Returning to the Founder: Śākyamuni Devotion in Early Medieval Japan and Japanese Buddhist Conceptions of History Luke Noel Thompson Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Luke Noel Thompson All rights reserved ABSTRACT Returning to the Founder: Śākyamuni Devotion in Early Medieval Japan and Japanese Buddhist Conceptions of History Luke Noel Thompson 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. Table of Contents 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 i 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 ii 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 iii List of Illustrations Manuscript of the Hikekyō, Shōsōin, Nara 139 Standing Śākyamuni statue , Bujōji, Kyoto Prefecture 192 Wooden box, Bujōji, Kyoto Prefecture 193 iv Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Bernard Faure for his encouragement over the past eight years and for his many insights. Besides providing helpful comments specific to the content of this dissertation, he continuously reminded me through example to ask larger questions of the material. I am also greatly indebted to Michael Como, who spent countless hours helping me to clarify my arguments, structure the dissertation, and render my writing more comprehensible. I have discovered the potential tedium of such work during the past year-and-a-half of helping my own students with their writing, which only increases my gratitude for his efforts to teach me the art of clear thoughts and short sentences. Max Moerman has been very generous with his time and energies during my time at Columbia, kindly looking at my work at various stages and providing academic advice more generally despite having no institutional responsibility to do so. I would also like to thank David Lurie for his involvement at multiple stages of my studies, and Chün-fang Yü and Zhaohua Yang for their help, time, and support. In addition, Haruo Shirane helped me continue my studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures when familial circumstances made such continuation difficult. Mark Blum kindly agreed to be on my dissertation committee, and provided useful feedback to my musings very early on in the process. I would also like to thank Brian Ruppert for his encouragement and advice. In Japan Saitō Hideki of Bukkyō Daigaku generously set aside time to read through primary sources with me. Besides sponsoring me, he made every effort to make my stay in Kyoto comfortable and fruitful. Iyanaga Nobumi kindly included me in his seminar in v Tokyo in the summer of 2010 and later in Kyoto. He also provided feedback to many of my inchoate thoughts in person and later via e-mail. Michael Jamentz has been extremely generous with his time both during my stay in Japan and afterwards. Besides introducing me to various archives in the Kansai region and helping me to stumble through facsimiles there, he has been a sounding board for many of my ill-formed ideas. The Japan Foundation, Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (Columbia University), Weatherhead East Asian Institute (Columbia University), and taxpayers of the United State (though the Foreign Languages and Areas Studies Fellowship) all supported me financially during the dissertation period, as well as during my studies leading up to that period. I am incredibly grateful to these institutions. Finally, I would like to thank those in my immediate kinship network: my parents, my parents-in-law, my wife, and my two children. vi Abbreviations BGD Bukkyōgo daijiten 佛教語⼤辞典 DBZ Dainihon Bukkyō zensho ⼤⽇本仏教全書. DKJ Daikanwa jiten ⼤漢和辭典 GR Gunsho ruijū 群書類従 Iwanami BJ Iwanami Bukkyō jiten 岩波仏教辞典 JKS Jōkei kōshiki shū 貞慶講式集. JZ Jōdoshū zensho 浄⼟宗全書 KD Kōshiki dētabēsu. MD Mikkyō daijiten 密教⼤辞典 Mochizuki BD Bukkyō daijiten 佛教⼤辭典 (Mochizuki Shinkō 望⽉信亨, ed.) NBJ Nihon Bukkyōgo jiten ⽇本仏教語辞典 NDZ Nihon Daizōkyō ⽇本⼤蔵経 NKBT Nihon koten bungaku taikei ⽇本古典⽂学⼤系 NST Nihon shisō taikei ⽇本思想⼤系 Oda BD Bukkyō daijiten 佛教⼤辭典 (Oda Tokunō 織⽥得能, ed.) Ono BKD Bussho kaisetsu daijiten 佛書解説⼤辭典 SBD Sōgō Bukkyō daijiten 総合佛教⼤辞典 SNKBT Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei 新⽇本古典⽂学⼤系 SSS Shinshū shiryō shūsei 真宗史料集成 ST Shintō taikei 神道⼤系 T Taishō shinshū daizōkyō ⼤正新修⼤蔵經 TZ Taishō shinshū daizōkyō zuzō ⼤正新修⼤蔵経図像 (last 15 vols. of Taishō shinshū daizōkyō. Numbered 1–15) Ui BJ Bukkyō jiten 佛教辭典. Ui Hakuju 宇井伯壽, ed. ZGR Zoku gunsho ruijū 続群書類従 ZZGR Zoku zoku gunsho ruijū 続々群書類従 vii Introduction 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