130 henrik h. sørensen
Nāgas,^126 and the Five Plague Spirits,^127 as well as the whole array of
astral and elemental gods and spirits. Several of the paintings reflect a
strong influence from the Daoist pantheon and related cosmology.^128
In the course of the Yuan and Ming we also see an increasing confla-
tion and integration of the Buddhist and Daoist pantheons. Moreover,
their expanding pantheons indicate that the two traditions borrowed
rather freely from each other. While the various sets of Shuilu paint-
ings from the Ming and early Qing feature the best examples of this
hybrid development, other examples include visions of the torments
of netherworld and paintings with composite pantheons.
The ritual of feeding the hungry ghosts (yankou zhai ), which
originated in its orthodox form with Amoghavajra’s translation of the
Yuqie jiyao jiu Anan tuoluoni yankou guiyi jing
(Scripture of the Collected Essentials of the Yoga of
Ānanda’s Spell for Liberating Burning Mouth with Ritual Proceedings)^129
during the second half of the eighth century, also developed its own
iconography. This resulted in sets of paintings depicting the process of
ritual feeding that later became integrated with the so-called Ullam-
bana ritual, with which the yankou zhai was conceptually affiliated.^130
Interestingly, the Daoists adopted the structure and concepts of this
ritual and its related iconography from Esoteric Buddhism and created
their own version with a largely similar iconography.^131
On the popular level, the Buddhist and Daoist pantheons became
increasingly syncretic, with many deities losing their original identi-
ties and contexts. Examples include the conflation of the Mārīcī and
(^126) Shanxisheng Bowuguan, comp. 1988, pl. 41.
(^127) Shanxisheng Bowuguan, comp. 1988, pl. 147.
(^128) Such as the presence of Xuanwu , the Warrior of the North (Shanxish-
eng Bowuguan, comp. 1988, pl. 78), the Sanyuan , the three gods controlling
the Water Department (Shanxisheng Bowuguan, comp. 1988, pls. 120–21), the Nine
Niangniang (Shanxisheng Bowuguan, comp. 1988, pls. 98–99), the Spirits
Controlling the Taboos of the Year (Shanxisheng Bowuguan, comp. 1988, pls. 130–31)
and Months, famous Daoist masters of the past (Shanxisheng Bowuguan, comp. 1988,
pl. 157), etc.
(^129) T. 1318. On Amoghavajra’s rituals see Orzech, 1994a, 1996b, 2002, and Lye,
2003.
(^130) See Teiser 1988b.
(^131) For two examples of a Daoist painting relating to the yankou zhai, cf. Zhongguo
daojiao xiehui, ed. 1995, 130–131.