. esoteric buddhist elements in daoist ritual manuals 531
Chinese characters and/or phrases.^6 Nevertheless, these Daoist incan-
tations were often composed in a way that retains many of the for-
mulaic aspects of Buddhist dhāraṇī. For example, many of the spells
found in Daofa huiyuan begin with the syllable oṃ (an ) and end
with some variation on the declaration svāhā.^7
Interestingly, while the majority of these Buddhist-inspired incan-
tations consist of pseudo-Sanskrit combinations of unintelligible syl-
lables with Chinese syllables and phrases, there are also a few authentic
Sanskrit mantra that can be found reproduced in their entirety in these
Daoist ritual manuals. For example, in a section of a manual included
in Daofa huiyuan describing rituals devoted to the Dipper Mother, a
Daoist version of the Buddhist deity Mārīcī (see below), a complete
dhāraṇī is included that matches up exactly with one contained in a
Buddhist ritual text devoted to Mārīcī.^8 Other examples include the
incorporation of a dhāraṇī from the Buddhist Great Cloud Sūtra, a
popular rainmaking scripture, within a Daoist rainmaking procedure,^9
and the inclusion of a dhāraṇī found at the end of Kumārajīva’s trans-
lation of the Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā sūtra in another Daoist
manual, where it is titled the “thirty-six character incantation.”^10
(^6) See Zürcher 1980, 110–111 and Bokenkamp 1983, 462–465 for other examples of
such pseudo-Sanskrit constructions in Daoist texts. Zürcher 1980, 111, in his analysis
of Buddhist influence on Daoist practices of the Northern and Southern dynasties,
remarked that in the use of pseudo-Sanskrit in texts of this period, “there is... no
recognizable attempt to imitate spells of the common dhāraṇī type with their typical
repetitive structure.” Similarly, Bokenkamp 1983, 465 in his analysis of early Lingbao
scriptures stated that the “numerous repetitions which characterize Buddhist dhāraṇī”
are “conspicuously lacking.” In light of these two scholars’ observations, it is worth
noting that many of the pseudo-Sanskrit spells found in, for example, the Daofa hui-
yuan, do in fact exhibit these characteristics of repetition and, as such, can be seen as
representing a greater degree of Buddho-Daoist hybridization than found in previous
eras.
(^7) For example, a short spell for capturing unruly spirits (zhuo zhou ) given in
Daofa huiyuan reads, “Oṃ; come, yaksạ; come, yakṣa; come, wild, disheveled, captur-
ing general; come, saber-whirling, sword-brandishing, capturing general; *suru suru
buru buru gataye s[vā]hā”
. 8 CT 1220, 224:21a.
CT 1220, 83:3b–4a. The original source is Molizhi pusa lue niansong fa
, 9 T. 1258.21:285b2–11.
CT 1220, 6:5a; compare with T. 991.19:497c13–18 and T. 992.19:504b8–15. For
more on the Great Cloud Sūtra and its influence on Daoist rainmaking practices, see
Capitanio (2008).
(^10) CT 1220, 229:5a–5b; compare with T. 235.8:752c4–7.