62. Esoteric Buddhism, Material Culture, And Catalogues In East Asia

Abstract

This chapter examines a representative selection of East Asian Buddhist catalogues, taking the formative phase of esoteric Buddhism in Japan as its fulcrum and with a view to establishing what information they can furnish about the adoption of this new and distinctive form of Buddhism, which came to be integrated into the prevalent sūtras system of early Heian Japan. However, to place Kūkai's Catalogue in context it is necessary to examine the role of catalogues and similar documents in eighth- and ninth-century East Asia. The Kaiyuan and the Zhenyuan catalogues, both compiled under the Tang, run to twenty and thirty fascicles respectively. The important documents in the crucial phase of the introduction of esoteric Buddhism into Japan, are the catalogues composed by Saichō and Kūkai. Serious political instability was beginning to tarnish the glories of Tang rule, which in turn led to Japan's suspension of official relations with China. Keywords: China; East Asia; esoteric Buddhism; Japanese Buddhism; Kaiyuan catalogues; Tang rule; Zhenyuan catalogues