The Great God of the Five Paths (Wudao Dashen 五道大神) in Early Medieval China

Abstract

The Great God of the Five Paths, Wudao dashen 五道大神, in charge of rebirth in the Five Paths, has been one of the prominent otherworld bureaucratic deities in Chinese popular religion since the early medieval period. Wudao first appeared obscurely in certain Chinese Buddhist versions of the Buddha's biography, yet there is no mention of the deity in any Indic sources. As later medieval accounts record a popular sacrificial cult of Wudao outside of Orthodox Buddhist circles during the early medieval period and modern anthropological reports confirm that the deity was worshiped as a deity of popular religions rather than a Buddhist one, previous scholarship has been inclined to assume these parallels as possible evidence that a non-Buddhist sacrificial cult of the deity dated back to the early medieval era. This paper attempts to re-approach two issues related to the deity: its origin and the early development of its cult in early medieval China, before the Tang dynasty (618–907 C.E.). It first demonstrates a possible origin of the deity and its possible formation through a comparative research on the evolution of the various versions of the Buddha's biography in both Indic and Chinese contexts. A close examination of early medieval textual and archaeological sources, along with later medieval sources claiming the existence of a non-Buddhist sacrificial cult of Wudao dating back to the early medieval period, also reveals that Wudao was always presented or considered in a Buddhist-related context during the early medieval period, whereas primary later accounts of an early non-Buddhist cult are not supported by substantial evidence and were probably propagandistic stories made up by vegetarian reformist monks of the Tiantai School 天台宗 during the Song dynasty.

Keywords:

• The Great God of the Five Paths
• Māra
• the Life of the Buddha
• the Emperor Wu of the Liang
• Ciyun Zunshi 慈雲遵式
• Buddhist vegetarianism

Acknowledgements

The motivation of this research initially came from a suggestion by the late Professor Glen Dudbridge. After a discussion on my previous research on the Jingdu sanmei jing 淨度三昧經, which also mentions the Great God of the Five Paths, he was extremely kind to photocopy articles related to the deity in person for me and encouraged me to further explore this topic. It was a great privilege to have the chance to study with him. I would also like to thank Professor T. H. Barrett, the late Professor Lance Cousins, Professor Robert Chard, Dr. Antonello Palumbo, Professor Dame Jessica Rawson, and Professor Ulrike Roesler for their invaluable advice during this research. The article is based on one section of my research project on “The Early Formation of the Buddhist Otherworld Bureaucratic Empire in Early Medieval China,” which was generously sponsored by research fellowships of the Sheng Yen Education Foundation, the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (IKGF) at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (European region). I am very grateful for their munificent support.

Notes on the Contributor

Frederick Shih-Chung Chen 陳世崇 was the Sheng Yen Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Chinese Buddhism (2015–2017) in the Department of Philosophy at the National Chengchi University, Taipei. He obtained his DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 2010. His main academic interests are the history and archaeology of early and medieval Chinese Buddhism.

Notes

1 Oda Yoshihisa 小田義久, “Godō daijin kō 五道大神攷,” Tōhō shūkyō 東方宗教 48 (1976): 14–29.

2 Glen Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 9 (1996–97): 65–98.

3 Zheng Acai 鄭阿財, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang 從敦煌吐魯番文書論五道將軍信仰,” in Zheng Acai Dunhuang Fojiao wenxian yu wenxue yanjiu 鄭阿財敦煌佛教文獻與文學研究 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2011), 26–61.

4 Zhen’gao 真誥 (CT 1016), 189–190.

5 There are inconsistencies of content and length between the Chinese versions of the Life of the Buddha and the non-Chinese (Sanskrit and Tibetan) versions of Lalitavistara, and also among the Chinese versions themselves. In Indic languages, there are several versions of the Life of the Buddha from diverse sources. Accordingly, I think that the Chinese versions of the Life of the Buddha are not necessarily all derived from the Lalitavistara. Therefore I deliberately refer in this article to “Chinese versions of the Life of the Buddha” rather than to “Chinese versions of the Lalitavistara.” P. E. Foucaux, trans. and ed., Le Lalita vistara, Annales du Musée Guimet 6 (Paris: Leroux, 1884); P. E. Foucaux, trans. and ed., Rgya tch’er rol pa, ou, Développement des jeux, contenant l’histoire du Bouddha Çakya-Mouni, trad. sur la version tibétaine du Bkah hgyour, et revue sur l’original sanscrit, Lalitavistâra (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1848); Matsuda Yūko 松田祐子, “Chinese Versions of the Buddha's Biography,” Indogaku Bukkyōgaku kenkyū 印度學佛教學研究 37, no. 1 (1988): 24–33; Erik Zürcher, “Review of Mélanges de sinologie offerts à Monsieur Paul Demiéville II, Bibliothèque de l’Institut de Hautes Etudes chinoises vol. XX (Paris, 1974),” T’oung Pao 64 (1978): 119; Antonello Palumbo, “Dharmarakṣa and Kaṇṭhaka: White Horse Monasteries in Early Medieval China,” in Buddhist Asia 1 (2003): 200–209; Ved Seth, Study of Biographies of the Buddha—Based on Pāli and Sanskrit Sources (New Delhi: Akay Book Corp, 1992), 97–99.

6 Matsuda, “Chinese Versions of the Buddha's Biography,” 27–28; Zürcher, “Review of Mélanges,” 119; Palumbo, “Dharmarakṣa and Kaṇṭhaka,” 200–209.

7 Alfred Foucher, The Life of the Buddha—According to the Ancient Texts and Monuments of India. Abridged Translation by Simone Brangier Boas (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 1963), 7.

8 Seth, Study of Biographies of the Buddha, 97–99.

9 Matsuda, “Chinese Versions of the Buddha's Biography,” 25.

10 Although the translation of the Yichu pusa benqi jing 異出菩薩本起經 is attributed to Nie Daozhen 聶道真 of the Western Jin dynasty 西晉 (265–316 C.E.), it may have been translated earlier. See Palumbo, “Dharmarakṣa and Kaṇṭhaka,” 206–207.

11 Yichupusa benqijing 異出菩薩本起經, T. 3, no. 188, 619b.

12 Minor revised quotation from the translation by Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 88

13 Taizi ruiying benqi jing 太子瑞應本起經, T. 3, no. 185, 475c.

14 Puyao jing 普曜經, T. 3, no. 186, 507c–508a.

15 Valerie Hansen, “The Path of Buddhism into China: The View from Turfan,” in Asia Major vol. 11, part 2, Turfan issue, (1998): 51–56. Zheng Acai, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 31–36. Frederick Shih-Chung Chen, “Buddhist Passports to the Other World: A Study of Modern and Early-Medieval Chinese Buddhist Mortuary Documents,” in Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China, ed. Paul Williams and Patrice Ladwig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 261–286.

16 Zengyi ahan jing 增壹阿含經, T. 2, no. 125, 683. This list of invocatory deities suggests a similarity in function between the Great God of the Five Paths and the other deities. Hārītī is a well-known deity for fertility in Indian religion. The goddess and her husband Pañcika were sometimes portrayed together with children and sometimes separately in statues in northwest India around the second century C.E. It was this association with fertility and the linguistic similarity between Pañcika and pañcagati, the Five Paths, that prompted Dudbridge's suggestion that the God of the Five Paths was probably another name for Pañcika. Nevertheless, despite these connections and the fact that Pañcika is also portrayed as an armed warrior in Indian religious scriptures and art, no parallel text of the gṛhapati (Moonlight) has been found in Indian languages, nor any other evidence in Indian or Chinese sources which might suggest that Pañcika is associated with the Five Paths. The interpretation therefore remains tentative. Ogawa Kanichi 小川貫弌, Bukkyō bunkashi kenkyū 仏教文化史研究 (Kyoto: Nagata Bunshodo, 1973), 31–79; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 89.

17 T. 2, no. 125, 700a–b.

18 Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans., The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya vol. 1 (Oxford: The Pali Text Society, 2000), 269–271.

19 Foucaux, Le Lalita vistara, 195–196; Gwendolyn Bays, The Voice of the Buddha: The Beauty of Compassion, Translated into English from the French by Gwendolyn Bays (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1983), 334–335.

20 According to the Chu sanzang jiji 出三藏記集, the current version of the Xiuxing benqi jing was probably developed from a prototype version called the Xiao benqi jing 小本起經. Chu sanzang jiji by Sengyou 僧祐 (445—518), T. 55, no. 2145, 16c. Kawano Satoshi holds that the Taizi ruiying benqi jing was probably edited by Zhi Qian from the Xiao benqi jing and another of Kang Mengxiang's translations, the Zhong benqi jing 中本起經. Kawano Satoshi 河野 訓, “Shoki Chūgoku Bukkyō no Butsuden o meguru sho mondai: Shugyō honki kyō ni kanren shite 初期中国仏教の仏伝をめぐる諸問題「修行本起経」に関連して,” Tōyō bunka kenkyūjo kiyō 東洋文化研究所紀要 113 (1991): 127–176.

21 Xiuxing benqi jing 修行本起經 (translated by Zhu Dali 竺大力 and Kang Mengxiang 康孟詳 in 197 C.E.), T. 3, no. 184, 468a.

22 J. J. Jones, The Mahāvastu, Translated from the Buddhist Sanskrit Vol. II (London: Luzac, 1952), 159.

23 Ratan Parimoo, Life of Buddha in Indian Sculpture (ashta-maha-pratiharya): An Iconological Analysis (New Delhi: Kanak Publications, 1982), 78–79, see fig. 114 and 115.

24 This is an introduction to stories of the past lives of the Buddha Gotama in the Jātaka, believed to have been edited by the eminent fifth-century Buddhaghoṣa.

25 Quotation from N. A. Jayawickrama, The Story of Gotama Buddha: the Nidāna-kathā of the Jātakatthakathā (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1990), 84–85; Alexander C. Soper. “Aspects of Light Symbolism in Gandhāran Sculpture,” Artibus Asiae 13 (1950): 63–85.

26 Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, The Life of the Buddha: Ancient Scriptural and Pictorial Traditions (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992), 239, see fig. 34.

27 Patricia M. Herbert, The Life of the Buddha (London: The British Library, 1992), see the painting on 29–30.

28 Karetzky, The Life of the Buddha, 72–73, 239. Karetzky cites a further image of the warrior Māra during this encounter in the Qizil caves. Karetzky, Early Buddhist Narrative Art: Illustrations of the Life of the Buddha from Central Asia to China, Korea, and Japan (Lanham, Md.; Oxford: University Press of America, 2000), 30.

29 Fo benxing ji jing 佛本行集經 (translated by Shenajueduo 闍那崛多 [Jñānagupta] during 587–591 C.E.). T. 3, no. 190, 732a.

30 “Generally regarded as the personification of Death, the Evil One, the Tempter (the Buddhist counterpart of the Devil or Principle of Destruction)  …  . It is evidently with this same significance that the term Māra, in the older books, is applied to the whole of the worldly existence of the five khandhas (the collection of the five compositional elements of our existence), or the realm of rebirth, as opposed to Nibbāna.” G. P. Malalasekera, Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names Vol. II (Oxford: The Pali Text Society, 1997), 611–612. With regard to sources referring to Māra as the personification of Death and the cycle of rebirth, also see Stephen F. Teiser, Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), 77–79.

31 Yiqiejing yinyi 一切經音義, T. 54, no. 2128, 673.

32 Wang Li 王力, ed., Guhanyu changyong zidian 古漢語常用字字典 (Beijing: Commercial Press, 2000), 11.

33 Zhao Qi 趙岐 and Sun Shi 孫奭, ed., Mengzi zhushu 孟子注疏 (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1999), 85.

34 Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1971), 79: 2407, 101: 2739.

35 Zeng Zhaoyu 曾昭燏, Jiang Baogeng 蔣寶庚, Li Zhongyi 黎忠義, Yinan guhuaxiang shimu fajue baogao 沂南古畫像石墓發掘報告 (Beijing: Wenhuabu wenwu guanliju, 1956), 40, fig. 44.

36 Li Xueqin 李學勤, “Fangmatan jianzhong de zhiguai gushi 放馬灘簡中的志怪故事,” Wenwu 1990, no. 4: 43–47; Lothar von Falkenhausen, “Sources of Taoism: Reflections on Archaeological Indicators of Religious Change in Eastern Zhou China,” Taoist Resources 5, no. 2 (1994): 1–12; Donald Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion,” Taoist Resources 5, no. 2 (1994): 13–28.

37 Ikeda On 池田溫, “Chūgoku rekidai boken ryakkō 中國歷代墓券略考,” Tōyō bunka kenkyūjo kiyō 東洋文化研究所紀要 86 (1981): 273. This English translation is quoted from Anna Seidel, “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs,” in Dōkyō to shūkyō bunka 道教と宗教文化, ed. Akizuki Kan’ei 秋月觀暎 (Tokyo: Hirakawa Shuppansha, 1987), 31.

38 Ikeda, “Chūgoku rekidai boken ryakkō,” 273, no. 6. Given the context, some scholars consider that the character 死 here should be a typo of 生. There are also different interpretations on whether the character 祿 (welfare) should be the character 錄 (roster).

39 Peter Nickerson, “‘Let Living and Dead Take Separate Paths’—Bureaucratization and Textualisation in Early Chinese Mortuary Ritual,” in Daoism in History—Essays in Honour of Liu Ts’un-yan, ed. Benjamin Penny (Oxon: Routledge, 2006), 22.

40 Shimen zhengtong 釋門正統 (completed by Zongjian 宗鑑 in 1237 C.E.), X. 75, no. 1513, 303c

41 Willem A. Grootaers, The Sanctuaries in a North-China City: A Complete Survey of the Cultic Buildings in the City of Hsüan-hua (Chahar) (Bruxelles: Institut belge des hautes études chinoises, 1995), 76–82; Hsiao Kung-Chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 1960), 632; Chūgoku nōsōn kankō chōsa kankōkai 中國農村慣行調查刊行會, ed., Chūgoku nōsōn kankō chōsa 中國農村慣行調查 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, vol. no. 1, 1953), 210–211; Daniel L. Overmyer, Local Religion in North China in the Twentieth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 43, 129; Stephen Jones, In Search of the Folk Daoists of North China (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 55, 192.

42 Oda, “Godō daijin kō,” 14–29. Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 96–98.

43 Jingdu sanmei jing 淨度三昧經, X, no. 15, 371c; Laozi zhongjing 老子中經, in Yunji qiqian 雲笈七籤, ed. Zhang Junfang 張君房 (Ji'nan: Qilu shushe, 1988), juan 18. Frederick Shih-Chung Chen, “Who Are the Eight Kings in the Samādhi-Sūtra of Liberation through Purification? Otherworld Bureaucrats in India and China,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., vol. 26, part 1 (2013): 55–78; Harumi Hirano Ziegler, The Sinification of Buddhism as Found in an Early Chinese Indigenous Sūtra: A Study and Translation of the Fo-shuo Ching-tu San-mei Ching (Samādhi-Sūtra of Liberation through Purification) (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001), 313–314.

44 Hansen, “The Path of Buddhism into China: The View from Turfan,” 51–56; Zheng Acai. “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 31–36; Chen, “Buddhist Passports to the Other World,” 261–286. Duan Fang 端方, ed., Taozhai cangshi ji 陶齋臧石記 (1909), 13: 6a─8a; Asami Naoichirō 浅見直一郎, “Chūgoku Nambokuchō jidai no sōsō bunshu—Hokusei Muhei yonnen ‘O Kōhi zuisō ibutsuso’ o chūshin ni—中国南北朝時代の葬送文書-北斉武平四年『王江妃随葬衣物疏』を中心に,” Kodai bunka 古代文化 42, no. 4 (1990): 1–19.

45 Hansen, “The Path of Buddhism into China: The View from Turfan,” 51–56; Zheng Acai, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 31–36; Chen, “Buddhist Passports to the Other World,” 261–286.

46 This manuscript is held by the Museum of Calligraphy, Tokyo; Oda, “Godō daijin kō,” 27, 29.

47 Zhang Zong 張總, “Yanluowang shoujijing zhuibu yankao 閻羅王授記經綴補研考,” Journal of the Dunhuang and Turfan Studies 敦煌吐魯番研究 5 (2000): 103, 115, see fig. 3; Mao Fengzhi 毛鳳枝, “Guanzhong shike wenzi xinbian 關中石刻文字新編,” in Shike shiliao xinbian 石刻史料新編 (Taipei: Xinwenfeng, 1982), 22: 16873–16877; Chen Dengwu 陳登武, Cong renjianshi dao youmingjie: Tangdai de fazhi shehui yu guojia 從人間世到幽冥界唐代的法制社會與國家 (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2007), 278–279.

48 Besides the association with Mt. Luofeng and the Northern Ghost King in the Daoist context, the association of King Yama with the Great Emperor of the North in the Buddhist context is likely related to an apocryphal account entitled “The reason why King Yama and his subjects became the bureaucrats of Hell in the past” (閻羅王等為獄司往緣), allegedly quoted from the Wen diyu jing 問地獄經 (“Sūtra on Questions on Hells”). In this fable, the prominent disciple of the Buddha, King Bimbisāra, became Yama in the underworld after a fateful defeat in battle and he was then subject to the Northern Celestial King, Vaiśravaṇa. Sengmin 僧旻 and Baochang 寶唱, etc., ed., Jinglü yixiang 經律異相, T. 53, no. 2121, 259a–b. Frederick Shih-Chung Chen, “In Search of the Origin of the Enumeration of Hell-kings in an Early Medieval Chinese Buddhist Scripture: Why Did King Bimbisāra Become Yama after His Disastrous Defeat in Battle in the Wen diyu jing 問地獄經 ('Sūtra on Questions on Hells’)?” Buddhist Studies Review 31, no. 1 (2014): 53–64.

49 Zhen’gao, CT 1016, 189–190.

50 Ibid.

51 The translation is quoted from Peter Nickerson, “Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1996), 554.

52 Nüqing guilü, CT 790, 1: 1–2.

53 Qiu Yue 丘悅, Sanguo dianlüe jijiao 三國典略輯校, ed. Glen Dudbridge and Zhao Chao 趙超 (Taipei: Dongda, 1998).

54 Minor modification of the quotation as translated by Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 92.

55 Minor modification of Dudbridge and Zhao's edition. Sanguo dianlüe jijiao, 187–188. The quotation appears in the entry on shamans in the Song dynasty encyclopedia, Taiping yulan. Taiping yulan 太平御覽 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960), 734: 15b–16a. The first part of the story is also recorded in more detail in the entry on lotus in the Taiping yulan, where it is attributed to the official history of the Northern Qi dynasty, Beiqi shu 北齊書, rather than the Sanguo dianlüe. ⟪北齊書⟫曰：後主武平中，特進侍中崔季舒宅中池內，蓮莖皆作胡人面，仍著鮮卑帽，俄而季舒見煞。Taiping yulan, 975: 6a–b. The surviving version of Beiqi shu does not include this material. As it gives fuller meaning to the whole sentence, however, I have adapted this quotation instead of using the abridged sentence in Dudbridge's version (崔季舒未遇害，家池蓮莖化為(胡)人面，着鮮卑帽。).

56 Sanguo dianlüe jijiao, 29. Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 92.

57 Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 92; Sanguo dianlüe jijiao, 187–188.

58 Wei Shou 魏收, Weishu 魏書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 12: 313; Li Baiyao 李百藥, Beiqi shu 北齊書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 3: 36–37; Li Yanshou 李延壽, Beishi 北史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 5: 196–197, 80: 2697; Sanguo dianlüe jijiao, 17.

59 Shimen zhengtong, X. 75, no. 1513, 303c; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 91; Sawada Mizuho 澤田瑞穗, Jigoku hen–Chūgoku no meikaisetsu 地獄變―中國の冥界說 (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1968), 90–91; Oda, “Godō daijin kō,” 27.

60 Grootaers, The Sanctuaries in a North-China City, 76–82; Hsiao Kung-Chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, 632; Chūgoku nōsōn kankō chōsa kankōkai, ed., “Chūgoku nōsōn kankō chōsa,” 210–211.

61 Grootaers, The Sanctuaries in a North-China City, 77; Daniel L. Overmyer also cites local histories in North China suggesting that there was a Wudao temple in just about every village. Overmyer, Local Religion in North China in the Twentieth Century, 43, 129.

62 Li Jinghan 李景漢, ed., Dingxian shehui gaikuang diaocha 定縣社會概況調查 (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 1986), 432. For other accounts on reporting deaths to the Temple of Wudao in North China, see Stephen Jones, In Search of the Folk Daoists of North China, 55, 192.

63 Sawada, Jigoku hen, 90–91; Oda, “Godō daijin kō,” 27; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 91.

64 Xiao Zixian 蕭子顯, Nanqi shu 南齊書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,1982) 27: 508; Li Bo 李 柏, “You Xiang Yu rufo kan Qi Liang Fojiao de minjianhua 由項羽入佛看齊梁佛教的民間化,” Henan Shifan Daxue xuebao 河南師範大學學報 36, no. 3 (2008): 216; Daoxuan 道宣, Guang Hongming ji 廣弘明集, T. 52, no. 2103: 297b23–c3; Lin Fu-shih 林富士, “The Cult of Jiang Ziwen in Medieval China,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 10 (1998): 370–371; Chen, “In Search of the Origin of the Enumeration of Hell-Kings in an Early Medieval Chinese Buddhist Scripture,” 60–61.

65 X. 75, no. 1513, 303.

66 Qisong 契嵩, Tanjin wenji 鐔津文集, T. 52, no. 2115, 713b: 27—715c.

67 Huiguang 慧觀 ed., Jinyuan ji 金園集, X. 57, no. 950, 10c.

68 X. 57, no. 950, 10c.

69 X. 75, no. 1513, 303c–304a.

70 Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, “Suiroku shōkō 水陸會小考,” Tōhō shūkyō 東方宗教 12 (1957): 14–33.

71 Tanjin wenji, T. 52, no. 2115, 713b–715c; Shi Guojing 釋果鏡, “Ciyun Zunshi yu Tianzhusi 慈雲遵式與天竺寺,” Dharma Drum Journal of Buddhist Studies 1 (2007): 103–175.

72 T. 52, no. 2115, p. 714a.

73 Ibid., 714b.

74 Fozu tongji 佛祖統紀, completed by Zhipan 志磐 (1220–1275 C.E.), T. 49, no. 2035, 359c.

75 Bernard Faure, “Relics and Flesh Bodies: The Creation of Ch’an Pilgrimage Sites,” in Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China, ed. Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 160.

76 Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 90.

77 Zheng Acai, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 36–56; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 95–96.

78 Tang Lin 唐臨, Mingbao ji 冥報記, T. 51, no. 2082, 793b; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 94; see also D. E. Gjertson, “A Study and Translation of the Ming-Pao Chi: A T’ang Dynasty Collection of Buddhist Tales” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1975), 160–166, 298–312.

79 Taiping guangji 太平廣記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), 304: 2408; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 94.

80 Wei Zheng 魏徵, etc., ed., Suishu 隋書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973), 52: 1341.

81 K. R. Norman, Collected Papers II (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1991), 1. Erik Zürcher, “Buddhist Influence on Early Taoism: A Survey of Scriptural Evidence,” T’oung Pao 66 (1980): 123.

82 For details of the study on these Dunhuang manuscripts, see Zheng Acai, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 36–56.

83 Zhu Faman 朱法滿, ed., Yaoxiu keyi jielü chao 要修科儀戒律鈔. CT 463, 15: 14a3–b7; Nickerson, “Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China,” 231–235.

84 Xue Juzheng 薛居正, etc., ed., Jiu wudai shi 舊五代史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976), 61: 815–816.

85 These excessive cults might be associated with the popular cults whose followers engaged in excessive sacrifice to “defeated armies and dead generals,” who were believed to have become the chief spirits of the underworld and have an impact on human epidemics and illnesses, such as the cults of Xiang Yu and Jiang Ziwen mentioned previously. These popular cults were significant religious phenomena during the early medieval period. Modern scholars have shown how they were later absorbed and institutionalized into Daoist religion. Rolf Stein, “Religious Taoism and Popular Religion from the Second to Seventh Century,” in Facets of Taoism, ed. Holmes Welch & Anna Seidel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 53–82; Mark Meulenbeld, “Civilized Demons: Ming Thunder Gods from Ritual to Literature” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2007), 11–12, 122; Lee Fong-mao 李豐楙, “Xingwen yu songwen—Daojiao yu minzhong wenyiguan de jiaoliu yu fenqi 行瘟與送瘟：道教與民眾瘟疫觀的交流與分歧,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Popular Beliefs and Chinese Culture 1 (Taipei: Center for Chinese Studies, 1994), 373– 422; Paul R. Katz, “Trial by Power: Some Preliminary Observations on the Judicial Roles of Taoist Martial Deities,” Journal of Chinese Religions 36 (2008): 54–83; Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 108–111.