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Abstract
Unlike any Japanese object before them, the jeweled pagoda mandalas challenge viewers to discern word from picture. Analyzing their production and the complicated process of viewing a surface that refuses strict delimitation as text or image and as relic or reliquary reveals these mandalas to be visualizations of the multiplicity of the Buddha body. The paintings collapse distinction with indivisibility while the constant slippage of signifier into signified escapes rigid duality, a realization urged by the surface's perlocutionary effect. These singular works uncover underlying dynamics in premodern Japanese Buddhist art, such as invisibility, performativity, and an increasingly textualized visual world.
Notes
1. For instance, the Flower Garland Sutra (J: Daihōkō butsu kegon kyō; C: Dafangguang fo huayan jing; S: Buddhāvataṃsaka mahāvaipulya sūtra), in Takakusu Junjirō and Watanabe Kaigyoku, eds., Taishō daizōkyō, 100 vols. (Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–32), no. 278, vol. 9, 395a4–788b9 (hereafter T.), visualizes the universe textually. See Luis O. Gómez, “The Whole Universe as a Sūtra,” in Buddhism in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 107–12
. This radical concept of language as originating in the dharmakāya (formless dharma body of the Buddha) institutes a vision of the world as textual conflation: everything is text, so it follows that text constructs everything and is the root of all things. There exists nothing that is not encapsulated by sacred text, nothing that does not issue forth from it, for differentiation is a matter of semiotic articulation and signification (shabetsu). The Mahāvairocana sūtra (J: Dainichi kyō; C: Dari jing; in T., no. 848, vol. 18, 1a4–55a4) is also used to cast the world as text. See Ryūichi Abé, The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 275–300 . For more on the topic of ajikan (A-syllable contemplation in Tendai and Shingon schools of Buddhism), see Cynthea J. Bogel, With a Single Glance: Buddhist Icon and Early Mikkyō Vision (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), 199–200 ; Richard K. Payne, “Ajikan: Ritual and Meditation in the Shingon Tradition,” in Re-Visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998), 219–48 ; and Pamela D. Winfield, Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kūkai and Dōgen on the Art of Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 81–84 .2. At the time of the jeweled pagoda mandalas' production, the relation between the Kansai region and Hiraizumi was a complicated one. Rather than adopting wholesale the Kansai trappings of culture and legitimacy, resulting in the jettisoning of Emishi culture, the Ōshū Fujiwara transformed Hiraizumi while maintaining traditions and symbols important to their northern heritage. See Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi: Buddhist Art and Regional Politics in Twelfth-Century Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998)
.3. Two of the lone mandalas appear to have been originally part of the same set and, based on stylistic analysis, were likely commissioned during the late eleventh or early twelfth century. One of the mandalas is currently in a private collection, while the other is owned by the temple Jōshinji in Shiga Prefecture. For an image of the mandala in a private collection, see Kyoto National Museum, ed., Ōchō no butsuga to girei: Zen o tsukushi bi o tsukusu (Kyoto: Kyoto National Museum, 1998). For an image of the Jōshinji mandala, see ibid., 343. The third lone mandala, likely produced in the late twelfth century, is now in the temple collection of Myōhōji in the city of Sakai. For an image, see Miya Tsugio, “Myōhōjizō myōhōrengekyō kinji hōtō mandara ni tsuite,” Bijutsu kenkyū 337 (1987): 88–96.
4. J: Myōhō renge kyō; C: Miaofa lianhua jing; S: Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sūtra; in T., no. 262, vol. 9, 1c15–62b1.
5. J: Konkōmyō saishōō kyō; C: Jinguangming zuisheng wang jing; S: Suvarṇaprabhāsottama rāja sūtra; in T., no. 665, vol. 16, 403a04–456c25.
6. J: Hannya haramita shingyō; C: Bore boluomiduo xinjing; S: Prajñāpāramitā hṛdaya sūtra; in T., no. 251, vol. 8, 848c5–23. For an image of the oldest example, see Miya Tsugio, Kinji hōtō mandara (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1976), 4.
7. Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara. Before the publication of his book, Miya wrote a few articles introducing his ideas, which were later incorporated into the monograph.
8. Willa J. Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra (New York: Weatherhill, 1988), 98–108.
9. For more on transformation tableaux, see Victor Mair, T'ang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); Tanabe, Paintings of the Lotus Sutra; Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, Japanese Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999); Eugene Wang, Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005); and Wu Hung, “What Is Bianxiang?—On the Relationship between Dunhuang Art and Dunhuang Literature,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 52, no. 1 (1992): 111–92.
10. Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi, 161–84
.11. For more studies on the jeweled pagoda mandalas, see Ishida Mosaku, “Kokuhō saishōōkyō kyōtō mandara,” in Chūsonji ōkagami, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Ōtsuka Kōgeisha, 1941), vol. 2, 4–13; Kameda Tsutomu, “Jūbun saishōōkyō jikkai hōtō mandara,” in Chūsonji, ed. Ishida Mosaku (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1959), 68; Hamada Takashi, “Konkōmyōsaishōōkyō kinji hōtō mandara zu,” in Chūsonji, ed. Fujishima Gaijirō (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1971), 145–52, 261–65; Ariga Yoshitaka, “Konkōmyō saishōō kyō zu saikō,” Chūsonji bukkyō bunka kenkyūjo ronshū 1 (1997): 92–99; Hayashi On, “Daichōjuinzō konkōmyōsaishōōkyō kinji hōtō mandara zu oboegaki,” Bukkyō geijutsu 277 (2004): 81–95; Miya, “Myōhōjizō myōhōrengekyō kinji hōtō mandara ni tsuite,” 88–96; and Izumi Takeo, “Hokekyō hōtō mandara,” Kokka 1169 (1993): 29–38. I have also provided a more extended analysis of this literature. See Halle O'Neal, “Written Stūpa, Painted Sūtra: Relationships of Text and Image in the Construction of Meaning in the Japanese Jeweled-Stūpa Mandalas” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2011), 7–13.
12. For a photograph of one of the inscriptions, see Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 90.
13. For a careful analysis of the compositional and painting styles as they pertain to dating, see ibid., 115–16.
14. Kunkai, Hōryūji zō son'ei-bon taishi den gyokurin shō, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1978), vol. 3, 456; and Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 90
.15. Ogino Minahiko, “‘Hōryūji shariden hōmotsu chūmon’ narabi ni, ‘Hōryūji gomadō honzon tō mokuroku’ ryakkai,” Bijutsu kenkyū 34 (1934): 35, 37.
16. For the complete inscriptions on the new boxes, see Nakao Takashi, “Kyōto Ryūhonji no Hokekyō shakyō,” Risshō daigaku bungakubu kenkyū kiyō 16 (2000): 5.
17. For an introduction to Tanzan Shrine, see Heibonsha, ed., Nihon rekishi chimei taikei, vol. 30 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1981), 410–11.
18. J: Muryōgi kyō; C: Wuliangyi jing; S: Amitartha sūtra; in T., no. 276, vol. 9, 383b15–89b22.
19. J: Kan Fugen bosatsu gyōhō kyō; C: Guan puxian pusa xingfa jing; in T., no. 277, vol. 9, 389b26–94b11.
20. See Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 86 n. 1, for the inscription.
21. Ibid., 85. For a reference to the 1783 passage, see Heibonsha, Nihon rekishi chimei taikei, vol. 30, 411.
22. Hanawa Hokinoichi, ed., Zoku gunsho ruijū 8, no. 214 (Tokyo: Zoku Gunsho Ruiju Kanseikai, 2001), 748–51, “Japan Knowledge,” http://japanknowledge.com/lib/display/?lid=91021V160362.
23. For a thorough analysis, see Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 81–85.
24. For a transcription of the inscription, see ibid., 86 n. 1. As Miya Tsugio (ibid., 39–42) points out, the term “lotus mandala” carries connotations unrelated to the Tanzan Shrine mandalas. By examining several premodern texts, he determines two broad categories of lotus mandalas. The more schematically arranged lotus mandala associated with Esoteric Buddhism and often used in the Lotus Sutra rites (hokekyōhō) frequently features Śākyamuni and Prabhūtaratna sitting side by side within a jeweled pagoda framed by an eight-petal lotus, a reference to the eleventh chapter of the Lotus Sutra, “Apparition of the Jeweled Pagoda.” The other category is the narrativization of the twenty-eight chapters of the Lotus Sutra (Hokekyō nijūhachi bon daiie, often shortened to daiie). However, if the historical entry is sufficiently ambiguous, as often they are, then it becomes difficult to ascertain whether the “lotus mandala” in the passage refers to the esotericized version or the transformation tableaux type; certainty is possible only if the mandala is described visually, or if the full categorical title is used for the paintings of the twenty-eight chapters.
25. Kuroita Katsumi, ed., “Bunji no chūmon,” in Azuma kagami, in Shintei zōho, kokushi taikei, 58 vols. (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1929–64), vol. 32, 352–55.
26. Hamada, “Konkōmyōsaishōōkyō kinji hōtō mandara zu,” 264.
27. The controversial text known as the “Chūsonji rakkei kuyō ganmon” mentions the commission of a blue paper Buddhist canon with alternating lines of gold and silver script, which is a reference to the vast scriptural project of Kiyohira. Hiraizumi Chōshi Hensan Iinkai, ed., “Chūsonji rakkei kuyō ganmon,” in Hiraizumi chōshi, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Zoku Gunsho Ruijū Kanseikai, 1985), vol. 1, 59–61. For a discussion of the technique of this very unusual style of sutra transcription, see Sasaki Hōsei, “Kingin kōsho no tejun to kōfu,” in Kenrantaru kyōten, ed. Sato Shinji (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1983), 132–34.
28. For example, Kiyohira's son Fujiwara Motohira (1105–1157) and grandson Fujiwara Hidehira (1122–1187) continued the practice of elaborate sutra transcription. Motohira commissioned a set of ornate Lotus Sutra scrolls, and Hidehira followed the tradition of his grandfather and ordered a blue and gold Buddhist canon. For more on the artistic commissions of Motohira and Hidehira, see Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi, 89–120.
29. Ibid., 174; and Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 33, 122. Miya also entertains the possibility of Motohira as patron.
30. Significant passages are dedicated to extolling the Four Guardian Kings' (J: shitennō; C: sitianwang; S: catur mahā rājakāyikāḍ) and other tutelary deities' protection for those who hold and keep the sutra. Specifically, the twelfth chapter of the sutra in the translation by Yijing, a Chinese monk who translated Buddhist scriptures, “The Protection of the Nation by the Four Guardian Kings,” details the vast rewards offered to those—in particular, kings and monks—who revere the sutra. The chapter begins with the promise of protection from encroaching enemies, freedom from sundry afflictions, and salvation from the bitterness of famine and epidemics for those who follow the Golden Light Sutra (in T., no. 665, vol. 16, 427c1–6). The Four Guardian Kings swear an oath to smite and subdue oppressors and to destroy evil and disease by the great power and authority bestowed on them as defenders of the righteous followers of the scripture (427c9–28). The promises of such sought-after blessings often focus on the eradication of enemies, with long passages of strong rhetoric detailing the utter annihilation of adversaries and their lands (427c20–27).
31. Hamada, “Konkōmyōsaishōōkyō kinji hōtō mandara zu,” 265. Hamada provides a transcription of the early eighteenth-century record in n. 5.
32. Hamada (ibid., 265) characterizes the “ten worlds (jikkai)” of the title as a reference to the ten levels of the mandalas' pagoda—including the first story's false or pent roof. Kameda Tsutomu (“Jūbun saishōōkyō jikkai hōtō mandara,” 68) advances a similar argument, explaining that the nine floors plus the pent roof, collectively called jūkai, or ten stories, came to be known as jikkai, a phrase he notes is completely unrelated to the Golden Light Sutra. Presumably, the homonymic quality of the words is responsible for the transference. However, neither author provides support for this supposition, and, given the lack of textual records for the jeweled pagoda mandalas, perhaps it is equally as possible to suggest that the “ten worlds” refers to the ten scrolls of the set rather than to the ten stories of the pagoda, which is itself an inaccurate count. Takahashi Tomio also finds this particular explanation weak and suggests instead that jikkai refers to the number of scrolls, culminating in a statement about the transformation of all things into the lands of the Buddha: one scroll, one pagoda, one world, and, thus, ten scrolls, ten pagodas, and the worlds of the ten directions (J: jippō sekai; C: shifang shijie; S; daśa dig loka dhātu), symbolizing the infinite expanse and all-encompassing nature of the Buddha realm. Takahashi Tomio, “Chūsonji to hokekyō: Chūsonji konryū no kokoro,” Tōhoku daigaku kyōyōbu kiyō 33 (1981): 39.
33. The Sanskrit word maṇḍala was transliterated into the Chinese term mantuluo and the Japanese term mandara. The term connotes the essence of enlightenment and is often spatially connected to the location of the Buddha's spiritual awakening. Esoteric mandalas typically configure deities according to geometric schemata that render a cosmological map of the realms. However, in Japan the term expanded to include a variety of artistic depictions, such as visualizations of sanctified spaces like those of the Pure Land paradises and Shintō kami and their shrines. The term is also applied to images that portray tales from the scriptures. For thorough treatments of Japanese mandalas, see Ishida Hisatoyo, Mandara no kenkyū, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Tōkyō Bijutsu, 1975); and ten Grotenhuis, Japanese Mandalas.
34. Ten Grotenhuis, Japanese Mandalas, 2.
35. For an etymological analysis, see “pagoda, n.,” OED Online, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/136027?redirectedFrom=pagoda& (accessed June 7, 2014). The term does not appear in the 1603 Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Vocabvlario da lingoa de Iapam, compiled by Jesuits in Nagasaki. For a reproduction of the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, see Iwanami Shōten, ed., Nippo Jisho, Vocabvlario da lingoa de Iapam (Tokyo: Iwanami Shōten, 1960).
36. “Stupa” has been used as an umbrella term for all Buddhist reliquaries, of which there is a great variety. Xuanzang (602–664), a Chinese Buddhist monk whose travels in India were recorded in the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Da Tang Xiyuji), advocated for this terminological unification. He declared the Chinese term for stupa, sudubo (J: sotōba), to be the accurate term for the architectural reliquaries he encountered. I would like to thank Tracy Miller for pointing this out in her talk “Perfecting the Mountain: On the Morphology of Towering Temples in East Asia,” for the “Seniors Academics Forum on Ancient Chinese Architectural History” (December 7–8, 2013) at Kinki University, Osaka. For Xuanzang's passage, see T., no. 2087, vol. 51, 872a23–25. For a concise yet thorough summary of the historical origins of stupas and the word's etymological derivation, see Kevin Trainor, Relics, Ritual, and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri Lankan Theravāda Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 32–39.
37. Excluding minor differences, the structure of transcription is markedly consistent across all the examples.
38. For a complete map of the pagoda's composition from sacred characters, refer to the associated digital project that animates the sequential construction, viewable on Taylor & Francis's Website for the Art Bulletin, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2015.1009326. It is also hosted on “Jeweled Pagoda Mandala,” under the Digital Projects tab at www.halleoneal.com. This marks the first time the complete sequence of the textual pagoda has been diagrammed and disseminated. Ishida Mosaku (“Kokuhō saishōōkyō kyōtō mandara,” 5) gave an early but cursory diagram of the Chūsonji transcription.
39. For more on the origins of the jeweled pagoda mandala format, see Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 1–9; and Halle O'Neal, “Continental Origins and Culture of Copying: An Examination of the Prototypes and Textualized Community of the Japanese Jeweled-Stūpa Mandalas,” Journal of Oriental Studies 22 (2012): 112–32.
40. The differences between the choice of narratives represented in the Ryūhonji and Tanzan Shrine sets are likely the result of differing stylistic models. The Tanzan Shrine version adheres to earlier styles of visual narratives in which a larger selection of vignettes is depicted, while the Ryūhonji set more closely matches the thirteenth century's predilection for a reduced palette of scenes. See Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 120–48. This explanation is not to suggest that an argument could not be made for variations in doctrinal interpretations within the two sets; such an argument, however, is beyond the scope of the current study.
41. Different handwritings seen within the sets provide evidence of multiple copyists.
42. Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 91. For a transcription of the verse used, see 117 n. 6.
43. Ibid., 91.
44. Ibid.
45. For a discussion of the nebulous origins of the standardized seventeen-character line, see Tanaka Kaidō, Shakyō nyūmon (Osaka: Sōgensha, 1971), 52–56.
46. In the case of the jeweled pagoda mandalas, the characters follow sutra-script style. I appreciate Amy McNair's sharing her calligraphic expertise with me through repeated email exchanges in which she patiently entertained my many questions.
47. Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 119; and Hamada, “Konkōmyōsaishōōkyō kinji hōtō mandara zu,” 262.
48. For instance, Ishida Mosaku (“Kokuhō saishōōkyō kyōtō mandara,” 4) argues that Fujiwara Hidehira brushed the pagodas of the Chūsonji mandalas.
49. Yamanaka Yutaka, trans., Eiga monogatari, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1995–98), vol. 2, 233–34
. William H. McCullough and Helen Craig McCullough, trans., A Tale of Flowering Fortunes: Annals of Japanese Aristocratic Life in the Heian Period, 2 vols. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), vol. 2, 530–35.50. For a discussion on the memorization of scripture, see Charlotte Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture & Medieval Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 133–72.
51. First coined by Julia Kristeva in the essay “Word, Dialogue, and Novel,” 1966 (reprinted in Desire and Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature [New York: Columbia University Press, 1980], 64–91), to describe the interrelated nature of texts that refer in myriad ways to a multitude of other texts, intertextuality has taken on a life of its own and can be applied to studies beyond the textual. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Michel Foucault presents the idea succinctly: “The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network. … The book is not simply the object that one holds in one's hands; it cannot remain within the little parallelepiped that contains it: its unity is variable and relative.” Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tavistock Publications, 1972), 23.
52. I would like to thank Sylvan Barnet and the late William Burto for their kind hospitality and inexhaustible expertise during my trips to view their collection and Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis for making it possible.
53. Komatsu Shigemi, “Hokekyō sasshi ni tsuite,” Museum 81 (1957): 7.
54. As Akiyama Terukazu notes, Komatsu Shigemi suggests that the identity of the nun, sadly obscured by damage to the scroll, could be Goshirakawa's consort, Takashina Eishi (d. 1216), the Lady of the Tango Chamber. See Komatsu Shigemi, “Menashikyō to sono shūhen,” Museum 60 (1956): 24–26. Akiyama also proposes that the Lady Kii could be the mystery woman, in light of her strong connections with the monks associated with the scroll's production and ownership and because she is referred to as “Kii the nun” in some documents. See Akiyama Terukazu, “Women Painters at the Heian Court,” trans. Maribeth Graybill, in Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, ed. Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1990), 167–70.
55. Komatsu Shigemi, Heike nōkyō no kenkyū, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1976
), vol. 2, 819–29. For more on the interpretative readings of the ashide in this scroll, see Julia Meech-Pekarik, “Disguised Scripts and Hidden Poems in an Illustrated Heian Sutra: Ashide and Uta-e in the Heike Nōgyō,” Archives of Asian Art 31 (1977): 52–78; and Eubanks, Miracles of Book and Body, 167–71. Illustrations of the scroll can be found in these publications.56. Examples of other empowered inscriptions are the paintings known as myōgō honzon (the name of a Buddha or a powerful verse that is treated as an icon) and kōmyō honzon (sacred light inscriptions).
57. For more information on Nichiren, see Jacqueline I. Stone, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), 239–356.
58. Ibid., 261.
59. Jacqueline I. Stone, “‘Not Mere Written Words’: Perspectives on the Language of the Lotus Sūtra in Medieval Japan,” in Discourse and Ideology in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, ed. Richard K. Payne and Taigen Dan Leighton (London: Routledge, 2006), 160
.60. Stone, Original Enlightenment, 241.
61. Jacqueline I. Stone, “Chanting the August Title of the Lotus Sutra: Daimoku Practices in Classical and Medieval Japan,” in Re-Visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism, ed. Richard K. Payne (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998), 152
.62. Esoteric mandalas composed of Sanskrit characters (Bonji mandara) are works of important text-image interactions representing the issue of embodiment bound up with language's potential. However, these mandalas are outside the scope of this present study because of the differences in the linguistic systems.
63. For Willa Tanabe's discussion on this subject, see Paintings of the Lotus Sutra, 98–108.
64. Miya Tsugio (Kinji hōtō mandara, 122) makes a similar observation.
65. Leon Hurvitz, trans., Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 270; in T., no. 262, vol. 9, 53b4–5
. Encouragement for one to commit autocremation can also be found in Chinese texts, such as the Fanwang jing (The Brahma Net Sutra). For more on the subject, see James A. Benn, Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007); and Jeremy Yu, Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).66. Hurvitz, Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, 272; in T., no. 262, vol. 9, 53c14–15
.67. For more information on the gift of the body, see Reiko Ohnuma, Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood: Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
68. Very rarely, the copyists omitted phrases. These are most likely mistakes rather than intentional omissions, as transcription accuracy was paramount and the deletion of those phrases does not form new meanings.
69. Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan, “Illuminating the Illuminator: Notes on a Votive Transcription of the Supreme Scripture of Golden Light (Konkōmyō saishō ōkyō),” Versus 83–84 (1999): 116
.70. The average size across the Ryūhonji set is 43 3/4 × 22 7/8 in. (111 × 58 cm). The Tanzan Shrine and Chūsonji versions are roughly similar.
71. Claude Gandelman, “By Way of Introduction: Inscriptions as Subversion,” Visible Language 23, nos. 2–3 (1989): 140.
72. J. L. Austin proposes the concepts of locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
73. Gandelman, “By Way of Introduction,” 146. For Austin's discussion on perlocutionary acts, see in particular 109–32.
74. I routinely saw people, when viewing the paintings on display, step close and squint in a physical attempt to see the minuscule text and then step back to see the pagoda. This bodily engagement was repeated multiple times.
75. In his analysis of “Duck/Rabbit,” Ernst Gombrich explores issues of perception and the fundamental interdependence of shape and interpretation. Gombrich suggests that as viewers, we are incapable of pure seeing without the application of intellect, which implies that whether one sees the text or the architectural reliquary in the jeweled pagoda mandalas is perhaps a matter of attention. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 4–6.
76. This quotation from the Sea Sutra (J: Kanbutsu sanmai kaikyō; C: Guanfo sanmei haijing; S: Buddha dhyāna samādhi sāgara sūtra; in T., no. 643, vol. 15, 645c4–697a10) is a translation by Wang, Shaping the Lotus Sutra, 246. For more on the artist's response to the Shadow Cave, see ibid., 245–55.
77. Rather than understand the material and oral expression of signs as two genres without overlap, Ruth Finnegan suggests that written and oral manifestations are not rigid categories but, often, genres with permeable borders. Finnegan, Oral Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 16–24.
78. Some of the earliest descriptions of this pairing come from intrepid Chinese monks. Both Faxian (337–ca. 422) and Xuanzang bear witness in their travel diaries to the practice of dharma relic stupas. In the text Record of Buddhist Countries (J: Bukkoku ki; C: Foguoji; in T., no. 2085, vol. 51, 859b18–19), Faxian records during his visit to India in 399–414 that stupas were constructed for the specific purpose of sutra veneration, creating sutra-stupas (J: kyōtō; C: jingta). Xuanzang (in T., no. 2087, vol. 51, 920a21–26) likewise records the ubiquitous and related practice of enshrining sutra verses in mini-stupas as dharma relics.
79. Another contemporary example is that of the kokerakyō (strips of wood in the shape of pagodas with inscriptions of sutra text). The earliest mention of kokerakyō comes from the Hyakurenshō, a thirteenth-century anthology of various records and tales by an unknown compiler. In the tenth month and eleventh day of 1181, the Hyakurenshō records that Taira Shigemori (1138–1179) told Goshirakawa of his dream in which one thousand volumes of the Heart Sutra were copied onto kokerakyō in order to pacify the troubled spirits of the war dead. Learning of this dream, Goshirakawa commissioned twelve barrels of kokerakyō, setting them adrift on the east and west seas. Kuroita Katsumi, ed., “Hyakurenshō,” in Shintei zōho, kokushi taikei, vol. 11, 105; and Tanaka Kaidō, Nihon shakyō sokan (Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 1974), 28.
80. Komatsu, Heike nōkyō no kenkyū, vol. 1, 47.
81. Hurvitz, Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, 160; in T., no. 262, vol. 9, 30c17–21
.82. Ishida Mosaku, “Gangōji gokurakubō hakken no kokerakyō,” in Gangōji gokurakubō: Chūsei shomin shinkō shiryō no kenkyū, ed. Gorai Shigeru (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1964), 229.
83. Ibid.
84. Miya, Kinji hōtō mandara, 7.
85. Hurvitz, Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, 232–36; in T., no. 262, vol. 9, 45b–46b
.86. For discussions on the trikāya (three bodies of the Buddha) system, see Nagao Gadjin, “On the Theory of Buddha-body: Buddha-kāya,” trans. Hirano Umeyo, Eastern Buddhist 6 (1973): 25–53; Lewis R. Lancaster, “An Early Mahāyāna Sermon about the Body of the Buddha and the Making of Images,” Artibus Asiae 36 (1974): 287–91; idem, “The Oldest Mahāyāna Sūtra: Its Significance for the Study of Buddhist Development,” Eastern Buddhist 8 (1975): 46; and Robert H. Sharf, Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store House (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 100–111.
87. An examination of the occurrences of dharmakāya in early texts reveals that the uses of the term identified it as the “collection of teachings,” or “body of teachings,” and as the “collection of dharmas,” in which followers could seek refuge and access to the Buddha and his law after the parinirvāṇa, rather than the highly conceptual body of the trikāya system. Over time, scholarship on the Buddha body doctrine has corrected the tendency in previous studies to nominalize the early uses of dharmakāya and to ignore the plural forms of the term, which had resulted in what many scholars have described as an anachronistic reading of dharmakāya as the fully developed transcendental body corresponding to the later trikāya theory, effectively mischaracterizing the development of the doctrine as far too consistent and tidy. For more on this issue, see Paul Harrison, “Is the Dharma-kāya the Real ‘Phantom Body’ of the Buddha?” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 15, no. 1 (1992): 44–94.
88. Hurvitz, Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, 163; in T., no. 262, vol. 9, 31b26–29
.89. Hurvitz, Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, 176; in T., no. 262, vol. 9, 34b12
.90. Hurvitz, Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, 159; in T., no. 262, vol. 9, 30c11–13.
91. John S. Strong, Relics of the Buddha (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 32
.92. For early Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan texts expounding stupas as bodies of the Buddha, see Gustav Roth, “Symbolism of the Buddhist Stūpa according to the Tibetan Version of the Caitya-vibhāga-vinayodbhāva-sūtra, the Sanskrit Treatise Stūpa-lakṣaṇa-kārikā-vivecana, and a Corresponding Passage in Kuladattas Kriyāsaṃgraha,” in The Stūpa: Its Religious, Historical and Architectural Significance, ed. Anna Libera Dallapiccola, in collaboration with Stephanie Zingel-Avé Lallemant (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1980), 183–209; and Adrian Snodgrass, The Symbolism of the Stupa (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1985), 360–77.
93. For more on this topic, see David Gardiner, “Maṇḍala, Maṇḍala on the Wall: Variations of Usage in the Shingon School,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 19, no. 2 (1996): 245–79; and Fabio Rambelli, A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 56–66, 144–48, 166–67.
94. Hurvitz, Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, 168; in T., no. 262, vol. 9, 32c15–16
.95. For more on the issues of presence and embodiment in icons, relics, and pagodas, see Helmut Brinker, Secrets of the Sacred: Empowering Buddhist Images in Clear, in Code, and in Cache (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011); Bernard Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Critical Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Jacob N. Kinnard, “The Field of the Buddha's Presence,” in Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia, ed. David Germano and Kevin Trainor (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 117–43; idem, Imaging Wisdom: Seeing and Knowing in the Art of Indian Buddhism (Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1999), 25–44; Robert H. Sharf, “The Idolization of Enlightenment: On the Mummification of Ch'an Masters in Medieval China,” History of Religions 32, no. 1 (1992): 1–31; idem, “Introduction: Prolegomenon to the Study of Japanese Buddhist Icon,” in Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, ed. Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 1–18; and idem, “On the Allure of Buddhist Relics,” Representations 66 (1999): 75–99.
96. For instance, W. J. T. Mitchell characterizes the relation of word and image as two countries that share a long history of relations but speak different languages. See Mitchell, “Word and Image,” in Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 53. Ernst Gombrich declares that “statements cannot be translated into images” and that “pictures cannot assert.” See Gombrich, The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Oxford: Phaidon, 1994), 138, 175.
97. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1973), 9
.98. Michel Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe, trans. and ed. James Harkness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 20–21. Also relevant here is Peter Wagner's use of iconotext, in which words and pictures intermingle within a specified framework. See Wagner, Reading Iconotexts: From Swift to the French Revolution (London: Reaktion Books, 1995).
99. Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe, 22.
100. Abé, The Weaving of Mantra, 276.
101. This is not an exhaustive list, and the reader will likely be aware of further examples.
102. Sasaki Kōkan, “Sō no jushika to ō no saishika: Bukkyō to ōsei to no musubitsuki ni kansuru ichi shiron,” in Kokka to tennō: Tennōsei ideorogi to shite no bukkyō, ed. Kuroda Toshio (Tokyo: Shujūsha, 1987), 53. For more on tendoku, see Shimizu Masumi, “Nōdoku to nōsetsu: Ongei ‘dokyō’ no ryōiki to tenkai,” Ryōjin: Kenkyū to shiryō 15 (1997): 25–29.
103. Sasaki, “Sō no jushika to ō no saishika,” 52.
104. Kyoko Motomochi Nakamura, trans., Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon Ryōiki of the Monk Kyōkai (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 186–87; and Keikai, “Nihon Ryōiki,” in Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, ed. Nakada Norio, 12 vols. (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1975), vol. 6, 197–99.
105. This occurs in reference to the transcription and dedication service of the Lotus Sutra at Muryōju'in sponsored by Empress Fujiwara Kenshi (994–1027). See Fujiwara Sanesuke, Shōyūki, in Dai nihon kokiroku (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1971), vol. 6, 46; and Egami Yasushi, “Sōshokukyō,” Nihon no bijutsu 278 (1989): 19.
106. Kuroita, “Hyakurenshō,” 65.
107. Fabio Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 90
.108. Ibid., 96.
109. For instance, this recent article: Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, “Collapsing the Distinction between Buddha and Believer: Human Hair in Japanese Esotericizing Embroideries,” in Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, ed. Charles D. Orzech, Henrik H. Sørenson, and Richard K. Payne (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 876–92
.110. Kevin Carr, “The Material Facts of Ritual: Revisioning Medieval Viewing through Material Analysis, Ethnographic Analogy, and Architectural History,” in A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture, ed. Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton (London: Blackwell, 2011), 23–47
.111. I pursue this argument further in my book manuscript by developing what I term a “salvific matrix of text and body” to interpret the mandalas’ combinatory composition.
112. For a brief introduction to shōgon with further citations for sources on the subject, see Andrew M. Watsky, Chikubushima: Deploying the Sacred Arts in Momoyama Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 36
. Also see Christian Boehm, The Concept of Danzō: ‘Sandalwood Images’ in Japanese Buddhist Sculpture of the 8th to 14th Centuries (London: Saffron Books, EAP, 2012), 107–16 .113. Rambelli, Buddhist Materiality, 88–90.
114. Richard K. Payne, “Awakening and Language: Indic Theories of Language in the Background of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism,” in Payne and Leighton, Discourse and Ideology in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, 89.
115. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 12
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Halle O'Neal
Halle O'Neal is a Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in Japanese Buddhist art, in particular, the intersections of body, relics, and text in visual culture. She is currently completing a manuscript on the jeweled pagoda mandalas [Department of History of Art, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH1 1JZ, halle.o'[email protected]].