Imported Chinese esoteric ritual manuals at times demonstrate standardized phrasings. Standard phrasings here means wordings that follow a certain (or fixed) pattern.
In particular, when apocryphal ritual manuals were written, other ritual manuals were copied. This fact suggests such ritual manuals can be positioned in the initial formative stages of the shidai, or in a stage prior to that. This will be discussed on the basis of the Bhaiṣajyaguru Visualization Manual and the Hayagrīva Manual.