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The Shikoku Pilgrimage – Visiting the Ancient Sites of Ko¯ Bo¯ Daishi

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The Shikoku Pilgrimage – Visiting the Ancient Sites of Ko¯ Bo¯ Daishi 17 Chapter 16 HJB:Master Testpages HJB 10/10/07 11:43 Page 239 CHAPTER 16 THE SHIKOKU PILGRIMAGE – VISITING THE ANCIENT SITES OF KO¯ BO¯ DAISHI The shikoku pilgrimage is unlike the saikoku pilgrimage, where one visits the thirty-three sites of kannon, but rather it is a journey that consists of eighty-eight sites in shikoku, which are said to be the ancient sites of ko#bo# Daishi ku#kai. at each site, people pay homage at the Daishi hall. Both pilgrimages are similar in that one goes to sacred sites; however, the pilgrimage of shikoku has come to be traditionally called ‘shikoku henro’. The shikoku pilgrimage is said to be 1,400 kilometres long and takes fifty to sixty days for someone to walk the entire route. ryo#zenji, situated in Tokushima prefecture, has been designated as temple number one and o>kuboji, of kagawa prefecture, has been designated as temple number eighty-eight. actually, the ideal route is to begin at ryo#zenji in awa (Tokushima prefec- ture), then on to Tosa (ko#chi prefecture), then iyo (ehime prefecture), then sanuki (kagawa prefecture), arriving finally at Ōkuboji. Doing the pilgrimage in numerical order is called jun- uchi, while doing it all in reverse order, in other words, beginning at o>kuboji, is called gyaku-uchi. Origin of the number eighty-eight it is not at all clear what the significance of the number eighty- eight is, but there are various theories which offer possible explanations. For example, the character for ‘kome’, or rice, can be divided into three parts which read: eight, ten, eight or eighty- 17 Chapter 16 HJB:Master Testpages HJB 10/10/07 11:43 Page 240 A History of Japanese Buddhism eight.alternatively, it could be a reference to the eighty-eight illu- sions of the mind of Jaken which could cause someone to sway from the principle of `Three Worlds and Four Noble Truths` as written in the Kusharon; or it could be the sum total of the years of misfortune for men (forty-two), women (thirty-three) and children (thirteen), or the number of eight large spiritual towers which ko#bo# Daishi constructed on the ancient sites of sakyakumi multiplied by ten with eight added to the total to make eighty-eight. There is also a theory that this number came from the kumano ninety-nine o#ji route. in other words, the kumano ninety-nine o#ji is the road to kumano along which one worships at certain small shrines called ‘o#ji’ along the way leading up to kumano shrine. however, even if by adding up all of the o#ji located at each place, the total number does not amount to ninety-nine. over the centuries, the location and number of o#ji have changed but in most cases the actual number has been closer to eighty-eight.Yet when one speaks of the number of o#ji it is always ninety-nine and by adding kumano shrine, located at the end of the route, the total reaches one hundred. The magical significance of the number ninety-nine has been given more attention, and as a result, the actual number has not become an issue so that the ‘ninety-nine o#ji’ has become fixed. however, at kumano, the number eighty-eight still lingers in the background and it could be said that the shikoku pilgrimage, which was strongly influ- enced by kumano, has accepted this number. Thus, at the moment it is clearly difficult to say just which theory is correct. The first reference to the shikoku pilgrimage in historical documents dates back to the twelfth-century book entitled Konjaku Monogatari. in the fourteenth section of the thirty-first fascicle, it states: ‘in olden times, three priests who travelled along the path of Buddha went along the road of shikoku to iyo, sanuki, awa and Tosa, proceeding close to the sea. on their journey, these priests unexpectedly found themselves walking along a mountain path and having lost their way walked further into the woods, praying that they would find their way to the beach. From this, we learn that as early as the late heian period (74–11) there were priests or hijiri who, while conducting training, travelled close to the sea and circumnavigated shikoku.’ 40.
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