
of Water and Land) and Daoist
Palace of Great Peace of Highest rituals (Retreat of the Yellow
Purity (Shangqing taipinggong), Register)
72–76
Palace of the Northern Emperor Sanhuang Daoism, 282n. 31
(Beidigong), 71, 78 Schipper, Kristofer, 6, 9–11, 87–88,
personator (shi), 186–190 143, 224, 246n. 20, 246–247n. 24
Puan jiao, 118, 151, 292–293n. 97 Seidel, Anna, 245n. 18
shamanism, 3
Qingwei (Pure Tenuity), 29–30 she/shehui, 12–13, 213, 214, 216
Shenxiao (Divine Empyrean), 26–28,
Rawski, Evelyn, 294–296n. 2 29, 35
Renzong (Song emperor), 76 Song dynasty: and Heavenly Texts,
Ritual Master ( fashi ): 7–8, 14, 21, 67–69; historical interpretation
30, 214–215, 224; and bianshen, of, 4–5; and Mandate of Heaven,
97, 273–274n. 33; and Buddhist 67–80; and new Daoist lineages,
monks, 158; as Buddhist monk, 30–31
115–118; characteristics of, 54, sorcery, 62, 121
58, 84–86, 258–259n. 25; as spirit-mediums (wu): characteristics
clerical exorcist, 32, 33, 52, 54, of, 77, 78, 83, 118–120; as
80–83, 153–155, 168, 195; children (tongzi ), 100, 109–110,
clients of, 45–46, 54–57; divin- 115–120, 124, 140–141, 144–
ities of, 30; as lay exorcist, 25, 146, 153–156, 156, 159–161,
31, 32, 33, 46–51, 54, 78–79, 162–165, 166–167, 168–170,
88–89, 107–108, 109–110, 156– 181, 182–185, 186, 193–194;
157, 159–160, 252–253n. 52, and literati, 161–165; and
291n. 79; as official, 61, 102, monks, 127, 185–186; as monks,
159; officials as, 59–60, 165– 141; as practitioners of Rites of
167; recruitment among elite, Ucchu3ma, 144–146, 146–147;
57–59, 260n. 55; and Rites of and Ritual Masters, 66, 79–86;
the Three Altars, 142–143; in Song, 61–66, 116, 147–150,
Index 355

151, 157; in Tang, 61, 124–125, Wakeman, Frederic, 201, 202, 207
185–186, 261–262n. 63; and Wang Qinruo, 67, 69
Zhenwu, 77, 149–150 Wang Wenqing, 28–29, 54–56
spirit-possession: definitions of, 1– witchcraft, 62
3, 84–85, 105, 112; and kai- Woodside, Alexander, 209–210
guang, 139, 189–190; and Wulei fa. See Daoist rituals (Rites
obsession, 96; and personator, of the Five Thunder [Gods])
187–190; and Rites of Sum-
moning for Investigation, 96, Xuanzong (Tang emperor), 123,
99–100; and Rites of the Three 287n. 50
Altars, 116; ritualized and non-
ritualized, 3–4; and rituals for Ye Jingneng, 253–254n. 59
the dead, 181, 182–186, 191– Yijian zhi, 17–20; and demon story,
196, 302n. 51; and shamanism, 18; as historical evidence,
1–3; and theater, 112–113 18–20; and spirit-possession,
spirit-writing, 56, 80 3–4, and zhiguai, 17–18
spiritual officers (lingguan), 72 Yu Wenbao, 171, 217
Strickmann, Michel, 8–11, 30, 37,
224, 236, 244n. 15, 245n. 18, Zhang Daoling, 22, 23, 24, 27,
271–273n. 30, 298n. 3 78–79, 94, 264n. 8, 273–
Su Shi, 75, 237, 308–309n. 20 274n. 33
Zhang Jixian (Thirtieth Celestial
Taizong (Song emperor), 71, 72, 123 Master), 27, 34, 38
Taizu (Song emperor), 71, 72 Zhang Shouzhen, 23, 27, 69–80
Tan Zixiao, 22, 24, 77–78, 81–84 Zhang Zifang (ancestor of Zhang
Tantric Buddhism, 115–152; and Daoling), 78
new Daoist lineages, 34 Zhao Rui (disciple of Zhang Dao-
Tianxin zhengfa. See Daoist rituals ling), 94
(Rites of the Celestial Heart) Zhao Sheng (disciple of Zhang
Tower Abbey (Louguan), 71, 72, Daoling), 27, 56
263–264n. 8 Zhejiang, 26, 53, 54, 62, 64, 122,
159, 182, 214, 237
Unger, Roberto, 222–224 Zhenzong (Song emperor), 67,
72, 73
Vajrabodhi, 123 Zhu Hong, 238–241
van der Loon, Piet, 1, 35–36, 37 Zhu Xi, 133, 189
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edward L. Davis is associate professor of Chinese history at the Univer-

sity of Hawai‘i at Manoa. He received his B.A. in modern European his-
tory from Harvard College and his Ph.D. in Chinese history from the Uni-
versity of California at Berkeley. His research interests focus on Middle
Imperial China (750–1600 a.d.) and on the history of Chinese religions
and culture. His previous publications include two essays on the cult to
the Xu brothers in Fujian. He is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Contem-
porary Chinese Culture and is currently at work on a history in 150 pages
of Chinese religions from the Stone Age to the Computer Age.