61. AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SHINGON

Elizabeth Tinsley

Mythology, canonization, and sectarian concerns have done much to delineate the contours of Japanese religious history in both the popu- lar and scholarly spheres, and this is no more so the case than in por- trayals of the priest Kūkai 空海 (774–835), celebrated as the founder of the Shingon 真言 (lit.,“true word”; zhenyan; mantrayāna) school of esoteric Buddhism (Jpn. mikkyō 密教) in Japan. He is also known as Kōbō Daishi 弘法大師 (“Great Teacher [who] spread the ”), a posthumous title conferred in 921. Kūkai came to occupy the realms of legend and folktale as a multitalented miracle-worker endowed with soteriological powers.1 For its part, sectarian scholarship has cast him as representative of the Buddhism of the Heian period (794–1185), which is contrasted to, and perceived as displacing, the Buddhism of the Nara period (710–794). Inasmuch as the myths, sectarian laudation, and popular adulation reveal much about the ideological projects of the cultures that shaped them, they have also generated and reinforced misunderstandings of Kūkai’s activities, and of the configuration of religious practices in Japan’s history as a whole. In order to clarify the significance of the development of Shingon in Japan, recent studies have tended to focus on Kūkai’s interactions with the imperial court and the clergy, and on his cooperation with and deviation from orthodox Buddhist thought and praxis.2

1 On the legends and hagiography, see Hinonishi, ed., 1988. 2 Ryuichi Abé 1999 and Jun Fujii 2008 have done much to emphasize the impor- tance of contextualizing Kūkai’s achievements within the historical context, and to shift the approach away from idealizing, sectarian portrayals. Abé reassesses Kūkai’s achievements, proposing that he had developed in Shingon a politically and cultur- ally influential Buddhist discourse. Fujii examines the influence of the Nara schools and Saicho on the development of Kūkai’s Shingon philosophy. Studies of Kūkai in English remain rather limited, but biographical accounts are available in Hakeda 1972, and Kitagawa 1987: 182–202. 692 elizabeth tinsley

Kūkai’s Early Career and Interest in Esoteric Buddhism Elements of esoteric Buddhism were already present in Nara- and early Heian-period Japan, albeit in disparate form (Horiike 1982, 22–39; Miyagi 1986, 75–91; Nara National Museum 2005). Many eso- teric had already been imported from China (Matsun- aga 1969, 160–61), and esoteric dhāraṇī incantation and deity worship had been subsumed into “exoteric” (kengyō 顕教) rituals of eighth- century Nara Buddhism. This incorporation of esotericism has often been characterized by sectarian scholarship as “miscellaneous esoteri- cism” (zōmitsu 雑密), in contrast to the “pure esotericism” (junmitsu 純密) of the imported Shingon and schools. These categories are, however, problematic (Abé 1999, 152–54). Contemporary practi- tioners were not likely to have themselves characterized their practices as “exoteric.” The two scriptural texts central to the esoteric tradition that Kūkai was to inherit and develop were also available, copied, and lectured on in Japan by this time. TheMahāvairocana sūtra (Dainichikyō 大 日経, Dari jing; Mahāvairocanābhisaṃ bodhi vikurvitā adhisṭ hānạ vaipulya sūtra; T. 848) was translated into Chinese in 726 by Śubhākarasiṃ ha (Shanwuwei; Zemmui 善無畏; 637–735) and Yixing (Ichigyō 一行; 684–727), and a copy had been made in Japan by as early as 737. An abbreviated version of the Tattvasaṃ graha sūtra (Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃ graha nāma mahāyāna sūtra, also called Vajraśekhara sūtra; Kongōchōkyō 金剛頂経; Jin gang ding jing; T. 865) had been translated into Chinese in 753 by Amoghavajra. However, it is highly doubtful that there was any awareness in Japan of esotericism as a discrete set of beliefs and practices. A significant aspect of Kūkai’s role in the development of esoteri- cism in Japan was his provision of a theoretical grounding for the eso- teric elements that had hitherto been unexamined by the “Six Schools” (rokushū 六宗).3 These schools, based in Nara, constituted the offi- cially recognized Buddhism, which was controlled by the Sōgō 僧綱 (Office of Priestly Affairs) of the Ritsuryō律令 state; the ritsuryō were

3 Hossō 法相 (Yogācāra), Kegon 華厳 (Avatamsaka), Kusha 倶舎 (Abhidharmakośa), Sanron 三論 (Mādhyamika), Jōjitsu 成実 (Satyasiddhi), Ritsu 律 ().