Surveilling All-Under-Heaven: The Rites of Summoning for Interrogation (Kaozhao fa 考召法) in Medieval China

This dissertation examines the development of a singular ritual tradition—the “rites of summoning for interrogation” (kaozhao fa考召法)—from its earliest traces during the Han (2nd century CE) to its full-flowering as a ritual specialty by the end of the Tang (618–907) by drawing upon both esoteric Daoist texts as well as anecdotal materials from the period. Practitioners of this tradition, termed “Ritual Masters of Summoning for Interrogation” (kaozhao fashi), identified as constituents of a larger celestial surveillatory bureaucracy and drew upon its authority to cure disease, exorcize spirits, mend rifts in the community, and even determine marriage compatibility. They did so by utilizing a range of ritualistic practices drawn from the earlier Celestial Master (Zhengyi 正一) and Upper Purity (Shangqing 上清) traditions, such as visualizations, incantations, ritualized pacing, and the talismanic arts. Such practices became widespread in the Song dynasty (960–1279) and were broadly adapted by Daoist movements of the period such as the Orthodox Methods of the Celestial Heart (Tianxin zhengfa 天心正法. In Chapter 1, I trace the origins of kaozhao back to the Han, where they—along with similar exorcistic traditions—drew inspiration from the bureaucratic argot and juridical stylings of officialdom. In Chapter 2, I posit a timeline for the development of kaozhao through the examination of ritual registers and situate the practice in context of the ritual landscape of 8th century China. Chapter 3 details the construction of the kaozhao practitioner’s identity, lineage, and history in the pages of a Tang-era ritual manual, the Jinsuo liuzhu yin 金鎖流珠引. This text provides the earliest categorization of kaozhao—dividing it into a binary of “civil” (wen 文) and “martial” (wu 武) practices—the combination of which were required to attain a new form of communal transcendence called “raising the residence” (bazhai 拔宅). Finally, I demonstrate how the kaozhao rite of “patrolling” (xunyou 巡遊), located therein, recast practitioners as celestial equivalents of the itinerant surveillance commissioners of the Tang, broadening their mandate as ritual polymaths.