518 george a. keyworthbe noted that the change in the tenth stage, which in post-tenth-
century China included seated meditation, indicates the rise of the
Chan school , which came to encompass all other sectarian divi-
sions in Chinese Buddhism after the twelfth century.
The answer to the apparent question of what may have influenced
these distinct changes in fundamental Chinese Buddhist ritual is the
propagation of esoteric Buddhism in China after the eighth century.
If we accept the chronology suggested by Orzech and others that
esoteric Buddhism entered China in the eighth century and came
to exert significant influence on Chinese Buddhist ritual practices,
then, at least from a textual point of view, it appears that the marked
increase in the number of devotional texts—otherwise ascribed to
either Tiantai or Huayan exegetes—might be attributable to Amogha-
vajra’s new ritual forms (Kamata 1986; Shioiri 2007). The category
of repentance rites (kṣama, chanhui ), often, though not exclu-
sively, using spells and/or incantations (dhāraṇī and mantra, tuoluoni
, zhenyan , and zhoushu ) to gain assistance with
one’s this-worldly anguish, rather than to progress toward liberation,
definitely predates the arrival of esoteric Buddhism in China.
However, the group of manifestations of Avalokiteśvara often
classified as esoteric—including the thousand-hand, thousand-eye
Guanyins (Sahasrabhuja-sahasranetra, Qianshou qianyan ),
he/she who fishes for or lassos beings to bring them to awakening
(Amoghapāśa or Amoghavajra, Bukongjuan ), Tārā (Duoluo
), horse-headed (Hayagrīva, Matou Guanyin ), wheel
of the wish-fulfilling gem (Cintāmaṇicakra, Ruyilun Guanyin
), eleven-head (Ekādaśamukha, Shiyimian Guanyin
), Cundī (Zhunti [ ] ), she who knits her brows (Bhṛkutī,
Pijuzhi ), and the green-necked lord (Nīlakan ̣tha, Qingjing ̣
)—becomes vital to the increase in the regard repentance rites
play in Chinese Buddhism since Song times. For Chinese Buddhists,
however, the Lotus and Buddhāvataṃsaka sūtras continued to pro-
vide the principle soteriological and ritual contexts for Avalokiteśvara,
Mañjuśrī, and Samantabhadra. Furthermore, the indigenous Chinese
development of the ten kings of hell, studied by Teiser (1988b, 1994),
reveals an alternate approach taken by Chinese Buddhists toward rit-
ual forms: they also incorporated hybrid Buddhist, Daoist, and Confu-
cian systems to address the consequences of death for those in this life
and in the afterworlds.