The Jade Register Hungry Ghosts Offering 玉箓济幽判斛仪

The compiler is unnamed.

Judging from its textual content and diction, it was presumably composed after the Song Dynasty.

It is a single scroll and incorporated into the Ritual Norms Section of the Cavern Mystery Division of The Daozang.

This text records the ritual of bestowing food and redeeming the netherworld spirits for the Jade Register Fasting. Its ritual proceedings include Taoist liturgical observances, offering invocations and prayers, summoning lonely spirits, guiding and receiving the spirits, purifying the spirit forms, sprinkling lustral water for purification, the Three Refuges, burning talismans, transforming sacrificial food, chanting incantations over the food, spiritual empowerment, proclaiming honorific titles of the deities, conferring precepts, ritual refinement for salvation, sending off the spirits with reverence, and burning sacrificial offerings, among other rites.

The term Pan Hu (Judging the Measure) is presumably derived from the Buddhist term Hu Shi (Measure of Food), which refers to the act of bestowing food to the hungry ghosts in the Yankou Rite. Esoteric Buddhism features a liturgical observance of offering food to the starving hungry ghosts, commonly known as the Yankou Feeding Ceremony. This ritual was generally held at dusk, providing food and drink, reciting incantations and expounding precepts to transcend the lonely wandering spirits and hungry ghosts.

The Ritual of Judging the Measure for Redeeming the Netherworld Spirits recorded in this text is certainly a Taoist ritual modelled after the Buddhist observances, embodying the merciful salvation ideology of The Dao.