日本佛教=Japanese Buddhism; 文本與圖像=Text And Image; 妙法蓮華經=Lotus Sutra; 寫經=Manuscripts; 如法經=Nyohōkyo; 紙本著色法然上人絵伝=The Illustrated Biography of Priest Hōnen
摘要
The Lotus Sutra, one of the fundamental sutras of Tiantai/Tendai school, was crucial to the Buddhist cultural interactions in East Asia. In early china, there were many examples of handwritten copies of the Lotus sutra in Buddhist texts. With the expanding of Chinese Buddhism, the merits of copying sutras were also introduced to other regions. The huge number of manuscripts of the Lotus sutra in Nara and Heian Periods suggests us that copying sutras was quite common in Japan as well. And one unique type of copying Lotus sutra was invented in Japan, that is the so-called Nyohōkyo. Nyohōkyo literally means that manuscripts that handwritten as dharma defines and offering as dharma suggests, and gradually became strictly restricted with rituals. This new style of copying Lotus sutra quickly became popular in medieval Japan. This article will observe the descriptions of Nyohōkyo both in texts and in images, with the images of rituals for Nyohōkyo in emaki scrolls such as The Illustrated Biography of Priest Hōnen, to present a rather comprehensive aspect of the Manuscripts of the Lotus sutra in East Asian cultural interactions.
