Journal of Chinese Religions, 46. 2, 93–121, November 2018 THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS (WUDAO DASHEN 五道大神) IN EARLY MEDIEVAL CHINA FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN National Chengchi University The Great God of the Five Paths, Wudao dashen 五道大神, in charge of rebirth in the Five Paths, has been one of the prominent otherworld bureaucratic deities in Chinese popular religion since the early medieval period. Wudao first appeared obscurely in certain Chinese Buddhist versions of the Buddha’s biography, yet there is no mention of the deity in any Indic sources. As later medieval accounts record a popular sacrificial cult of Wudao outside of Orthodox Buddhist circles during the early medieval period and modern anthropological reports confirm that the deity was worshiped as a deity of popular religions rather than a Buddhist one, previous scholarship has been inclined to assume these parallels as possible evidence that a non-Buddhist sacrificial cult of the deity dated back to the early medieval era. This paper attempts to re-approach two issues related to the deity: its origin and the early development of its cult in early medieval China, before the Tang dynasty (618–907 C.E.). It first demonstrates a possible origin of the deity and its possible formation through a comparative research on the evolution of the various versions of the Buddha’s biography in both Indic and Chinese contexts. A close examination of early medieval textual and archaeological sources, along with later medieval sources claiming the existence of a non-Buddhist sacrificial cult of Wudao dating back to the early medieval period, also reveals that Wudao was always presented or considered in a Buddhist-related context during the early medieval period, whereas primary later accounts of an early non-Buddhist cult are not supported by substantial evidence and were probably propagandistic stories made up by vegetarian reformist monks of the Tiantai School 天台宗 during the Song dynasty. KEYWORDS: The Great God of the Five Paths, Māra, the Life of the Buddha, the Emperor Wu of the Liang, Ciyun Zunshi 慈雲遵式, Buddhist vegetarianism 1. INTRODUCTION From obscure origins in the Chinese Buddhist scriptures, the Great God of the Five Paths, Wudao dashen 五道大神 (hereafter Wudao), has emerged as one of the most prominent otherworld bureaucratic deities associated with human rebirth in Chinese popular religions since the early medieval period. References in medieval manuscripts and modern anthropological reports have prompted scholarly interest in © Society for the Study of Chinese Religions 2018 DOI 10.1080/0737769X.2018.1479505 94 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN the origin and transformation of Wudao and especially in how he evolved into a deity of popular religions outside the Buddhist context. In modern scholarship, there have been three major scholars who have undertaken research specifically on Wudao. In his pioneering study, Oda Yoshihisa 小 田義久 surveyed an extensive range of textual sources and argued that the modern interpretation of the deity as a Daoist god in Japan was a misunderstanding of his cryptic evolution from a deity of Buddhist origin to a deity of popular religions. Locating this evolution in the historical context of the development of Chinese Buddhism, Oda held that the confusing transformation of Wudao actually exemplifies the Sinification and popularization of Buddhism in China.1 Following on from this, Glen Dudbridge investigated the possible origin of Wudao in Indian Buddhist scriptures, the early textual implications of the cult of Wudao outside orthodox Buddhism, and references in the later medieval ritual texts of esoteric Buddhism. In seeking the origins of the deity in Indian Buddhism, Dudbridge paid particular attention to one story in the Chinese version of Ekottarāgama (Zengyi ahan jing 增壹阿含經, T. 2, no. 125), where Wudao is one of a list of invocatory deities, including the goddess Hārı̄tı̄. The image of Hārı̄tı̄ was sometimes accompanied by that of her husband, Pañcika, portrayed as a warrior. Linguistically, moreover, the name Pañcika seems linked to pañcagati, the Sanskrit term for Five Paths, and its pronunciation shows similarity with Benshi 賁(奔)識, the Chinese name of Wudao. Dudbridge inferred from this that the God of the Five Paths may have been concocted by a Chinese translator as a back-formation from the Sanskrit term, pañcagati. In positing his origin in non-Buddhist popular cults, Dudbridge was influenced by the fact that many early medieval stories about Wudao are set near the Lower Yangzi River. Although not recorded until much later medieval times (during the Tang-Song period), these accounts seem to testify to a popular cult of Wudao in this region during the early medieval period.2 Zheng Acai 鄭阿財 based his research on archaeological sources, the Dunhuang and Turfan manuscripts. He examined references to Wudao in mortuary passports in the pre-Tang Turfan manuscripts and also in the Tang-period Dunhuang manuscripts, charting his transformation from a warrior general to the Wheel-Turning King, Cakravartin.3 This article addresses two fundamental questions about Wudao: first, the origin of the deity, and secondly whether or not there was already a popular sacrificial cult of Wudao outside Buddhist circles in the early medieval period (i.e., before the Tang dynasty). Dudbridge’s linguistic link between the Great God of the Five Paths and pañcagati in Sanskrit arises from the Chinese version of Ekottarāgama, while the deity is first mentioned in an episode of certain Chinese versions of the Buddha’s biography. It seems to me that, in exploring his possible Indian origin or concoction by a Chinese translator, it is essential to re-examine this episode in the broader historical 1 Oda Yoshihisa 小田義久, “Godō daijin kō 五道大神攷,” Tō hō shū kyō 東方宗教 48 (1976): 14–29. 2 Glen Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 9 (1996–97): 65–98. 3 Zheng Acai 鄭阿財, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang 從敦煌 吐魯番文書論五道將軍信仰,” in Zheng Acai Dunhuang Fojiao wenxian yu wenxue yanjiu 鄭阿財 敦煌佛教文獻與文學研究 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2011), 26–61. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 95 context of the development and transmission of the Buddha’s biography in both Indic and Chinese versions. In doing so, this paper will suggest possible causes of the formation of the character of the Great God of the Five Paths. With regard to the second question, this paper will cast doubt on Dudbridge’s ideas about a regional connection and the significance of retrospective accounts of a popular non-Buddhist sacrificial cult during the early medieval period. Using archaeological and textual sources, I will demonstrate that Wudao was always presented or considered in a Buddhist-related context during the early medieval period, whereas the later accounts of an early non-Buddhist cult are not supported by substantial evidence and were probably vegetarian propagandist stories made up by monks of the Tiantai School 天台宗, whose heartland happened to be the Lower Yangzi region. 2. THE EARLIEST KNOWN APPEARANCES OF THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS IN BUDDHIST SOURCES The origin of Wudao has baffled scholars for more than a millennium. As early as the sixth century, the eminent Daoist Master, Tao Hongjing 陶宏景 (452–536 C.E.), commented in the Zhen’gao 真誥 that he was not sure of the identity of the deity.4 The prime reason for this obscurity is the absence from extant Indian sources of any corresponding deity called the Great God of the Five Paths. The earliest textual source for Wudao is associated with certain Chinese versions of the Life of the Buddha (usually equated to the Sanskrit Lalitavistara), specifically the episode of “The Great Departure.”5 Here the deity appears in the form of a warrior of enormous strength named Benshi 賁(奔)識. Comparative analyses by modern scholars of different Chinese versions of the Buddha’s biography have revealed that the Chinese texts are not all pure translations but rather pieces of “Chinese patchwork.”6 Also, as there are no words in Indic languages corresponding to Benshi, the absence of the deity from Indian sources has prompted speculation that he might not have derived directly from an Indian original. 4 Zhen’gao 真誥 (CT 1016), 189–190. There are inconsistencies of content and length between the Chinese versions of the Life of the Buddha and the non-Chinese (Sanskrit and Tibetan) versions of Lalitavistara, and also among the Chinese versions themselves. In Indic languages, there are several versions of the Life of the Buddha from diverse sources. Accordingly, I think that the Chinese versions of the Life of the Buddha are not necessarily all derived from the Lalitavistara. Therefore I deliberately refer in this article to “Chinese versions of the Life of the Buddha” rather than to “Chinese versions of the Lalitavistara.” P. E. Foucaux, trans. and ed., Le Lalita vistara, Annales du Musée Guimet 6 (Paris: Leroux, 1884); P. E. Foucaux, trans. and ed., Rgya tch’er rol pa, ou, Développement des jeux, contenant l’histoire du Bouddha Çakya-Mouni, trad. sur la version tibétaine du Bkah hgyour, et revue sur l’original sanscrit, Lalitavistâra (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1848); Matsuda Yū ko 松田祐子, “Chinese Versions of the Buddha’s Biography,” Indogaku Bukkyō gaku kenkyū 印度學佛教學研究 37, no. 1 (1988): 24–33; Erik Zürcher, “Review of Mélanges de sinologie offerts à Monsieur Paul Demiéville II, Bibliothèque de l’Institut de Hautes Etudes chinoises vol. XX (Paris, 1974),” T’oung Pao 64 (1978): 119; Antonello Palumbo, “Dharmarakṣa and Kaṇ tḥ aka: White Horse Monasteries in Early Medieval China,” in Buddhist Asia 1 (2003): 200–209; Ved Seth, Study of Biographies of the Buddha—Based on Pāli and Sanskrit Sources (New Delhi: Akay Book Corp, 1992), 97–99. 6 Matsuda, “Chinese Versions of the Buddha’s Biography,” 27–28; Zürcher, “Review of Mélanges,” 119; Palumbo, “Dharmarakṣa and Kaṇ tḥ aka,” 200–209. 5 96 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN On this point, most previous scholarship has limited its focus to the relation between the Lalitavistara and the Chinese versions of the Buddha’s biography which first mention Wudao. Little attention has been paid to the question of whether the appearance of Wudao exclusively in the Chinese texts is a unique phenomenon in the cross-cultural transmission of the Buddha’s biography. Of the study of the Buddha’s biography in Indic languages, Alfred Foucher writes: These, then, are our primary sources, and a priori we have no right to adopt one to the exclusion of the others. The fact that we are faced with several different versions of the same incidents can only favor research. What finally transpires is that the differences we find among the various accounts are not as fundamental as the partisans of Singhalese orthodoxy would have us believe for the sake of polemical expediency. That all their sources were the same is revealed by the numerous identical expressions and similar parallel passages.7 According to Ved Seth’s work on biographies of the Buddha in Pāli and Sanskrit, accounts of his departure from the city gate in the episode of “The Great Departure” differ in respect of how the gate was opened and the identity of the deities or demonic beings encountered by the prince.8 This suggests that the appearance of Wudao in certain Chinese versions is not exceptional in the evolution of accounts of the Life of the Buddha, but could be part of an ongoing process. I propose that it is essential to review and compare the context of Wudao in all the Indic and Chinese accounts of the Buddha’s life. 2.1. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS IN CHINESE VERSIONS OF THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA The earliest sources to mention Wudao are three Chinese versions of the Buddha’s biography: the Taizi ruiying benqi jing 太子瑞應本起經 (T. 3, no. 185), the Yichu pusa benqi jing 異出菩薩本起經 (T. 3, no. 188), and the Puyao jing 普曜經 (T. 3, no. 186). The Taizi ruiying benqi jing is recorded as having been translated between 222 and 229 C.E. by Zhi Qian 支謙. Matsuda Yū ko 松田祐子 has observed that, despite differences in wording, there is a close resemblance between the whole Yichu pusa benqi jing and significant parts of the Taizi ruiying benqi jing that do not appear in other Chinese versions.9 Judging by its archaic style and transcriptions of foreign words, the Yichu pusa benqi jing may actually predate the Taizi ruiying benqi jing.10 Certain portions of the Puyao jing are exactly the same as corresponding sections of the Taizi ruiying benqi jing. It is alleged to have been translated by Zhu Fahu 竺法護 (Dharmārakṣa) in 308 C.E. 7 Alfred Foucher, The Life of the Buddha—According to the Ancient Texts and Monuments of India. Abridged Translation by Simone Brangier Boas (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 1963), 7. 8 Seth, Study of Biographies of the Buddha, 97–99. 9 Matsuda, “Chinese Versions of the Buddha’s Biography,” 25. 10 Although the translation of the Yichu pusa benqi jing 異出菩薩本起經 is attributed to Nie Daozhen 聶道真 of the Western Jin dynasty 西晉 (265–316 C.E.), it may have been translated earlier. See Palumbo, “Dharmarakṣa and Kaṇ tḥ aka,” 206–207. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 97 Here are translations of the encounter with Benshi (Wudao) in each of the three Chinese versions. The Yichu pusa benqi jing says: Walking several dozen li, the Crown Prince met a man called Benshi. Benshi is the great god among ghostly gods. He is sturdy and reserved. Holding a bow in his left hand and arrows in his right hand, and wearing a sharp sword at his waist, he stood across the paths. Where Benshi dwelt, there were three roads: the first was the Path of Devas, the second the Path of Men, and the third, niraya, the Path of Evil Men. The Crown Prince saw him from a distance. Displeased, he rode his horse straight up to Benshi. Instantly, in fear and terror, Benshi cast aside his sword, bow, and arrows, and stepped back from the road. The Crown Prince asked which path he should follow. Benshi indicated the Path of Devas and said: “This is the path you should follow.” 行十數里，見一男子，名曰賁識，賁識者，鬼神中大神，為人剛憋；左手 持弓，右手持箭，腰帶利劍，當道而立。賁識所立處者有三道，一者天 道，二者人道，三者泥犁惡人之道。太子遙見，心為不樂，直以馬前趣 之。賁識即惶怖戰慄，解劍持弓箭，卻路而立。太子問曰：「何道可 從？」賁識即以天道示之：「此道可從。」11 The Taizi ruiying benqi jing reads: Then [the Crown Prince] arose and mounted his horse. He moved on several dozen li with Che Ni [Pāli: Channa; Sanskrit: Chandaka, who was one of the retinue of the prince] and suddenly saw the Great Spirit in Charge of the Five Paths, whose name was Benshi. He was exceptionally hard and strong, holding a bow on his left and arrows on his right, and wearing a sharp sword at his waist. His dwelling was at the meeting-place of three roads, the first named the Path of Devas, the second the Path of Men, the third the Path of the Three Evil Destinies. These names refer to where the souls of the dead must pass and meet. The Crown Prince came up and asked which path he should follow. Benshi, in fear and terror, cast aside his bow, let go his arrows, and removed his sword. Hanging back, he indicated the Path of Devas and said: “This is the path you should follow.”12 即起上馬。將車匿前行數十里。忽然見主五道大神。名曰賁識。最獨剛 強。左執弓。右持箭。腰帶利劍。所居三道之衢。一曰天道。二曰人道。 三曰三惡道。此所謂死者魂神。所當過見者也。太子到問。何道所從。賁 識惶懅。投弓。釋箭。解劍。逡巡示以天道曰。是道可從。13 The Puyao jing reads: Then the Bodhisattva marched further forward and saw the God of the Five Paths, whose name is Benshi and who dwells at the head of the 11 Yichupusa benqijing 異出菩薩本起經, T. 3, no. 188, 619b. Minor revised quotation from the translation by Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 88 13 Taizi ruiying benqi jing 太子瑞應本起經, T. 3, no. 185, 475c. 12 98 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN Five Paths. He carried a sword and held a bow and arrows. Seeing the Bodhisattva coming, he released the bow, threw the arrows away, and untied the sword. He then stepped back. Then he kowtowed at the feet of the Bodhisattva. He said to the Bodhisattva: “In the era of Brahmadeva, I received the decree of the Celestial King to guard the Five Paths, but I do not know how this system works. I am not clever and lack understanding. I hope that you can tell me the meaning of it.” The Bodhisattva said: “Although you govern the Five Paths, you do not know where these beings are going or where they have originated. If they have observed the Five Precepts, then they will become men, and if they have performed the Ten Merits, they will be reborn in Heaven. If they have been unwilling in performing these (good deeds), they will fall into the realm of the hungry ghosts. If they have behaved contrary to these [good deeds], they will become brute animals. If they have acted according to the opposite Ten Wickednesses, they will be in Hell. Free from following the Five Paths, people then return to human origin. If you do not yearn for the Five Paths, you will be free from the Five skandhas, the Three Poisons [desire, anger, and ignorance], and the Six Sources of Decay [the attractions of the six senses], and reach the state of nirvāna. Not staying in the world of living and death and not lodging in the state of nirvāna, you will reach the state of avaivartika and receive Bodhisattva predestination. You hold the worldly sword and stand guard day and night with the five weapons. I grasp the Great Sword of ultimate wisdom. I slash the courses of the Five Paths, the cycle of living and death, because all these stem from non-existence. There is no end and no beginning. It is perpetual peace and formlessness.” Benshi experienced a realization and reached the state of avaivartika. The infinite celestial deities all developed the aspiration for enlightenment. Then the Bodhisattva bravely left his household and went out through the city gate. 是菩薩稍進前行。睹五道神名曰奔識。住五道頭。帶劍執持弓箭。見菩薩 來。釋弓投箭解劍退住。尋時稽首菩薩足下。白菩薩曰。梵天之際天王見 敕。守五道路不知如之。愚不敏達惟告意旨。菩薩告曰。雖主五道不知所 歸。源所從來。五戒為人。十善生天。慳墮餓鬼。觝突畜生。十惡地獄。 無五趣行便歸人本。不慕五趣。以無五陰三毒六衰。則是泥洹。不處生死 不住泥洹。便不退轉受菩薩決。無所從生靡所不生。於諸所生悉無所生。 卿持俗刀。五兵宿衛。吾執智慧無極大劍。斷五趣生死皆至本無。無終無 始永安無形。奔識心解逮不退轉。無限天神皆發道心。於是菩薩勇猛捨 家。適出城門。14 The accounts in the Yichu pusa benqi jing and Taizi ruiying benqi jing are almost identical, except that the Yichu pusa benqi jing does not refer to Benshi as the God of the Five Paths, but as “the great god among ghostly gods.” By contrast, the encounter is presented quite differently in the Puyao jing, where Benshi appears in front of the Crown Prince just before he reaches the city gate, not after. 14 Puyao jing 普曜經, T. 3, no. 186, 507c–508a. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 99 Furthermore, the Puyao jing includes an additional section in which the Bodhisattva instructs Wudao (by means of the Buddhist moral teaching of karmic retribution) that observance of the Five Precepts and Ten Merits is the guarantee of superior rebirth. In the sixth to seventh-century Buddhist tomb inventories uncovered in Turfan, observance of this Buddhist moral teaching by the tomb’s occupant during his or her lifetime is always the pivotal issue emphasized during the transition of the deceased to the Great God of the Five Paths in the other world.15 The Puyao jing therefore seems to provide textual evidence for this practice in early medieval Turfan. 2.2. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS IN THE CHINESE VERSION OF EKOTTARĀ GAMA The Great God of the Five Paths also appears twice in the Chinese version of Ekottarāgama (Zengyi ahan jing 增壹阿含經), translated a century later by Qutan Sengjiatipo 瞿曇僧伽提婆 (Gautama Saṅ ghadeva) in 397–398 C.E. In the 25th juan of Zengyi ahan jing, the Great God is invoked by a gṛhapati for granting him a baby (along with other popular deities, Hārı̄tı̄, the twenty-eight Yakṣas, Indra, and the spirits of mountains and of trees).16 The 27th juan relates how the Buddha is afflicted by wind and tells his attendant, the Venerable Upavāṇ a 優頭槃, to fetch hot water. Upavāṇ a visualizes that a gṛhapati called Viśāla 毘舍羅, who believes in the Great God of the Five Paths but does not believe in the Buddha and has not performed meritorious deeds in life, is about to die and transmigrate to the Hell of Crying. If Viśāla provides hot water to the Buddha, this meritorious action will save him from his gruesome fate. Realizing Upavāṇ a’s intention, the Great God of the Five Paths comes to Viśāla and tells him of the beneficial consequences of aiding the Buddha. By transforming himself into an armed demonic figure, the Great God eventually persuades Viśāla to supply the hot water, which he then presents to the Buddha.17 This story parallels the tale of brahmin Devahita in the Saṃ yutta Nikāya in Pāli. Here the Buddha is likewise afflicted by wind, and brahmin Devahita supplies hot water when Upavāṇ a requests it. The Buddha tells Devahita that his meritorious action will be rewarded, and Devahita becomes a follower of the 15 Valerie Hansen, “The Path of Buddhism into China: The View from Turfan,” in Asia Major vol. 11, part 2, Turfan issue, (1998): 51–56. Zheng Acai, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 31–36. Frederick Shih-Chung Chen, “Buddhist Passports to the Other World: A Study of Modern and Early-Medieval Chinese Buddhist Mortuary Documents,” in Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China, ed. Paul Williams and Patrice Ladwig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 261–286. 16 Zengyi ahan jing 增壹阿含經, T. 2, no. 125, 683. This list of invocatory deities suggests a similarity in function between the Great God of the Five Paths and the other deities. Hārı̄tı̄ is a wellknown deity for fertility in Indian religion. The goddess and her husband Pañcika were sometimes portrayed together with children and sometimes separately in statues in northwest India around the second century C.E. It was this association with fertility and the linguistic similarity between Pañcika and pañcagati, the Five Paths, that prompted Dudbridge’s suggestion that the God of the Five Paths was probably another name for Pañcika. Nevertheless, despite these connections and the fact that Pañcika is also portrayed as an armed warrior in Indian religious scriptures and art, no parallel text of the gṛhapati (Moonlight) has been found in Indian languages, nor any other evidence in Indian or Chinese sources which might suggest that Pañcika is associated with the Five Paths. The interpretation therefore remains tentative. Ogawa Kanichi 小川貫弌, Bukkyō bunkashi kenkyū 仏教文化史研究 (Kyoto: Nagata Bunshodo, 1973), 31–79; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 89. 17 T. 2, no. 125, 700a–b. 100 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN Buddha.18 Devahita appears to be the prototype of Viśāla, but the Great God of the Five Paths is not mentioned in the Pāli source. Indeed, since we cannot find any source in Indian or other central Asian languages that contains a corresponding depiction of the Great God of the Five Paths, the origin of this additional episode remains obscure. 2.3. COUNTERPARTS OF THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS IN OTHER VERSIONS OF THE BUDDHA’S BIOGRAPHY There are two other accounts of an encounter between the Buddha and a deity that resemble the appearances of Wudao in the Indic and Chinese versions of the Buddha’s biography. First, in the extant Sanskrit and Tibetan versions of the Lalitavistara,19 it is the city deity of Kapilavastu who approaches the Crown Prince as he leaves. The city deity tries to stop the prince and begs him to stay. This episode also appears in the Mahāvastu and another Chinese version of Buddha’s biography, the Xiuxing benqi jing 修 行本起經.20 The latter reads as follows: At that time, the deity of the city gate appeared. The deity kowtowed to the Crown Prince and said, “The country Kapilavastu is in the most central part of the world. It is a rich and happy [nation] and people are secure. How is it that you are abandoning it and leaving?” The crown prince replied with the following stanza: “(The cycle of) life and death is lasting and long, the sentient beings’ spirits pass through the five destinations. May my past vow be accomplished. I shall open the door of nirvāna.” Then the city gate opened of itself. The Crown Prince left the gate and flew. 時城門神人現稽首言。迦維羅衛國。天下最為中。豐樂人民安。何故捨之 去。太子以偈答言。生死為久長 精神經五道。使我本願成 當開泥洹門。 於是城門自然便開。出門飛去。21 In the Mahāvastu, the city deity is referred to as the goddess Nagaradevatā.22 The episode is also illustrated in the Gandhara reliefs, where the goddess stands in 18 Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans., The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Saṃ yutta Nikāya vol. 1 (Oxford: The Pali Text Society, 2000), 269–271. 19 Foucaux, Le Lalita vistara, 195–196; Gwendolyn Bays, The Voice of the Buddha: The Beauty of Compassion, Translated into English from the French by Gwendolyn Bays (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1983), 334–335. 20 According to the Chu sanzang jiji 出三藏記集, the current version of the Xiuxing benqi jing was probably developed from a prototype version called the Xiao benqi jing 小本起經. Chu sanzang jiji by Sengyou 僧祐 (445—518), T. 55, no. 2145, 16c. Kawano Satoshi holds that the Taizi ruiying benqi jing was probably edited by Zhi Qian from the Xiao benqi jing and another of Kang Mengxiang’s translations, the Zhong benqi jing 中本起經. Kawano Satoshi 河野 訓, “Shoki Chū goku Bukkyō no Butsuden o meguru sho mondai: Shugyō honki kyō ni kanren shite 初期中国仏教の仏伝をめぐる諸問題「修行本起経」に関連して,” Tō yō bunka kenkyū jo kiyō 東洋文化研究所紀要 113 (1991): 127–176. 21 Xiuxing benqi jing 修行本起經 (translated by Zhu Dali 竺大力 and Kang Mengxiang 康孟 詳 in 197 C.E.), T. 3, no. 184, 468a. 22 J. J. Jones, The Mahāvastu, Translated from the Buddhist Sanskrit Vol. II (London: Luzac, 1952), 159. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 101 front of the Crown Prince who is on a horse.23 This image of a goddess is quite different from the warrior image of Wudao. The other similar story is a well-known episode in the Southern Buddhist tradition whose textual origin goes back as far as the Nidānakathā.24 After he leaves the city gate, the Crown Prince encounters Māra: At the selfsame moment, Māra came there with the intention of making the Bodhisatta turn back; and, remaining in the sky, he said, “Friend, do not depart; on the seventh day from today the wheel of empire will manifest itself to you. You will reign over the four great continents with their surrounding islands numbering two thousand. Turn back, O hero.” “Who are you?” “I am Vasavatti.” “Māra, I know full well of the wheel of empire manifesting itself, but for sovereignty I have no use. I will become a Buddha, causing the ten thousand world-systems to resound.” Then Māra said, “Whenever a reflection of lust, hatred, or malice arises in your mind from now on, I will know of it”; and followed him closely like his shadow, without going away from his side, waiting for an opportunity to seize him.25 This encounter is depicted in many Buddhist sculptures and paintings. In one Gandharan relief, Channa holds the royal parasol on the right, the prince is on horseback in the center, and Māra dressed as a warrior stands on the left.26 Similar images may be seen in a Burmese painting of the Buddha’s biography held by the British library.27 Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky has noticed the similarity between Māra the warrior here and Wudao in the Chinese versions. Indeed, she perceives Wudao as Māra, and has translated Wudao in the Taizi ruiying benqi jing as Māra.28 Māra is also mentioned in a parallel context in one Chinese version, the 23 Ratan Parimoo, Life of Buddha in Indian Sculpture (ashta-maha-pratiharya): An Iconological Analysis (New Delhi: Kanak Publications, 1982), 78–79, see fig. 114 and 115. 24 This is an introduction to stories of the past lives of the Buddha Gotama in the Jātaka, believed to have been edited by the eminent fifth-century Buddhaghoṣa. 25 Quotation from N. A. Jayawickrama, The Story of Gotama Buddha: the Nidāna-kathā of the Jātakatthakathā (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1990), 84–85; Alexander C. Soper. “Aspects of Light Symbolism in Gandhāran Sculpture,” Artibus Asiae 13 (1950): 63–85. 26 Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, The Life of the Buddha: Ancient Scriptural and Pictorial Traditions (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992), 239, see fig. 34. 27 Patricia M. Herbert, The Life of the Buddha (London: The British Library, 1992), see the painting on 29–30. 28 Karetzky, The Life of the Buddha, 72–73, 239. Karetzky cites a further image of the warrior Māra during this encounter in the Qizil caves. Karetzky, Early Buddhist Narrative Art: Illustrations of the Life of the Buddha from Central Asia to China, Korea, and Japan (Lanham, Md.; Oxford: University Press of America, 2000), 30. 102 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN Fo benxing ji jing 佛本行集經 (T. 3, no. 190),29 though his role there is that of a troublemaker who tries to terrify the prince and foil his departure by means of magic. The Yichu pusa benqi jing, which might predate the Taizi ruiying benqi jing, does not call Benshi “the God of the Five Paths,” but simply “the great god among ghostly gods,” a phrase that often refers to Māra. According to the Dictionary of Pā li Proper Names, Māra could be the personification of the realm of rebirth.30 It seems possible that this embedded meaning of Mā ra was adapted in the Chinese versions into the role of Wudao in this episode. On the other hand, the role of Mā ra in the Nidānakathā as a tempter differs substantially from the role of Wudao as a submissive figure in the three Chinese versions. If Wudao is a Chinese adaptation of Māra, one may question why Māra’s character has been altered in this way. 2.4. THE MEANING OF BENSHI Despite Dudbridge’s tentative suggestion of Pañcika, no Indic equivalent of the name of the Great God of the Five Paths, Benshi 賁識 or 奔識, has so far been found. The Yiqiejing yinyi 一切經音義 (Pronunciation and Meaning in the Complete Buddhist Canon) by Shi Huilin 釋慧琳 (737–820 C.E.) offers this entry: Benshi: it stems from the name of the God of the Five Paths. In the light of its literal meaning in the Zhouyi (the Book of Change), 賁 means decoration, and is also said to mean colorless. 賁識: 彼寄反五道神名也。依字周易賁者飾也。又曰賁無色也。31 It seems that Huilin likewise could not find an equivalent to Benshi in any Indic language and therefore resorted to the meanings of the character in the Chinese Classics. This may suggest that he considered the name to have a Chinese origin. His interpretation based on the Zhouyi is nevertheless problematic. The character 賁 in Classical Chinese has several different meanings with distinct pronunciations. It is pronounced as fen when it means large. When it denotes decoration as one of the trigram signs in the Zhouyi, it reads as bi. The character can also be a variation form of 奔, which means running and has the same pronunciation.32 As the God of the Five Paths was referred to as either賁識 or 奔識 in the Chinese versions of the 29 Fo benxing ji jing 佛本行集經 (translated by Shenajueduo 闍那崛多 [Jñānagupta] during 587–591 C.E.). T. 3, no. 190, 732a. 30 “Generally regarded as the personification of Death, the Evil One, the Tempter (the Buddhist counterpart of the Devil or Principle of Destruction) … . It is evidently with this same significance that the term Māra, in the older books, is applied to the whole of the worldly existence of the five khandhas (the collection of the five compositional elements of our existence), or the realm of rebirth, as opposed to Nibbāna.” G. P. Malalasekera, Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names Vol. II (Oxford: The Pali Text Society, 1997), 611–612. With regard to sources referring to Māra as the personification of Death and the cycle of rebirth, also see Stephen F. Teiser, Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), 77–79. 31 Yiqiejing yinyi 一切經音義, T. 54, no. 2128, 673. 32 Wang Li 王力, ed., Guhanyu changyong zidian 古漢語常用字字典 (Beijing: Commercial Press, 2000), 11. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 103 Life of the Buddha, it seems that the character’s third meaning is more applicable in this context. Furthermore, in the ancient classics, while 賁 was considered a variant of 奔, it did not only signify running but was also associated in many situations with a famous warrior called Meng Ben 孟賁(奔) of the Warring States period. Meng Ben, renowned for stupendous strength and bravery, could pull a bull’s horn off with his bare hands.33 King Wu of the Qin 秦武王 (r. 310–307 B.C.E.) admired strong and brave men, so the likes of Meng Ben became his subordinates. His name ben 賁 often appears alongside that of another noted warrior, Xia Yu 夏育, to signify bravery, 賁育之勇.34 The image of Meng Ben as a fearsome warrior could be found among the historical figures inscribed on the walls of tombs during the Han dynasty.35 The appropriation of the imperial bureaucracy as a metaphor for the administration of the other world has been a distinctive feature of Chinese religions since the early imperial era. A text about human resurrection excavated in Fangmatan 放馬灘 suggests that, even before the end of the fourth century B.C.E., there was a religious belief in a bureaucratic position in the other world responsible for the Life-mandate of human beings, and that this post was filled by a dead mortal who had been a noted officer.36 Could the name of Wudao, Benshi, relate to the historical warrior Meng Ben? Furthermore, in Later Han funeral texts of the second century, we frequently see the following sentence: “The living pertains to the number nine; the dead pertains to the number five. 生人得九 死人得五.”37 A celestial ordinance on the surface of the tomb-quelling basin found in Zhang Shujing’s 張 叔 敬 tomb, dated 174 C.E., reads: The Yellow God created the five sacred peaks. He takes charge of the welfare (or roster) of the living. He summons the spirit souls and vital souls, and controls the archives of the dead. 黃 神 生 五 嶽, 主 生 (死)人 祿 (錄); 召 魂 召 魄, 主 死 人 籍.38 33 Zhao Qi 趙岐 and Sun Shi 孫奭, ed., Mengzi zhushu 孟子注疏 (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1999), 85. 34 Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1971), 79: 2407, 101: 2739. 35 Zeng Zhaoyu 曾昭燏, Jiang Baogeng 蔣寶庚, Li Zhongyi 黎忠義, Yinan guhuaxiang shimu fajue baogao 沂南古畫像石墓發掘報告 (Beijing: Wenhuabu wenwu guanliju, 1956), 40, fig. 44. 36 Li Xueqin 李學勤, “Fangmatan jianzhong de zhiguai gushi 放馬灘簡中的志怪故事,” Wenwu 1990, no. 4: 43–47; Lothar von Falkenhausen, “Sources of Taoism: Reflections on Archaeological Indicators of Religious Change in Eastern Zhou China,” Taoist Resources 5, no. 2 (1994): 1–12; Donald Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion,” Taoist Resources 5, no. 2 (1994): 13–28. 37 Ikeda On 池田溫, “Chū goku rekidai boken ryakkō 中國歷代墓券略考,” Tō yō bunka kenkyū jo kiyō 東洋文化研究所紀要 86 (1981): 273. This English translation is quoted from Anna Seidel, “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs,” in Dō kyō to shū kyō bunka 道教と宗教文化, ed. Akizuki Kan’ei 秋月觀暎 (Tokyo: Hirakawa Shuppansha, 1987), 31. 38 Ikeda, “Chū goku rekidai boken ryakkō ,” 273, no. 6. Given the context, some scholars consider that the character 死 here should be a typo of 生. There are also different interpretations on whether the character 祿 (welfare) should be the character 錄 (roster). 104 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN After researching the symbolic meaning of the number five in Later Han mortuary texts, Peter Nickerson has concluded that … . five, the number of the dead, pertains to China’s five sacred mountains or Marchmounts, the horizontally deployed five directions and other quintuplets that figure importantly in mortuary belief.39 The Buddhist conception of the five destinations of rebirth seems to match the mortuary symbolism of number five and its association with the registration of the dead at the five sacred mountains in early Chinese religion. 2.5. A POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS Following Ved Seth’s comparative approach to the study of the Buddha’s biography in Indic languages, my examination of parallels to the appearance of Wudao in the episode of “The Great Departure” in different Indic and Chinese versions reveals a similar degree of variety in points of detail. This suggests that, within the overall framework of the storyline, flexibility of adaptation continued when the Buddha’s biography was transmitted to Chinese audiences. Like the various Indian versions of the Life of the Buddha, the Chinese versions (such as the three that include the God of the Five Paths) did not simply parrot earlier texts, but were part of an ongoing process of evolution. This is consistent with Dudbridge’s surmise that the Great God of the Five Paths could have been coined by a Chinese translator on the basis of a linguistic link with the Sanskrit term for the Five Paths, pañcagati. Despite the absence of an identical counterpart to Wudao in Indic sources, textual and linguistic analysis offers clues to the formation of the character. The title of Benshi as “the great god among ghostly gods” in the Yichu pusa benqi jing and the warrior images of Benshi in the episode of “The Great Departure” in all three Chinese versions call to mind the similar warrior image of Māra in the Nidā nakathā and the embedded meaning of Māra as the personification of the realm of rebirth (even though the reported conversation between Māra and the prince differs greatly from the encounter with the God of the Five Paths). On the other hand, linguistic examination of the Chinese name of the Great God of the Five Paths, Benshi, shows that the first character of the name, ben, was usually associated in classical texts with the fearless warrior Meng Ben of the Warring States period. The title of the deity, referring to the Buddhist idea of the five paths, also corresponds to the mortuary symbolism of the number five and the five sacred mountains in early Chinese religion. Coming on top of Dudbridge’s suggestion of a linguistic link between Wudao and pañcagati, it seems to me that these textual and linguistic parallels are not accidental, but are possible causes of the early formation of the character of the Great God of the Five Paths. 39 Peter Nickerson, “‘Let Living and Dead Take Separate Paths’—Bureaucratization and Textualisation in Early Chinese Mortuary Ritual,” in Daoism in History—Essays in Honour of Liu Ts’un-yan, ed. Benjamin Penny (Oxon: Routledge, 2006), 22. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 105 3. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS IN EARLY MEDIEVAL TIMES AS RECORDED IN MEDIEVAL CHINESE SOURCES: THE CULT OF A POPULAR GOD OUTSIDE BUDDHISM? Despite the earliest account of Wudao deriving from Chinese versions of the Buddha’s biography, a limited number of historical records edited in the later Tang and Song dynasties say that Wudao had already been a popular god or demonic figure outside Buddhist circles during the early medieval period. In particular, the thirteenth-century Shimen zhengtong 釋門正統 (The Orthodoxy of Buddhism, X. 75, no. 1513) refers to a sacrificial cult of Wudao during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Liang (r. 502–549 C.E.).40 Anthropological studies of Northern China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries also record the existence in rural regions of Wudao cults that were not affiliated to Buddhist temples.41 Oda regarded this as evidence of the transformation of Wudao from a deity in Buddhist scripture into a god of popular religions in the historical context of the Sinification of Chinese Buddhism. Dudbridge, however, saw these modern anthropological reports as confirmation of the early narratives of Wudao as a deity outside Buddhist circles.42 It needs to be borne in mind that the few later medieval accounts from which scholars have inferred the existence of non-Buddhist cults of Wudao during the early medieval period are all historical “scoops,” unsupported by other records. Whether they reflect a real historical cult of the Five Paths is therefore questionable. In this section, I investigate claims of a popular Wudao cult during the early medieval period by examining a wider range of early medieval and medieval textual and archaeological sources concerning the deity. This will demonstrate that all materials relating to Wudao from the fifth and sixth centuries are actually Buddhist in the sense that they are either texts from formal Buddhist genres or items of material culture with a predominance of Buddhist iconography. Meanwhile, contextual examination of the later medieval accounts of a non-Buddhist cult of Wudao during the early medieval period will show the likelihood of their being fabricated tales designed as propaganda against rival contemporary cults. 3.1. THE BUDDHIST WUDAO IN THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES The Great God of the Five Paths is mentioned in one of the most popular early medieval Chinese indigenous Buddhist scriptures, the Jingdu sanmei jing 淨度三昧經 (Samādhi-Sū tra of Liberation through Purification), which can be dated not later than the mid fifth century C.E. The scripture highlights the importance of abstinence 40 303c Shimen zhengtong 釋門正統 (completed by Zongjian 宗鑑 in 1237 C.E.), X. 75, no. 1513, 41 Willem A. Grootaers, The Sanctuaries in a North-China City: A Complete Survey of the Cultic Buildings in the City of Hsüan-hua (Chahar) (Bruxelles: Institut belge des hautes études chinoises, 1995), 76–82; Hsiao Kung-Chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 1960), 632; Chū goku nō sō n kankō chō sa kankō kai 中國農村慣行調查刊行會, ed., Chū goku nō sō n kankō chō sa 中國農村慣行調查 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, vol. no. 1, 1953), 210–211; Daniel L. Overmyer, Local Religion in North China in the Twentieth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 43, 129; Stephen Jones, In Search of the Folk Daoists of North China (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 55, 192. 42 Oda, “Godō daijin kō ,” 14–29. Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 96–98. 106 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN on the Days of the Eight Kings, a Buddhist appropriation of the Daoist eight seasonal days associated with the periodic inspection and report of human beings’ deeds by the Eight Trigram Deities. The narration of the otherworld bureaucratic process of inspection is probably derived from the Buddhist text of the Four Great Kings and the fourteenth chapter of the Laozi zhongjing 老子中經 (the Central Scriptures of Laozi). Wudao is referred to as the Great King of the Five Paths (Wudao dawang 五道大王) in a hybrid list of otherworld warrior and messenger deities from indigenous Chinese popular religions as well as similar Buddhist inspecting deities.43 The significance of Wudao as the otherworld guardian is evident from the earliest Chinese Buddhist otherworld passport excavated in Turfan, dated from the midsixth to mid-seventh centuries, and also from a wooden tablet of the same period dedicated to a lady named Wang Jiangfei 王江妃, uncovered in Shandong 山東.44 Buddhist otherworld passports appropriated the style and form of indigenous Chinese funeral passports that were themselves modeled on secular official documents, a practice dating back to the Han dynasty and later adopted by the Daoists. These earliest Buddhist otherworld passports always emphasize observance of the Buddhist Five Precepts and Ten Merits as guarantees of protection and wellbeing in the other world. The mortuary passport of Wang Jiangfei was filed by her husband Gao Qiao 高僑, who is called a disciple of Śākyamuni Buddha at the start of the text, and it was endorsed by Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara as scribe and Bodhisattva Vimalakı̄rti as witness. It instructs Wudao to protect Lady Wang and her belongings during her journey to the other world, regarding him as an otherworld bureaucratic god within a hybrid pantheon of Buddhist and indigenous Chinese deities plus regional otherworld bureaucrats. This shows how the hybrid model of the Buddhist otherworld bureaucracy was not only recorded in indigenous Chinese Buddhist scriptures like the Jingdu sanmei jing, but also embodied in mortuary practice during the same period. By contrast, the Turfan Buddhist tomb inventories dating from the mid-sixth to the mid-seventh centuries were supposed to be filed by a Buddhist monk, and the Great God of the Five Paths 五道大神 is the only otherworld bureaucratic deity mentioned in the text (though two indigenous Chinese otherworld spirits are cited as witnesses).45 In the postscript to a manuscript of the Guanyin jing 觀音經 (Sū tra of Avalokiteśvara), handwritten in 770 C.E., Wudao is the direct supervisory deity 43 Jingdu sanmei jing 淨度三昧經, X, no. 15, 371c; Laozi zhongjing 老子中經, in Yunji qiqian 雲笈七籤, ed. Zhang Junfang 張君房 (Ji’nan: Qilu shushe, 1988), juan 18. Frederick Shih-Chung Chen, “Who Are the Eight Kings in the Samādhi-Sū tra of Liberation through Purification? Otherworld Bureaucrats in India and China,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., vol. 26, part 1 (2013): 55–78; Harumi Hirano Ziegler, The Sinification of Buddhism as Found in an Early Chinese Indigenous Sū tra: A Study and Translation of the Fo-shuo Ching-tu San-mei Ching (Samādhi-Sū tra of Liberation through Purification) (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001), 313–314. 44 Hansen, “The Path of Buddhism into China: The View from Turfan,” 51–56; Zheng Acai. “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 31–36; Chen, “Buddhist Passports to the Other World,” 261–286. Duan Fang 端方, ed., Taozhai cangshi ji 陶齋臧石記 (1909), 13: 6a─8a; Asami Naoichirō 浅見直一郎, “Chū goku Nambokuchō jidai no sō sō bunshu —Hokusei Muhei yonnen ‘O Kō hi zuisō ibutsuso’ o chū shin ni—中国南北朝時代の葬送文書-北 斉武平四年『王江妃随葬衣物疏』を中心に,” Kodai bunka 古代文化 42, no. 4 (1990): 1–19. 45 Hansen, “The Path of Buddhism into China: The View from Turfan,” 51–56; Zheng Acai, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 31–36; Chen, “Buddhist Passports to the Other World,” 261–286. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 107 of one Li Sizhuang 黎思莊, monitoring his fulfillment of Buddhist commitments.46 This difference suggests two perceptions of Wudao in early medieval Buddhist contexts: he could either be the major otherworld bureaucratic deity to devotees or else merely one of several in a hybrid Buddhist Pantheon. An image of Wudao appears on an early medieval Buddhist votive stele (excavated in Fuping 富平 county of Shaanxi 陜西 province) offered by a person called Fan Nuzi 樊奴子 in 532 C.E. to his deceased ancestors, calling for their better rebirth and achievement of future Buddhahood. On the lower part of the back side of the stele, Wudao and Yama are depicted as gods of judgement who interrogate, torture, and punish deceased sinners.47 This association of Wudao with Yama as otherworld judges in the Buddhist context was also made by Tao Hongjing, a prominent early medieval Daoist, contemporary with Emperor Wu of the Liang. In a chapter entitled “Elucidation of the secluded and the subtle” 闡幽微 in the Zhen’gao, Tao commented: Here must be where the northern ghost king of Mt. Luofeng 羅酆山 determines and judges criminals, which likely is the lodge of the god called King Yama in the scriptures. The king is nowadays the Great Emperor of the North.48 However, I do not know who the Great God of the Five Paths is. All sentient beings, when they die, are subordinate to him. 此即應是北酆鬼王決斷罪人住處。其神即應是經呼爲閻羅王所住處也。其 王即今北大帝也。但不知五道大神當是何者爾。凡生生之類其死莫不隸 之。49 This gives us a glimpse of how the Great God of the Five Paths was perceived by a religious scholar during Emperor Wu’s time. Apparently, Tao was uncertain about the origin and identity of the deity. Despite this, the God of the Five Paths was placed just behind Yama. Tao Hongjing may have envisaged the God of the Five 46 27, 29. This manuscript is held by the Museum of Calligraphy, Tokyo; Oda, “Godō daijin kō ,” 47 Zhang Zong 張總, “Yanluowang shoujijing zhuibu yankao 閻羅王授記經綴補研考,” Journal of the Dunhuang and Turfan Studies 敦煌吐魯番研究 5 (2000): 103, 115, see fig. 3; Mao Fengzhi 毛鳳枝, “Guanzhong shike wenzi xinbian 關中石刻文字新編,” in Shike shiliao xinbian 石刻史料新編 (Taipei: Xinwenfeng, 1982), 22: 16873–16877; Chen Dengwu 陳登武, Cong renjianshi dao youmingjie: Tangdai de fazhi shehui yu guojia 從人間世到幽冥界唐代的法 制社會與國家 (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2007), 278–279. 48 Besides the association with Mt. Luofeng and the Northern Ghost King in the Daoist context, the association of King Yama with the Great Emperor of the North in the Buddhist context is likely related to an apocryphal account entitled “The reason why King Yama and his subjects became the bureaucrats of Hell in the past” (閻羅王等為獄司往緣), allegedly quoted from the Wen diyu jing 問地獄經 (“Sū tra on Questions on Hells”). In this fable, the prominent disciple of the Buddha, King Bimbisāra, became Yama in the underworld after a fateful defeat in battle and he was then subject to the Northern Celestial King, Vaiśravaṇ a. Sengmin 僧旻 and Baochang 寶唱, etc., ed., Jinglü yixiang 經律異相, T. 53, no. 2121, 259a–b. Frederick Shih-Chung Chen, “In Search of the Origin of the Enumeration of Hell-kings in an Early Medieval Chinese Buddhist Scripture: Why Did King Bimbisāra Become Yama after His Disastrous Defeat in Battle in the Wen diyu jing 問地獄經 (’Sū tra on Questions on Hells’)?” Buddhist Studies Review 31, no. 1 (2014): 53–64. 49 Zhen’gao, CT 1016, 189–190. 108 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN Paths as a deity from outside his own religious circle, yet likely to play a role similar to King Yama as judge of the deceased.50 Another early medieval Daoist scripture, Nüqing guilü 女青鬼律 (Code of Nüqing for [Controlling] Demons, CT 790), also interprets Wudao as a profane juridical spirit in the other world: The Thrice Venerable Demon of the Southern Township is the Demon of the Five Paths of the profane [su, but here the Buddhists?]. He is surnamed Che and has the personal name of Ni. He is in charge of inquisitions and calculations for the registers of the dead; the sins of the living [also] are all directed there. This demon dwells on the northwest spur of Mount Tai and also has subordinate officials.51 南鄉三老鬼、俗五道鬼，姓車，名匿，主諸死人錄籍，考計生人罪，皆向 之。此鬼在太山西北角，亦有官屬。52 Here the God of the Five Paths is seen as a profane spirit responsible for recording the deceased and the sins of the living. However, his name is not Benshi, but Che Ni (Channa), who was one of the Buddha’s retinue when he left Kapilavastu (as mentioned in the Chinese versions of the Life of the Buddha discussed in the previous section). This looks like a simple mistake of the name of a Buddhist figure, but it does suggest that the author of the Nüqing guilü was aware that the God of the Five Paths was associated with Buddhism. Thus, in the extant textual and archaeological sources of the fifth and sixth centuries, Wudao is always considered as a deity or spirit relevant to Buddhism rather than as the pagan god of a sacrificial cult outside the Buddhist domain. 3.2. THE THREE LATER MEDIEVAL ACCOUNTS OF THE CULT OF WUDAO The idea that there was a sacrificial cult of Wudao outside the Buddhist context during the sixth century generally rests on three accounts dating from the later medieval period. As they are isolated historical documents, without related historical or archaeological sources to verify them, their authenticity is open to question. I shall here examine the three texts in chronological order. The Sanguo dianlüe 三國典略, an unofficial historical record dating from the eighth century,53 mentions the God of the Five Paths in its account of the dream of the wife of Cui Jishu 崔季舒, a courtier in the Northern Wei dynasty ruled by the nomadic Xianbei 鮮卑 tribes. It has been suggested that this shows the deity as a monstrous malicious spirit outside the Buddhist system. The relevant passage, dated to the tenth month of the second year of Jiande 建 德 (573 C.E.), reads: 50 Ibid. The translation is quoted from Peter Nickerson, “Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1996), 554. 52 Nüqing guilü, CT 790, 1: 1–2. 53 Qiu Yue 丘悅, Sanguo dianlüe jijiao 三國典略輯校, ed. Glen Dudbridge and Zhao Chao 趙 超 (Taipei: Dongda, 1998). 51 THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 109 (Before Cui Jishu was murdered), the lotus stalks in the pool at the home of the Specially Promoted Palace Attendant Cui Jishu all turned into faces of barbarian men who still wore Xianbei hats. Soon after, Jishu saw these unfortunate spirits. And his wife had a daytime nightmare from which she awoke to say that she had seen a man who was ten feet tall and covered all over in black hair about to come and press close to her. A shaman said: “This is the General of the Five Paths: it is an ill omen when he enters your house.”54 (崔季舒未遇害)，特進侍中崔季舒宅中池內，蓮莖皆作胡人面，仍著鮮卑 帽，俄而季舒見煞。妻晝魘魘，寤云:「見人長一丈，遍體黑毛，欲來逼 己。」巫曰:「此是五道將軍，入宅者不祥。」55 Glen Dudbridge maintains that, since this description of the General of the Five Paths as a monstrous hairy figure comes from a shaman and not from a Buddhist monk, it shows the deity devoid of Buddhist character and outside the Buddhist milieu. In his view, it therefore matches the later Song historians’ delineation of the cult of Wudao in the sixth century.56 It should be noted, however, that apart from the narration of the General of the Five Paths as a bad omen and a malign spirit in the shaman’s interpretation of the looming ill fate of Cui, there is no mention of whether any religious measure or ritual was performed by the shaman to prevent the impending misfortune by appeasing the ill spirit, Wudao. That is to say, this account does not have any indication that Wudao is a deity to be worshipped or appeased by the shaman’s cult through any religious rituals or sacrifices for good consequence.57 In this respect, Wudao here is quite distinct from the deity of the sixth-century popular cult of the God of the Five Paths recorded in the Shimen zhengtong. In addition, according to official historical records, Cui Jishu was a henchman of the then prime minister, Gao Cheng 高澄, elder brother of the founder of the next dynasty, the Northern Qi. Cui is notorious for punching Emperor Xiaojing 孝靜 of the Eastern Wei and conspiring with Gao Cheng in a failed attempt to usurp the throne. Gao Cheng’s brother, Gao Yang 高洋, later succeeded in usurping the throne and massacring the Xianbei royal 54 Minor modification of the quotation as translated by Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 92. 55 Minor modification of Dudbridge and Zhao’s edition. Sanguo dianlüe jijiao, 187–188. The quotation appears in the entry on shamans in the Song dynasty encyclopedia, Taiping yulan. Taiping yulan 太平御覽 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960), 734: 15b–16a. The first part of the story is also recorded in more detail in the entry on lotus in the Taiping yulan, where it is attributed to the official history of the Northern Qi dynasty, Beiqi shu 北齊書, rather than the Sanguo dianlüe. 《北齊書》曰：後主武平中，特進侍中崔季舒宅中池內，蓮莖皆作胡人面，仍著鮮卑帽，俄而 季舒見煞。Taiping yulan, 975: 6a–b. The surviving version of Beiqi shu does not include this material. As it gives fuller meaning to the whole sentence, however, I have adapted this quotation instead of using the abridged sentence in Dudbridge’s version (崔季舒未遇害，家池蓮莖化為(胡)人 面，着鮮卑帽。). 56 Sanguo dianlüe jijiao, 29. Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 92. 57 Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 92; Sanguo dianlüe jijiao, 187–188. 110 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN family.58 The idea that Cui before his death saw lotus stalks turned into faces of barbarian men “who still wore Xianbei hats” could therefore be interpreted as an omen of impending vengeance by the deceased royal family. The story, rather than relating to a real historical incident, may have arisen from Cui’s ill reputation. Even if it did have a historical basis, the story only suggests that, in the sixth century, the God of the Five Paths was included in the interpretations of a shamanic cult. It does not confirm the later accounts of a popular cult of the God of the Five Paths during that period. The chief medieval source supporting the idea of a popular cult of Wudao is the thirteenth-century Shimen zhengtong (The Orthodoxy of Buddhism). This is a history of Buddhism that presents the Tiantai School 天台宗 as the standard of orthodoxy in much the same way as Chinese official histories legitimate rulers and dynasties. It was compiled in the then heartland of the Tiantai School, the Lower Yangzi region, and was eventually completed by a Tiantai monk called Zongjian 宗鑑. In the “Monograph on benefitting living beings” 利生志, it records that Wudao was the chief deity of a popular sacrificial cult outside Buddhist circles in the Lower Yangzi region during the reign of Emperor Wu of Liang. In order to stop the practice of killing for sacrifices, the Buddhist emperor reformed the cult (as he did others) by imposing a Buddhist way of vegetarian sacrifice, called the “Six Paths.”59 Both Oda and Dudbridge noticed the resemblance between this narration and several anthropological reports from Northern China, written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that record the existence of a deep-rooted Wudao cult in rural regions whose ritual practice was outside Buddhist authority.60 In Willem A. Grootaers’s report on Xuanhua 宣化, Chahar, for instance, Wudao temples are described as small roadside shrines very popular with local people. 61 Li Jinghan 李景漢, in a report on the Ding 定 county of Hebei 河北, noted that bereaved families, on the night of a death, brought candles, papers, lamps, alcohol, and food to the Wudao temple in order to make a sacrifice for the deceased.62 These reports do indeed offer parallels to the “excessive” cult of Wudao mentioned in the Shimen zhengtong, giving rise to an assumption that Wudao had probably been a popular god outside Buddhist circles ever since early medieval times.63 Early medieval historical and archaeological sources record the efforts of several 58 Wei Shou 魏收, Weishu 魏書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 12: 313; Li Baiyao 李百藥, Beiqi shu 北齊書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 3: 36–37; Li Yanshou 李延壽, Beishi 北史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 5: 196–197, 80: 2697; Sanguo dianlüe jijiao, 17. 59 Shimen zhengtong, X. 75, no. 1513, 303c; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 91; Sawada Mizuho 澤田瑞穗, Jigoku hen–Chū goku no meikaisetsu 地獄變―中國の冥界說 (Kyoto: Hō zō kan, 1968), 90–91; Oda, “Godō daijin kō ,” 27. 60 Grootaers, The Sanctuaries in a North-China City, 76–82; Hsiao Kung-Chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, 632; Chū goku nō sō n kankō chō sa kankō kai, ed., “Chū goku nō sō n kankō chō sa,” 210–211. 61 Grootaers, The Sanctuaries in a North-China City, 77; Daniel L. Overmyer also cites local histories in North China suggesting that there was a Wudao temple in just about every village. Overmyer, Local Religion in North China in the Twentieth Century, 43, 129. 62 Li Jinghan 李景漢, ed., Dingxian shehui gaikuang diaocha 定縣社會概況調查 (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 1986), 432. For other accounts on reporting deaths to the Temple of Wudao in North China, see Stephen Jones, In Search of the Folk Daoists of North China, 55, 192. 63 Sawada, Jigoku hen, 90–91; Oda, “Godō daijin kō ,” 27; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 91. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 111 ardent Buddhists during the fifth and sixth centuries to impose vegetarian reform on popular sacrificial cults in the Lower Yangzi region, such as Li Anmin (李安民, 429– 486 C.E.) on the cult of Xiang Yu 項羽 in Wuxing 吳興 and Emperor Wu of the Liang on the cult of Jiang Ziwen 蔣子文.64 Nevertheless, despite Emperor Wu being famous for his vegetarian reforms, there is no historical record of the cult of Wudao during his reign before the Shimen zhengtong. As noticed previously, even the Emperor’s eminent contemporary Tao Hongjing, writing his comment in the Zhen’gao, admitted that he was not familiar with the deity. The report in the Shimen zhengtong demands much closer scrutiny than it has hitherto received from scholars. It occurs within an account of the prominent vegetarian reformer and Tiantai Master, Ciyun Zunshi 慈雲遵式 (964–1032 C.E.). The paragraph that mentions the cult of Wudao also covers Zunshi’s teaching on no-killing for the sake of all sentient beings in the Six Paths, the explanation of the ritual of shishi 施食 (offering food), his criticism of the worship of ghosts for blessing, his performance of an exorcism to convert a temple of the cult of the White Crane from blood sacrifice to vegetarian offerings, and the origins of another famous Buddhist ceremony for the deceased, the ceremony of Water and Land 水陸會, likewise attributed to the time of Emperor Wu. The term “Water and Land” is derived, we are told, from the saying that immortals acquire food in flowing water while ghosts acquire food in a pure place (i.e., where monks dwell: 又有所謂水陸者,取諸仙致食於流水鬼致食於淨地之義).65 Much of this material can also be found in the Jinyuan ji 金園集 (X. 57, no. 950), a collection of Zunshi’s teachings, re-edited in 1151 C.E by his fifth-generation dharma disciple, Huiguang 慧觀, and in the biography of Zunshi recorded by the Song Chan monk Qisong 契嵩 (1007–1072 C.E.) in the Tanjin wenji 鐔津文集 on the basis of what he heard from Zunshi’s disciple, Zushao 祖韶.66 It is therefore very likely that the compilers of the Shimen zhengtong drew on these two sources. With regard to sacrifice to the Six Paths, the account in the section on the rectification of the meaning of shishi ritual 施食正名 in the Jinyuan ji reads: During the Tianjian period of the Liang, killing was halted in the world. By using similar Buddhist procedures, a sacrifice to the Six Paths was instituted to replace the excessive cults in the Lower Yangzi region. The vegetarian food and thick soup are to exempt us from sacrificing sheep. Now we inherit this [sacrifice]. As it is not a convention, it is essential to verify it. 梁天監，天下止殺。乃用相似佛法設六道之祭，代江東淫祀。蔬食菜羹， 免我犧羊。今之承之，既非彝訓，不能無考故。67 64 Xiao Zixian 蕭子顯, Nanqi shu 南齊書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,1982) 27: 508; Li Bo 李 柏, “You Xiang Yu rufo kan Qi Liang Fojiao de minjianhua 由項羽入佛看齊梁佛教的民間化,” Henan Shifan Daxue xuebao 河南師範大學學報 36, no. 3 (2008): 216; Daoxuan 道宣, Guang Hongming ji 廣弘明集, T. 52, no. 2103: 297b23–c3; Lin Fu-shih 林富士, “The Cult of Jiang Ziwen in Medieval China,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 10 (1998): 370–371; Chen, “In Search of the Origin of the Enumeration of Hell-Kings in an Early Medieval Chinese Buddhist Scripture,” 60–61. 65 X. 75, no. 1513, 303. 66 Qisong 契嵩, Tanjin wenji 鐔津文集, T. 52, no. 2115, 713b: 27—715c. 67 Huiguang 慧觀 ed., Jinyuan ji 金園集, X. 57, no. 950, 10c. 112 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN This Buddhist way of vegetarian sacrifice, “the Six Paths” described here, is nearly the same as that said in the Shimen Zhengtong to have been imposed by Emperor Wu of Liang on the cult of Wudao, except Wudao is not mentioned. It is important to notice that the Jinyuan ji presents the sacrifice of the Six Paths not as a conventional practice of the time of Zunshi, but as a “revived ritual” from the time of Emperor Wu. The explanation of the term “Water and Land” contained in the Shimen zhengtong is also found in the Jinyuan ji at the start of this same section.68 According to the Shimen zhengtong, after the Liang dynasty, the ceremony of Water and Land was not transmitted until Master Daoying 道英 acquired the text in the ninth century.69 However, as Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮 has pointed out, there is no historical proof that the rite had its origins in the time of Emperor Wu of Liang. It was probably fabricated later, adapted perhaps from popular Tantric Buddhist rituals during the late Tang period.70 Since the earliest textual sources about sacrifice to the Six Paths are associated with Zunshi, it is advisable to take a closer look at the life of this Buddhist vegetarian reformer. According to the Tanjin wenji, Zunshi was known not only for his promotion of the teachings of the Tiantai School in the Lower Yangzi region, but also as a keen vegetarian propagandist who rectified excessive practices by restoring the so-called old principle.71 Two episodes in the biography are specifically concerned with his vegetarian reform of local cults. One tells of his exorcism of the temple of the White Crane and the other describes his promotion of vegetarianism in Hangzhou and Suzhou. The texts read as follows: For those towns which previously performed excessive sacrifices, (Zunshi) rectified all those practices by inspecting in accordance with the old principles, so that excessive offering was removed. The so-called temple of the White Crane was [the temple] that people particularly ardently worshipped. They competed in killing animals for sacrifice. The master instructed them to convert to vegetarian sacrifice from food tainted with blood. When he, together with others, sailed to the temple of the White Crane, torrential wind and violent waves struck. Those people said that this had been done by the god. The master then explained the causal condition for the prohibition of killing in Buddhism to [the people of] the temple. Then the waves quieted down. At that moment, he ordered the god to receive the Buddhist precepts. Since then, animal sacrifices have ended. So he wrote the record of the uncultivated temple to make a treaty with the god. People still follow it now. 其邑先有淫詞(祀)者。皆為考古法正之濫饗者徹去。其所謂白鶴廟者。民 尤神之。競以牲作祀。法師則諭其人使變血食為之齋。及其與眾舟往白鶴 而風濤暴作。眾意謂神所為。法師即向其廟說佛戒殺之緣。而其浪即平。 尋命其神受佛之戒。此後以牲祀者遂絕。即著野廟誌乃與神約。而民至于 今依之也。72 68 69 70 X. 57, no. 950, 10c. X. 75, no. 1513, 303c–304a. Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, “Suiroku shō kō 水陸會小考,” Tō hō shū kyō 東方宗教 12 (1957): 14–33. 71 Tanjin wenji, T. 52, no. 2115, 713b–715c; Shi Guojing 釋果鏡, “Ciyun Zunshi yu Tianzhusi 慈雲遵式與天竺寺,” Dharma Drum Journal of Buddhist Studies 1 (2007): 103–175. 72 T. 52, no. 2115, p. 714a. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 113 The custom in Hangzhou was to offer wine and meat at funerals. The master purposefully instructed them in the wonderful doctrine of causality. The custom was wholly transformed. It was generally converted from meat to vegetarian sacrifice. He therefore wrote an article called “The Dharma door to compassion and wisdom over the prohibition on alcohol and meat” to rectify the matter. People there still advocate it. The following year, people in Suzhou used their state tally to receive the master at the monastery of Kaiyuan. He was engrossed in lecturing on the Buddhist ceremony day and night. The ceremony magnificently gathered audiences from both good and bad backgrounds. The number of people was said to reach tens of thousands during the day and thousands in the evening. People who did not drink alcohol and eat meat were all over the city. Trade in the official wine shops and butchery markets went down considerably. 杭之風俗習以酒餚會葬。法師特以勝緣諭之。其俗皆化。率變葷為齋。因 著文曰。誡酒肉慈慧法門。以正其事。其人至今尚之。明年蘇人以其州符 迓法師就開元精藍晝夜專講法會。盛集黑白之聽者。謂日萬夕千。其人不 飲酒噉肉者。殆傾郭邑。酒官屠肆頗不得其售也。73 Both these episodes present a picture of Zunshi’s vegetarian reform which seems to correspond to the account of Emperor Wu’s reform of the excessive cult of Wudao in the same Lower Yangzi region, and the role of Zunshi mirrors that of Emperor Wu in the Shimen zhengtong. Moreover, the custom of offering meat and alcohol in Hangzhou in the days of Zunshi seems to conform to the modern anthropological report of non-vegetarian funeral offerings by the cult of Wudao. Do these similarities suggest a link between the two records? Could the legend of Emperor Wu’s vegetarian reform of the cult of Wudao have been part of a maneuver by later vegetarian propagandists, such as Zunshi, to rectify the “excessive” sacrificial practices of their own contemporaries? This geographical connection is also found in an account of the deity in the thirteenth-century Fozu tongji 佛祖統紀 (Completed Records of the Buddha and Patriarchs, T. 49, no. 2035). This is another history of Buddhism from the Tiantai perspective, with more extensive content, completed by Zhipan 志磐 in 1269 C.E. in the Lower Yangzi region. In a chapter on another noted Buddhist emperor, Emperor Wen of the Sui 隋文帝 (r. 581–604 C.E.), there is an episode in the paragraph on the third year of Kaihuang 開皇 that tells how a monk called Huiying 惠盈 bestowed the Dharma of the Precepts on a god called Wudao with his entourage in Hailing 海陵 in the Lower Yangzi region, when the deity was about to depart for the eastern seaboard. The paragraph in question starts with an account of an imperial edict issued by Emperor Wen in that year, forbidding the killing of animals during the three abstinence months of the year and six abstinence days of each month.74 In his research on the creation of Chan pilgrimage sites, Bernard Faure argued that the mythological sagas of the Chan masters’ exorcisms of pre-existing local deities via Buddhist teachings manifested a process of conversion to Buddhism in those 73 74 Ibid., 714b. Fozu tongji 佛祖統紀, completed by Zhipan 志磐 (1220–1275 C.E.), T. 49, no. 2035, 359c. 114 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN regions. He concluded, “The re-territorialization of Ch’an was accompanied by a re-mythologization.”75 Dudbridge has suggested that this model could also apply to the case of the conversion of the God of the Five Paths in the Fozu tongji: Mythological statements of this kind can also be understood in terms of social practice and belief: they imply changes in religious institutions, and above all changing claims to authority over regional or local cults. As worshippers turn from one cult to another, so the worshipped gods submit to other authority— or so, at least the myth-makers seek to persuade us.76 Dudbridge put forward the idea that the conversion of the God of the Five Paths here could also suggest an orthodox Buddhist challenge to a Wudao cult on the eastern seaboard during the sixth century. This interpretation of the mechanism of conversion seems consistent with the account of Zunshi’s conversion of the pagan god of the White Crane temple recorded in the Tanjin wenji. In that story, after Zunshi supernaturally calmed the powerful waves caused by the pagan god, the god eventually accepted the Buddhist precepts, and animal sacrifice was abandoned. So, it seems valid to apply Dudbridge’s suggestion to the conversion of the God of the Five Paths in the Fozu tongji. Nevertheless, does a mythological statement concerning the conversion of a deity to Buddhism in a certain region in a certain period necessarily reflect religious conflict between the popular cult and Buddhism there and then, as it literally claims? Makita’s research on the ceremony of Water and Land shows that there is a possible tendency to justify later religious practices by associating them with eminent religious figures from history, like Emperor Wu of the Liang. The Tanjin wenji said that Zunshi rectified excessive sacrificial practices by instituting vegetarian sacrifice according to so-called “old principles.” The story of Huiying’s encounter with the God of the Five Paths was recorded in the Fozu tongji in a paragraph on the third year of the reign of another eminent Buddhist Emperor, Wen of the Sui, when he forbade animal killing during the abstinence period. Both accounts of the God of the Five Paths in the Fozu tongji and the Shimen zhengtong are set in the reign of emperors (Wen of the Sui and Wu of the Liang) who generously patronized Buddhism and enthusiastically banned the practice of killing animals. Both these periods have been regarded as the “heyday” of Chinese Buddhism by Chinese Buddhist historians. If so, why are the two stories not found in any historical source prior to these much later Southern Song sectarian-oriented records of the Tiantai School? This fuels a suspicion that they may have been concocted to borrow religious authority from a prestigious bygone era. Perhaps the accounts of the God of the Five Paths did not happen during the time claimed by the texts but during that of the legend-maker, who placed them in the past in order to bolster the credibility and authority of vegetarian practice. In the Jinyuan ji, Zunshi did not say that the sacrificial cult in the days of Emperor Wu related to Wudao; Wudao is mentioned only in the later Shimen zhengtong. So far, I have not been able to find any 75 Bernard Faure, “Relics and Flesh Bodies: The Creation of Ch’an Pilgrimage Sites,” in Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China, ed. Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 160. 76 Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 90. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 115 substantial evidence that, among many popular sacrificial cults, there was one devoted to Wudao in the Lower Yangzi region in the time of Zunshi. Therefore we still lack sources to explain why Wudao is identified as the deity in the two much later reports about the Buddhist proselytization of pagan cults. Nevertheless, the depiction of the conversion of the sacrificial cult of Wudao to vegetarianism coincides with Zunshi’s conversion of pagan sacrificial cults to vegetarianism in the same region, which was also the heartland of the Tiantai School. As both accounts are unsupported by other sources, and Wudao is only mentioned or considered in Buddhist contexts in early medieval sources, it seems to me that the references to Wudao in the records of the Tiantai School are more likely to relate to Zunshi’s vegetarian proselytization than to the historical realities of the sixth century. 3.3. THE INCREASE OF POPULARITY OF WUDAO FROM THE TANG DYNASTY It has been shown by scholars such as Zheng Acai that, from the Tang dynasty (618– 907 C.E.) onward, references to Wudao incrementally increased in mystical tales and religious scriptures, in line with the rising popularity of esoteric Buddhist texts translated or composed during the medieval period. In one of the most popular and influential indigenous medieval scriptures composed during the Tang dynasty, the Scripture of the Ten Kings, Wudao appears as one of the ten hell-kings on the journey of purgatory.77 Wudao is also mentioned in popular medieval mystery tales and transformation stories. In the seventh-century Mingbao ji 冥報 記 (The Record of Retribution from the Dark World), the role of Wudao in the other world is likened to the official position of a president of a government board in the secular world.78 Later, in the eighth-century Guangyi ji 廣異記, there is even a story about a person called Wang Ji 王籍 being received as a General of the Five Paths in the other world before his imminent death79 (which is similar to the story in the Suishu 隋書, the official history of the Sui dynasty, of the impending death and reincarnation of General Han Qinhu 韓擒虎 as Yama, King of Hell).80 These texts suggest that Wudao was a term denoting not an individual deity but merely one of the otherworld bureaucratic positions to be filled by dead mortals. They also demonstrate a popular belief that the positions of Buddhist deities could be assumed by deceased Chinese officials, a sign of the theological accommodation of the Buddhist theory of transmigration to indigenous Chinese religion.81 The popularity of Wudao is shown by the frequency of his appearance as an otherworld bureaucratic deity in medieval manuscripts, especially in Dunhuang. He is 77 Zheng Acai, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 36–56; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 95–96. 78 Tang Lin 唐臨, Mingbao ji 冥報記, T. 51, no. 2082, 793b; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 94; see also D. E. Gjertson, “A Study and Translation of the Ming-Pao Chi: A T’ang Dynasty Collection of Buddhist Tales” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1975), 160–166, 298–312. 79 Taiping guangji 太平廣記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), 304: 2408; Dudbridge, “The General of the Five Paths in Tang and Pre-Tang China,” 94. 80 Wei Zheng 魏徵, etc., ed., Suishu 隋書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973), 52: 1341. 81 K. R. Norman, Collected Papers II (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1991), 1. Erik Zürcher, “Buddhist Influence on Early Taoism: A Survey of Scriptural Evidence,” T’oung Pao 66 (1980): 123. 116 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN mentioned in mortuary texts, exorcistic texts, and prayers.82 His appeal was not limited to Buddhists but extended to popular religions and Daoist contexts. For example, the deity is mentioned in one type of the popular hybrid exorcistic texts in the Dunhuang manuscripts, the Erlangwei 兒郎偉, and also in the eighth-century Daoist scripture, the Yaoxiu keyi jielü chao 要修科儀戒律鈔 (Breviary of Rules, Rituals, Precepts, and Statutes Essential to Practice), where he is listed in a model funeral ordinance as an otherworld bureaucratic deity.83 In the tenth century, General An Jinquan 安金全 was likened to Wudao and named An Wudao after him, on account of his bravery.84 In much the same way that Yama, who originated in India, was later appropriated by Daoist and Chinese popular religions, morphing into a prominent indigenous deity, Wudao’s prevalence in the otherworld bureaucratic pantheon later in the medieval period suggests that he was no longer a god confined to the Buddhist-related context as he had been in the early medieval period. He gradually came to be accepted as a Chinese god in Chinese popular religion. In this regard, it is more likely that not until later in the medieval period could a non-Buddhist sacrificial popular cult develop which worshipped Wudao as they did indigenous Chinese deities—like those popular cults involving “excessive” animal sacrifice and offerings of alcohol and meat, recorded in the biography of Zunshi.85 4. CONCLUSION This paper re-assesses two core questions regarding the origin and early development of the Great God of the Five Paths in early medieval China. It begins with an examination of the deity’s appearance in the episode of the Great Departure in the Buddha’s biography, where Wudao was first mentioned, and scrutinizes all the various versions of this in both Indic and Chinese languages. This survey shows that, although these different versions of the Buddha’s biography were built upon a consensus framework, there had already been a certain level of variety and 82 For details of the study on these Dunhuang manuscripts, see Zheng Acai, “Cong Dunhuang Tulufan wenshu lun Wudao jiangjun xinyang,” 36–56. 83 Zhu Faman 朱法滿, ed., Yaoxiu keyi jielü chao 要修科儀戒律鈔. CT 463, 15: 14a3–b7; Nickerson, “Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China,” 231–235. 84 Xue Juzheng 薛居正, etc., ed., Jiu wudai shi 舊五代史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976), 61: 815–816. 85 These excessive cults might be associated with the popular cults whose followers engaged in excessive sacrifice to “defeated armies and dead generals,” who were believed to have become the chief spirits of the underworld and have an impact on human epidemics and illnesses, such as the cults of Xiang Yu and Jiang Ziwen mentioned previously. These popular cults were significant religious phenomena during the early medieval period. Modern scholars have shown how they were later absorbed and institutionalized into Daoist religion. Rolf Stein, “Religious Taoism and Popular Religion from the Second to Seventh Century,” in Facets of Taoism, ed. Holmes Welch & Anna Seidel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 53–82; Mark Meulenbeld, “Civilized Demons: Ming Thunder Gods from Ritual to Literature” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2007), 11–12, 122; Lee Fong-mao 李豐楙, “Xingwen yu songwen—Daojiao yu minzhong wenyiguan de jiaoliu yu fenqi 行瘟與送瘟：道教與民眾瘟疫觀的交流與分歧,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Popular Beliefs and Chinese Culture 1 (Taipei: Center for Chinese Studies, 1994), 373– 422; Paul R. Katz, “Trial by Power: Some Preliminary Observations on the Judicial Roles of Taoist Martial Deities,” Journal of Chinese Religions 36 (2008): 54–83; Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 108–111. THE GREAT GOD OF THE FIVE PATHS 117 flexibility in the Indic as well as the Chinese texts with regard to narrative details, such as the deities or spirits encountered by the Crown Prince before or after he passed through the city gate. The exclusive reference to Wudao in certain Chinese versions without any Indic counterpart is not an exceptional case of textual transmission. Instead, it could be the product of what was clearly an on-going evolution. Dudbridge’s suggestion that the Great God of the Five Paths could be devised by a Chinese translator as a back-formation from pañcagati, the Five Paths in Sanskrit, could apply in this context. In addition, the warrior images of Benshi and his title as “the great god among ghostly gods” (not “the Great God of the Five Paths”) in the Yichu pusa benqi jing significantly resemble the warrior image and title of Māra in a parallel context in the Nidānakathā. Yet Māra behaved defiantly towards the Crown Prince, whereas Benshi showed him deference. Moreover, the Chinese character, ben, is frequently associated with the fearless historical warrior Meng Ben in early Chinese texts, and the term Five Paths, as the realm of rebirth, seems also compatible with the mortuary symbolism of the number five and the five sacred mountains in early Chinese religion. From the broader perspective of the transmission and evolution of the Buddha’s biography, it is not a surprise that these textual and linguistic parallels do not appear randomly coincidental. They actually constitute possible grounds for the early formation of the character of the Great God of the Five Paths in this textual context. As to whether there was a non-Buddhist popular cult of Wudao during the early medieval period, my survey shows that Wudao was mentioned or considered in the Buddhist–related context in early medieval archaeological and textual sources. By contrast, the later medieval references to a sacrificial cult of Wudao outside the Buddhist circle during the early medieval period appear only in sectarian Tiantai historiography during the Southern Song dynasty, when the heartland of the Tiantai School was the Lower Yangzi region. The tales regarding the Buddhist conversion of a profane cult of Wudao, particularly the overarching case of Emperor Wu of the Liang’s vegetarian reform of the cult, are actually associated with Buddhist proselytization of pagan sacrificial cults that occurred in that region. They are probably propagandistic tales of so-called “old principles,” fabricated by zealous vegetarian reformers such as Ciyun Zunshi in order to help rectify contemporary excessive sacrificial practices during the medieval period. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The motivation of this research initially came from a suggestion by the late Professor Glen Dudbridge. After a discussion on my previous research on the Jingdu sanmei jing 淨度三昧 經, which also mentions the Great God of the Five Paths, he was extremely kind to photocopy articles related to the deity in person for me and encouraged me to further explore this topic. It was a great privilege to have the chance to study with him. I would also like to thank Professor T. H. Barrett, the late Professor Lance Cousins, Professor Robert Chard, Dr. Antonello Palumbo, Professor Dame Jessica Rawson, and Professor Ulrike Roesler for their invaluable advice during this research. The article is based on one section of my research project on “The Early Formation of the Buddhist Otherworld Bureaucratic Empire in Early Medieval China,” which was generously sponsored by research fellowships of the Sheng Yen Education Foundation, the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities (IKGF) at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (European region). I am very grateful for their munificent support. 118 FREDERICK SHIH-CHUNG CHEN BIBLIOGRAPHY ABBREVIATIONS CT Schipper, Kristofer, ed. Concordance du Tao-tsang. Titres des ouvrages. Publications de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 102. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1975. T Taishō Shinshū Daizō kyō (Taishō Tripiṭaka) 大正新脩大藏經 Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō kankō kai 大正一切經刊行會, 1924–1935. X Xuzangjing 續藏經, Shinsan Dai Nihon zoku zō kyō 新纂大日本續藏經 (卍新纂續藏). Tokyo: Kokusho Kankō kai 國書刊行會, 1975–1989. PRIMARY SOURCES Beiqi shu 北齊書. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972. Li Baiyao 李百藥 ed. 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