Immigrant Gods on the Road to Jindō

Abstract

This chapter traces the role of the Hata, an immigrant kinship group from the Korean kingdom of Silla, in the complex interactions between rulers, kami, and buddhas during the Nara and early Heian periods. Because immigrant lineages such as the Hata played a major role both in the formative Buddhist tradition and in a series of local cults that were absorbed by the royal cult, their influence extended across the religious spectrum of the Nara period. As the court increasingly turned to lineages such as the Hata for Buddhist and non-Buddhist sources of protection from the hostile spirits that traveled the roadways of the land, members of the Hata came to pervade not only the upper echelons of the ecclesial hierarchy, but also some of the most powerful lineages at court. As a result, when Kammu tennō moved his court to the main Hata stronghold in Yamashiro province at the start of the Heian period, it was Hata monks and courtiers who propitiated the Hata shrines and deities that surrounded the court.