TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)Soon, however, the new rites became independently circulating "techniques"
transmitted outside of "proper" Chen-yen lineages. Unlike the situation during
the High T'ang and in Japan, the norm in post-T'ang China is precisely that of
individual texts and textual lineages which are collected by members of what are
actually non-Vajrayana (and even non-Buddhist) schools. These rites for the
dead actually became the principle source of income for small hereditary
temples, the most numerous kind of monastic institution.^45
Scholars who have studied the Ghost Festival have tended to focus on the
early Buddhist and Taoist festivals and on the popular story of Mu-lien, thereby
avoiding the complicated Vajrayana core of the rites.^46 Most who have remarked
on the Vajrayana foundation and performance of the rituals for hungry ghosts
have noted the mechanical performance of the rites and the profit motive, as a
way of discrediting any validity the rites might hold.^47 As I noted above, this
reflects an essentialist bias toward ritual-a focus on the mental dimension of
practice and the attainment of enlightenment as being more important than ritual
action and mundane ends.
When we tum to the Buddhist canon or to commentaries and to iconographic
collections of these rites we find that they are classified as "miscellaneous"
tantra and relegated to the back of the collections. Rites for the protection of
the state or the production of rain come soon after the root texts and their
commentaries. This treatment by modem compilers reinforces the sense that
these rites for the dead are quite peripheral, and perhaps even on the edge of
orthodoxy.
It may come as a surprise, then, that the rites reveal close adherence to the
Two Truths cosmology and to notions of siddhi found in the root texts. Indeed,
the rites are based on ritual structures drawn from the STTS and have affinities to
those found in the Sarvadur-gatiparisodhana and other performances found in
the Indo-Tibetan tradition.^48 In others words, the rites for the salvation of hungry
ghosts which are performed to this day are classic Vajrayana rites.
Buddhist texts on hungry ghosts constitute eleven numbers in the Taishi5
edition of the Tripitaka. Eight of these are directly connected with the rites as
practiced for the last eleven hundred years. The other three texts belong to a
branch tradition concerning the "three siddhis" which is interesting in its own
right but quite distinct from the practice under consideration.^49 Numbers 1313,
1315, 1318, and 1319 are attributed to Amoghavajra. Number 1320, the text
which is the basis of all rites from the Yuan dynasty onward, is sometimes attri-
buted to Amoghavajra. Numbers 1314 and 1317 are attributed to Sik~ananda.
Number 1321 is by P'o-t'o-mu-a.
The crucial texts are 1319, Origins of the Teachings Given to Ananda con-
cerning the Distribution of Food to the Burning Mouths from the Essentials of
the Yoga-tantra (Yii-chia chi-yao yen-k'ou shih-shih ch 'i-chiao A-nan-to yiian-
yu) and 1320, Rites for Distributing Food to the Burning Mouths from the
Essentials of the Yogatantra (Yii-chia chi-yao yen-k'ou shih-shih i [YCYK]).
Attributed to Amoghavajra, they may date from his circle and from the circle