532 joshua capitanio
Esoteric Buddhist Deities
Along with the usage of Sanskrit and pseudo-Sanskrit incantations,
several specific deities of Buddhist origin were incorporated into the
pantheon of supernatural beings addressed through these Daoist ritual
practices. Below are some examples of such incorporation.
Acala
Known in Chinese as the Immovable Luminous King (budong min-
gwang ) or the Immovable Worthy (Budong zun ),
Acala is one of the five wrathful vidyārājas (wu mingwang )
who figure frequently in esoteric Buddhist ritual manuals of the Tang
dynasty. In Daoist texts, he appears variously as the Immovable Worthy
Sage (Budong zunsheng ), Immovable Worthy King (Budong
zunwang ), or Immovable Worthy God Budong zunshen
). In one ritual manual, the Great Methods of Summon-
ing and Investigation of [Mount] Fengdu (Fengdu kaozhao dafa
),^11 he is included among the “Marshals of Fengdu”
and described thus: “Song Youqing ,^12 styled Yuantong
, the Worthy God Immovable of [Mt.] Fengdu :
Wearing a six-sided hat embroidered in gold, he grasps a golden
halberd in his hand; [he wears] black robes with iron armor, and black
boots” (CT 1220, 262:2b^ ). In this particular text he is paired with the
three-headed, six-armed Ma Zong ,^13 and a ritual technique is
described that centers around the use of the “talisman for apprehend-
ing malicious [spirits] of the two marshals, Ma and Song”
, in which the ritual master calls upon these two gener-
als to muster up their spirit-army in order to exterminate malignant
forces.^14
(^11) See Mollier 1997 for a discussion of the significance of Mt. Fengdu in Daoist
exorcistic ritual.
(^12) Also Song Wenqing ; for example CT 1220, 227:17a.
(^13) Also known simply as Marshal Ma (Ma yuanshuai , regarded by scholars
as a Daoist assimilation of the Bodhisattva Huaguang ). See von Glahn 2004,
212–221.
(^14) For a description of another Daoist exorcistic technique involving Acala, see
Strickmann 2002, 209–210 and Davis 2001, 272 n. 30.