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Visualize next the myriad savants and thousand perfected as they come drifting through space and enter the pearl en masse . . . after the perfected have assembled the [supreme Monarch] of primordial commencement releases the propitious rays of the white hairs between his eyebrows, casting them down to illuminate all the purgatories of the Nine Abysses of Fengdu, that is, they shine down from Nirvana [ niwan, the nine palace-grottos in the cranium] to beneath the navel. With each ray . . . the Celestial Worthies who Relieve Suffering . . . enter into all the purgatories . . . all the incriminated hun souls are pardoned and forgiven and they exit forthwith from the purgatories . . . join in the chanting and descend, pacing the phosphoresent clouds. They [the savior worthies] sprinkle all the hun souls with sweet dew and ritual rains, by which they are able to cool and clarify their minds and bodies and open wide their throats. (Boltz 1983, 500–503)
As the Xuandu daxian yushan jinggong yi continues, it is evident that the cleansing and nourishing of the guhun is based not on the metaphoric complex of Vedic and yogic homa fire found in the fang yankou (the presence of the ostensibly “Buddhist” term niwan notwithstanding) but on the Daoist metaphor of the body as a state. This bureaucratic metaphor itself had long before been mapped with Daoist metaphors of internal alchemy ( neidan: the body as cosmos; heaven as cranium, hell as bowels, etc.). The “sweet dew” of this banquet indicates not the Vedic/yogic amrta/ bodhicitta but rather the divine saliva or pearl of “jade yang” and the elixir of the immortals of Daoism that is synthesized in the fiery crucible of the Daoist master’s body ( lianhua fa, the body as crucible; 61.31b–32a). The orphaned hun souls are “criminals” who must “undergo the procedure of refinement”
( shou lian fa; 61.8b) or undergo “refining and transformation” ( lianhua, purification is rectification; 61.20a), and so on. The pudu
“banquet” is based on the bureaucratic, physiological, and alchemical metaphors of Daoism and its salvific program, and its “sweet dew” elicits the entailments of those metaphors.
It should be quite clear at this point that “syncretism” is totally inadequate as a framework for understanding what is going on in the pudu. We do not have here an ad hoc throwing together of elements properly a part of two separate systems. Rather, in the fang yankou we see Buddhists utilizing ritual programs and metaphoric complexes (a language of mantra, dharani, and bija—the potent sonic seeds of reality in the Yogatantra s) of South Asian origin with many layers of
“source” and “target” domains to address a particularly Chinese need (the annual mopping-up of the cosmos). The Daoist pudu rituals ap-
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propriate the overall idea and plan of the Buddhist program and even many of its details. But this is a “translation” in which the many-layered South Asian metaphoric complex is mapped as a whole onto a similarly many-layered East Asian metaphoric complex involving orphaned hun souls and the bureaucratically orchestrated process of their salvation through alchemical transformation in the Daoist’s body. The pudu is properly a case of “metaphoric equivalence.”
Given the fact that both the Buddhists and the Daoists held communal banquets on behalf of departed souls long before the advent of Esoteric Buddhism, and given the fact that both religions deployed banquet metaphors that entail “sweet dew” (albeit of very different metaphoric provenance), it is no wonder that observers consider the pudu and the fang yankou “indistinguishable.” But there is a coherent difference. The pudu does not copy the fang yankou. It translates its ritual program—a descent to hell and a salvific shepherding and nourishing of the beings of the universe —in a coherent Daoist performance based on distinctively Daoist metaphors.
There are, however, a few loose ends, and this takes us back to the apparent identity between the fang yankou and the pudu propounded by some native and scholarly observers. Have the two rituals interacted for so long that they are interchangeable? Many laypeople who hire the priests and monks care little about the matter. But they certainly are not interchangeable for the Buddhists and Daoists who perform the rituals! Michel Strickmann has argued that the idea of a banquet itself is of Buddhist origin. Yet Chinese culture seems to be organized around food and banqueting, so convergence on this matter is not surprising. Perhaps Buddhist ritual inspired the notion of using the symbolism and techniques of alchemy in a communal setting, but this is probably true of the Lingbao movement as a whole.
One dimension of Daoist pudu that may be “intersemiotic” is the relationship between the Daoist’s own salvific intitiation and his or her ability to “save” or initiate others, for the alchemical sublimation of the adept is played out as a sublimation/initiation of the suffering souls (Lagerwey 1987, 210). As already noted, a similar structure occurs in the fang yankou, and consecration/initiation of the egui is found in the Tang manuals. The association was played out at large Buddhist ordination centers that held fang yankou at times of mass ordinations (Strickmann 1996, 373–378). The longstanding association between wandering monks and wandering preta—both of whom must be fed—
is of decidedly Buddhist provenance.
There are a number of areas in which Daoist rituals may have
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influenced the Buddhist fang yankou and vice versa. The Buddhist manual refers to the beings according to their appropriate gati and uses the term “egui. ” The addition of the “Writ on the Ten Types of Lonely Hun” ( Shilei guhun wen, T. 1320; 21.483b–484a) would appear to address decidedly Daoist expectations.24 Also peculiar is the mantra for ghosts who are obstructed from the distribution of food ( zhangshi gui, 480a). Given the elaborate evocation and destruction of karma that follows the hell-busting sequence, this seems superfluous. Or maybe here we have an echo of the “obstructed” souls ( zhihun) of the Daoist tradition? Perhaps more striking is the final bonfire in which Dizang Wang, along with offerings of hell money, is consumed. Strickmann conjectured that this represented not a homa but a Daoist-styled incineration of documents (Strickmann 1996, 407). He is, I think, correct. What he seems to have overlooked is that the homa fire is present in the Buddhist rite in the “flaming mouth(s)” ( yankou) that must be fed “sweet dew.”
Notes
1. For an overview, see Orzech 1994, 51–72. Bemoaning the lack of studies, Michel Strickmann has recently considered this material (1996, 403–
411). Actually, Yoshioka (1959, 369–432) has a substantial treatment of the complex.
2. Syncretism remains a widely used category in religious studies and anthropology. For a look at the politics of its use in anthropology, see Stewart and Shaw (1994). See also T. K. Stewart and C. W. Ernst (forthcoming).
3. Huiyuan inveighed against the mixing of Chinese and Buddhists in certain roles as “mutual interference of different species.” See Orzech 1998, 108.
4. I will be using “translation” in three senses. First, as actual translation from one language to another. Second, as the representation of the sounds of one language in another (more precisely, transliteration). Finally, as the process of transferring ideas, complexes of ideas, and ritual structures between one set of texts and performances and another, whether in the same language or not.
5. On geyi, see Ch’en 1964, 68–69; Zürcher 1972, 1:184; T’ang 1951, 276–286; Fung 1953, 2:241–242.
6. The task of interpretation in the context of “sinification” is perceptively treated in Gimello 1978, 52–89; Gregory 1991, 93–114.
7. Zürcher (1980) has distinguished between “strong” and “weak” forms of borrowing, and between formal and complex forms of borrowing of Buddhist materials in early Daoist texts (up to the sixth century).
8. I am indebted to two fine essays by Stewart, which introduced me to recent translation theory (1999; 2001).
9. For a critique of Nida, see Gentzler 1993, 43–73.
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10. Sangren has argued that such differential interpretation is at the heart of the concept ling (numinous, efficacious), and the skillful manipulation of social interaction through differential interpretation constitutes ling.
11. I would like to thank Glen Hayes, whose paper “The Necklace of Immortality” (1996) introduced me to the work of Lakoff and Johnson.
12. Here I follow the convention in metaphor studies of placing metaphors in small caps.
13. Erik Zürcher advances an argument somewhat similar to this. Thus in his survey of Buddhist elements in early Daoist scriptures, he distinguishes
“weak” borrowings from “strong” borrowings, with the former largely emptied of their Buddhist meanings ( kong, or “emptiness,” for example). He argues for three “complexes” that had profound impact in Daoism: karma and retribution, morality (including the notion of precepts and vows), and Buddhist cosmology (1980, 119–122). Stephen R. Bokenkamp, in an analysis of the Buddhist influence on the Lingbao corpus, has explored the impact of the South Asian metaphor of creative language (“Brahma-language”) on the development of Daoist dharani and Brahma-script, as well as the impact of the metaphor of the “pure-land” on the scriptures of Ge Chaofu. He has done similar work on the impact of the bodhisattva stages (1983, 462–464, 469–476; 1990).
14. Stewart draws on Roman Jakobsen, who has given the label “intersemiotic” to translation from one medium, say speech, to another medium, such as signs ( Jakobsen 1971, 261). In other words, an entire signification complex can be “mapped” onto another such complex.
15. We should note that the style of Daoist vajra s is unique.
16. For the record, the Xuandu daxian yushan jingkong yi contains a rather humdrum list of “Buddhist” terms: Tianzun (Heavenly Worthy), ganlu ( amrta, sweet dew), wu zhuoshi (five turbulent epochs), sanjie ( triloka, triple world), sanbao ( triratna, triple gem), moluo ( mara, evil), liudao ( gati, six destinies), zhengfa ( saddharma, correct teaching), fa ( dharma, divine law), falun ( dharma-cakra, wheel of the law), shifang (ten directions), shizuo (lion throne), and Guanyin (Avalokite4vara). Also present are various permutations of the term “fan, ” or Brahma.
17. For a treatment of the later manuals, see Orzech 1994.
18. For an introduction to and brief bibliography on the vast topic of Vedic ritual, see Heesterman 1987. For the metaphor of the guest in Vedic ritual, see Heesterman 1993, 36–39 188–189.
19. For my analysis of the modular structure of Esoteric ritual, see Orzech 1998, ch. 6; for the chart “Boiler-plate Sequences,” see 1998, 296.
20. This citation is from Rig Veda 8:48. See O’Flaherty 1981, 134.
21. The apotropaic dimension of Esoteric and Vajrayana ritual has not escaped scholarly attention. For a treatment, see Beyer 1973, 254–258; Stablein 1976a, 165–173; 1976b, 55–69.
22. For a more complete treatment, see Orzech 1989, 101–109; 1994, 56–61.
23. “Eight gates” refers to an eight-sided mandala with the eight trigrams, the zenith, and the nadir representing the ten directions of the cosmos.
24. It is obviously an addition, as it follows the statement that “the Yuqie jiyao yankou shishi yi is complete” (483b3).
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