tantric threads between india and china 271curative power attributed to these scriptures and their ritual application
attracted many lay followers.
During the Song dynasty and later, typical elds of Tantric prag-
matics such as exorcism, ghost-possession and divinatory techniques
remained viable in local traditions where Daoist and Buddhist praxis
had merged.^88 Dream interpretation even gained new grounds of social
function: Whereas Tantric scriptures such as the Subhuparip cch and
the Susiddhikara contain prescriptions for the interpretation of dreams
to estimate the adept’s predisposition to initiation and attainment,^89
Confucian scholars who had to pass the civil examinations under the
solid Confucian administration of the Ming and Qing period often
requested services of Buddhist and Daoist monks considered to be
experts in occult rituals and dream interpretation (Chin. zhan meng
). Among Confucian scholars, dreams were regarded as indicators
of a candidate’s capacity to become an of cial, and the emperors too
sought to determine or to con rm their policy by means of dream
interpretation.^90 It was also common practice for Chan masters (Chin.
chanshi ) to teach dhras as an apotropaic device used by Confu-
cian scholars to pass the civil examinations.
The Tantric sacralisation of social order foreshadowed a structure
of domination on which the post-Song Confucian state was founded:
an almost inscrutable system of civil examinations, by which the entry
into the state apparatus was controlled through “esoteric rituals” of
exclusion and reciprocal inclusion. The aim was to establish a habit-
forming meritocracy in the bonds of governmental authority, with its
character of both initiation and ritual theatricality. Concomitantly,
as was the case with the ritual operation of maalas as domains by
which the initiate proceeds from the periphery to the realisation of the
central power, the candidate for civil service has to pass hierarchical
planes from the provincial up to the metropolitan examinations at the
imperial palace, the centre of imperial order. Such forms of expression
resemble “profaned”, repressed or sublimated Tantric notions fallen
into oblivion as such:^91 sanctifying the hierarchy of social order and
sacralising sovereignty by reference to an all-pervading, self-realising(^88) See Davis 2001, pp. 123–125, 134–136, 141–152.
(^89) Strickmann 1996, pp. 299–301.
(^90) Elman 2000, pp. 326–345.
(^91) See Davis 2001, pp. 188–191.
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