A Brief Collection on Southern Dharma

The Song dynasty Lingwai Daide (Answers from beyond the Ranges) says: In the ruins of Zhurong, where potent numinous power gathers, the strange methods within are also a current of Heaven-and-Earth's transformation. Shamans are named for Jing—could that be without cause? I have heard of shamans and sorcerers using the Yu steps and incantations to whip ghosts and gods, smash temples and destroy stoves. I once investigated this, and the South indeed has a source and lineage. For when the South generates beings, they naturally inherit the nature of taboos—in things it is so, how much more for people? In the streams and caves of Yongzhou there is a bird called the Ling Falcon, skilled at the Yu steps to remove obstruction. There is also the Zhen bird, also skilled at the Yu steps to break mountains and stones. There is one called the Twelve-Hour that can contain poison and shoot a person's shadow to cause illness. Looking at this, the South's having methods is truly of this kind of qi. Yet today when shamans draw talismans, they must make them in the shape of the Zhen's crown—one can also see its source and lineage. Thus the further southwest, the more strange and bizarre; in the vast Heaven and Earth, each method has its root—there must be those skilled in methods, and this is also called natural, not something humans can contrive.

Sanfu Fengyun Yong commentary: Here even the saying about shooting the shadow already touches on the bizarre, yet forcing a connection with the Ling Falcon is plainly groundless.

The Qing dynasty Songlei Leichao says: Great Stream Mountain lies in the Guangzhou region. There was once a cave on the mountain. The people there did not ordinarily see it open—only each year on the fifth day of the fifth month did the cave open. The locals prepared ink, paper, and brushes; when the time came they entered. Feeling the stone walls with their hands, they sensed hollows as if carved; quickly they brushed ink on them, covered with paper, took rubbings, and came out. The cave then closed. Looking at the printed paper they held—sometimes incantations, sometimes medicine formulas—what they obtained was never the same; sometimes there were no legible characters and nothing was obtained. Incantations and medicine formulas, when applied, never failed to verify. This is the origin of the Southern Dharma.

Sanfu Fengyun Yong commentary: This account of opening a cave to obtain characters—later generations have no further evidence and no records, which is highly doubtful. So the claim that this is the origin of the Southern Dharma cannot be trusted.

Gengsi Bian says: The customs of Chu favor ghosts, and there are the most sorcerers of strange arts, changing in myriad ways; people call them "Masters of the Art" (shigong) and hold them in great awe. In Wugang Prefecture there was a certain Jiang Cong, especially cunning, who served as warden of the City God temple near the Nawei Prince's mansion. One day the Prince lost a foot-wrapping, which the wind blew to the temple. Cong found it and said to his wife: "Our food and clothing have arrived." He killed a duck, took its head, wrapped it in the foot-wrapping, nailed it with an iron nail, placed it under the spirit seat, and performed curses on it. The Prince that moment had such pain in his foot that he could not eat or sleep; he summoned shamans to pray day and night without cease. Another day, Cong made an offering and went personally to inquire after the illness, claiming he could cure it. A eunuch privately raised funds, prepared offerings, and asked Cong to make blessings for the Prince—after removing the nail from the foot, the pain instantly ceased, and Cong received priceless thanks. After another ten days or so, Cong again nailed it as before; the Prince's illness returned as before, and he summoned Cong to pray again until it stopped. From March to year's end, whenever the illness flared, he always ordered Cong to pray, and after the prayer it was always cured. The Prince grew suspicious and said to Cong: "Next year there will be a great sacrifice to the City God—I will reward you richly." When the time came, the Prince deliberately delayed past the sacrifice date; the pain immediately flared again. He sent someone to agree that the sacrifice would be on a certain day, and he was immediately clear again. The Prince saw through his trickery, summoned him and kept him. He had his guards trick his wife into revealing three objects and presented them. The Prince personally interrogated Cong; at first he still denied it, but when shown the objects he confessed. The case was finished; a courier was sent to report; an imperial edict ordered the demon expert to be sent to the capital, and he died at Linqing. At the time most shamans were wanton and overbearing: if a household had a little wine or food and a shaman passed the door, they must invite him to feast; if he was unwilling to go, they would send it to his home—otherwise they would suffer disaster. If one went out seeking profit and met a shaman on the road, earnestly begging for a good word, the gain would surely be abundant; otherwise much loss and failure. In a curl of the lip or a glance of the eye, they could bring fortune or disaster. Their fellow practitioners were often themselves sick, and they used arts to suppress each other. When a newly dead person could not yet be coffined, a shaman was invited to perform rites, using the hem of garments to take the corpse qi and scatter it in the wild; after a month it did not rot or stink—this was called "lodging the stench." To break the method, one entered and looked directly, and the corpse stench immediately appeared. Those who knew said: within their teaching the corpse is transformed into a thing, like a carp, placed between cliffs and covered with ice. To break the method, one simply uses fire to melt the ice, and the corpse itself decays and stinks. Only if transformed into agarwood can nothing harm it—yet fire can still burn it. When the Min Prince's household held a funeral, the coffin was so heavy it could not be lifted; even adding dozens of men it was still so. They summoned a Master of the Art to perform rites of release, and immediately it moved. The shaman said: "A certain shaman, out of old hatred, moved a mountain and placed it on the coffin—but just now it has been dispelled." Their absurdity and terror were so hateful. Only after Jiang Cong's defeat did this group begin somewhat to restrain themselves. The villager Wu Yong served his father as instructor at the Min Prince's mansion and witnessed these events many times. There was also a certain Li Wu among the mansion guards, skilled in many transformations. Wu once tested his arts: seeing a magpie on the roof, he ordered him to fetch it. Wu silently recited an incantation, and the magpie came before him, and he caught it barehanded. Wu said: "This must be used by chance encounter; if one premeditates the thought of catching birds, even all day one cannot get one or two. Other things are all like this." He also said: "When the art crosses Dongting Lake, it does not work greatly—he is not glad to do this either. Broadly speaking, like the Southern Dharma used in Fujian and Guangzhou and the carpenter's techniques of immobilization, since it was transmitted from former generations, one cannot help but practice them." Wu Yong was quite good at talking of the strange; the following four matters were all from his account.

Sanfu Fengyun Yong commentary: The nail-in-foot method, the coffin-hard-to-lift method, the lodging-the-stench method—these are also transmitted today, but mostly come from among the lowly folk, and are not the Southern Dharma of Song-era killing people to sacrifice to ghosts.

Duxing Zazhi says: In the Xiangfu reign, Wang Jie of Ting had a technique of burning gold. Because of this he met Liu Chenggui, who recommended him to Lord Wang Ji, and he was granted an audience—people of the time called him "Wang Who Burns Gold." Jie could make people see, one by one, whatever they thought of, and so people were deluded by him. Broadly this was all Southern Dharma—by feeding people fox saliva so they would be like this. The method: place meat in a small-mouthed jar, bury it in the wild; a fox sees it and wants to eat, but its beak cannot enter, so its greedy saliva flows down into the jar and soaks into the meat. Then take the meat, dry it into dried meat powder, and place it in people's food and drink. It is also said that mixing fox saliva with water and washing the face makes the head and features visible, transformed into strange shapes. Nowadays among those in the river country who practice the eating-vegetables-and-serving-demons arts, many have this technique. Once a person went to follow them; they ordered him to wash his face with water, but the person only washed half—the washed half transformed differently, while the unwashed half remained as before—and thus one knows the water contains something strange.

Luyi Ji says: Below Shaozhou city, in the pool on the south side of the great river, in the Kaiyuan years the Celestial Master Shen Yuanzhi hid three stone caskets of Daoist books at the bottom of the pool. Yuanzhi was skilled in the methods of the Three and Five taboos; even today Shaozhou has many who can perform this art—it is called the Southern Dharma.

Sanfu Fengyun Yong commentary: This should speak of Zhao Hou's Southern Dharma, yet in Zhao Hou's Dharma there is also no saying of killing people to sacrifice to ghosts—so it is not the Southern Dharma of Song.

Song Huiyao Jigao says: "...On the nineteenth day, the Central Secretariat and Chancellery reported: 'We have learned that in Lin'an Prefecture and the various circuits, prefectures, and counties, many evil and false people at busy thoroughfares cut off limbs, gouge out intestines and stomachs, and set up stages to deceive the populace—commonly called the Southern Dharma—passed on and learned from one another. If not prohibited, the harm is no small matter...'"

Sanfu Fengyun Yong commentary: "Cut off limbs, gouge out intestines and stomachs, set up stages to deceive the populace—commonly called the Southern Dharma"—this matter of killing people to sacrifice to ghosts; in investigating this evidence, one should rely on this.

Tiaoxi Yuyin Conghua says: Tiaoxi Yuyin says: As for the line "every household raises Wugui," I have observed among the various poetry discussions that there are four explanations. The Manseng Shihua takes the pig as Wugui; Cai Kuanfu's Shihua takes the Wuye spirit as Wugui; the Lengzhai Yehua takes the Wuman ghost as Wugui; Shen Cunzhong's Bitan and the Xiangsu Zaji take the cormorant as Wugui—I now record all their accounts. The Manseng Shihua says: "'Every household raises Wugui, every meal eats yellow fish.' The world takes Wugui as the cormorant, saying Sichuan people raise this to catch fish. In the Chongning years I once went to Xingguo Army; the prefect Yang Dingchen, style Hanjie, one day invited me to a meal of local flavors, serving steamed pig's head meat, and said to me: Sichuan people are fond of this meat; every household raises pigs—the Du poem's 'every household raises Wugui' is precisely this. When they call a pig they make the sound of Wugui, hence they call the pig Wugui." Cai Kuanfu's Shihua says: "Some say Old Du's poem 'every household raises Wugui, every meal eats yellow fish'—Wugui is the cormorant, raised to catch fish. When I was young in Bazhong, though I saw people using cormorants to catch fish, I never heard them called Wugui; I do not know how the Kuizhou Tujing got this. Yet Yuan Weizhi's Jiangling Shi says: 'Sick, one sacrifices the crow called ghost; shamans divine with tiles in place of turtles.' The annotation says: Southern people, when ill, sacrifice to Wugui. Thus the name Wugui is seen from here. Between Ba and Chu there were once those caught killing people to sacrifice to ghosts; when asked about their spirit, they said 'the Seven-Headed Spirit of Wuye.' So Wugui is only the name of the spirit they serve. Some say the character 'raise' is a corruption of 'sacrifice'—the reasoning is also fitting. For it is because they killed people and sacrificed them that the poem first says 'Strange customs, ah, how wondrous—hard for such people to live with.' If it were raising cormorants to catch fish for eating, what would be so wondrous or impossible to live with? So the cormorant is decidedly not Wugui—one should follow Yuan's annotation." The Lengzhai Yehua says: 'Many people on the Chuan-Xia route serve the Wuman ghost; because they live by the river, they simply eat yellow fish every meal. Ordinary people do not understand, and read 'raise' as livestock-rearing, thus making Shen Cunzhong wrong in identifying Wugui as the cormorant.'" Shen Cunzhong's Bitan says: 'The scholar Liu Ke studied rare books widely. Du's poem has "every household raises Wugui, every meal eats yellow fish." Those of the world who explain it all say that between Kui and the Gorge there are still ghost households today—barbarian people, their masters called ghosts. But I have never heard of any saying of Wugui. And "ghost households" is what barbarians call them, not what households raise.' Ke according to the Kuizhou Tujing said: people of the Gorge tie cormorants with ropes around the neck, making them catch fish; when they get fish they hold them up headfirst—still so today. When I was in Shu I saw households raise cormorants to make them catch fish—it is truly so. Only I do not know they are called Wugui.'" The Xiangsu Zaji says: 'The Bitan has already discussed Du's poem "every household raises Wugui, every meal eats yellow fish"—people of the Gorge call the cormorant Wugui, raising it to catch fish.' Also according to the Dongzhai Jishi: 'Fish-farming households of Shu raise a dozen or so cormorants; each day they can catch dozens of catties of fish. They bind the throat with rope so small fish can pass but large fish cannot eat; periodically they call and take them out, then send them back again. Very tame and familiar, following one's pointing and gaze as if human; if one catches a fish and does not return it, the flock leader pecks and makes it return. Compared with releasing hawks and falcons, there is no labor of running about, and the profit is somewhat greater.' The records end here. Yet Fan Shugong also did not know that the cormorant is what Du's poem calls Wugui. According to the Yimao Zhuan: 'The land of Wa has much water and little land; they hang small rings on the cormorant's neck, making them enter the water to catch fish—over a hundred a day.' This is truly so. I have carefully examined the four accounts, and consider identifying the cormorant as Wugui correct; those who say the pig, the Wuye spirit, and the Wuman ghost are Wugui are wrong. When I held office at Jian'an, on some business I went to the Northern Gardens to roast tea and returned by small boat; midway I saw several fishing boats, each using five or six cormorants, tying their feet with rope, putting them to the bottom to catch fish, slowly drawing them out and taking their fish. Having witnessed this with my own eyes, I am further convinced.'"