Pivots of meaning in the teaching of the way: A transtextual study of a set of terms from the "Daojiao yishu"

Around the year 700 C.E., a Daoist master from present-day Hubei by the name of Meng Anpai compiled a text entitled Pivots of Meaning in the Teaching of the Way (Daojiao yishu ). Though Meng unambiguously labels it a Daoist text, it contains many terms and concepts that are better known in the context of Buddhism. Scholars have traditionally approached the Daojiao yishu and similar texts with the goal of placing them in the context of the Buddhist or Daoist traditions, identifying them as examples of Buddhism in Daoist guise, or of Buddhism's influence on Daoism. This study takes a different perspective, examining the Daojiao yishu 's relationships to other texts and the semantic fields of the terms it contains. We explore the Daojiao yishu 's links to other texts on several different levels, revealing a complex pattern of relationships to a variety of sources. Our study of semantic fields focuses on a set of six terms used in the second chapter of the text to identify types of sacred bodies; close examination of these terms reveals broad ranges of meaning that are not easily subsumed under the categories of Buddhism or Daoism.