초록/요약

Previous scholarship has generally focused on dhāraṇī of two types: those inscribed or stamped as talismans and those enacted through recitation. Through an examination of Yingxian Timber Pagoda (ca. 1056) from the Liao Dynasty, however, this paper reveals a third practice in north China that broke from those of the Tang period in that it required no written or recited form of dhāraṇī. Rather, it materialized the ritual process in physical form—from invocation of the Buddhas to enactment of the dhāraṇī through the wish-fulfilling jewel and mandala—by means of an architectural space. The pagoda’s five stories and the Buddhist statues enshrined therein, as this paper shows, were designed not only to embody the chanting ritual of the Uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī (Foding zunsheng tuoluoni佛頂尊勝陀羅尼) but also to visualize the philosophical contents of the dhāraṇī in material form. The pagoda’s architectural space was planned in such a way as to optimize the efficacy of the dhāraṇī through the material agency of the pagoda and its statues with their intricate iconography. In the ritual imagination of medieval Buddhists, the pagoda was believed to be an architectural device that, once erected, would incessantly generate the power of the dhāraṇī with little to no human intervention. Yingxian Timber Pagoda aptly exhibits the ways in which Liao Buddhism innovated and developed complex dhāraṇī practices from those that were inherited from previous dynasties, expanding the tradition of “material dhāraṇī” practices in the cultural landscape of East Asia.