sudden innovation, as much as the product of gradual evolution. Yet,
　　　　  as Duti's manual reveals, and as I have tried to indicate here, it
　　　　  was an innovation that could be doctrinally supported by texts.
　　　　  Here, I can do no more than introduce another suspect, the
　　　　  fascinating late Ming monk Zhixu (1599-1655), a man highly regarded
　　　　  by his contemporaries, whatever their religious inclinations. Not
　　　　  only was Zhixu profoundly influenced by the Shouleng'yan jing and
　　　　  the Fanwang jing, but also his collected writings allow a remarkable
　　　　  insight into the practices of an eminent monk. Many of those
　　　　  practices involved writing scriptures in his own blood and burning
　　　　  the crown of his head and his arms. Between the ages of 26 and 56
　　　　  Zhixu burned incense on his head on six occasions and on his arms
　　　　  twenty-eight times.(53) Whether his personal practices had any
　　　　  effect on ordination in general is unknown, but the possibility is
　　　　  an intriguing one that deserves further exploration. More attention
　　　　  needs to be focused on Zhixu, Duti, and the agenda of the Qing state
　　　　  in order to settle this question. But burning at ordination remains
　　　　  an apocryphal practice, one that is purely Sinitic and that is
　　　　  firmly grounded in two apocryphal texts.
　　　　  PRAYING FOR RAW
　　　　  Given the predominance of references to the Lotus Sutra in the
　　　　  biographical literature, there is an understandable tendency to
　　　　  attribute the inspiration for the act of autocremation solely to
　　　　  this particular non-Chinese textual model. While it is true that
　　　　  there is a strong case for claiming that Chinese Buddhist
　　　　  autocremators found inspiration and justification for their acts in
　　　　  the Lotus--a justification that was of course reinforced by our two
　　　　  apocryphal texts--there was in fact a well-attested Chinese model
　　　　  for autocremation that was sometimes explicitly mimicked in Buddhist
　　　　  autocremation. It is a historical fact that autocremation was known
　　　　  and practiced in China long before the translation of the Lotus
　　　　  Sutra. Shao shen can therefore be considered an apocryphal practice
　　　　  in the sense of being an indigenous practice that clearly predated
　　　　  the translation of the Lotus Sutra.
　　　　  Leaving aside for the moment the early mentions of "burning shamans"
　　　　  (fen wu) to produce rain in times of drought that appear in such
　　　　  texts as the Zhou li, Zwo zhuan, and the treatises on rainmaking
　　　　  contained in the Chunqiu fan lu, let us now turn to early accounts
　　　　  of non-Buddhist autocremators. Rainmaking was normally practiced by