Buddhist literature; Japanese; Mahayana Buddhism; Japanese – Religion; History; Asians; Gautama Buddha
摘要
This dissertation examines Japanese conceptions of and devotional attitudes toward Śākyamuni (the historical Buddha) during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. It focuses in particular on a new interest in Śākyamuni that arose in the twelfth century, and argues that this interest was a response to two developments: the appearance of the belief that the world had entered Buddhism’s final age, and the increasingly acute sense that Japan existed at the periphery of the Buddhist world. These two developments evoked in some clerics a sense of distance from the origins of Buddhism and a feeling of helplessness since the final age was a time when soteriological progress was thought to be particularly difficult. Japanese Buddhists were thus faced with a problem: how to proceed given these disadvantageous circumstances? Some clerics found comfort in theories about the Buddha Amida’s ability to take humans away from this world to his pure land, while others turned instead to the Mahāyāna Buddhist idea that humans are born enlightened (and thus need not worry about their personal salvation after all). The monks and texts at the center of my research instead looked to Śākyamuni in an attempt to reconnect with the source of the Buddhist tradition, thereby countering the inevitable decline of Buddhism by linking themselves to, and in some cases recreating, the imagined golden age that Śākyamuni and his Indian environs represented.
目次
List of illustrations iv Acknowledgements v Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Śākyamuni in Early Japanese Buddhism 21 Śākyamuni-of-narrative: the hagiographical buddha 26 Śākyamuni-of-doctrine: the eternal buddha 39 Changing views of history 51 The Śākyamuni of Seiryōji 56 Śākyamuni in the Konjaku monogatari shū 65 Conclusion 68
Chapter 2 Jōkei and the Hikekyō 70 The Hikekyō 76 Previous scholarship on the Hikekyō 84 The influence of the Hikekyō on Jōkei’s conception of Śākyamuni: ties to the Buddhist past 86 Jōkei and Amida 90 Aspects of the Hikekyō emphasized by Jōkei and what what this tells us about Jōkei’s conception of Śākyamuni 97 Śākyamuni’s jātaka: Samdrareṇu (J. Hōkai) and his 500 vows 98 Śākyamuni’s uniqueness: his character and position within the Buddhist pantheon and our relationship to him 101 The influence of the Hikekyō on Jōkei’s conception of relics: ties to the present and the Buddhist future 107 Relics in the Hikekyō 108 Jōkei’s understanding of relics 114 Jōkei’s reading of the Hikekyō and that work’s influence on his understanding of the nature and soteriological role of relics 118 Conclusion 124
Chapter 3 Hōkei, his 500 Vows and Śākyamuni as a daimyōjin: The Reception of the Hikekyō between the Tenth and Thirteenth Centuries 128 Three different receptions of the Hikekyō 131 Hōkai and his 500 vows 134 The Shaka nyorai gohyaku daigan (kyō) 135 The Shaka nyorai shaku 144 Śākyamuni as a daimyōjin 150 Myōjin, myōjin, and daimyōjin 153 Origin of the sixteen-character phrase 155 Relationship between buddhas and kami 161 Chūsei shinwa, Chūsei Nihongi 164 The rise of Pure Land Buddhism, and the turn to the other world 169 Conclusion 173
Chapter 4 Vulture Peak in Japan: Importing the Sacred Past into the Defiled Present 175 Vulture Peak: In India and in Japan 182 Views of Vulture Peak and Śākyamuni as being elsewhere 187 Rebirth in Śākyamuni’s pure land 188 Views of Vulture Peak and Śākyamuni as being here in Japan 197 Jōkei and Mt. Kasagi 199 Thirteen-tiered pagoda 200 Conclusion 208
Conclusion 217
Works Cited 227 Appendices 257 Appendix 1: Table of quotes from and references to the Hikekyō 258 Appendix 2: Translation of Jōkei’s Gongu ryōzen kōshiki (1196) 269 Appendix 3: Translation of Jōkei’s Kasagidera jūsanjūtō kuyō ganmon (1198) 288 Appendix 4: Translation of Jōkei’s Tōshōdaiji Shaka nenbutsu gammon (1202) 295 Appendix 5: Translation of tale from Chūkōsen (by 1152) 304
