DOMINIC STEAVUParatextuality, Materiality, and Corporeality in Medieval
Chinese Religions
Talismans (fu) and Diagrams (tu)ABSTRACT In medieval China, talismans (fu) and sacred diagrams (tu) were ubiquitous elements in religious

texts. Since they were composed of divine illegible esoteric patterns, meaning was not produced by themarkings talismans and diagrams bore; it was, rather, displaced onto the objects themselves, whether they
were two-dimensionally represented in scriptures and ritual manuals or externalized and materialized onto
physical supports. In this respect, the objecthood and palpable materiality of talismans and diagrams madethem shorthand tokens for direct access to the supernatural. Drawing on emblematic yet understudied
scriptures of medieval Daoism and esoteric Buddhist, the present study considers talismans and diagrams
as paratextual objects, bringing to light the fact that they not only passively frame the reading of a text but inmany instances also constitute the primary and determining level of “text” that is read. In this way, sources inwhich talismans and diagrams featured prominently were approached ﬁrst and foremost through theirmaterial aspects, namely paratexts. What is more, the talismans and diagrams that appeared in texts were
often meant to be externalized and materialized, in some cases onto the bodies of adepts or visualized in theirmind’s eye, thereby conﬂating paratextuality, materiality, and corporeality. In a pair of striking examples,
practitioners are instructed to embody and become actual ritual objects, blurring the boundaries between
text, object, and body in one single divine locus.

KEYWORDS Daoism, Buddhism, Paratexts, Materiality,

Corporeality, Embodiment, China, Talismans, Diagrams, Authority

INTRODUCTION

In the context of medieval China, revealed talismans (fu 符) and diagrams (tu 圖) aresynonymous with Daoism. One has only to peruse the pages of the Daoist Canon (daozang
道藏) for a hint of the tradition’s reliance on the implements. Both of these ritual media
operated on the basis of true form (zhenxing 真形) and the parent notion of true name(zhenming 真名). Essentially, talismans and diagrams were depictions of a supramundane
entity’s true name and true shape respectively, interchangeable and complementary symbols
that gave a visually observable shape to a supramundane being’s “image” (xiang 象)—its
metaphysical substance and most fundamental identity. Although true name and true shaperemained indexical, they were nonetheless closer approximations of the way in which anentity would be constituted in its unmediated state as an image (xiang) of the all-generating
Dao than the habitual and inaccurately anthropomorphic representations that circulated in
the world of mortals.1 The concept of the “imaginal” that Henry Corbin deployed in his
1. I have presented notions concerning true name in relation to talismanic script as well as talismans in relation
to diagrams in my previous work; accordingly, I will only keep to the broad strokes here. For those who are interested
in a detailed discussion supported by primary sources, see my The Writ of the Three Sovereigns: From Local Lore to

Journal of Medieval Worlds, Vol. 1, Issue 4, pp. 11–40, e-ISSN 2574-3988 © 2019 by The Regents of the
University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or
reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page,https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jmw.2019.1.4.11

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True names in talismanic script from the
Scripture of the Wondrous Essence of the Eight
Emperors (Dongshen badi miaojing jing 洞神八帝妙
精經; DZ 640), 18a–20b.
FIG. 1.

analysis of Islamic theology can perhaps serve as an explicative parallel for readers morefamiliar with Abrahamic traditions. It refers to the creative and imaginative space which
renders the metasensory world of the divine perceptible or, at least, decodable in themundane world.2 In their respective traditions, true form (as well as true name) and theimaginal are notional topographies that mediate between the unfathomably ethereal realmof the divine and everyday sensory granularity.
The two images above and below are salient examples of talismans and diagrams fromthe earliest surviving complete reprint of the Daoist Canon, dated to 1598. Although they
are from the Late Imperial period, we may assume on the basis of earlier visual cognatesthat they remained sensibly similar to the ones used in medieval China or even earlier.
The ﬁrst image (ﬁg. 1) is a sample page from a source that will be discussed in thefollowing section. It contains 24 true names (zhenming) of deities and spirits rendered-

Institutional Daoism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019), especially 50–62 and 94–101, respectively; seealso n. 24, below.
2. See Henry Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis: The Imaginary and the Imaginal,” Spring (1972): 1–19.

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FIG. 2. The “true form” of Mount Tai from the Ancient Original True Form
Diagrams of theFive Peaks (Wuyue guben zhenxing tu 五嶽古本真形圖; DZ44), 18.17b-18a. 1598.

in celestial script (tianwen 天文), a form of divine talismanic script. The names were to be
inscribed onto a support medium in accordance with the adjacent instructions provided
in conventional script. Once reproduced and ritually activated, they were employed tocontrol the entities with which they are associated. The second ﬁgure (ﬁg. 2) is a true
form diagram (zhenxing tu 真形圖) of Mount Tai 泰山, one of the ﬁve cosmic sacredpeaks of Daoism. Such diagrams were used as numinous maps to guide adepts into themarchmounts’ invisible recesses, where they could unearth divine medicines of immortality or consort with sylphs and immortals. They could also function as meditation aids;and since true form and true name are two sides of the same coin, diagrams, in the same
capacity as talismans, could serve as apotropaic amulets or summoning devices for deities
who populated the cosmic mountains.
Although they are most commonly associated with Daoism, which took formal shapein the early third century CE, talismans and diagrams have a long pre-Daoist history in
China. Shang (1600–1046 BCE) and Zhou (1046–256 BCE) conceptions of imperial
authority rested on the ability to communicate with the divine through sacred script andsymbols, as evidenced by excavated materials pertaining to turtle plastron and scapula
divination.3 Donald Harper argues that the transition to imperial China (220 BCE
onward) was accompanied by a new epistemological framework in which “diagrams [tu圖] functioned together with the written word [wen 文; shu 書] to reveal a universal
plan—at once cosmic and divine.” Humans inhabited “an encoded world thatsages decoded and made accessible to society in material form,” namely as fu [符] and3. Mark Lewis has notably established a formal genealogical link between the script that permeates talismans anddiagrams and Shang (1600–1046 BCE) and Zhou (1046–256 BCE) oracle-bone writing; see the ﬁrst chapter ofMark Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999).

Steavu | “Paratextuality, Materiality, and Corporeality in Medieval Chinese Religions13

tu [圖], talismans and diagrams.4 The earliest surviving examples of these implements
were designed for this very purpose, namely, to render encrypted cosmico-divine universal
knowledge into an intelligible and digestible format.5 As Harper concludes, their “classiﬁcation in an epistemological system […] reinforced the idea of a universe that was knowable,communicable, and applicable to human aﬀairs.”6 If the myriad creatures were composed ofperishable forms (xing), transient and unstable by deﬁnition, talismans and diagrams oﬀered
their “true forms” (zhenxing), a more stable peek into the immutable essence of things, their“image”—(xiang) as it was referred to, which was itself a direct window into the eternalDao, the “Great Image without form” (daxiang wuxing 大象無形).7
In the imperial administration, tallies (qi 契; quan 券) were used as gages to verify theruler’s written orders, or as tokens of authority. Authentication was conﬁrmed when thetwo split halves of the tally were joined together. Combining a juridico-administrative
logic with the notion of a divine script and true-form images, revealed talismans anddiagrams became ubiquitous tokens of divine approbation conﬁrming a ruler’s receipt ofthe mandate to rule by the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE).8 Possession of these omens
was proof of two things: ﬁrst, that the ruler was contractually bound to do the bidding of
Heaven; and second, that the ruler could contractually bind deities—from high-ranking
oﬃcials of the celestial bureaucracy or local spirits—to do his bidding. Because theyshared with imperial cults the view of the supernatural as a vast hierarchicallystructured bureaucracy (which served as the blueprint for the state rather than the otherway around), Daoists were instrumental in developing ritual technologies related totalismans and diagrams.9 However, other actors in the religious landscape of medieval
China, most notably Buddhists, also made ample use of them.
4. Donald Harper, “Communication by Design: Two Silk Manuscripts of Diagrams (Tu) from Mawangdui
Tomb Three,” in The Warp and the Weft: Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China, ed.
Francesca Bray, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, and Georges Métailié (Leiden: Brill, 2007): 169–190.
5. Paraphrasing the Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 (Master Lü’s Spring and Autumn [Annals]), Donald Harper
describes the Mawangdui manuscript Tianwen tu (Diagram of Heaven’s Patterns) in these terms; see his “The
Magico-Religious Conception of Tu ‘Diagram’ in Early Chinese Thought,” (Unpublished Typescript, 1998), 6–9.
6. Harper, “The Magico-Religious Conception of Tu ‘Diagram’,” 12.
7. Daode jing 41. The Xici 繫辭 (Appended Statements) explains: “What is above form is called the Dao; what
is below the form is called an object” 形而上者為之道, 形而下者為之器; translation from Fabrizio Pregadio,“The Notion of ‘Form” and the Ways of Liberation in Daoism,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 14 (2004), 95; see also
Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 323. Pregadio (“TheNotion of Form”), 90–99 explains that the term qi 器, “literally meaning ‘vessel,’ and is used in this sentence asa synonym of wu [物], ‘thing’; it denotes any entity that exists in the world of form, distinguished from the Dao,
which is above form.”
8. Talismans (fu) and diagrams (tu) revealed by Heaven in pairs as tangible proof of the Heavenly Mandate(tianming 天命) played an important role in imperial consecration rites since the Zhou. Until the Tang dynasty(618–907), the Chinese terms for talismans and diagrams, fu and tu, were interchangeable—the only distinction wasthat talismans were considered “male,” and diagrams, “female”—a contrast which implied that they were often
revealed and transmitted as gendered pairs. Around the sixth or seventh century, talismans came to be regarded as
a comparatively textualized set of symbols while diagrams were considered more image-based.
9. For a detailed analysis of Daoist talismans that ﬁrmly underscores their juridico-administrative dimensions,
see Stephen Bumbacher, Empowered Writing, Exorcistic and Apotropaic Rituals in Medieval China (St. Petersburg,
FL: Three Pines Press, 2012). For an exhaustive overview of the genre of Daoist diagrams and their grounding in true
form, see Shih-shan Susan Huang, Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

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Buddhism originated in India in the sixth century BCE and was present in China
from the ﬁrst century CE at the latest. In order to gain a foothold in the Middle
Kingdom, as elsewhere, Buddhists made concerted eﬀorts to adapt their teachings orpractices and render them intelligible to host cultures. Thus, the question of why the
Chinese agents of translocal Buddhism adopted such unequivocally indigenous religious
forms as talismans and diagrams can be answered rather succinctly: ﬁrst and foremost,they conferred politico-spiritual (theocratic or cosmocratic) authority and legitimacy;
second, the symbolic language in which they were couched was immediately comprehensible and familiar to Chinese audiences—and especially ruling elites—a boon for
Buddhism, which was periodically viliﬁed as an invasive foreign tradition.10 More
important is the question of how this adoption occurred and, as a corollary, that of
how it was so seamlessly executed—particularly in contrast to the interchange of
doctrinal notions or ritual frameworks, which required delicate reformulation andcareful recalibrating. In attempting to shed light on the processes through which
talismans or diagrams and their semantic capital were transferred from a local nonBuddhist context to a translocal Buddhist one, it is my hope that certain insights might
be gained in understanding the mechanics of Buddhist interactions with indigenous
traditions in China and beyond.
This study opens with a consideration of talismans and diagrams as fundamentallyillegible artefacts. Drawing on the example of the Daoist Writ of the Three Sovereigns(Sanhuang wen 三皇文), the ﬁrst section centers on their role as material objects, evenwhen they consist of two-dimensional representations in a scriptural source. In thisregard, they are paratextual objects, yet, as the second section demonstrates, this does
not detract from their importance. In fact, in spite of their status as oﬀtext, they were
decisive in framing how the text was read. The third section follows this thread,focusing on a Buddhist source, Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences (Longshu
wuming lun 龍樹五明論), and the deployment ritual objects produced from twodimensional representations of talismans and diagrams contained in its pages. Buildingon this analysis, the subsequent section of the article concentrates on another Buddhist
document, the Method of the Great Compassionate Wisdom Seal of Avalokiteśvara
Bodhisattva Which Pervades the Dharma Realm, Beneﬁts Sentient Beings, and Perfumes
Thusness (Guanzizai pusa da beizhi yin zhoubian fajie liyi zhongsheng shun zhenru fa 觀自在菩薩大悲智印周遍法界利益衆生薫眞如法). It establishes how paratexts not
only activate their semantic potential in texts or the ritual arena, but also on/in the
body of adepts. As a result, in certain cases, practitioners of medieval Chinese religions
embody the artefact and supply the point of intersection between paratextuality, materiality, and corporeality. Lastly, the article closes with a discussion of the methodologicalimplications for the study of East Asian religions.

10. For a sample of Buddhist responses to anti-foreign sentiments as well as Chinese counter-responses, see GilRaz, “Conversion of the Barbarians (huahu 化胡): Discourse as Proto Han Nationalism” in “The Literary Subversive,” ed. Dominic Steavu, Medieval History Journal 17.2 (2014): 255–294.

Steavu | “Paratextuality, Materiality, and Corporeality in Medieval Chinese Religions15

1. ON THE ILLEGIBILITY AND MATERIALITY OF TALISMANS AND DIAGRAMSIt should be underlined that prior to proverbially joining the competition and integrating talismans or cosmic diagrams into their tradition, Buddhists had attempted todiscredit them. Polemicists such as Dao’an 道安 (ﬂ. 6 th century) and Zhen Luan 甄鸞(ﬂ. 535–581) were vocal detractors of Daoism: their eﬀorts initially converged on thelate third-century Writ of the Three Sovereigns (Sanhuang wen), a collection of talismans
representing the true names of gods and spirits rendered in undecipherable divine
talismanic script (ﬁg. 1). The talismans were used to summon gods or keep balefulspirits at bay.
In his Treatise on the Two Teachings (Erjiao lun 二教論), Dao’an plainly states thatthe earliest ﬁgure in the transmission line of the Writ of the Three Sovereigns, Bao Jing 鮑靜 (230 or 260–330), fabricated the text that he claimed to have discovered in a cave ona famous mountain. The passage explains: “during the Yuan Kang reign of the [Western]Jin [between 291 and 299], Bao Jing forged the Writ of the Three Sovereigns andconsequently incurred capital punishment.”11 The notion that Bao Jing was executed forforgery is echoed in Zhen Luan’s Essays to Ridicule the Dao (Xiaodao lun 笑道論). The
text reports that “Bao Jing forged the Scripture of the Three Sovereigns; the matter was
exposed, and he was put to death.”12
One of the important reasons why Dao’an and Zhen Luan singled out the Writ of theThree Sovereigns was because of its considerable cultural impact. The source was a keystoneof Daoist talismanic methods in early medieval China. Despite, or rather precisely becauseof the straightforwardness of its methods, during the ﬁfth century, the source came
to constitute the core of the Cavern of Divinity (dongshen 洞神), one of the threefoundational corpora and textual pillars of the nascent Daoist Canon. Already by the
fourth century, Ge Hong 葛洪 (283–343) praises the collection of talismans in The
Master Who Embraces Simplicity (Baopuzi 抱朴子):[…] Among important writings on the Way, none surpass the Esoteric Writ of theThree Sovereigns and the True Form Charts of the Five Peaks. The ancients, theimmortal oﬃcers, and accomplished people respect and keep secret these teachings.13
道書之重者，莫過於三皇內文五岳真形圖也。古人仙官至人，尊祕此道。

Although the Writ of the Three Sovereigns and the True Form Charts of the Five Peaks
topped the rankings of Daoist texts from the 3 rd to the 5 th centuries, they were illegible.
Like all talismans and revealed diagrams, they were “writings,” yet they were authored ina divine language undecipherable to the common mortal. Their markings consisted of thetrue names (zhenming) for talismans and true form (zhenxing) for diagrams—ontologicallyone and the same since they were both equated with the original unmediated appearance
and identity of supranatural entities. Only immortals or those of equivalently high spiritual
11. 晉元康中。鮑靖造三皇經被誅。事在晉史; Erjiao lun 二教論 (Treatise on the two teachings; 569) in
Guang hongming ji 廣弘明集 (Expanded collection for the spread of the light; T.2103), 8.141b.
12. 鮑靜造三皇。事露而被誅; Xiaodao lun 笑道論 (Essays to ridicule the Dao) in Guang hongming ji,
9.151b.
13. Baopuzi, 19.336.

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attainment could decode the sacred characters and images that constituted talismans anddiagrams. Although, with luck, one could encounter such ﬁgures in antiquity, Ge Honglaments that by his time, in the fourth century, no one was accomplished enough to read
divine markings:
Formerly, during the Kingdom of Wu (222–280) lived a Jie Xiang who could readtalismanic script and tell whether it was corrupt or not. Once someone attempted totest him by removing the captions from various therapeutic and apotropaic talismans,
but Jie Xiang identiﬁed them one by one and he even corrected some errors. Since then,none has known talismanic script. Nowadays, people cannot read the characters on
talismans, and no one can tell if they are wrong.14
昔吳世有介象者，能讀符文，知誤之與否。有人試取治百病雜符及諸厭劾
符，去其籤題以示象，皆一一據名之。其有誤者，便為人定之。自是以來，莫有能知者也。[…] 然今符上字不可讀，誤不可覺 […]。

As the artefacts still circulated in Ge Hong’s time, we may deduce that the user’s capacity
to decipher a talisman or diagram was by no means a prerequisite for its successful
application. As long as the inscriptions or shapes were correctly traced, it mattered little
if adepts were illiterate. In actuality, the illegibility of the ritual objects added to theirauthority for it was proof of their supernatural provenance, and by extension, of theirdivine authority.
Other scholars have pointed to the centrality of illegibility in establishing the authorityof talismans and their perceived eﬃcacy. James Robson and Gil Raz have argued that
incomprehensibility is a deﬁning feature of most talismanic script.15 Likewise, Yang
Zhaohua signals the cryptic nature of divine writing, but he also points out that someof the earliest talismans were “simple and legible.”16 Only with the development andspread of institutional Daoism from the second or third centuries CE is there a pronounced appreciation for talismans written in illegible script. The contemporary scholar
Ge Zhaoguang has aptly termed the Daoist penchant for unreadable writing a “linguisticarchaism” (fugu zhuyi 復古主義) intentionally designed to simultaneously drape thetalismans in a veil of unfathomable otherwordliness while concentrating the means of
their production in the hands of a small and qualiﬁed clerical minority.17
14. Baopuzi, ibid. cf. Baopuzi, 19.335–36.
15. James Robson, “Signs of Power: Talismanic Writing in Chinese Buddhism,” History of Religions 48:2
(2008), especially 135–139, and 167; and Gil Raz, The Emergence of Daoism: Creation of Tradition (London:
Routledge, 2012), 139–143.
16. Yang Zhaohua, “Devouring Impurities: Myth, Ritual and Talisman in the Cult of Ucchus.ma in Tang
China” (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 2013), 267–268.
17. Ge Zhaoguang 葛兆光, Zhongguo zongjiao yu wenxue lunji 中國宗教與文學論集, 57, cited in Yang,“Devouring Impurities,” 269. Similarly, Brigitte Baptandier, “Le Tableau talismanique de l'Empereur de Jade,
Construction d'un objet d'écriture,” L’Homme 129 (1994): 59–92, argues that while talismanic diagrams are notintended to be read according to habitual linguistic conventions, through their symbols and script, they narrate
mythologies and histories (among other things) and are therefore decipherable if not legible. However, she focuses oncontemporary applications of talismans-diagrams that date from a more recent time when Daoism, especially in its
more vernacular incarnations, was less concerned with establishing legitimacy and thus not as inclined to emphasize
illegibility; see also Yang, “Devouring Impurities,” 269.

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With the institutionalization of Daoism and the codiﬁcation of its writings during theﬁfth and sixth centuries, the Writ of the Three Sovereigns became one of the fundamental
ordination documents for clergy.18 This document was among the ﬁrst that novices
received during initiation because its divine characters spelled out the names of all thedeities and demons to which the recruit now had access. The Writ was inscribed in theearlier Han-dynasty tradition of imperial sacraments, celestially-granted tokens conﬁrming a divinely-sanctioned mandate to rule. The discovery or possession of these sacredgages was evidence of a monarch’s privileged line of communication with Heaven, of theircontrol of supernatural powers, and consequently, of their authority over human subjects
as well. Similarly, receiving the Writ implied direct access to and dominion over the gods
whose divine names appeared in the talismans.
Cognizant of the close association between revealed talismans or diagrams and imperial legitimacy, Buddhists persisted in their eﬀorts to discredit the Writ. Under the aegis
of a sympathetic emperor Tang Taizong 唐太宗 (599–649; r. 626–649), they spearheaded a campaign to revoke the canonical status of the Daoist scripture. The Forest of
Pearls in the Garden of the Law (Fayuan zhulin), a late 7 th-century Buddhist encyclopedia, relates the following events:
In the twenty second year of the Zhenguang era of the Tang (648), there was […]a Madam Wang who possessed the True Form Diagrams of the Five Peaks and the
Scripture of the Three Sovereigns, which had been forged by the Daoist master of yore,
Bao Jing […]. She praised it, saying: ‘Invariably, when nobles have this scripture, they
become monarchs of kingdoms […] and ladies who possess this text will inevitably
become empresses […].’19
至大唐貞觀二十二年。有[…]妻王氏有五岳真[形]圖及舊道士鮑靜所造三皇
經 […]。上云。凡諸侯有此文者。必為國王 […]。 婦人有此文者。必為皇后。

The seditious potential of this account did not go unnoticed by government censors, who,
after a summary investigation, arrived at the conclusion that the Writ of the ThreeSovereigns was a human fabrication and decidedly not a sacred text revealed by gods.
In the ﬁfth month of the very same year, an edict from the Vice Director (shilang 侍郎)
Cui Renshi 崔仁師 decreed:
The script and characters of the Scripture of the Three Sovereigns cannot betransmitted; its words are reckless perversions, hence it is ﬁtting that it be destroyed.20
三皇經文字既不可傳。又語涉妖妄宜並除之。

18. See Steavu, The Writ of the Three Sovereigns, 180–185.
19. Fayuan zhulin (法院珠林; T.2122), 55.708ab; a substantial paraphrase of the passage is found in Timothy
Barrett, Taoism under the T’ang. Religion and Empire during the Golden Age of Chinese History (London: Wellsweep,1996), 23–25.
20. Fayuan zhulin, 55.708b.

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A few months later, after the regional magistrate-investigators had assembled all the
copies of Writ they could collect, the lot was publicly burned before the Imperial
Secretariat of the Board of Rites and the text was stricken from the Daoist Canon.21
The principal reason why Buddhist polemicists such as Dao’an and Zhen Luan were so
zealous in their accusations, and why the Tang authorities so swift in their condemnation,
was the intimate connection between political authority and divinely-revealed imperial
sacraments. Talismans such as the Writ of the Three Sovereigns, which functioned as
rosters of supernatural beings, constitute a prime example of this close relationship. For
fear that they might be used in counter-claims of legitimacy to the throne, the medieval
Chinese state imposed strict controls on these documents. The Tang Code of 653 CE, forexample, stipulated that any household found in possession of the Luo River Writing(Luoshu 洛書) or the Yellow River Chart (Hetu 河圖), another pair of illustrious sacraments, would see its members sentenced to two years of forced labour.22 Anna Seidel has
demonstrated that talismans and diagrams were above all celestial tokens that testiﬁed toa privileged relation between their holder and the divine, and that they were deployed infull awareness of their political potential, nourished by the absence of any demarcation
between temporal and spiritual authority in early and medieval China.23 Registers (lu 籙),
diagrams including the True Form Charts of the Five Peaks, and most pertinently thetalismans of the Writ of the Three Sovereigns, were transmitted in Daoist consecration
rituals that were tantamount to an imperial investiture, whereby the adept, now a spiritualsovereign, was granted dominion over the sacred spaces or supramundane denizens
represented in the objects.24

21. Fayuan zhulin, ibid.
22. Alexei Volkov, “Geometrical Diagrams in Traditional Chinese Mathematics,” cited from Francesca Bray,“Introduction,” in Bray et al., ed., The Warp and the Weft, 23.
23. See Anna Seidel, “Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments: Taoist Roots in the Apocrypha,” in Tantric
and Taoist Studies in Honour of Rolf Stein, ed. Michel Strickmann (Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Études
Chinoises, 1983), 2.291–371.
24. The tradition that evolved around the Writ of the Three Sovereigns shares many traits with that of Daoist
registers (lu 籙), perhaps best represented by the Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi dao 天師道). Despite thesimilarities, there are nonetheless signiﬁcant points that set them apart. For example, the Writ is deeply couched ina centrifugal imperial metaphor and most of the deities over which it aﬀords control are local (tied to features such as
woods, rivers, mountains, roads, or stars). Here we may discern the imprint of Han theocratic ideology, most vividly
manifested during Emperor Wudi’s 漢武帝 (156–87 BCE) reign (141–87 BCE); by periodically touring commanderies and sacriﬁcing to local gods, the emperor appropriated their cults along with their territory of inﬂuence.
Returning to the capital with his “acquisitions,” he posited himself as a centralized distillation of all regional gods,
consequently expanding his politico-spiritual authority to the farthest reaches of his empire. Conversely, the Celestial
Master registers chieﬂy contain the names of martial deities, valued ﬁrst and foremost for their exorcistic or
apotropaic powers. Moreover, they are typically composed in legible “human” characters whereas the divine celestial
script of the Writ is illegible. As a corollary, a rhetoric of authenticity and legitimacy developed around the talismansof the Writ: they are often referred to as zhenfu 真符 (true talismans), zhenzi 真字 (true characters), zhenben 真本(true text), zhenming 真名 (true names), or zhenhui 真諱 (true concealed names) much in line with the parent
notion of “true form” zhenxing 真形. According to this logic, since they are written directly in a divine language
without the intermediary of human understanding, they are ineluctably “truer” than any of their counterparts
rendered in more legible adulterated scripts.

Steavu | “Paratextuality, Materiality, and Corporeality in Medieval Chinese Religions19

2. TALISMANS AND DIAGRAMS AS PARATEXTUAL OBJECTSTo reiterate, the fetishization of illegibility as a discourse is principally identiﬁed withformalized or institutional Daoism in China; it is woven into the early medieval rhetoricof divine revelations according to which scriptures were said to have manifested in one of
the Daoist heavens in illegible divine script before degrading into versions that werecompatible with base human forms of communication. In this light, the illegible true
names (zhenming) or true forms (zhenxing) of deities contained in talismans and diagrams are remnants of the original divine form of a sacred scripture. Because of theirunintelligibility, they constitute immediately veriﬁable and tangible evidence of a text’s
divine origin and legitimacy.
A number of attempts have been made, some more successful than others, at uncovering the syntactic logic of talismans according to their constituent components, a large
proportion of which are derived from Chinese graphs or from stylized likenesses ofasterisms or astral bodies.25 Although in some cases one may tease out the illusion of
meaning, the language of talismans and diagrams is designed to be hermetic, remaining
somehow familiar but ultimately impenetrable to all but a small spiritual elite. That latemedieval and early modern versions of the ritual implements contained more legible
components is a testament to their increasing imbrication with vernacular or “popular”
Daoist traditions in which illegibility and pristine celestial origins were less of a concern.26
However, even in such instances, they were not meant to be read since any incidental
meaning that could be derived from the markings on talismans and diagrams was subordinate to the meaning they embodied as objects.
Because they were essentially illegible, talismans and diagrams operated ﬁrst and foremost according to a logic of materiality. Talismanic script and true form images weretypically written, carved, or stamped onto material supports such as paper, silk, wood,stone, leather, or even skin. More rarely, they were traced on soil, in water, or in air.
Sometimes, the support was incinerated and its ashes ingested; other times, the inscriptions survived more indeﬁnitely as apotropaic amulets worn on one’s person or as sacredgages establishing authenticity or trust. In all cases, talismanic script and true form images
semantically empowered those media on which they were aﬃxed, even the most ephemeral
ones. Yet, since the collection of logographic or iconographic symbols that usually bear
semantic value are undecipherable, the burden of carrying meaning is displaced to thephysical medium itself. To put it another way, because the markings on talismans and
25. The most convincing attempts, it should be noted, focus on talismans from either vernacular, or postmedieval and vernacular-inﬂected Daoist reform movements such as the Tianxin zhengfa 天心正法 (Orthodox
Rites of the Celestial Heart). See, for instance, Monica Drexler, Daoistische Schriftmagie: Interpretationen zu den
Schriftamuletten Fu im Daozang (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994). For a synopsis of secondary sources, seeYang Zhaohua, “Devouring Impurities,” 271–275; see also his deciphering of an Ucchus.ma talisman, 288–290.
26. To be sure, a proportion of talismans from the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) present decipherable
marks and graphs. But these are once more derived from vernacular traditions and/or common religion. See Wang
Yucheng 王育成 on the subject, “Donghan daofu shi li” 東漢道符釋例, Kaogu xuebao 考古學報1 (1991): 45–56.
Many of the graphs denote concepts that are diﬀerent from those with which they are associated in conventional
language. For example, the character for “sun” or “day,” ri 日, a common component of talismanic script, can refer
the heraldic beasts of the Five Agents (wuxing 五行); see Drexler, Daoistische Schriftmagie, 50.

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JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL WORLDSWINTER 2019

diagrams are semantically empty, they acquire meaning through their objecthood, whether
it is wooden seal or the pages of a scripture: they are active signiﬁers whose semantic value
rests in the very absence of a signiﬁed. Rather than acting as vectors of meaning, talismanic
script or true forms, and by extension, the talismans and the diagrams which they grace, arephysical concretions of meaning—objects whose semantic potential is embedded in theirvery constitution as objects.27
Although they commonly appear as stand-alone documents, talismans and diagrams
were more habitually integrated into scriptures, where conventional text was by far thedominant vehicle for conveying meaning. Consequently, in textual analyses, talismans anddiagrams are usually considered accessory devices that merely supplement or enhance themain text. They are in fact paratexts, objects that frame or inﬂuence the reading of a text
but are external to the text itself. This includes prefaces, epigraphs, tables of contents, butalso type font, the name of the author, the shape or format of a source, the kind andquality of the support medium, and so on. As Gérard Genette has shown, paratexts playa more complex role than simply buttressing text. They are strategic liminal spaces
between text and oﬀ-text where the reading of the text is largely determined. They are
thresholds that invite or exclude speciﬁc interpretations and guide the relationshipbetween reader and text.28
Paratexts exist within the physical boundaries of a source—but they can also exist
outside of it. The ﬁrst variety is designated as peritext: talismanic script and true-form
diagrams fall under this rubric as they are contained within the pages of sources, adjacent
to text. The second variety, which encompasses the paratexts that are outside the physicalboundaries of a source, denotes epitexts. Talismans and diagrams can also fall in this classsince their illustrations from within the text are meant as blueprints or patterns for thereader to reproduce outside the text, when carrying out a ritual or deploying theirapotropaic beneﬁts in situ.
Elena Valussi has already shown the beneﬁts of considering paratexts in the context
of Chinese religions and, more particularly, Female Alchemy (nüdan 女丹).29 The
perspective gained from approaching talismans and diagrams speciﬁcally as paratexts
is one that brings to light certain features that are crucial in explaining the sustained
relationship between these objects and claims of access to a higher divine order ofauthority as well as the universal intelligibility of these claims. One of these features,tied to their function as peritextual devices, is their plasticity and adaptability to various
discursive ﬁelds. A second feature, tied to their epitextual function, is their materiality,
the fact that they are concrete objects—either as a component of a material text ortransferred from the pages of a text and reproduced onto an external material support—with established and immediately recognizable symbolic capital. A priori, these two
27. See Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 30–32, for a discussion of similar notions with respect to symbols in theconstitution of religious systems.
28. See Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
29. Elena Valussi, “Female Alchemy and Paratext: How to Read nüdan in a Historical Context,” Asia Major 21:2
(2008): 153–193.

Steavu | “Paratextuality, Materiality, and Corporeality in Medieval Chinese Religions

21

facets may seem at odds—one tends toward compatibility with multiple semanticorders, the other toward rigid adherence to a pre-deﬁned meaning. But in actuality,
these two features complement each other and make talismans and diagrams virtuallyunavoidable in the formulation of religious identity in imperial China, whether Daoist,
Buddhist, or other.
On one hand, talismans and diagrams are virtual clean-slate receptacles for, andsimultaneously, vectors of ﬁrst-order meaning. Because of their illegibility and the resulting plasticity of their content, they are adaptable to any ritual context. Their markings canrefer to the Daoist god of a local river just as well as a Buddhist Wisdom King (Skt.
vidyarāja; Ch. ming wang 明王); diagrams can represent the interior space of a Daoist
sacred mountain just as well as the structure of the Buddhist Diamond realm (Skt.
vajradhātu; Ch. jin’gangjie 金剛界). On the other hand, talismans and diagrams docome with some permanent second-order semantic baggage that is independent fromthe variable meaning they embody. They espouse a relatively consistent juridicoadministrative form which is immediately recognizable through stable and distinctive
material features including square or rectangular frames, undecipherable and thus supernatural ﬂowing scripts or shaded ink-stain images, recurring geometric patterns (which
often represent cosmological principles), and so on. It is these instantly veriﬁable material
elements that mechanically evoke legitimacy, credentials, or supramundane authority.
Thus, despite the apparent semantic subordination of talismans and diagrams to text
in Buddhist and Daoist materials (by virtue of their ostensible lack of content and theirpresumably ancillary position with respect to writing in the layout of scriptures), theseparatexts, when they appear, are in fact dominant in framing the reading of a source. They
invert the relationship between text and oﬀtext, bringing the traditionally marginalized
elements of a source to the forefront in determining how that source is read. Indeed,talismans and diagrams become the text that is to be “read” ﬁrst and foremost, since they
are what provides the scripture with its divine or spiritual heft. Although this reading is
eﬀectively undertaken via the accompanying instructions or commentary, the central
focus of texts with talismans and diagrams remains squarely on those paratexts. Fromthe moment a source is unrolled or opened, the eyes bypass the text and are immediately
attracted to the distinctive curves of talismanic scripts or the hypnotic contours true-form
diagrams, thereby constituting the initial lens through which the urtext of the source isinterpreted. Fully cognizant of their eﬀect on the gaze of readers, some compilers consciously foreground the paratext and render the legible text as oﬀtext (see ﬁg. 3). In othercases, such as the striking Buddhist “pagoda scriptures” (jingta 經塔), by which readers
reconﬁgure text into a religious architecture following a narrative itinerary (ﬁg. 4), or the“sectioned texts” (kewen 科文), whose structure and argument are displayed schematically, the text espouses the shape of a talismanic or diagrammatic paratext.30 These
examples are especially clear illustrations of how scriptures could acquire fully paratextual
30. See Michael Lackner, “Les diagrammes d’analyse textuelle : une pratique savante de la tradition chinoise,” inLieux de savoir 2. Les mains de l’intellect, ed. Christian Jacob (Paris: Albin Michel, 2011), 827–828; and, by the sameauthor, “Diagrams as an Architecture by Means of Words: the Yanjitu” in Bray et al., The Warp and the Weft,
342–343.

22

JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL WORLDSWINTER 2019A text consisting of talismans with appended instructions (left) from theS.2498 Dunhuang mansucript of the Quintessential Incantation of Vajrakumāra ( Jingang
tongzi xinzhou 金剛童子心咒); and a pagoda scripture (jingta) (right) version of the Heart
Sūtra (Xinjing 心經), S.4389. From the British Library, http://idp.bl.uk/
FIG. 3 AND FIG. 4.

roles as material artefacts, subverting the primacy of text not only with respect to thesemantic rapport between text and oﬀtext in their pages, but also with respect to thephysical source itself, whereby their functions as tangible sacred diagrams or talismanic
objects overshadowed their content altogether.

3. PARATEXTS IN BUDDHIST SOURCES

Talismans and diagrams were pervasive indigenous Chinese implements that surfaced instate rituals (whether properly cultic or juridico-administrative), vernacular religious
practices, and perhaps most prominently, institutional Daoism. In their Buddhist incarnations, too, they vividly highlight the aforementioned crucial inversion between text andparatext as well as the precedence of objecthood in that relationship. More importantly, it
is arguably in the sources of the “Esoteric Teachings Section” (mijiao bu 密教部) of the
Sino-Japanese Buddhist Canon that we ﬁnd the most lucid examples of how Chinese
religious paratexts are not only imbricated with notions of materiality, but, as we shall see,with notions of corporeality as well.
During the early medieval period, from around the same time that their polemicists
declared the Writ of the Three Sovereigns to be a forgery, Chinese Buddhists began toadopt talismans and diagrams along with the practices to which they belonged, andreformulated them to match their own pantheons, metaphysics, and cosmologies. Talismans were seamlessly incorporated into Buddhist manuscript and canonical sources.31
31. For canonical scriptures from the mijiao bu that prominently feature talismans, see for example T.1219,
T.1229, T.1238, T.1265, and T. 1331, all of which are discussed by Michel Strickmann in the chapter on “Ensigillation,” 123–193, from his Chinese Magical Medicine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002); see also
T.1307, examined by Christine Mollier, Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic
Exchange in Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), in the broader context of BuddhoDaoist talismans; see especially Chapters 2 and 4 of her book. See also Paul Copp, The Body Incantatory: Spells andSteavu | “Paratextuality, Materiality, and Corporeality in Medieval Chinese Religions

23

Less common but nonetheless signiﬁcant was the Buddhist use of cosmic or true formlike diagrams (tu), often in combination with talismans.32 From the point of view ofrhetorical strategy, assimilating the ritual objects aﬀorded the beneﬁt of their semantic
associations without any of the inconvenience of imposing new and foreign epistemic
tools.33 Talismans and diagrams were concrete and familiar religious implements thataﬀorded real-world results at the same time as they reinforced political legitimacy, marked
advantages for those among the Buddhists who operated in elite circles and were vying
with Daoists for imperial sponsorship. The opening of the Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on theFive Sciences (Longshu wuming lun),34 most likely from the late sixth century,35 is unambiguous about its target-audience and the intended applications if its methods:-

the Ritual Imagination in Early Medieval Chinese Buddhism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014),
especially Chapters 1 and 2; and Robson, “Signs of Power.”
32. On the general topic of images and diagrams in the development of medieval Buddhist ritual technologies,
see Koichi Shinohara, Spells, Images, and Man.d.alas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2014). More often than not, diagrams in Buddhist sources are sketches of ritual areas,
but in other cases, they are closer to the cosmic and/or true form diagrams discussed earlier; see for example T.1103,
T.1299, T.1308, T.984, and T.914. The pairing of talismans and especially cosmic diagrams have a historicallyturbulent relation with Buddhist orthodoxy because of their unmistakably Daoist associations. In some ways, it isremarkable that they even found a place in the Sino-Japanese Buddhist Canon. As an enduring sign of underlying
uneasiness, out of the 5,320 texts canonized in the revised Taishō Tripit.aka, only about two dozen contain talismansor their ritual relatives, seals (yin 印) (According to Xiao Dengfu’s tally in Daojiao xingdou fuyin yu fojiao mizong,
194–195, there are 31 such texts). This ﬁgure stands in stark contrast to the roughly 400 sources with talismans outof 1,487 texts of the authoritative ﬁfteenth-century recension of the Daoist Canon. In comparison to canonicalsources, Buddhist manuscripts from Dunhuang notably display a higher number of texts with talisman and diagrams,suggesting a closer relationship between the ritual objects and non-canonical or vernacular forms of Buddhism. In his
discussion of sources pertaining to the talismanic rites of the Buddhist deity Ucchus.ma, Yang Zhaohua, “Devouring
Impurities,” 90–102 has demonstrated how illustrations of talismans or seals underwent signiﬁcant doctoring andsuppression from one edition of a text to another. After a veritable tug-of-war around the inclusion of Ucchus.ma
talismans, the “unoﬃcial line” won out over the “oﬃcial line” when images of the implements were ﬁnally canonizedaround 1137 in the Sixi 思溪 edition of the Tripit.aka—an impressive achievement after having been excluded fromthe Koryŏ 高麗 canon of 1087. This constitutes more of an exception to the rule since overall, talismans weresystematically purged from canonical recensions; many of the talismans that survive in the early twentieth-century
Taishō Tripit.aka were salvaged from oblivion and painstakingly reconstructed. See Yang, “Devouring Impurities,”
260–262.
33. Remarking on the Buddhist adoption and re-formulation of Daoist ritual elements, Michel Strickmann,
Chinese Magical Medicine, 140 observed: “…the familiar gains vastly in authority by being rendered exotic.”
34. The ﬁve sciences (or ﬁve studies; pañca-vidyā) of India refer to śabda, grammar and composition (sheng 聲);śilpakarmasthāna, the arts and mathematics (gongqiao 工巧); cikitsā, medicine (yifang 醫方); hetu, logic (yin 因);and adhyātma, philosophy (nei 內). For the last term, see William Edward Soothill and Lewis Hodous, A Dictionaryof Chinese Buddhist Terms: With Sanskrit and English Equivalents and a Sansrkit-Pali Index (New York: Routledge,
2004 [1937]), 119, where they cite Monier Williams’ deﬁnition as follows: “the ‘knowledge of the supreme spirit, orof ātman, the basis of the four Vedas; the Buddhists reckon the Tripit.aka and the 十二部教 as their 内明, i. e. theirinner or special philosophy.” In China, this list is known as the “internal” (nei 內) Five Sciences. It is complemented
by another, lesser-known list of the “external” (wai 外) Five Sciences: these start oﬀ in a similar way, with grammar
and composition (sheng), the arts and mathematics (gongqiao), and medicine (yifang), but logic and philosophy are
replaced with the incantation methods (zhoushu 呪術) and talismans and seals (fuyin 符印). The Longshu wuming
lun privileges the external Five Sciences, with particular emphasis on the latter two.
35. A Wuming lun 五明論 (Treatise on the Five Sciences) in one scroll (juan) is listed in the Lidai sanbao ji 歷
代三寶紀 (Record of the Three Treasures Through the Ages; T.2034), 100b4, and dated to 558; see also the Da
Tang neidian lu 大唐內典錄 (Record of the Buddhist Canonical Scriptures of the Great Tang; T.2149), 55.271c;
and the Kaiyuan shijiao lu開元釋教錄 (Record of the Teachings of Śākyamuni of the Kaiyuan era; T.2154),
55.544c. From these sources, we also learn that Rangnabatuoluo 攘那跋陀羅 (Jñānabhadra) and Shenayeshe 闍那

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JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL WORLDSWINTER 2019

At the time [of King Aśoka (r. 268 BCE–232 BCE)], there was a South Indian monk
who was previously a non-Buddhist but he came to admire the Dharma and left his
family.36 He addressed the king saying, “In the past I sought ways among the heterodox
teachings to beneﬁt the people. Today I leave home and enter into the Dharma of the
Buddha. He also has ways to beneﬁt sentient beings.37
于時有南天竺國比丘舊是外道慕法出家。如白王言。我昔尋外法中有利益人民之法。今日出家入佛法中。亦有利益眾生之法。

The monk proceeds to list a number of Buddhist techniques, stressing that these arecomparable and equal to the methods of heterodox teachings for beneﬁtting the people.
First and foremost, he lists the use of talismans (fu), which are tied to therapeutic cures aswell as rain-making rituals. Upon hearing of this Aśoka, the storied Indian Buddhist
monarch, was greatly pleased:
The king stated, “I command that you use these means to beneﬁt all sentient beings.”
Thus, on the seventh month of the seventh day one should take seven stalks ofmountain-cloud bamboo seven chi in length and place drawn talismans inside them.
The talismans should say, “May Indra instruct me on how to beneﬁt sentient beings.
May all dragons and ghosts follow my command.” Also take a willow branch and carve
it into a human eﬃgy. Construct an altar out of willow and place it on top. After
circumambulating the altar recite the spell saying, “I take refuge in Indra. May wind-耶舍 (Jinayaśa) undertook the translation of the Wuming lun in Chang’an’s 長安 Poqie婆伽 (Bhagavat) monastery;see Young, Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015),
170–171. The connection and potential identity between the Wuming lun and the Longshu wuming lun(Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences) was underscored by Osabe Kazuo 長部和雄, Tōsō mikkyō shiron ko 唐宋
密教史論考, who cites the work of Ōmura Seigai 大村西崖, Mikkyō hattatsushi 密教發達志, 5.17 (but as Young,ibid., 171 n. 48, points out, Ōmura does not refer to the Longshu wuming lun at all). Osabe, Tōsō mikkyō shiron ko,
234–237, ﬁnds similarities in content and style with other sixth century “proto-Tantric” Chinese Buddhist texts. He
concludes that although it is ﬁrmly grounded in Six Dynasties (220–589) materials, the present canonical version of
the Longshu wuming lun, which is derived from a Heian-period (794–1195) Japanese manuscript from Sekizanji 石
山寺 in Kyoto, was re-edited during the Tang dynasty. This assessment rests on what Osabe identiﬁes as markers of
a division between “pure esotericism” (junmitsu) and “mixed esotericism” (zōmitsu), an analytical cleavage that is now
widely considered anachronistic with reference to Chinese materials. Thus, on the basis of Osabe’s account alone, theexact relation between the Wuming lun of 558 and the Longshu wuming lun remains somewhat unclear. Following
Osabe, Davis Society and the Supernatural in the Song (Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001), 134, intimatesthat they are the same text; as does Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 170, who dates the canonical version to
the sixth century without providing much in the way of justiﬁcation. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that thetwo treatises on the Five Sciences are indeed the same text. Sources from the mid-seventh to the mid-eighth centuries
already refer to an established tradition of associating Nāgārjuna with talismans, seals, and alchemical elixirs; see theXin huayan jing lun 新華嚴經論 (Treatise on the New Flower Garland Sutra; T no.1739) 36: 895b by Li Tongxuan
李通玄 (635–570) and the Zhiguan fuxing chuanhong jue 止觀輔行傳弘決 (Instructions for Propagating the
Expanded Practice of Calming and Contemplation; T.1912), 46.445c, dated to 765; cited from Stewart Young,
Conceiving the Buddhist Patriarchs in China, 171 and 180, respectively. Aside from Strickmann, Chinese Magical
Medicine, and Osabe, Tōsō mikkyō shiron ko, the work of Davis, Society and the Supernatural, 134–136, more recently,
Young, Conceiving the Buddhist Patriarchs, 170–177, provides useful overviews of Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Five
Sciences; in Chinese, see Xiao Dengfu 蕭登福, Daojiao shuyi yu mijiao dianji 道教術儀與密教典籍 (Taipei:
Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 2004), 399–406.
36. Leaving the family (chujia 出家) is a common circumlocution in Buddhist sources to express entering themonastic order.
37. Longshu wuming lun, 1.956c.

Steavu | “Paratextuality, Materiality, and Corporeality in Medieval Chinese Religions25

spirits come to the aid of sentient beings. May ﬁre spirits come to cast light. May rainspirits come to ripen the crops. May treasure spirits come to distribute wealth. May
earth spirits come to comfort sentient beings. For whomever and for whatever concern,
I command it. This year all shall be suitable. Take haste! Take haste! As if commanded
by law”38
勅用其法皆利一切衆生。當如七月七日取山雲竹七枚長七尺者。置畫符
中。其符曰。天帝教我利益衆生。一切龍鬼隨我使令。又取章柳刻作人形。作一壇以章柳置上。以遶壇側然後呪曰。歸依天帝釋。風神來濟衆
生。火神來起光明。雨神來百穀熟成。寶神來錢財集。地神來安穩衆生。
爲某甲爲某事令使。今年皆悉稱。急急如律令。

The ritual eﬃcacy of the talismans is undisputed by Aśoka. The Buddhist ruler wastes notime in adopting them as part of his governing strategy, for which they are perfectly suited.
In addition to beneﬁtting his subjects, they also increase the prestige and authority of his
rule, establishing a direct link between himself and the deity whose true name is depicted in
the talismans, Indra, the martial protector of Buddhism and emperor of Heaven. For
medieval Chinese readers of Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences and the potential
royal sponsors among them, the talismans depicted in the text’s folios were unmistakablesigns of divine patronage—despite their illegibility, which is never even mentioned. At thesame time, by virtue of their material resonance with imperial sacraments and, as in thisexample, juridico-administrative logic, they embodied political expediency as well.
In his study on magical medicine in medieval China, Michel Strickmann devotes a full
chapter to the topic of Buddhist talismans (fu) and seals (yin 印), where he describes
Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences as “[p]erhaps the most idiosyncratic document of
the medieval fascination with seals and sealing,” and “the most elaborate single text on
seals and sealing that [he has] found.”39 Seals refer to typically wooden or stone stamps
into which talismanic script is engraved and then impressed onto a two-dimensionalsurface (see ﬁg. 5); in ritual terms they are indissociable from the talismans they help
produce. The following passage from Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences is representative of the talismanic sealing methods contained in the source:
If you wish to bestow beneﬁts on all sentient beings and eliminate their illnesses andhardships, you should use this seal and lead the aﬄicted into a room. Bathe their bodies
with aromatic water. Then, impress the seal on the spot where the ailment is. No[illness] will remain unhealed.40
若欲與一切眾生除其病難者。當用此印將病人在一室。以香水浴身。隨有
病處以印印之。無不得差。

Overall, Nagārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences can be described as a catalogue of sealing
and talismanic methods whose broad scope encompasses everything from healing illness
and becoming invisible to transforming soil into food to stave oﬀ hunger and manifesting
38. Longshu wuming lun, 1.957a.
39. Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 170 and 171, respectively.
40. Longshu wuming lun (T.1420), 964a12.

26

JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL WORLDSWINTER 2019A sample seal (yin) (left) and talisman (fu) (right)
and from Nagārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences(Longshu wuming lun; T.1 4 2 0 ), 9 6 5 c and 9 6 8 a,respectively.

FIG. 5.

oneself as the indestructible diamond body of the Buddha.41 The instructions below oﬀer
a typical sample of how its talismans are produced and employed:
The ﬁrst [of eighteen talismans] is the talisman of the Seven Buddhas and the Seven
Spirits. This talisman concerns bodily aﬄictions experienced by those from one to one
hundred years of age, whether old or young. […] take a piece of white unprocessed silk
one chi [foot] in length. Draw the talisman with real cinnabar and hang it from yoursash. The hundred illnesses will be dispelled. Men must wear it on the left, and womenon the right.42
第一七佛大神符。符主人身百年之中。或老或少。[…] 以素生絹一尺。真朱沙書此符佩之。百病去除。男左女右。

Much like in Daoist sources such as the Writ of the Three Sovereigns or as with thepreceding passage which relied on a healing seal, in these lines, the paratextual writing that
represents the sacred names of the Seven Buddhas and Seven Spirits is immediately
eﬃcacious as soon as it is ritually activated and materialized onto a piece of silk. The
writing it bears is inconsequent. From the moment that it is made into a ritually activatedtangible object, its full apotropaic and healing potential is deployed.
Let us turn to the central ritual of Nagārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences in order toexamine how materiality and paratextuality of ritual implements are interlaced withcorporeality. The text’s central and most emblematic ritual, one that combines bothtalismans and a prominent diagram, is described in a section titled “Sūtra and Diagram
41. See Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 170–178; See also Young, Conceiving the Buddhist Patriarchs,
170–175. For a brief overview of the text with a focus on its therapeutic practices, see Dominic Steavu, “Apotropaic
Substances as Medicine in Buddhist Healing Methods” in Buddhism and Healing in East Asia, ed. Pierce Salguero(New York: Columbia University Press, 2017): 441–453.
42. Longshu wuming lun (T.1420), 957b25.

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Diagram (left) and accompanying seals (right) from the “Scripture andDiagram of the Bodhisattva Nagārjuna’s Secret Instructions” (“Longshu pusa mijue
tujing”) section of Nagārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences, 958bc.

FIG. 6 AND FIG. 7.

of the Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna’s Secret Instructions” (“Longshu pusa bijue tu jing” 龍樹菩薩祕決圖經). The instructions are impressionistic; from the mention of a number offeatures including the twelve chronograms (shi’er chen 十二辰; alt. the “twelve times”
shi’er shi 十二時) and the Four Gates (simen 四門) of the intercardinal directions, we
may ascertain that the diagram is a map of cosmic time and space. After a few lines, thereader gains a clearer indication of the ritual’s purpose. Using the talismans to call on
deities, adepts are meant to navigate through the cosmic ritual area and meet withsummoned gods:
In conformity with the method of the twelve times, emerge from and re-enter [theritual diagram], intone [the spells], and activate the seals. Thereupon, you will haveaccess to the gods who [will aid you] in fathoming auspicious and inauspicious matters[…]. You will completely determine questions of life and death.43
依十二時法出入誦行印。諸神吉凶皆達。[…] 悉決生死。

Despite the instructions, details remain blurry, particularly with respect to the speciﬁc roleof the cosmic diagram. The text is equally unclear about the activation of the seals and themeaning of the script that constitutes them (ﬁg. 4). It is almost as if these details areunimportant, as if seals/talismans and diagrams fulﬁll their purpose simply by being
included in the textual description of the ritual.
Thus, in Buddhist sources too, talismans and diagrams operated as paratextual
devices. At ﬁrst glance, they seem to have merely supportive roles as veriﬁable visual
reminders of the ritual’s legitimacy and telegraphic guarantees of its promised outcome. This was, after all, one of the chief reasons why Buddhists fully incorporated
43. Longshu wuming lun, 958b–959a.

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FIG. 8. Diagram from the “Sūtra and Diagram of the Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna’s Secret
Instructions” (“Longshu pusa mijue tujing”) (left) compared to a diagram for the steps forencountering the Jade Maiden (yunü 玉女) following the pattern of the Big Dipper (right)
from the Yellow Emperor’s Secret Instructions of the Eight Gates of the Great One for Entering
the Cosmograph (Huangdi Taiyi bamen rushi bijue 黃帝太一八門入式祕訣; DZ 587), 5ab.

these artefacts during the medieval period after having earlier discredited them (at leastin polemical circles).44
Yet, upon closer inspection, the talismans and diagram ﬁll in important gaps in the
textual description of the ritual. They command our attention and actually guide ourreading of the source, once more inverting the relation between text and oﬀtext. With
their gaze drawn to the puzzling cosmic diagram, readers are compelled to decipher it.
And in searching for familiar reference points they ineluctably arrive at the ubiquitouscosmograph (shi 式). This instrument was made up of a square lower half, the Earthplate (dipan 地盤), which organized time and space coordinates on a grid. The upper
half, the Heaven plate (tianpan 天盤), was mobile and usually circular. It also borechronotopic markers. The cosmograph was generally used in divination or calendricalcomputations by matching certain values from the top plate to others on the bottom
plate in successive stages, until a ﬁnal space and/or time marker was obtained. In
Daoism, it was also deployed in divination as well as in summoning rites in order todelineate and calculate sacred space and time. In Daoist texts where its use is rituallyprescribed, the cosmograph is represented as a cosmic diagram redolent of the one in
our Buddhist text (ﬁg. 8).
The medieval Daoist rite known as the “Jade Maiden Shutting [the Gates] Behind
Her” (“Yunü fanbi” 玉女返閉) notably centers on the cosmograph and its manipulation.
Its detailed description in the Northern Song-dynasty (960–1127) Book of the Luminous
Mirror of the Six Ren Tallying with Yin (Taishang liuren mingjian fuyin jing 太上六壬明
鑑符陰經) completes many of the lacuna in the elliptical “Sūtra and Diagram of the
44. A number of studies have already ﬂeshed out these points, and there is no need to rehearse the details of
their ﬁndings here. See Robson, “Signs of Power” for Chinese Buddhism, and Seidel “Imperial Treasures and Taoist
Sacraments” for Daoism’s incorporation of earlier autochthonous notions of talismanic authority and eﬃcacy.

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FIG. 9. Reconstituted Earth plate of the shi cosmograph from the “Sūtra and Diagram of theBodhisattva Nāgārjuna’s Secret Instructions” (“Longshu pusa mijue tujing”) with addedinterpolary horizontal and vertical axes corresponding to the ten celestial stems (tiangan天干) on the basis of the description from the Luminous Mirror of the Six Ren Tallying
with Yin (Taishang liuren mingjian fuyin jing (left). For comparison, a complete shi
cosmograph from the Six Dynasty (220–559), with celestial stems and early branches(dizhi 地支), the Four Gates (simen 四門) and the intercardinal directions, all present on
the Earth plate; the Big Dipper acts as a pivot at the center of the round Heaven plate (right).
Reproduced on the basis of Abe no Seimei to Onmyōdō, 53.

Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna’s Secret Instructions.”45 Through a close comparative reading, it
becomes apparent the Buddhist diagram is the square Earth plate of a cosmograph; it alsocomes to light that Buddhist adepts were intended to act as the mobile Heaven plate, thus
recreating and embodying a fully functional cosmograph within the ritual area. They
oriented themselves according to the Earth plate and then peripatetically crossed theritual area by rotating and tracing the pattern of the Big Dipper (see ﬁgs. 8 and 9) in orderto eventually end up at the calendrical marker corresponding to the day and time that thepractice was undertaken. Once they arrived at their destination on the grid, adepts could
escape the yoke of conventional space-time and enter the realm of true form (zhenxing).
There, they met the deity summoned by means of the accompanying talismans, perhaps
Nāgārjuna bodhisattva as the section’s title suggests. In the Daoist version, they met the
Jade Maiden (yunü), who lends her name to the rite.
Subsequently, adepts could inquire with the conjured deity about spiritual mattersor more mundane concerns such as health, wealth, or fate, before returning to thephenomenal world.46 Alternatively, they could prolong their sojourn in the parallel
45. To my knowledge, the Taishang liuren mingjian fuyin jing, 4.2a–7b, contains the fullest description of the“Yunü fanbi” among extant Daoist sources. Other sources oﬀer more schematic accounts of the rite; see for instance
Huangdi Taiyi bamen rushi bijue 黃帝太一八門入式秘訣 (Yellow Emperor’s Secret Instructions of the Eight
Gates of the Great One for Entering the Cosmograph; DZ 587), 12a–15a.
46. The Daoist Canon holds a number of scriptures that explicitly describe the use of a shi cosmograph forvarious but similarly prognosticatory ends; see for example, the Huangdi longshou jing 黃帝龍首經 (Yellow

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imaginal realm, hide their bodily form (dunxing 遁形) to escape their woes or search forconcealed medicines of immortality. Since true forms consist of unmediated manifestations of the image (xiang) of the Dao, they are only visible to supernatural beings and thehigher rungs of the spiritually accomplished; thus, to the eyes of common mortals, adepts
were eﬀectively invisible when they entered the placeless space of true form, or rather,
they were “illegible.” As Ge Hong, the author of the Master Who Embraces Simplicity
relates, by crossing over into the alternate spiritual dimension, adepts could “immersethemselves in the invisible, just as the sun sinks into the earth and the sun and moon lose
their brilliance—so that neither man nor demon may be able to perceive them.”47
Without the talismans and diagram in the “Sūtra and Diagram of the Bodhisattva
Nāgārjuna’s Secret Instructions,” it would be virtually impossible for uninitiated readers
to decode what the ritual was about. Such sources were esoteric by design, and it was therole of masters to bestow the keys to their understanding upon novitiates in the form oforal instructions. Yet, with the addition of the paratextual elements and their visible
parallels with well-known Daoist analogues, even a neophyte or accidental reader could
infer some general impression about the ritual’s tenor. The talismanic script and diagram,two-dimensional representations of objects-to-be, are primordial in establishing themanner in which the text that describes the practice should be read. To a large degree,
they are already fully formed material artefacts since they are illegible yet semanticallycharged paratextual objects, much akin to the binding of a book, the ink in which it was
written, or even the type of paper it with which it was composed. Accordingly, as we haveseen with Daoist sources, in such cases where talismans or cosmic diagrams ﬁgure prominently at the center of a text, the paratexts subsume the text, which is then primarily
deﬁned not by its content but by its apotropaic or conjuring powers—the same ones
aﬀorded by its talismans or diagrams. Yet, in the instance of the “Sūtra and Diagram of
the Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna’s Secret Instructions,” the paratext exceeds its bounds to-Emperor’s Scripture of the Dragon Head; DZ 283), the Huangdi jinkui yuheng jing 黃帝金匱玉衡經 (Yellow
Emperor’s Scripture of the Golden Casket and Jade Scales; DZ 284), and the Huangdi shou sanzi xuan nü jing 黃帝
授三子玄女經 (Scripture of the Jade Maiden Transmitted by the Yellow Emperor to his Three Disciples); see Marc
Kalinowski, “Les instruments astro-calendriques des Han et la méthode Liu Ren,” Bulletin de l’École française
d’Extrême-Orient 72.1 (1983), 396–402, for an overview of these sources; and more recently, Dominic Steavu,“The Allegorical Cosmos: The Shi 式 Board in Medieval Taoist and Buddhist Sources” in Coping with the Future:
Theories and Practices of Divination in East Asia, ed. Michael Lackner (Leiden: Brill, 2018): 196–232.
47. The full passage from Baopuzi, 17.301, reads:
Moreover it is said that [with this method adepts can] escape the chaos of the world and cut oﬀ their traces
on famous peak; on an Upper Prime ding mao day, at the time that is called “Yin virtue” or “Celestial
Heart,” [this method] enables those who are without concern or worry to immerse themselves in theinvisible, just as the sun sinks into the earth or the sun and moon lose their brilliance—so that neither man
nor demon may be able to perceive them.

又曰，避亂世，絕跡於名山，令無憂患者，以上元丁卯日，名曰陰德之時，一名天心，可以隱淪，所謂白日陸沈，日月無光，人鬼不能見也
Dated to the ﬁrst half of the fourth century, this is the earliest passage in received literature to mention the hidden
stem (dunjia 遁甲) method, a generic name for all rites that enable practitioners to disappear into the realm of true
form (with or without the aid of a cosmograph). One century later, the term surfaces in a list of divinatory techniques recorded in the oﬃcial history, the Houhanshu 後漢書 (Book of the Latter Han), 112A.1a13.

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subsume not only the entirety of the physical text, but the reader as well. Adepts themselves constitute three-dimensional projections of the two-dimensional objects represented in the scripture. They literally embody the paratexts, providing a locus for theintersection of paratextuality, materiality, and corporeality in their very person.

4. PARATEXTS, TRUE FORM, AND CORPOREALITY: THE CASE OF THE METHOD OF
THE GREAT COMPASSIONATE WISDOM SEAL OF AVALOKITEŚVARA

The majority of paratextual diagrams that dot the pages of the Sino-Japanese Buddhist
Canon are related to technical ritual objects, depicting iconographic details or cosmic
sacred spaces (altars, man.d.alas, or as in the above cited case, a shi cosmogram). A few ofthem could be visualized in contemplation practices. True form diagrams (zhenxing tu)(Fig. 2), however, are noticeably absent from the texts of the Taishō Tripit.aka. Perhaps
the notion of true form was too closely associated with Daoist theology, in contrast to themore generic talisman. Buddhists had in the ﬁrst place an equivalent notion similar
enough that no direct borrowing was necessary: “Samaya embodiments” (sanmeye shen三昧耶身) and “samaya forms” (sanmeye xing 三昧耶形, sanxing 三形) constituted
a fully-formed conceptual bridge to the Daoist notion of true form. These terms refer toshorthand allusive icons for buddhas and bodhisattvas that express the divine beings’
spiritual essence or fundamental quality. Moreover, samaya (from sam, “together; andaya- “going”) can be rendered as “joining together” as a tally, one of the earliest meanings
of fu (“talisman”).48 The samaya constitutes the emblematic form and proof of a buddha’sor bodhisattva’s spiritual quality.49 This relationship between emblematic form andfundamental spiritual essence is evocative of the one shared between talismanic writingor true names (in this case the form) and true form (the essence) in Daoism. In Buddhist
sources, samaya are sometimes represented graphically and integrated into diagrams, as in
the example below (Fig. 10).
In this paratext from the Method of the Great Compassionate Wisdom Seal of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva Which Pervades the Dharma Realm, Beneﬁts Sentient Beings, and Perfumes Thusness (Guanzizai pusa da beizhi yin zhoubian fajie liyi zhongsheng shun zhenru fa
觀自在菩薩大悲智印周遍法界利益衆生薫眞如法), the bodhisattva of compassion
Avalokiteśvara (Ch. Guanyin 觀音) is depicted through its samaya form as a lotus ﬂower
atop a vajra or “thurnderbolt.”50 The samaya is placed against a diagrammatic background
representing the lid of an incense burner which also doubles as a man.d.ala—a cosmic
diagram in the same vein as the cosmograph (shi). The lid is inscribed with the the syllablesom., va, jra, dha, rmma, ﬁve out of the six seed-syllables (Skt. bīja; Ch. zhongzi 種子) that
48. The term can also be translated as “coming together,” “meeting,” “in agreement”; for a standard gloss, see
Soothill and Hodous, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, 67.
49. In contrast to the talisman or true form, however, samaya forms incorporate an oral/aural component as
well, since “spiritual quality” simultaneously manifests and is determined by the Buddha or bodhisattva’s original
sacred vow.
50. This brief text is attributed to Amoghavra 不空 (705–774) but otherwise unattested until the middle ofthe thirteenth century, in Japan. I am indebted to Peter Romaskiewicz, a doctoral student of the Department ofReligious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose insights on the source have proven valuable.

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The samaya form of Avalokiteśvara
from the Method of the Great Compassionate
Wisdom Seal of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva
Which Pervades the Dharma Realm, Beneﬁts
Sentient Beings, and Perfumes Thusness(Guanzizai pusa da beizhi yin zhoubian fajieliyi zhongsheng shun zhenru fa 觀自在菩薩大悲智印周遍法界利益衆生薫眞如法;
T.1042), 33c.
FIG. 10.

make up the bodhisattva’s mantra, the oral/aural equivalent to its true name (zhenming).
The ﬁnal syllable of the mantra, hrīh., takes shape in the plumes of smoke that emerge fromthe incense burner during a ritual described in the source. An additional pair of paratextual
ﬁgures that visually resonate with true Daoist true form charts (zhenxing tu) depict this lastvaporous syllable. The ﬁrst of these (Fig. 11) represents an incense seal (xiangyin 香印)
fashioned in the shape of seed-syllable hrīh.
.
The incense seal functioned as a “combustion clock” or “incense clock”: once ﬁtted
into the burner, it was gradually consumed, emitting billows of smoke that could—underfavorable conditions—hang above the ritual area in a conﬁguration suggested by the seal.
Indeed, the second of the additional images (Fig. 12) shows the shape the smoke should
espouse. As the seed-syllable progressively formed, it revealed the “true and basic principle” (zhen shi li 眞實理), the “dharma of emptiness” (kongfa 空法), which is identiﬁed
with four principles corresponding to the four glyphs that make up the syllable.51 In turn,
51. The four principles are assigned to each of the major curvatures of the syllable so that the sequence is readonce sequentially and once in reverse, with some phrases being duplicated. They appear on the image, Guanzizai pusa
da beizhi yin zhoubian fajie liyi zhongsheng shun zhenru fa (T.1042), 33b, in the following order: “the unfathomablecause of all dharmas, [it is] pure and undeﬁled, pure and undeﬁled, unknowably unimpeded, unknowably unimpeded, originally unarisen and unextinguished, originally unarisen and unextinguished, therefore unknowably

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True form diagram-like rendering of
the incense seal (xiangyin) that is consumed
to produce the plume, Method of the Great
Compassionate Wisdom Seal of Avalokiteśvara,
34a.

FIG. 11.

the smoke transformed and produced all the bodies of the buddhas and bodhisattvas,
which come to pervade the dharma realm.52 Upon pondering the smoke syllable and its
transformations, practitioners were granted paranormal powers (siddhis), exemption fromall obstacles, as well as rebirth in Western Paradise of Ultimate Bliss. At the ritual’s
climax, the smoky hrīh. syllable morphed into the vajra-lotus samaya pictured above,
before assuming the corporeal form of Avalokiteśvara bodhisattva, which enveloped thepractitioner and became their own appearance.53
We may note that the compound “incense seal” (xiangyin) is partially derived from theterm “seal” (yin), a common substitute for “seed syllable” (Ch. zhongzi 種子; Skt. bīja).54“Seals” also refer to mudrās—codiﬁed hand gestures that embody and activate a deity’s
power—and, more germanely, to stamps engraved with otherworldly script.55 Further-

unimpeded, pure and undeﬁled, pure and undeﬁled, [it is] the unfathomable cause of all dharmas.” Thus, the glyph(賀) represents “the unfathomable cause of all dharmas”; ra (羅) represents the “pure and undeﬁled”; īha(伊) represents the “unknowably unimpeded”; and h.
(惡) represents the “originally unarisen and un, the closing sound of
extinguished.” Together, these four principles come together in the seed syllable hrīh.
Avalokiteśvara’s mantra and the written as well of oral/aural distillation of the bodhisattva’s essence.
52. Guanzizai pusa da beizhi yin zhoubian fajie liyi zhongsheng shun zhenru fa (T.1042), 33b.
53. Guanzizai pusa da beizhi yin zhoubian fajie liyi zhongsheng shun zhenru fa (T.1042), 33b.
54. For example, “precious seal” (baoyin 寶印) is used in reference to the seed syllables of buddhas or bodhisattvas; see Soothill and Hodous, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, 476. Another term for incense seals is“buddha-seal” (yinfo 印佛), which usually come in the shape of a buddha. This is not to be confused with “seal of the
Buddha” (foyin 佛印), which denotes the auspicious marks on the Buddha’s chest—habitually an inverted triangle
above a lotus or a swastika—or in Chan Buddhism, the inherent and universal proof of Buddhahood present withinall people. For more on seals as proof, see below.
55. Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 137, supposes that referring to the talisman-like stamps as yin—a term which, although Chinese, had strong foreign consonance due to its other Buddhist uses—was intended toreinforce the image of Indian origins, while, at the same time, making them familiar to the Chinese.

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Incense plume in the shape of the hrīh.
seed-syllable associated with bodhi sattva Avalokiteśvara, Method of the Great
Compassionate Wisdom Seal of Avalokiteśvara,33b.
FIG. 12.

parallels between seed syllables and talismanic script underscore their conceptual
proximity. Aside from shared terminology, both are aniconic written distillations of thesupernatural potencies they represent, although the seed syllable’s eﬃcacy originallyderives from an oral/aural, not written, source.56 Both were also largely illegible. In China,
seed-syllables were traditionally traced in arcane Indic Siddhām. script familiar only toa restricted minority of Buddhist prelates.57 As with talismanic script, this feature concretized the seed-syllable’s divine origins and increased its perceived potency. What ismore, like their indigenous cousins, seed syllables were conventionally anchored in
56. Seed syllables, seals, and mantras (zhenyan 真言), literally “true words” or “perfect words,” are ontologicallyequivalent. On the related issue of materially-inscribed dhāran.ī spells, the ritual cousins of mantras sometimes also
rendered in Siddhām. script, see Paul Copp, The Body Incantatory.
57. See Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 137, where the author reﬂects on the bīja-laden spells of Buddhist magical medicine in China: “Whereas the Daoist priest was directed to recite spells, commands, and a petitionin standard literary Chinese, the Buddhist Master of the Law (whose title itself is Sanskritized as Dharmacarya) had
to employ Sanskrit in Chinese phonetic transcription to invoke his divine assistants. Although such Buddhist
teachers presumably received oral instruction on the signiﬁcance of all these names and terms, it is diﬃcult toimagine that the words were at all intelligible to the patient or his family. In any case, the transcriptions are often so
idiosyncratic as to puzzle even the modern scholar with all the resources of Buddhist lexicography at his command.
We cannot help inferring that this verbal transformation was a very important part of the process of changing
Chinese rituals into potent Buddhist operations sanctioned by the authority of the Buddha. In other words, theIndic terms were not translated but only transliterated or transcribed in order to intentionally retain their unintelligibility and by extension, their aura of legitimacy.”

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a tangible support medium—for instance, the incense seal, and by extension, theplumes of smoke that emerged from it. Thus, seed syllables were also external symbols, physical emblems, and material proof of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, as theterm “seal” implies.
Just as talismanic writing and true form were interwoven expressions of divine nature,
so too seed syllables were also imbricated with samaya forms. This is readily apparent in
the Method of the Great Compassionate Wisdom Seal of Avalokiteśvara, which describes
the vaporous hrīh. seed-syllable gradually morphing into Avalokiteśvara’s samaya form, thevajra-lotus. Albeit a tangible object, whether in its paratextual embodiment or its incarnation as an actual beﬂowered ritual implement, the samaya still harks back to the divine
being unmediated essence—in other words, its true form. To reiterate, this is the sameessence rendered in the bodhisattva’s mantra or seed syllable, the latter functioning
simultaneously as sacred symbol and cosmic diagram: as highlighted in the line thatappears immediately after the image of the incense seal, “Obtaining entry into this ‘wheel’[grants] attainment of the most peerless bodhi.”58 Thus, the incense seal and more
importantly the ethereal ribbons of Siddhām. script it produced were nothing short ofa three-dimensional man.d.alaic cosmograph projected into the air, one that practitioners
ritually entered by immersing themselves in its smoke. By doing so, they also merged andunited with Avalokiteśvara. In this reborn perfected physical form, adepts embodied thecentral object of this ritual—the incense seal—emitting the smoke of enlightenment andenveloping all those with whom it came into contact:
With this present body [practitioners] will behold buddhas and will obtain thedhāran.ī named “not deﬁled by the world.” In the place where they are reborn[the Western Paradise of Ultimate Bliss], their body will emit a wondrous fragrance
and sentient beings everywhere in the ten directions of the realm will become
perfumed and all will realize the stage of non-retrogression […] If they interact withthe world to save sentient beings, they will be like the lotus ﬂower that is not deﬁled
by the mud.59
現身見佛。得陀羅尼名。不染世也。所生之處身出妙香。遍十方國。衆生得薫。皆證不退。[…] 設交世間。度衆生如蓮華不爲諸垢所染也。

This formidable metamorphosis, by which adepts become a fragrant incense seal anddivine bodhisattva at the same time in their very bodies, began with a few twodimensional diagrams inserted amidst rows of text. These paratexts were paramount in
guiding the ritual along to its pinnacle and providing practitioners with a clear understanding of how their embodied transformation would end. They are what the readers
continually focused on as their eyes scrolled down strings of words on the page; they are
what, in a trance-like meditative state, one part of their minds projected inwardly andaimed to make outwardly corporeal, while the other part decoded the text.

58. 得入此輪至無上菩提; Guanzi zai pusa yin (T.1042), 34a.
59. Guanzi zai pusa yin, 33b.

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5. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION

Light takes on nothing else than the imago of things, which, whether you call it forma,
or simulacrum, or idolum, or species, or spectrum, does not matter, if you understand butthat alone, that it represents the thing.
Fabrizio di Acquapendente, De visione, voce, auditu, 1600.

In De memoria, Aristotle elaborates on the double nature of the image, referring to itself
as an identiﬁable instance of the broader genus of image (eikon), and also to somethingelse, that which it speciﬁcally represents. That “something else” possessed a very diﬀerent
status depending on the end for which was enlisted.60 As semantically malleable but
recognized referents to politico-spiritual authority, paratextual talismans and diagrams
were ideal carriers of that legitimacy. The sacred character and revelatory aura attributed
to illegible writing and diagrams were ingredient to buttressing claims, even in contexts
that had little to do with Daoism or Buddhism. In literati circles devoted to exegesis andtextual analysis for instance, it was commonly held that these devices represented if notembodied unmediated access to supreme knowledge was common currency.61 The early
Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino, writing about engraved talismanic images in the
15 th century, insisted that they owe their eﬃcacy to their depictions of “ﬁgures andnumbers” observable in the skies; ﬁgures and numbers that “have the greatest aﬃnity
with the Ideas in Mind, the Queen of the World,” resulting in a reverberation much likethe one between two lutes, with the human instrument resonating as its celestial opposite
plays.62 Likewise, talismans and diagrams point to the true name, true form or “essence”
of that which they depict, embodying a condensed form of knowledge that is not readily
apparent in the mundane world to the undeserving eye—one that ﬁnds its fullest expression in the Heavens and can only barely, if at all, be fathomed by the human mind.
On the one hand, talismans and diagrams are inscribed in a grammar of unknowing. In
this context, illegibility, lack of knowledge, or the absence of a stable signiﬁed takes on
a positive and transformative function, conferring on the signiﬁer the status of a puresymbol with zero symbolic value—an absence of meaning that inevitably points to a divine
and ineﬀable point of origin and renders any related ritual eﬀective, despite semantic
dissonance.63 Relying on the talismans of the Writ of the Three Sovereigns as a test case for
60. De memoria, 450b23–29, paraphrased from Christoph Lüthy and Alexis Smets, “Words, Lines, Diagrams,
Images. Towards a History of Scientiﬁc Imagery,” Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009): 398–439, 425; Harper in“The Magico-Religious Conception of Tu,” on page 4, similarly concludes, although in reverse order, that talismans anddiagrams “both crystallize any type of intended knowledge but they also function as the iconic keys to that knowledge.”
61. Michael Lackner, “Les diagrammes d’analyse textuelle,” 828. In the last sentence of the article, Lacknersurmises that a line can be drawn between revelatory devotional or meditational diagrams and diagrams related to thecomparatively sober pursuit of textual analysis. Echoing this ﬁnding and blurring the boundaries even further toinclude script, Lüthy and Smets, “Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images,” 402–404, explain: “The ease with which words
can become patterns and patterns can become images is fascinating—and at the same time highly problematic: forthis ﬂuid transition from writing to imaging massively complicates attempts at a typology or taxonomy of epistemic
imagery; render the question of the function and role of such images impossible to answer in any general way; andundermines attempts to deﬁne the relation between words, concepts, theories, and images.”
62. Citation and paraphrase from Lüthy and Smets, “Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images,” 429, slightly modiﬁed.
63. The notion of “pure symbol” is borrowed from Lévi-Strauss, cited in Peter Pels’ “Introduction” in Magic andModernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 20. In the passage,

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medieval China, we established in the ﬁrst section of the article that the unintelligibility oftalismanic script achieved this goal while also deﬂecting the function of producing meaning onto the artefact itself. Thus, on the other hand, at the same time that they conceal
meaning, talismans and diagrams reveal meaning through the immediacy of materiality.
Francesca Bray has studied the history of technical diagrams (tu) in China, yet her ﬁndings
may be extended to religious talismans and diagrams as well. She signals that the diagram isa functional category rather than an aesthetic or morphological category. One of its chief
purposes is direct representation (as in technical illustrations), but even in its simpler
incarnations, when pertaining to the creation of sacred space for example, she argues thatthe formal patterns of the diagram are “guiding the viewer through a strictly ordered
trajectory.”64 This dimension is more akin to what Barthes calls a “pure and full signiﬁcation,” a perfect intelligibility through which a medium of representation (in Barthes’
example, catch wrestling performances) empties out interiority to beneﬁt the material
exterior, and thus promotes an immediate reading of meaning.65
This is precisely what the paratext achieves, and in this capacity, the talismans anddiagrams of medieval Chinese religions are prime exemplars of paratextuality. Accordingly, the second section of our article uncovered how talismanic script and diagrammatic
images in Daoist and Buddhist scriptures shifted the habitual semantic emphasis fromtext to oﬀtext, from the notional to the perceptually veriﬁable. Yet, in religious studies,
methodological conventions prescribe minimizing the material dimension of a ritual/sacred object in order to extract and foreground the incorporeal aspect that makes it“sacred.” In other words, scholars of religion tend to approach ritual objects by decommodifying them, thereby transcending their material condition and entering a newmeta-economy of symbolic goods in which value is ascribed not through the usual
calculations reserved for objects, but rather through sacred exchanges (of merit or karma,
for instance) between people on one hand and the divine, supernatural, or metaphysicalon the other. Overcoming objecthood—that is, animating things so as to trace theiragency—has been a productive avenue of inquiry.66-

Pels juxtaposes Michael Taussig’s contribution to the volume, “Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism: Another Theory of
Magic,” on 272–341, which is also relevant to the present discussion, with the ﬁndings of Emil Durkheim, Marcel
Mauss, and Henri Hubert concerning representation and magic; on a similar topic, more relevant to East Asia, see
Roger Janelli and Dawnhee Yim Janelli, “The Functional Value of Ignorance at a Korean Séance,” Asian Folklore
Studies 38.1 (1979): 81–90.
64. Francesca Bray, “Introduction: The Powers of Tu,” Graphics and Text in The Production of TechnicalKnowledge in China, 1–78.
65. Roland Barthes, “The World of Wrestling,” Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 18–19, and 25.
66. A good deal of the spiritual commerce that informs the manipulation of ritual objects or substances—evenin pre-capitalist societies—is grounded in classical structures of creating symbolic value for objects or commodities.
Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities
in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoﬀ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986),
3–63, especially 41; Appadurai has argued that “commodities represent complex social forms and distributions ofknowledge” that, very generally, are either tied to the production of the commodity or to its consumption. This is
proposed by other, earlier thinkers as well, perhaps most prominently Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political
Economy of the Sign (Candor, NY: Telos Press, 1981), 65–67, who, building on Marx, writes that an object has fourways of acquiring meaning: use value, determined by an object’s practical implementation or operation (logic ofutility); exchange value, determined by an object’s equivalence/economic worth (logic of the market); symbolic value,

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Re-investing in the materiality of the sacred, especially when it involves corporeality,
can yield just as many insights, and can notably counterbalance the commodity fetishismthat contemporary scholars impose on ritual objects. By this I mean the tendency tosometimes occlude the historical context and social relations involved in the productionof ritual objects in favor of a focus on emic and self-referential theological analyses. To
give an example, commodity fetishism dictates that practitioners ascribe a particularmeaning to talismans or even scriptures because they simply understand them to be
divinely revealed and not because of a historically and socially constructed series of value
signiﬁcations that contribute to the cultural production of ritual objects (as well as
scriptures). Re-centering the study and analysis of Daoist and Buddhist talismans ordiagrams on materiality not only paints a more accurate picture of how they were
understood in medieval China, but it also enables us to uncover that the spiritual musings, ethereal deliberations, and metaphysical speculations which scholars often focus onas distillations of a religious tradition were actually rooted in concrete historical conditions and social interactions pertaining to paratextual objects, material implements, andthe physical body.
The third section of the article centered on the talismans and diagrams from Nāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences as well as their externalization as manifested ritual
implements. Despite being rooted in imperceptible true name and true form, talismanic
writing and cosmic diagrams ﬁnd concrete expressions when inscribed onto physicalsupports. After initial disapproval, Buddhists adopted them wholesale as instantly recognizable emblems of divine kingship and immediately veriﬁable gages of authority over the
supramundane. These aspects resonated particularly well with the Buddhist purveyors of“esoteric teachings” (mijiao) who strove to simultaneously distance themselves from their“foreign” heritage while catering to the Chinese ruling elite. Most notably, readers ofNāgārjuna’s Treatise on the Five Sciences were enjoined to incarnate part of a ritual
implement that is diagrammatically pictured. The text therefore oﬀered a salient exampleof how paratextuality and materiality converge with corporeality.
The convergence of these themes is even more fully ﬂeshed out in the Method of theGreat Compassionate Wisdom Seal of Avalokiteśvara, the focus of the fourth and ﬁnal
section. In this source, we witnessed how the paratextual seed syllables (Buddhist equivalents of true names), materialized samaya form (Buddhist equivalents of true form), andthe bodhisattva to whom they belonged intersected in a single locus, the adept’s body.
This is not an exceptional example for medieval China; there are numerous parallels in-

determined by an object’s relative ambivalence in relation to two subjects, a giver and a receiver (logic of the gift); andﬁnally, sign value, determined by the measure of diﬀerence perceived between one who possesses an object and one
who does not (logic of status). As far as the material culture of religion is concerned, Baudrillard’s model has muchinsight to oﬀer as a complement or alternative to gauging an object’s “sacredness” from the standpoint of metaphysics. See for example Fabio Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism,
especially 259–273, where the author notably discusses and applies Baudrillard’s model. From the sources examinedin the present article, it emerges that symbolic value and perhaps especially sign value were crucial components ofwhat made possessing talismans and cosmic diagrams such a privilege in medieval China.

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Buddhist and Daoist sources.67 It is, however, a scintillatingly clear illustration of howtalismanic and diagrammatic paratextual elements deﬁned certain medieval Chinesesources, how they were intricately interwoven with materiality—and also, with corporeality. For ultimately, it was in the body of the adept, whether internally through visualizations or externally through ritual actions, that scriptures were acted out and performed. It
was through the physical practitioner, via texts, that the imperceptible realm of gods andspirits, buddhas and bodhisattvas, burst into the mundane world.
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67. For a representative Daoist example pertaining to ritual practices associated with the talismanic diagram
known as the Man-Bird Mountain (Renniao shan 人鳥山), see Fabrizio Pregadio, “The Man-Bird Mountain:
Writing, Prophecy, and Revelation in Early China,” International Journal of Divination and Prognostication 2:(2020, forthcoming).

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