burning.
　　　　  In fact, the earliest reference to burning at ordination dates to
　　　　  the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). It occurs in the biography of Zhide
　　　　  (1235-1322), in Ming gaoseng zhuan (Biographies of Eminent Monks
　　　　  compiled under the Ming), and would put the earliest recorded use of
　　　　  burning at ordination at around 1280: "Whenever he bestowed the
　　　　  precepts on the seven assemblies (qi zhong), he thought it necessary
　　　　  to make the fathers, mothers, older and younger brothers teach each
　　　　  other so that they would not transgress.(49) So with burning incense
　　　　  he burned the crowns of their heads and their fingers, as a vow that
　　　　  would last to the end of their lives."(50)
　　　　  The idea of burning the body to "seal a vow" that is present both in
　　　　  Zhide's biography, and in the eighteenth-century gazetteer seems to
　　　　  have been already familiar in a slightly different context--that of
　　　　  the bodily practices of Song Tiantai masters. Zunshi (964-1032), for
　　　　  example, who seems to have had rather a reputation for making
　　　　  powerful vows, burned his head as he swore to "exert himself in the
　　　　  practice of the four forms of samadhi until the end of his life,"
　　　　  which is extremely close to the vow taken by those burned at
　　　　  ordination, according to the monastic gazetteer quoted above.(51)
　　　　  We now have a starting point for burning at ordination, but we are
　　　　  still faced with the problem of understanding by precisely what
　　　　  means this practice grew from (apparently) a single monastery and a
　　　　  single teacher in the Yuan, to become an empirewide phenomenon in
　　　　  the early Qing. The obvious sources--ordination manuals for the
　　　　  bodhisattva precepts--are, for the most part, frustratingly silent
　　　　  on the matter. This is largely due to the fact that such manuals
　　　　  largely prescribe speech rather than action, and as de Groot's
　　　　  account indicates, there were no ritual words that accompanied
　　　　  ordination burning. The earliest explicit references in these
　　　　  materials that I have been able to find are (1) in a Qing commentary
　　　　  by Chaoyuan (1631-87) that inserts "stage directions" into the
　　　　  Chuanshou santan hong jiefayi by Hanyue (1573-1635) and (2) in an
　　　　  ordination manual completed in 1650 by Duti (1601-79), which does
　　　　  draw on the Fanwang jing to account for the burning that ordinands
　　　　  undergo.(52) The fact that the latter text appeared one year after
　　　　  the Qing regulation that speaks of burning at ordination makes one
　　　　  immediately suspicious that burning at ordination may have been a