Filling in the Blanks: The Syntax and Semiotics of Meditation in the Qizil Yoga Manual

This paper analyses the grammar, specifically the syntax and paradigms, of visual recollection in the c. 5th-century Qizil Yoga Manual (QYM). Associated with Kucha on the Northern Silk Road, the QYM examines visual recollection, combining Sarvāstivāda meditation sequences with some Mahāyāna and ostensibly local practices (e.g. Dhammajoti 2021, Abe 2024). As with certain Mahāyāna ontologies, the expansive Qizil meditations appear to eschew a formal grammar of meditation, focusing on expansive spatiality rather than temporality. However, the formulas also retain the Sarvāstivāda emphasis on visual elements in strict temporal sequence. The cue for this paper is taken from Yamabe’s analysis of the Turfan cave images in which he argues that the murals in Turfan represent a kind of visual language of meditation (Yamabe 1999). Recently, further progress has been made towards understanding this visual language in spatial terms by Vignato and Li (2024), yet many questions remain over the visual culture of Kucha and its significance for meditation. The paper engages a semiotics of image visualization and temporal experience. It finds both radical departures in the Qizil Manual from South Asian textual traditions as well as distinct local elaborations on how to gain ontological freedom.