198 henrik h. sørensen
the fundamental belief in magic: what makes it work and why? Such
questions may be referred to as “the logic of magic.”
In both classical Hinduism and in the later Buddhist context of per-
formative magic, the concept of the “word as power” is an all-pervad-
ing one. Although not always so, in the vast majority of accounts of
magical performance, it is the “word” or verbal utterance that triggers
the unfolding of a given form of magic. The idea of “word as power”
is of course fairly common in the history of religions, but in the Bud-
dhist context these features were developed and refined to such an
extent that one may rightly use the term “science of language” to sig-
nify the lore surrounding its use. In the Esoteric Buddhist tradition
the science of language was most fully unfolded in the performative
and ritual uses of the Sanskrit language in the form of spells (dhāraṇī)
and mantras.^3
The Science of Magic in Esoteric Buddhism in China
The practice of magic, both in Buddhism as well as in other religious
traditions, nearly always requires ritual performance or at least some
form of regulated and formal behavior on the part of the practitioner.
In Esoteric Buddhism the performative aspect is especially impor-
tant. Although in theory at least, any sincere Buddhist believer could
perform a rite aiming at a magical result, often described as “divine
response” or “resonance” (ganying ),^4 in practice it required a
professional performer to carry out most of the Esoteric Buddhist rites,
especially the complex ones that required a high degree of specialized
knowledge, personal charisma, and spiritual insight.
It is interesting to note that while Esoteric Buddhist texts are often
keen to stress that ritual success depends on the observation of a num-
ber of taboos during the performance, in actual practice this seems to
have been only rarely the case. Not only can a considerable divergence
from the established (textual ) norm be observed when comparing dif-
ferent recensions and translations of the same ritual text, it is also
(^3) For a recent view of dhāraṇī see Davidson 2009; and for a solid study on the
use of spells in medieval Chinese Buddhism, including ample reference to the Indian
tradition, see Copp 2005. 4
For a discussion of this important belief in the context of Chinese Buddhism, see
Kieschnick 1997, 97–101.