102 Systemizing Martial Practice
to examine the staff’s place in Buddhist history, for its military role might
have derived from earlier functions the tradition assigned it.
The Ring Staff
Long before it was relied upon for fighting, the staff served as the emblem of
the monk. Monastic regulations, which were translated into Chinese during
the early medieval period, prescribe a staff as among the “eighteen belong-
ings” that a monk should carry in the performance of his duties. They also or-
dain its exact shape, which differed from that of the fighting staff, Instead of
an unadorned pole of equal thickness throughout its length, the staff decreed
by monastic law was decorated at one end with two to four metal loops, from
which hung between six to twelve metal rings (figure 20). Named in Sanskrit
khakkhara, this ring staff was called in Chinese transliteration xiqiluo and qi-
helan. More commonly, however, it was known in China as xizhang (xi staff).
The word xi, meaning tin or pewter, may allude to the metal of which the rings
were made, or onomatopoeically to the sound they emitted. In his Tran sl a t e d
Buddhist Terminology (Fanyi mingyi ji), Fayun (1088–1158) explains that “the xiqi-
luo is called xi zhang, because when rattled it emits a xixi sound. For this reason
the Sarvâstivâda-vinaya names it ‘Sounding Staff ’ (shengzhang).”^53
Fayun’s etymological analysis of the xizhang shows the significance that
Buddhist scriptures accord its ringing. Monastic regulations provide three rai-
sons d’être for the ring staff, two of which depend on the chiming of its rings.
First, the ringing produced by shaking the staff can scare away snakes, scorpi-
ons, and other dangerous beasts. Second, it can alert a donor to the presence
of an alms-begging monk at his door. The third function is not related to the
staff’s acoustics: like any walking stick, the ring staff can offer support for old
and sick monks. These practical functions are accompanied by the symbolic
significance that Buddhist monks attached to the staff’s varying number of
loops and rings. One scripture recommends, for example, four loops, symbol-
izing “the severance from the four types of birth, meditation on the four truths,
cultivation of the four forms of equanimity, entrance into the four dhyânas, the
purification of the four empty [regions], the clarification of the four areas of
thought, the fortification of the four proper forms of diligence, and attain-
ment of the four divine powers.”^54
Numerous references to the ring staff in medieval literature attest that at
least some monks followed monastic regulations and carried it. As John Kie-
schnick has pointed out, biographies of eminent monks use such expressions as
“picked up his ring staff ” to signify that a monk set on a journey, and Tang po-
etry alludes to the “crisp sound of the ring staff on a snow-covered path.”^55 Occa-
sionally, the ring staff signified by metonymy its clerical owner, as when Bai Juyi
(772–846) wrote of the “ring staff climbing to the monastery on high.”^56 Simi-
larly, visual works of art reveal that the ring staff, like the alms bowl, became a