作者單位：銘傳大學應用中文系教授Professor of Department of Applied Chinese at Ming Chuan University
關鍵詞
敦煌寫卷=Dunhuang manuscript; 小兒驚啼=Children’s crying of frightening; 小兒夜啼=Children’s crying in nightime; 書鬼字符=Talismans of Writing the Character of Demon; 書田字符咒=Talismans of Writing the Character of Field
The Recipe for Healing the Children’s Crying of Frightening on the Dunhuang manuscript P. 2666V is a Zhuyou exorcism that disperses demons away from children by writing the talismans of characters on their belly buttons. However, the Yansheng exorcism of writing the character of Gui 貴 under the belly button is not supported by other textual sources. In the meantime, contemporary Buddhist literature and medical texts often told writing the talismans of the gui 鬼 character. After the Song era, the recipe was made by writing the character of tian for attaching it to the belly button. This paper first argues that the talisman of writing the character gui was a mistake from a perspective of folk medical knowledge. Moreover, this paper suggests that the mistake might come from the confusing pronunciations of gui 貴 and gui 鬼. Lastly, this paper traces the transformation from writing the character gui 鬼 in the Dunhuang texts to writing the character tian 田 in the Song dynasty.
