. esoteric buddhism in song dynasty sichuan 433
(1159–1249).^5 Song Dynasty sources—the Biography of Liu Benzun
of the Tang (Tang Liu Benzun zhuan ) by Zujue
(1087–1150) and the visual programs of Baodingshan and Anyue—
focus on Liu’s use of incantations to defeat evil spirits, the extreme acts
of asceticism for which he became famous, his mastery of an occult
tradition described using terms from Tang esoteric Buddhism, and
his spiritual identification with Vairocana. Scholars have so far been
unable to determine the precise nature and antecedents of the form of
esoteric Buddhism ascribed to him in extant sources, sketched using
such standard terms as “Yoga,” “Great Wheel,”^6 “Five Families,” as
well as Tang adepts such as Vajrabodhi, Amoghavajra, and Yixing.^7 In
this light, it is striking that the descriptions of Liu’s religious life and
the few direct quotations attributed to him in the Biography emphasize
not complex doctrines and ritual systems but assertions of Liu’s innate
supernatural gifts, as well as simpler incantation practices directed at
specific ends, such as are common in miracle tales and in the ancient
corpus of dhāraṇī literature.^8 Taken as a whole, the Biography suggests
a situation in which an occult figure of local legend was mapped onto
an esoteric Buddhist system that was at least in large part foreign to
the early legends. Sørensen asserts that the picture of Liu’s practice
given in the text, and elsewhere in Baodingshan and Anyue, is best
characterized as a combination of
esoteric Buddhist tradition, which in Sichuan derived from the late Tang,
on the one hand, and the ascetic tradition of self-mortification as pro-
mulgated in the Pseudo-Śūraṅgama sūtra and the Pseudo-Brahmajāla
sūtra, on the other.Sørensen further notes that on the esoteric side, however, he can find
no specific texts that account for this style.^9 Ding Mingyi’s work agrees
with this picture in general terms, describing what he calls the “mutual
(^5) For more on these figures, see Sørensen, “Esoteric Buddhism in Sichuan During
the Tang and Five Dynasties,” in this volume.
(^6) For information on this term, see Sørensen, “Esoteric Buddhism in Sichuan Dur-
ing the Tang and Five Dynasties,” in this volume. See also the entry “Dairin” by Durt,
1994d. 7
For a convenient, though not unproblematic, translation of the Biography, see
Howard 2001, 170–74. 8
See Copp, “Dhāraṇī Scriptures,” in this volume. For a similar characterization of
Liu’s practice, see Teiser 2006, 223. 9
Sørensen 2001, 85.