1. SCRIPTURE, RELIC, TALISMAN, SPELL: MATERIAL INCANTATIONS AND THEIR SOURCES
āWRITE THIS DHÄRAį¹ÄŖ DOWNā
For the reader of the literature on Buddhist spellsāboth traditional and modernāwhat is most arresting about written spells is not the natures or workings of the potencies attributed to them or their sometimes intricate and beautiful forms. It is the simple fact that they were to be written down at all. Buddhist spells, as one scholar has quipped, āunlike children, were to be heard but not seen; that is, they were to be spoken but not read.ā1 The writing of incantations, however, despite oft-repeated claims for the essential orality of these āutterances,ā turns out to have constituted an important and complex part of medieval Buddhism. An examination of spell writing practices evidenced both in dhÄraį¹Ä«-sÅ«tras rendered into Chinese from the fifth through the eighth century and in the later material record reveals a set of profoundly rich traditions rooted in both Indian Buddhist and traditional Chinese cultural ground. The continuity of these practical traditions, including their discursive practices, within (at least) the area ranging from the Indian subcontinent in the West to the Japanese archipelago in the East will become clear, beginning in this chapter and then more fully in the next two. Part of this continuity was due simply to the spread of Buddhism, the fact that Asians of this period took up its practices and interpretive styles throughout a far-flung region. But that spread was not the only important vector in the growth of East Asian Buddhist traditions of material incantation. Another was constituted by the spread and elaborationāaccording to logics at times quite different from those of Buddhismāof native Chinese incantation and amulet techniques.2 The extensive Chinese cultural resonances of, and perhaps in some cases sources of, certain of these techniques become clear when we examine them alongside closely related native talismanic and medical arts involving charms, seals, medicines, and elixirs. Simply looking to Buddhismās spread, and to the accounts in its scriptures, is not enough to grasp the complexities of this strand of medieval Chinese religious life.
But, beginning with those scriptural accounts, what becomes clear after even a brief survey is that the functions and roles of written spells, not surprisingly, changed over time. Chinese translations dating from the seventh century,3 contemporary with or slightly earlier than the Indic scriptures of the incantations of Wish Fulfillment and Glory, the two incantations that are the main exemplars in this study, reflect pictures of dhÄraį¹Ä«s consonant with those of these two spells. That is, like talismans or medicines, written dhÄraį¹Ä«s were powerful in their own right and in their own ways, quite apart from any oral performance, or, in the case of native Chinese talismans and seals, the spells that would often accompany them. If we can take the texts preserved in the Chinese Buddhist canon to have been typical of their respective ages (an assumption that should not go unquestioned),4 this seems to have been a new development. I have not found many prescriptions for spell writing in either Chinese versions of Indic sÅ«tras or in native Chinese Buddhist sÅ«tras dating from before the seventh century that take the inscription to be potent in this way. In earlier texts, dhÄraį¹Ä«s were to be written down as part of the kinds of contemplative practices discussed in the introduction, or because they were included in scriptures to be copied according to the logics of the ācult of the bookā in MahÄyÄna Buddhism. No special potency is attributed to the act of writing or to the particular natures of objects inscribed with spells; writing is for the most part either taken for granted or put in a position secondary to vocal enactment and auditory reception. Yet by the seventh century things had changed dramatically. Spell writing changed from an incidental practice to a central one, and descriptions of dhÄraį¹Ä«s transformed correspondingly. Over its history in the medieval period, conceptions of and bodily engagements with written dhÄraį¹Ä«s (what in this book I will often simply call their āimaginationā) follow three models: written dhÄraį¹Ä«s as simply the recorded speech of the Buddha, as textual relics of the Buddha, and finally, imagined in line with their spoken counterparts, as inscribed charms.5
These changes can be mapped according to two distinct historical trajectories. The first includes the earlier two categories of spell writing just mentioned: written spells as simply parts of Buddhist scriptures and as relics. The close relationship between these two forms is quite well known. The second basic trajectory resulted in the third set of practices: those that treat written spells as potent in ways that resemble their spoken counterparts. In terms of its appearance in Chinese versions of Buddhist scriptures, this model of written spells seems to have been a product of two parallel trends in Buddhist ritual practice. The first includes the practices in which inscribed dhÄraį¹Ä«s were employed in ways that echo ancient Indic uses of spoken incantations to enchant bodies for healing or protection: spells were applied to the body directly or through media such as ash, oil, or dirt; or, alternatively, objects that had been enchanted were worn on the body as amulets. Beginning in Chinese translations of the late seventh century, we find the same prescriptions for the use of written spells. Though in these sources I have found no instances of inscribing spells directly onto the body, in the case of the Incantation of Glory and others of its kind, objects that had been inscribed with the dhÄraį¹Ä« were said to be able to impart their efficacies physically, whether directly or via media such as dust, shadow, or wind. Likewise, objects inscribed with other dhÄraį¹Ä«s, most notably for my purposes the Incantation of Wish Fulfillment, were worn as amulets in forms directly traceable to earlier practices centering on spoken incantations. The second trend that shaped the imagination of inscribed incantations was the assimilation of spell writing practices to those involving amulets, medicines, and sealsāpractices that, by the seventh century, when talismanic spell writing seems to have appeared, had already had long and prominent histories in India, Central Asia, and China.
This chapter offers an overview of these three modes of Buddhist spell writing, moving quickly through the first two, which are both better covered in previous (and current) scholarship and of less importance to my project in this book. I explore the practical and metaphorical background for the third form of spell writing in more detail here to set the scene for the two chapters on individual traditions of dhÄraį¹Ä« practice that follow.
COPYING SÅŖTRAS AND THEIR DHÄRAį¹ÄŖS
The earliest clear scriptural statement about the writing of dhÄraį¹Ä« incantations6 that I have found is in the Qifo bapusa suoshuo da tuoluoni shenzhou jing, the Great DhÄraį¹Ä« Spirit-Spell Scripture Spoken by the Seven Buddhas and Eight Bodhisattvas, a large compendium of spell rites that dates from sometime between 317 and 420.7 The text does not draw special attention to the inclusion of writing as a proper form of dhÄraį¹Ä« reception;8 it treats its spells simply as normal examples of MahÄyÄna scripture, which are to be reproduced as often and in as many forms as possible, in order both to spread the doctrines they contain and to instantiate the great spiritual power, or āmerit,ā they embody. From their earliest days, MahÄyÄna texts contained passages asserting that their realization in material form as inscriptions produced tremendous spiritual power, phenomena that scholars, following Gregory Schopen, have identified as features of a cult of the book in the tradition.9 Passages noted by Schopen include one from the Aį¹£į¹asÄhasrikÄ, one of the earliest of all MahÄyÄna scriptures, asserting that āwhere this perfection of wisdom has been written down in a book, and has been put up and worshipped, there men and ghosts can do no harm, except as punishment for past deeds.ā10 A sÅ«traās incantations, in these contexts, appear to have been included simply because they were parts of these scriptures.
A typical example of a passage in the Scripture of Seven Buddhas and Eight Bodhisattvas mentioning the writing of spells runs as follows: āIf practitioners copy (shuxie) or recite (dusong) this dhÄraį¹Ä« they will earn the protection of thousands of buddhas in this very lifetime. Such a person at the end of his life will not fall into any of the evil paths of rebirth but will be reborn into TuÅita Heaven and see with his own eyes Maitreya.ā11 Sometimes the further verb āpracticeā (xiuxing) is added to the set of modes of reproduction listed above.12 Since these verbs are also commonly used to describe what one should do with sÅ«tras, dhÄraį¹Ä«s do not seem to be special classes of text or utterance in these passages.
Another early passage that mentions the writing of dhÄraį¹Ä«sāin a text roughly contemporary to the Seven Buddhas and Eight Bodhisattvasātreats the practice in a similar way, including it among a group of other modes of practice but not calling special attention to it. Here, however, writing is set slightly apart: it is not mentioned in the same breath as the others. This gives us a better view of the way the practice is seen in the text. The passage in question, from Dharmakį¹£emaās (Tanwuchen, 385ā433) translation of the *Karuį¹Äpuį¹įøarÄ«kasÅ«tra, the Scripture of the Lotus of Compassion (Beihua jing),13 i...