Previous scholarship has generally focused on dhāraṇī practices of two types: first, enacting the believed power of dhāraṇīs through recitation; and second, using inscribed or stamped dhāraṇīs as talismans. Through an examination of Yingxian Timber Pagoda (ca. 1056) from the Liao Dynasty, however, this paper reveals a third type of dhāraṇī practice in north China that broke from those of the Tang period in that it required no written or recited form of dhāraṇī; instead, it materialized the ritual process in physical form—from invocation of the Buddhas to ritual enactment of the wish-fulfilling jewel and the mandala—by means of an architectural space. The pagoda’s five stories and the Buddhist statues enshrined therein, as this paper shows, were designed not only to embody the chanting ritual of the Uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī (Foding zunsheng tuoluoni 佛頂尊勝陀羅尼) but also to visualize the philosophical contents of the dhāraṇī in material form. The pagoda’s architectural space was planned in such a way as to generate the efficacy of the dhāraṇī through the material agency of the pagoda and its statues with their intricate iconography. In the ritual imagination of medieval Buddhists, the pagoda was believed to be an architectural device that, once erected, would incessantly enact the dhāraṇī ritual with little to no human intervention. Yingxian Timber Pagoda aptly exhibits the ways in which Liao Buddhism innovated and developed complex dhāraṇī practices that had been inherited from previous dynasties, expanding the tradition of “material dhāraṇī” practices in the cultural landscape of East Asia.
目次
Abstract Introduction 55 Enigmatic Pagoda 57 Mandala and Dhāraṇī 59 Jewel and Ritual 66 Empty Space and the Truth-body 70 The Buddha Bodies 79 Trikāya in the Dhāraṇī 85 Trikāya Invoked for Ritual 90 Material Agency and Physical Movement 94 Concluding Reflections 97 References 103
