Beyond being mnemonic devices , dharanis had magical powers , both when chanted and in written forms as seals . In China , where the visual word was seemingly more powerful than the sounded word , which was favoured in India , the seal and the mirror held mantic powers because they doubled images in reverse , inverting the phenomenal world . Thus paper that had written out the “ double " was respected or burnt , and paper imitations of real items of value were burnt as offerings to the spirits . The circular or reversible text , the hui － wen , was another form of doubling . Thus the Ilsûngpôpgyedo is both a dharani and a circular text . Ûisang mentioned the dharani , in which “ one is all and all is one " 一卽一切 一切卽一 , and declares the verses a “ spiral poem " 槃 詩 , which has its precedents in a “ board poem " 槃 詩 by the wife of Su Po － yü or Tou T ' ao . Such poems could be read from the centre in a circular fashion , or in reverse , and a number attributed to Buddhist monks are collected in the Hui － wen lei － chü 回文 類 by Sang Shih － ch ' ang 桑 世 昌 of the Sung , including a Chen － hsing sung 眞性 頌 attributed to Bodhidharma , and another attributed to T ' ai － tsung ' 太宗 of the T ' ang that was formulated 製 in imitation of “ Bodhidharma ' s " work . But these latter date from long after Ûisang ' s time . However , as such hui － wen poems by lay people such as the pro － Buddhist poet Wang Po ( 王 勃 647 － 674 ) who wrote about a P ' an － chien t ' u in 675 and Empress Wu who wrote a preface to another existed before and during the time Ûisang was active in China , they may have been a source for the idea of the “ seal text ". Chih － yen viewed the entire Hua － yen ching as a dharani , and an old record 古記 quoted in the Ch ' ongsurok states that because East Asians could understand neither the siddham Sanskrit letters nor the dharanis , Chih － yen resorted to the analogy of coins . Ishii Kôsei has suggested therefore that Ûisang in addition adopted the hui － wen form as the closest East Asian approximation to the dharani . This is the reason , Ishii avers , that Ûisang called it a “ seal text ", as something that functioned and could be printed like a dharani . It may also have been inspired by numerology , such as the Ho － t ' u 河圖 or “ River Chart " or the Lo － shu 洛 書 or “ Lo River Writing ", magic squares which can be read in a swastika 卍 form in the former or in a circle to the right in the latter . These were generally understood by Ûisang ' s age . The numerology was supported by one theory , which Kyun ' yô criticised :