Moving monks and mountains: Chōgen and the cults of Gyōki, Mañjuśrī, and Wutai

ABSTRACT

The renown of Chōgen (1121–1206), who spearheaded Tōdaiji’s early medieval restoration, rests greatly on his reputed three pilgrimages to China. However, scholars have long questioned Chōgen’s accounts, with some doubting that he ever went. The current majority view is that he did go. But doubts linger concerning other details Chōgen claims, including his professed veneration of Mañjuśrī at Mt. Wutai. On one hand, Kujō Kanezane’s (1149–1207) diary records an 1183 dialogue in which Chōgen reports that he could not travel to Wutai due to the Jin occupation. On the other hand, Chōgen’s 1185 vow for Tōdaiji’s restored Great Buddha claims that he did make it to Wutai. But given that Wutai remained under Jin control then, and we have no evidence for a trip by Chōgen in that interim, how can we understand this incongruity? This article contextualizes that incongruity within Chōgen’s cultic and performative practices, arguing that questions of Chōgen’s veneration of Mañjuśrī ‘at Wutai’ require more than tests of historical veracity to assess. I suggest instead that the very ‘fit’ and ‘non-fit’ of the moving pieces and players provide the keys to understanding how Chōgen places Wutai and his cultic practices within broader cultural imaginaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Chōgen
• Tōdaiji
• Wutai
• Mañjuśrī
• Gyōki
• pilgrimage
• performance
• medieval Japan
• Song China

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the sponsors and other participants in the international conference ‘Mañjuśrī in Motion: Multi-Cultural, Cross-Religious Characteristics and International Impact of the Wutai Cult,’ held at the Great Sage Monastery of Bamboo Grove on Mt. Wutai in July 2016, where the initial results of this research were presented. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Japan Foundation, whose award of a Japanese Studies Fellowship enabled further research for this article in the summer and fall of 2016.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Abbreviation

T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō; see Modern Sources, Takakusu & Watanabe, et al.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The bell that Chōgen helped donate to Enjuin 延寿院 on Mt. Kōya in 1176, and its engraved inscription, which I will address later, stands as a noteworthy exception. Another possibly firsthand account can be found in the Eisai nittō engi 栄西入唐縁起, preserved in two Tokugawa period (1600–1867) compilations, which includes brief mention of activities that Chōgen and the renowned Tendai and Zen monk Eisai 栄西 (or Yōsai; 1141–1215) undertook together on China’s Mt. Ayuwang 阿育王 and Mt. Tiantai 天臺 in 1268. The text takes the form of an autobiography written by Eisai in 1215, just before he died, and its historical value has recently been undergoing a positive reappraisal (Watanabe, “Go-Shirakawa Hōō no Aikuōzan shariden konryū to Chōgen, Eisai,” 4, citing Enomoto, “‘Eisai nittō engi’ kara mita Hakata”). That said, even if we can accept that the text was actually penned by Eisai in 1215 without later embellishments, like most accounts of Chōgen’s pre-Tōdaiji activities, it was only written after his 1181 appointment as chief fundraiser for the restoration and the ensuing spread of his and other accounts of his exploits.

2. That it remains a puzzle does not mean scholars have not tried to solve it. For one provocative recent theory, see Watanabe, “Go-Shirakawa Hōō no Aikuōzan shariden konryū to Chōgen, Eisai.” Watanabe argues that Chōgen and his skills in temple construction projects were already well known to Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa 後白河 (1129–92; r. 1155–58) before the Tōdaiji restoration, due to their joint activities to construct a relic hall at Mt. Ayuwang between 1169 and 1175. Like most theories regarding Chōgen’s purported activities in China and prior to the Tōdaiji restoration, however, this too should be considered a puzzle piece still in motion, and it is the very movement of these pieces that I want to call attention to here.

3. See the entry in Kanezane’s diary, Gyokuyō 玉葉, for 1183/1/24; 2:593. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Chinese and Japanese sources are my own.

4. See Chōgen’s vow dated 1185/8/23 in Tsutsui, Tōdaiji zoku yōroku, 32; Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 68.

5. My focus here on incongruity and issues of “fit” and “non-fit” is indebted to Jonathan Z. Smith. The main passage that I have in mind is from Smith, Map is Not Territory, 300. However, I have also been influenced by Sam Gill’s emphasis on Smith’s concern with these issues more broadly and by his analysis of Smith’s approach under the rubric of “play” (Gill, “No Place to Stand”). See also Roberts, “All Work and No Play,” for insightful reflections on the linked issues of incongruity and play in Smith’s and Gill’s work.

6. For the full texts of the imperial order, issued in the name of Emperor Antoku 安徳 (1178–85; r. 1180–85), and the appended vow attributed to Chōgen, see Tsutsui, Tōdaiji zoku yōroku, 11–13; Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 35–37.

7. Sazenshū is short for the Namu Amidabutsu sazenshū 南無阿弥陀仏作善集, Chōgen’s “Record of Good Deeds” compiled circa 1203. For convenience, citations here are from the edition in Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 482–95, a chronologically arranged compilation of documents relating to Chōgen. However, I have also consulted the edition in Ōsaka Sayama-shi, Ōsaka Sayama-shi shi, 20–26, which improves in some respects on the better-known Kobayashi edition, and the annotated English translation in Rosenfield, Portraits of Chōgen, 207–231.

8. For the reference in the Sazenshū, see Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 492. For the Hyakurenshō passage, see Kuroita et al., Shintei zōho kokushi taikei, 11: 106, and Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds, 76, for an English translation.

9. As Goodwin indicates (Alms and Vagabonds, 76), Go-Shirakawa was likely the real author of the imperial order, even though it was issued in the name of the child-emperor Antoku. For her full discussion of the edict and appended vow, and their contrasts with the Gyokuyō passages on the start of the fundraising campaign, see 75–79. For the original Gyokuyō passages, see the entries for 1181/7/14 and 10/9, 2: 515–16, 532.

10. On the original project to construct the Great Buddha and Gyōki’s reputed involvement, see Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds, 68, 78–80, 95; Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship, 255–79; and Augustine, Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japan, 77–83. For comparisons between Gyōki’s and Chōgen’s activities, see Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds, chapter 4. On the evolution of Gyōki’s biography more broadly to the medieval period, see Augustine’s study.

11. See the Sazenshū entry in Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 484, and Rosenfield’s English translation, where he notes that the image is no longer extant and the temple remains unidentified (Portraits of Chōgen, 213).

12. See Carr, “Plotting the Prince,” 59–66.

13. Sazenshū, in Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 495. See also Rosenfield’s translation and notes on the shrine in Portraits of Chōgen, 231.

14. Sazenshū, in Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 493.

15. The Council of State directive on the Uozumi anchorage project can be found in Takeuchi, Kamakura ibun, 2: 188–89 (doc. 847). The translations here are adapted from Goodwin, “Claiming the Land,” 240, with reference to the Kamakura ibun text and slightly modified.

16. Sazenshū, in Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 493.

17. The translation here is by Goodwin, in Ōyama, “Beyond the Secular,” 211. The Sayamaike stone inscription was excavated during 1993 construction activities for the Sayama dam and is printed in Ōsaka Sayama-shi, Ōsaka Sayama-shi shi, 19–20. See Ōyama’s “Beyond the Secular” for a valuable recent study of Chōgen’s involvement in this project, including a partial translation of the inscription on p. 211. See also Rosenfield, Portraits of Chōgen, 235–36, and the color image of the inscription on p. 229 (plate 162).

18. For the original order, dated 1200/8, see Takeuchi, Kamakura ibun, 2: 400–1 (doc. 1156). See also the analyses in Obara, “Kanjin to kei’ei,” 150–51, 159. Regarding the passage quoted here, the construction of the Pure Land Hall included a device that lifted the back wall, which apparently enabled sunlight reflecting off a large reservoir west of the temple to shine on the triad (Goodwin and Wilson, “Memories and Strategic Silence,” 120. See also Kainuma, “Chōgen’s Jōdoji Amida Triad,” 123, and Kainuma, “The Jōdoji Amida Triad,” 263–64). Based on the hall’s architectural style, it seems clear that it was designed to accommodate broad crowds of pilgrims, who could approach the images relatively freely (Kainuma, “Chōgen’s Jōdoji Amida Triad,” 106, 120, 123). Thus although Chōgen’s account of pilgrims with sight not being able to see the images when they approach serves largely as a rhetorical flourish, paralleling the depiction of the blind attaining sight, it is not difficult to imagine some pilgrims actually being temporarily blinded, or otherwise unable to see the images clearly, due to effects of the western sunlight reflecting off the images.

19. For the Sazenshū references, see Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 491. For the Great Wisdom Sūtra (Daihannyakyō 大般若經; Ch. Da bore jing), see T no. 220.

20. Goodwin, Alms and Vagabonds, 87; Rosenfield, Portraits of Chōgen, 237.

21. For the passages in the Shinpukuji 真福寺 version of Keishun’s Tōdaiji shuto sankei Ise daijingū ki 東大寺衆徒参詣伊勢大神宮記, see Kokubungaku Kenkyū Shiryōkan, Komonjo shū, 382–83. See also Abe, “Ise ni mairu hijiri,” 203–4, on these passages. On this pilgrimage record more broadly, see also Abe’s analysis in Kokubungaku Kenkyū Shiryōkan, Komonjo shū, 435–60; and Itō, Chūsei Tenshō Daijin shinkō, 541–62.

22. Tsutsui, Tōdaiji zoku yōroku, 12.

23. On Chōgen’s pilgrimages to Ise and links with the Gyōki cult, see also Kubota, Shintōshi no kenkyū, 311–26; Obara, “Kanjin to kei’ei,” 158–9; and Abe, “Ise ni mairu hijiri.”

24. Sazenshū, in Kobayashi 1965, 485–6.

25. On Saichō’s recommendations, and Amoghavajra’s (705–74) influence on his position, see Groner, Saichō, 138–41.

26. See Tsutsui, Tōdaiji yōroku 東大寺要録, 108, for the attribution of the founding of Tenchi’in to Gyōki, who is referred to there as “Mañjuśrī’s manifestation (keshin 化身),” and pp. 108–10 for the full entry on Tenchi’in. For an analysis of the Tōdaiji yōroku entry on Tenchi’in and its links with Gyōki, see Yoshida, “Tōdaiji Tenchi’in no sōritsu to Gyōki.”

27. See Taniguchi, Chōgen no Monju shinkō, 40, which includes a color image of the illustration.

28. Abedera (安部寺 or 安倍寺) was also known as Sūkeiji 崇敬寺 and is now typically referred to as Abe no Monju’in 安倍の文殊院 (The Abe Mañjuśrī Cloister).

29. See Tanaka, “Kaikei saku Monju kishi zō,” for further analysis of the inscription, including a partial black-and-white image and printed reproduction on p. 62.

30. That said, Masuda Masafumi’s recent study of the statue, “Abe Monju’in Kishi Monju Bosatsu zō kō,” 7, bridges the gap between these dates simply by positing that Kaikei constructed the image from 1203 to 1220. In other words, Kaikei may have constructed the head and some other parts by the date of the 1203 inscription there, but not completed the rest of the image until 1220, when Myōhen made his dedication. The reasons for such a relative delay in completing the image are unclear, although its grand scale and the inclusion of the four attendant statues – which Masuda believes were indeed part of the original construction as a single set (7, 9) – likely played a role. For a convenient collation of references on the relative dating of the attendant images, see p. 24n. 10 there.

31. This is not to say, however, that Chōgen was the main donor for the statue. Myōhen’s dedication in the statue suggests that he regarded his nephew Ebin 慧敏 (b. ca. 1170) as the main donor, and Masuda affirms that role in “Abe Monju’in Kishi Monju Bosatsu zō kō,” the first study to focus specifically on Ebin in connection with the statue. On Myōhen’s dedication and involvement, see Wakai, “Kū’amidabutsu Myōhen”; Kanda, “Kaikei’s Statues of Mañjuśrī and Four Attendants,” 13; and reproductions of Myōhen’s colophon in Tanaka, “Kaikei saku Monju kishi zō,” 63, and in Masuda “Abe Monju’in Kishi Monju Bosatsu zō kō,” 10. Rosenfield gives 1210 and “four years after Chōgen’s death” as the date for Myōhen’s dedication (Portraits of Chōgen, 174), but based on the original colophon image, that is mistaken.

32. Some may also see direct testimony to Chōgen’s Mañjuśrī faith in Kanezane’s votive text dated 1183/5/19, which dedicates a relic to be inserted in the Great Buddha statue. There, Kanezane appends Mañjuśrī’s five-syllable mantra, and the context frames Mañjuśrī as corresponding to the “response body” of Mahāvairocana Buddha and the relic as infusing the statue with the power of the full “threefold body” of Mahāvairocana. Given the timing of this donation, only a few months after his 1183/1 dialogue with Chōgen, Chōgen may have influenced the donation and Kanezane’s views in this text. But I would still treat this as indirect testimony; the influences on Kanezane’s Buddhist thought were wideranging. For more on Kanezane’s votive text, see Tani, “‘Kujō Kanezane busshari hōnō ganmon’”; Mori, Sekkan inseiki shisōshi kenkyū, chapter 3; Obara, “Kujō Kanezane no ganmon o meguru nōto; Quinter, “Enacting Identities”; and the full document in Takeuchi, Heian ibun, 8:3094–3096 (doc. 4089).

33. See Quinter, “Emulation and Erasure”; Quinter, From Outcasts to Emperors, chapter 1.

34. The collective grouping of essays in Nakao and Imai, “Chogen, Eison, Ninshō,” is illustrative of this interest. See also Sugiyama, Nihon chōkokushi, 249; Nakao, “Eison ni miru shōjin butsu”; Oishio, “Chōgen denshō,” 33, 36n. 38; and Ōyama, “Beyond the Secular,” 217–19.

35. For the Mañjuśrī Parinirvāṇa Sūtra, see Monjushiri hatsunehangyō 文殊師利般涅槃經 (Ch. Wenshushili banniepan jing; T no. 463) and Quinter, “Visualizing the Mañjuśrī Parinirvāṇa Sutra,” for an annotated translation and analysis of its provenance. Most significant here is the text’s proclamation that Mañjuśrī will appear before practitioners as an impoverished, solitary, or otherwise afflicted being to promote compassionate deeds (T no. 463, 14: 1.481a28–b3). For more on this scripture and the Wutai Mañjuśrī cult as precedents for links between Mañjuśrī and charitable activities in early to medieval Japan, see Quinter, From Outcasts to Emperors, chapter 2.

36. Ninshō, who eventually settled in eastern Japan and became the restoring founder of Gokurakuji 極楽寺 in Kamakura, did not remain itinerant throughout his career. But his early career, including his years at Saidaiji, amply demonstrate his kinship with kanjin hijiri and other itinerant or reclusive practitioners. See Oishio, Chūsei no nanto bukkyō, chapter 6. For more on Myōhen, including links between his activities and Chōgen’s, see Wakai, “Kū’amidabutsu Myōhen”; and Itō, “Myōhen to Rengedani Hijiri.”

37. For an early and forceful expression of doubts concerning all of Chōgen’s reported trips to China, see Yamamoto, “Chōgen nissō den shiken” (originally published in 1964). For a recent investigation of these issues affirming Yamamoto’s argument that Chōgen never actually went, see Ōtsuka, “Chōgen no ‘nissō.’”

38. See, for example, Aoki, “Shunjōbō Chōgen no nissō”; Horikoshi, “Chōgen no nissō”; the collection of articles in Nakao, Tabi no kanjin hijiri; and Rosenfield, Portraits of Chōgen, 38–39. Rosenfield, while stating that it is beyond his ability to render judgment, clearly favors the views of scholars suggesting that Chōgen did go.

39. See Nara Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, Daikanjin Chōgen, 70–71, plate 13, for color images of the bell (now held by Senpukuji 泉福寺 in Wakayama Prefecture) and inscription and pp. 213–14 for a printed version of the inscription. See also Rosenfield, Portraits of Chōgen, 192, for a brief analysis. Horikoshi, “Chōgen no nissō,” 209, argues against Yamamoto’s characterization of the inscription as an example of Chōgen’s self-testimonies to having traveled to China three times, suggesting instead that it reflects the view of the unnamed person who “drafted” the inscription. However, considering that Chōgen’s name was appended as the first of the two signees to the inscription, I concur with Yamamoto’s characterization, even if the inscription was drafted on Chōgen’s behalf (which was common then for dedicatory texts and inscriptions).

40. Translations and paraphrases here are based on the Gyokuyō entry for 1183/1/24, 2:593–4.

41. See Chōgen’s vow dated 1185/8/23 in Tsutsui, Tōdaiji zoku yōroku, 32; Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 68.

42. For provocative arguments concerning the increasing replacement of Wutai as Mañjuśrī’s home in eleventh-century and later hagiographies of Gyōki and other Japanese monks, see Andrews, “Representing Mount Wutai’s Past,” chapters 5 and 6.

43. On the development of the Shikoku pilgrimage tradition, see Reader, Making Pilgrimages.

44. My read of the passage here differs from that in Rosenfield, Portraits of Chōgen, 224, lines 112–13, including my treatment of these practices as part of a circuit from Kumano to “Mitake” and the reference to the “paid reverence and withdrew (作禮而去)” passage. For the final words of the Lotus Sūtra quoted here, see T no. 262, 9: 7.62a29. Based on this passage, and the fact that offering services for “the one-thousand set sūtra” (senbukyō kuyō 千部経供養) commonly referred to the recitation of the Lotus Sūtra one thousand times, the sūtra recited by the ten jikyōsha in the preceding sentence likely refers to the Lotus Sūtra, rather than to the Dainichikyō as it is rendered in Nakao, Chūsei no kanjin hijiri, 20; Rosenfield; and Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 490. Here, I have relied on the text of the Sazenshū in Ōsaka Sayama-shi, Ōsaka Sayama-shi shi, 23–4, which improves on the rendering in Kobayashi’s edition. For further reference, see Kikuchi, Chūsei bukkyō no genkei, 69–78, on Chōgen as a jikyōsha, and pp. 70 and 83n. 79, on this passage.

45. Yamamoto, “Kinpusen hirai denshō to Godaisan shinkō,” 5.

46. The two main sources in question are the Ōgishō 奥儀抄 composed by Fujiwara Kiyosuke 藤原清輔 (1104–1177) between 1135 and 1144 and the Waka dōmōshō 和歌童蒙抄 compiled by Fujiwara Norikane 藤原範兼 (1107–65) between 1145 and 1154. On the overlapping identities of Ōmine, Kinpusen, and Yoshino in these and other accounts, see Yamamoto, Kinpusen hirai denshō, 3–5. For studies linking such accounts to Chōgen’s practices in particular, see Ikoma, “Chūsei no shōjin shinkō” and “Sanrin shugyō no michisuji.” An apparently earlier tradition claims that Kinpusen itself existed in China and it was simply Kinpusen, rather than Wutai, that flew to Japan (Teshima, Heian jidai no taigai kankei, 316–18). Most important here, however, as Teshima also points out (317; 330–31n. 64), is that the view of Kinpusen as Wutai did circulate in Japan by the mid-twelfth century.

47. See Yamamoto, Kinpusen hirai denshō.

48. Taniguchi, Chōgen no Monju shinkō, 35.

49. Here, these various hijiri refer to semi-itinerant practitioners who resided in smaller sub-temples and hermitages on Mt. Kōya and elsewhere, including the network of Tōdaiji bessho that Chōgen helped develop in his role as Tōdaiji chief fundraiser.

50. In Western-language scholarship, see Kanda, “Kaikei’s Statues of Mañjuśrī and Four Attendants”; Yiengpruksawan, Hiraizumi, 142–58; Wu, “The Mañjuśrī Statues and Buddhist Practice of Saidaiji”; Quinter, “Creating Bodhisattvas,” From Outcasts to Emperors, and “Materializing and Performing Prajñā”; and Andrews, “Representing Mount Wutai’s Past,” chapters 5–7. In Japanese, see especially Horiike, “Nanto bukkyō to Monju shinkō”; Kaneko, “Monju Bosatsu zō”; and Fujisawa, “Monju Bosatsu zō zōryū.”

51. See the records of Kanezane’s relic donations in his Fujiwara Kanezane ganmon 藤原兼実願文 dated 1183/5/19 (Takeuchi, Heian ibun, 8:3094–96 [doc. 4089]) and in his Gyokuyō entry for 1185/4/27; 3:80. See also the record for Go-Shirakawa’s donation of two relics from Tōshōdaiji 唐招提寺 and Tōji 東寺, which he had Chōgen enshrine, in the Tōdaiji zoku yōroku entry for 1185/8/23 (Tsutsui, Tōdaiji zoku yōroku, 32; Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 67).

52. Tsutsui, Tōdaiji zoku yōroku, 32.

53. For more on ganmon (Ch. yuanwen) as a genre, see the recent collection of articles in Acta Asiatica (Kim, “Comparative Research on ‘Written Prayers’”). Most pertinent here is the article by Abe Yasurō, “Aspects of Ganmon.”

54. On this evidence, see Nakao, Chūsei no kanjin hijiri, 118–19; and Oishio, “Chōgen denshō,” 11–12.

55. A “secret buddha” in Japanese temples is an image that is not ordinarily displayed to visitors. For more on the significations of such images, see Rambelli, “Secret Buddhas.” On Zenkōji and its Amida triad, see McCallum, Zenkōji and Its Icon, and Tsuda, “Zenkōji Amida sanzon zō.” On medieval Japanese views of India, China, and Japan as the three Buddhist countries, see Wakabayashi, “Sangoku Shisō and Japan’s Identity in the Buddhist Cosmology”; Blum, “The Sangoku-Mappō Construct”; and Tsuda, “Zenkōji Amida sanzon zō.”

56. See the Sazenshū passages in Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 490. My interpretation differs from Rosenfield’s translation (Portraits of Chōgen, 224), which suggests that both the one million recitations over thirteen days and the seven-day recitation took place during the first “occasion” or “visit.” Chōgen’s ichido 一度 that prefaces his mention of each practice is better understood as “on one occasion” and “on another,” in parallel with the successive visions he then recounts.

57. Ikoma, “Chūsei no shōjin shinkō,” 106.

58. See Sanford, “Breath of Life”; van der Veere, Kōgyō Daishi Kakuban; and Proffitt, “Mysteries of Speech and Breath,” for rich analyses of Pure Land thought and practice in Shingon.

59. Sazenshū, in Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 494. Our earliest extant example of Chōgen referring to himself as Namu Amidabutsu dates to 1187, but it is likely that he adopted an Amida name himself before conferring such names to others. See Oishio, “Chōgen denshō,” 11–12, on the timing of these events relative to Chōgen’s Zenkōji experiences and his appointment to the Tōdaiji restoration.

60. For the Sazenshū passage, see Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō, 490–1. On the lumber donations for the relic hall, see Watanabe, “Go-Shirakawa Hōō no Aikuōzan shariden konryū to Chōgen, Eisai.” On Chōgen’s connections to Ayuwang relic traditions more broadly, see Ingram, “The Monk Chōgen’s Expansion of Buddhist Relic Circulation.”

61. See, for example, the analyses in Nakao, “Eison ni miru shōjin butsu”; and Foulk and Sharf, “On the Ritual Use of Ch’an Portraiture.”

62. On the circa 1196 dating, see Kobayashi, Shunjōbō Chōgen shiryō shūsei, 342, and Rosenfield, Portraits of Chōgen, 83 and 225. The dating of Chōgen’s donation of the images of himself is complicated by his grouping them with the lumber donations, right after the reference to the one for “repairs,” and he may be referring to two or even three separate donation occasions. However, for a detailed recent argument that the construction of the Mt. Ayuwang relic hall and the lumber donations took place between 1169 and 1175, see Watanabe, “Go-Shirakawa Hōō no Aikuōzan shariden konryū to Chōgen, Eisai.”

63. For an insightful analysis into buddhas’ portrayed inability to lie, and the status of the “privileged lie” in Indian Buddhist literature, see Nance, “Tall Tales, Tathāgatas, and Truth.”

64. Not all scholars of religion would agree with this characterization – at least in theory. But I stand with Russell McCutcheon in suggesting that, in practice, most scholars do reserve the right to apply different standards than their subjects would, even when the scholars’ methodological stances might suggest otherwise. See McCutcheon, “It’s a Lie.”

65. Teshima, Heian jidai no taigai kankei, 314–15. For a related argument, see Watanabe, “Go-Shirakawa Hōō no Aikuōzan shariden konryū to Chōgen, Eisai,” 18. Watanabe suggests that, because Wutai was more widely known and celebrated than Mt. Ayuwang in Japanese Buddhist circles at the time, to appeal more broadly to supporters Chōgen simply “embellished” on his experiences at Ayuwang by substituting in references to Mañjuśrī and Wutai in the 1185 text.

66. See in particular Smith, Map is Not Territory and Imagining Religion.

67. See Gill, “No Place to Stand,” especially 309–10.