472 ruth dunnell
extant works in the Khara Khoto collection. Imperial birthdays and
other anniversaries became occasions for Buddhist ceremonies lasting
days, featuring lavish public displays of piety and the distribution of
sūtras, coins, banners, and tsha tsha, lectures by prominent Buddhist
teachers, the recitation of dhāraṇī, the performance of homa rituals,
and other rites suggestive of Sa skya influence (Shi 1988, Shen 2007b).
Translations from Tibetan texts multiplied from Renzong’s reign
forward.
According to the Tiansheng code issued early in Renzong’s reign,
two offices of the second rank (out of five levels) oversaw affairs of Bud-
dhist monks and novices; each bureau was headed by six state precep-
tors (guoshi ) and a supporting staff. In addition, the emperor also
retained personal preceptors, which in the Tiansheng code included
a supreme preceptor (shangshi , also the gloss for lama) and a
state preceptor (guoshi). The earliest reference to an imperial preceptor
(dishi ) seems to occur in the 1160s, after publication of the extant
version of the Tiansheng code (see below). A hierarchy of preceptors
thus arose, at the top of which presided the national and imperial pre-
ceptors. Dozens of preceptor titles survive; monks from India (prob-
ably via Tibet), Tibet, Kashmir, and possibly other Central Asian and
Himalayan centers held positions and titles in the Xia sangha, along
with native monks, Tibetans, Tanguts, and Chinese (Dunnell 2009ab).
It is also likely that Uighur monks, both native residents from the
Ganzhou area and those from beyond the Tanguts’ western border,
played a significant role in Xia, especially in the dissemination of eso-
teric teachings, although it is more difficult to identify them as such
(Shi 1988; Shen 2006).
In addition to presiding at festival and court ceremonies, teaching,
translating, and publishing, the sangha staff administered the network
of national monasteries and temples and the procedures by which
novices and monks were recruited, trained, ordained, and promoted,
regulations that are laid out in the Tiansheng code. The examination
curriculum consisted of reciting eleven texts of “sūtras and gāthās,”
one list of texts for candidates testing in Chinese, and another for
those testing in Tangut and Tibetan. Each list was headed by the
Humane Kings Sūtra (Renwang huguo banruo bolomiduo jing
) (Kychanov 1987–1989; Shi, Nie, and Bai 1994).
Between the two lists (not all the titles of which have been identified
with certainty), the Tangut and Tibetan one seems to feature more
works translated from Tibetan. This curriculum, heavy on dhāraṇī and