TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)J. J. M. De Groot, Les .Jetes annuellement C£!lebrees a Emoui (Paris: Annales du
Musee Guimet, 1886), 12:403--45; Marinus Wilhelm De Visser, Ancient Buddhism in
Japan, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1935), 1:58-115; and Duane Pang, "The P'u-tu Ritual,"
in Buddhist and Taoist Studies I, ed. David W. Chappell and Michael Saso (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1977), pp. 95-122. For more, see Stephen Teiser, The
Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988),
especially his excellent bibliography on the topic.
42 Teiser has limited investigations to the pre-Vajrayana materials and to the mythology
surrounding the figure of Mu-lien; see his "Postscript: The Ghost Festival after T'ang
Times," p. 107.
43 I am not the first person to watch simultaneous Buddhist and Taoist performances of
the p 'u-tu and to remark on their similarity. Robert P. Weller in his Unities and
Diversities in Chinese Religion (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987),
pp. 117-24, has also noted it, as did Judith Boltz in her excellent study, "Opening the
Gates of Purgatory: A Tenth Century Taoist Meditation Technique for the Salvation
of Lost Souls," Tantric and Taoist Studies, Melanges Chinois et Bouddhique 21
(1983), 2:487-511.
44 For the story of Mu-lien, see Arthur Waley, "Mu-lien Rescues His Mother," in
Ballads and Stories from Tun-Huang (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960), pp. 216-35;
Iwamoto Yutaka, Mokuren Densetsu to Urabon (Kyoto, 1968); and Kenneth Ch'en,
The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1973), pp. 24-28; and now the standard reference, Teiser's The Ghost Festival,
pp. 116-24.
45 Holmes Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900-1950 (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 207.
46 De Visser is one exception.
47 For instance, Welch, pp. 185, 197. This begs the question of ritual efficacy.
48 See Tadeusz Skorupski's translation and study of The Sarvadurgatiparisodhana
Tantra: Elimination of All Evil Destinies (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983). The text
not only deals with the various kinds of rites for propitiation, etc., but it specifically
deals with aid to beings in the lower gatis, and it is related to the Y oga-tantra "class"
of texts as are similar rites which I will detail below. Also relevant from a compara-
tive and genetic point of view are the Yi-dags kha-nas-me-'bar-ba Ia skyabs-mdzad-
pa 'i gzwis and the Yi-dags-mo kha-'bar-rna dbugs-dbywi-ba 'i gtor-ma 'i cho-ga, Toh.
646, 1080 and 647, 1079, respectively; Yensho Kanakura, ed., A Catalogue of the
Tohoku University Collection of Tibetan Works on Buddhism (Sendai: Tohoku Uni-
versity, 1953). These are translations ofT. 1314andT.1313. Therearepopularparal-
lels to the Chinese practice in the Tibetan smyuli gnas, an annual rite involving the lay
community in the feeding of hungry ghosts.
49 Osabe treats these texts in his Todai mikkyoshi zakko, pp. 204-52. The texts (T. 899,
905, 906) are connected with the "Three siddhis" movement and have little to do with
the rites for the salvation ofpretas that I am discussing. A quick reading of these texts
indicates that they are heavily colored by Taoist ritual techniques. They would make a
fascinating study on their own.
50 There is some disagreement over the attribution and dating of texts 1319 and 1320.
More traditional scholars attribute both to Amoghavajra, while Osabe dates these
texts, especially 1320, anywhere from late T'ang to Ming. See Osabe, Todai
mikkyoshi zakko (n. 2 above), pp. 154-55. Chou Shu-chia has recently noted that
1319 agrees with the Tibetan. Based on linguistic evidence Chou regards 1320 as a
Yiian supplement which revives the original practice begun by Amoghavajra. See
Chou Shu-chia, "Yen-k'ou," in Chung-kuofo-chiao (Beijing, 1982), 2:397-99. There
was a hungry ghost revival through the instigation of Chu-hung (1535-1615), who