288 Book Reviews
Koichi Shinohara Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. xxii + 324 pages. Hardcover. isbn 978-0-23-116614-0. us$50.00.
Koichi Shinohara’s new work, Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas, is an important work of scholarship that offers new insights into the early development of Indian Esoteric Buddhist rituals, through a careful philological examination of sources in Chinese translation. While his primary research questions concern the nature and trajectory of Buddhist ritual developments in India, Shinohara’s work nevertheless provides important context for the development of Esoteric Buddhist ritual in China. By examining dhāraṇī/mantra recitation, maṇḍala initiation, and deity visualization, Shinohara gives readers insights into prac- tices that were and continue to be prominent in certain forms of Sinitic Buddhism. The central premise of Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas is that a clear trajectory of development can be traced from the simple recitation of dhāraṇī- incantations described in some Mahāyāna Buddhist scriptures (particularly those that have come to be known as dhāraṇī-sūtra [tuoluoni jing 陀羅尼經]) to the complex rituals of incantation, initiation, and visualization found in “mature” Esoteric Buddhism, exemplified in East Asian traditions by texts such as the Mahāvairocana-sūtra and Vajraśekhara-sūtra. Shinohara demonstrates and describes these developments through the close reading and comparative analysis of Indic texts on Buddhist ritual translated into Chinese, largely between the fourth and eighth centuries ce. In the introduction, Shinohara characterizes these ritual developments by describing three different “ritual scenarios,” each more complex than its prede- cessor, which he has observed across a wide variety of sources. Briefly, these scenarios are the following: (1) the repeated recitation of spells for the attain- ment of specific aims; (2) the recitation of spells and the performance of other ritual actions before the image of a deity, sometimes represented at the center of a maṇḍala, in order to bring about the appearance of miraculous signs or visions indicating practitioners’ “accomplishment” of their ritual goals; and (3) the organization of multiple deities into a pantheon, depicted or visualized as an elaborate maṇḍala, into which candidates are initiated according to a spe- cific ritual procedure; following their initiation they are authorized to perform specific ritual practices involving mantra recitation and the visualization of specific deities. Thus, one of the central themes of the book is the changing role that images—the physical depictions of deities as well as their visualized forms—played at various stages in the evolution of Esoteric Buddhist ritual.
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The book itself consists of eight chapters spread across three parts. Shinohara’s general method is to focus, in each chapter, on a particular ritual tradition, represented by a set of scriptures and ritual texts that—over periods of time ranging from a few decades to several centuries—were translated mul- tiple times into Chinese. Each individual translation is treated as a snapshot that encapsulates a particular moment in the development of the ritual tradi- tion to which it belongs; by engaging in meticulous comparison of the different Chinese translations, which are examined in chronological order, Shinohara is able to deduce larger patterns of ritual evolution. Part i traces the general development of Shinohara’s three main ritual sce- narios, from the earliest and simplest forms of dhāraṇī recitation, to the grad- ual introduction of painted images and rites of image worship, to the introduction of a detailed rite of maṇḍala initiation described in the Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtras (Tuoluoni ji jing 陀羅尼集經), translated by Atikūṭa 阿地瞿多 in the mid-seventh century. Chapter 4 also contains an illuminating discussion in which Shinohara demonstrates the connection between the Buddhist maṇḍala initiation and post-Vedic developments in Indian ritual, as described in Purāṇic texts. In part ii, Shinohara describes the gradual introduction of visualization practices into Esoteric Buddhist ritual, and the evolution of the dhāraṇī-sūtra genre from relatively simple texts organized around a few basic incantations to elaborate manuals describing multiple rituals involving both painted images and meditative visualizations. Finally, the elaborate ritual tra- ditions associated with the Mahāvairocana-sūtra and Vajraśekhara-sūtra come into focus in part iii, as Shinohara shows how the maṇḍala initiation ritual described at the culmination of part i was combined with the increasingly complex visualization practices highlighted in part ii to create a mature synthesis of Esoteric Buddhist ritual. Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas is an impressive work of scholarship that advances our understanding of the evolution of Esoteric Buddhist ritual and the complex relationship between Esoteric Buddhism and the earlier, incanta- tion-centered style of ritual practice that some scholars have labeled as “dhāraṇī Buddhism,” and Shinohara makes significant strides toward uncovering the complex relationships that exist between the diverse collections of dhāraṇī- sūtras and Esoteric Buddhist ritual texts contained within the Sinitic Buddhist canon. Although much of the book focuses on Indian texts and ritual practices, scholars of Chinese religions (and Buddhism in particular) will find much of use in Shinohara’s work. By shedding light on the Indian development of these Buddhist ritual techniques, Shinohara has provided a useful point of departure from which to investigate the further transformation in China of practices such as spell recitation, deity visualization, and the ritual manipulation of images. review of religion and chinese society 2 (2015) 265-294