630 henrik h. sørensen
with Eight Petals) and the Oryun chongja t’o (Chart of
the Five Types of Wheels). Interestingly, the dual mandalas of the
Dharmadhātu and Vajradhātu known from Esoteric Buddhism dur-
ing the Koryŏ period here have been exchanged with the diagrams
Cundī’s Nine-Letter Heavenly Circle (Chunje kuja ch’ŏnwŏn t’o
), and the Vajra Earthly Square ( Kŭm’gang chibang t’o
), ritual structures that originated in the Chinese shuilu
material such as Zhipan’s Fajie shengfan shuilu shenghui xiuzhai yigui,
mentioned above.
Another important type of graphic diagram employed by the ritual
specialists of Korean Buddhism was the dhāraṇī chart.^28 The printed
dhāraṇī charts are dominated by spells and mantras associated with the
cult of Avalokiteśvara (see below), among which we find the Sinmyŏ
changgwi tae tarani (Divine and Wondrous Sec-
tions of the Great Spell ),^29 actually the Nīlakaṇthaka-dhāraṇ ̣ī. The
popularity of the spell from the Pseudo Śūraṅgama Sūtra is also docu-
mented in the Chosŏn material, where we find it in the form of a
printed sheet to be placed in a pokchang or carried as an amulet on
the person for protection (figure 2).
The use of talismans in Chosŏn dynasty Buddhism was fairly wide-
spread and popular as well. Not only did the Buddhists inherit the
talismanic tradition from the Koryŏ, they were also influenced by
the large number of Chinese texts that were imported during most
of the dynasty. In addition to Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian scrip-
tures, this imported material included astrological texts, works on
divination, historical works, as well as books on geomancy (p’ungsu
) and standard yin-yang theories. It is not unlikely that tracts
originating in popular Chinese religion also found their way to Korea
in the period under discussion. In any case the amount of foreign lit-
erature containing talismans was rather voluminous, something that
is reflected in the Buddhist scriptures available in Korea throughout
the Chosŏn.
Talismans are found in a number of Buddhist scriptures and ritual
texts dating from the middle Chosŏn onwards, including illustrated
(^28) For an introduction to this material with special focus on the Koryŏ period, see
Sørensen forthcoming.
(^29) Many types of this spell exist, including prints in Siddham and in pure Chi-
nese. It can also be found as an elaborate wheel-shaped spell-chart combined with the
Ṣaḍaksaravidyā ̣ and other symbols of power (cf. Prunner 1991, 161–62).