Part of The Lotus Sutra (Found at Mount Kinpu)
- Person
-
作者藤原道長
- Date
-
制作年 Chotoku ４（998)
- Title
- コンシコンジホケキョウダンカン（キンプセンマイノウキョウ）
- Measurements
- 13.8×46.5
- Materials, techniques and shape
- gold letters on deep blue paper
- Collections
- Century Akao Collection
- Depository
- Institute of Oriental Classics (Shido Bunko)
- Ref. number
- AW-CEN-002534-0000
- License
- CC BY Images license
- Creditline
-
慶應義塾（センチュリー赤尾コレクション）
- URL
- Classification
- Art
- AI Tagging
- Water resources Plant Wood Grey Tree
In Japan’s mountain worship, people believed that Mount Kimpusen (lit. “Mountain of Gold”) in Yoshino (Nara Prefecture) was associated with the deity Zao Gongen (Deva King) and that the mountain had a store of gold treasures. Arousing deep faith among the Heian-era nobles, the cult professed that the mountain would be where the Bodhisattva, or the Compassionate One (Jp. Miroku Bosatsu; Sk. Maitreya), would make himself manifest 5.67 billion years after Buddha’s death. The nobles built a Sutra Mound at the top of Kimpusen and dedicated sutra manuscripts in an earnest desire for salvation. In prayer for a peaceful death, one of the most powerful men of the era, Senior Regent Fujiwara-no-Michinaga, made a lavishly decorated dedicatory sutra written in gold ink on dark-blue paper. The copy was placed in a gilt bronze sutra case and then buried in the Sutra Mound to be preserved for eternity. It was excavated in 1691, shedding light on how it came into being. The inscription on the sutra case read that the 15-handscroll sutra manuscript was consecrated in August 1007 after being hand-copied indeed by none other than the Senior Regent Michinaga himself. It was also learned that the dedicatory sutra also contained some copies that had been prepared in 998. Today, the extant sutra copies, authentically rendered by Fujiwara-no-Michinaga are preserved at Kimpu Shrine, Tokyo National Museum, and the Goto Museum.The exhibited piece is a segment showing a part of Lotus Sutra Volume 5, Chapter 13 “Exhortation to Hold Firm”. The bottom half of the segment decayed during the 600 years that the scrolls were buried underground. On the remaining half, the heavy ink of gold mud seems to have been written slowly and steadily, and the beautiful Classic-style brushwork proves the height of calligraphic mastery Michinaga had attained.
On the eleventh day of the eighth month in the year 1007, the politician FUJIWARA no Michinaga (966–1028), had a case with The Lotus Sutra and other Buddhist texts copied on 15 scrolls and buried at Mount Kinpu in Yoshino, Nara prefecture. According to his Diary of the Chief Adviser (Midō kanpaku), Michinaga, who served as minister of the left at the time, copied and had the sutras buried to preserve them until the Bodhisattva Miroku (sk. Maitreya), would appear 5.67 billion years after the death of the Buddha Shaka (sk. Shakyamuni). The cylindrical cases, made of gold and bronze and inscribed with devotions, were discovered around 1691 and designated as a national treasure, and are now in the collection of the Kyoto National Museum. The sutras and other texts inside are in the collections of Kinpusenji Temple and the Tokyo National Museum, and many of them are designated as important cultural properties.
This piece of paper contains 23 lines of chapter 13, “Encouraging Devotion,” of the Lotus Sutra. The reason why the lower half of the sutra is missing is that the water in the cylindrical sutra case dissolved the paper over a period of 700 years. The front part with the gold characters also got stuck to the back, and this makes the characters shine even more brilliant. Different from the diligent characters of his diary, this piece of paper allows us to feel the devotion of Michinaga.
Description from the exhibition Catalogue "Letter-scape: Century Akao Collection, A World of Letters and Figures", Keio Museum Commons, April 2021
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Identifiers
- Title (EN)
- Part of The Lotus Sutra (Found at Mount Kinpu)
Physical description
- Weights and quantities
-
Quantity 1紙
- Attachments
- マット、布製たとう
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