Materializing and Performing Prajna: Jōkei's Manjusri Faith and the Kasagidera Restoration

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)In studies of medieval Japanese Buddhism that privilege the new Kamakura schools, scholar-monks belonging to the Nara, Shingon, and Tendai schools are typically cast in a negative light. Despite his renown in the medieval period, the Hosso monk Jokei ... (1155-1213) is no exception. In fact, Jokei has often served as the poster child for the elitist and oppressive tendencies of scholar-monks from the established schools due to his putative role in suppressing Honen's ... (1133-1212) new Pure Land movement. Recent studies, however, have challenged standard theories on Jokei's relationship to the early Kamakura period suppression of Honen and his followers from a variety of angles.1 But most significant here among new developments in Jokei studies are those spurred by the landmark publication in Jokei koshiki shu (Taisho Daigaku 2000) of thirteen koshiki he authored and the increased attention to the performative and popularizing dimensions of his diverse cultic activities.2 As I will suggest, koshiki texts also represent a chief means by which Jokei and other Nara scholar-monks packaged their cultic concerns for broader, trans-sectarian audiences.The activities of leading medieval Nara monks have typically been characterized as reactionary responses by elites to popularizing tendencies championed in the new Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren schools rather than as creative adaptations of Buddhist teachings and practices in their own right. Even amid revisionist studies of Japanese religion, the textual and doctrinal concerns of Jokei and other scholar-monks are often contrasted with the lived religion expressed in such activities as icon veneration, simplified chanting rituals, and pilgrimage practices. This article, however, uses Jokei's involvement in the restoration of Kasagidera ... and in the Manjusri cult-including a koshiki dedicated to Manjusri that Jokei composed-as a case study of how one leading Nara scholarmonk integrated these same on-the-ground practices with his doctrinal and other textual activities.Jokei's Monju and other koshiki texts were not composed in a vacuum. For many of his koshiki, we have colophons or other testimony by Jokei that iden- tify the context of their composition. Some were composed upon request and thus tailored to the needs of the practitioners soliciting Jokei's textual and ritual expertise. Others were initiated by Jokei himself and reflect such well-known aspects of his cultic activities as his devotion to the buddha Sakyamuni, the bodhisattva Kannon (Sk. Avalokitesvara), and the future buddha, Maitreya.3 For other koshiki, however, including his Monju koshiki ... (Manjusri Koshiki), we lack such firsthand testimony to the date, place, or other circumstances of their composition and need to reconstruct their contexts based on both the internal evidence of the texts and their fit with other examples of his cultic activities.The connections of the Maitreya cult with Kasagidera, and accordingly with Jokei's activities after his move to this mountain temple about twelve miles northeast of Nara, are well known due to a massive cliffside image of Maitreya that had attracted devotees for centuries by the time of the restoration.4 However, the interlinked significance of the Maitreya and Manjusri cults during Jokei's Kasagi years (1193-1208), the most productive period of his career, has been little explored, even though that significance is attested in diverse material constructions, textual genres, and ritual performances. Particularly important for this study is recognizing that Jokei's Monju koshiki shows close thematic connections with his other activities at Kasagidera, including his composition of the Shin'yosho ... (Essentials of the mind), one of his best-known doctrinal treatises. And particularly important for understanding Jokei's place in the medieval revival of Nara Buddhism more broadly is recognizing that in the early Kamakura period (1185-1333), Nara scholar-monks took the lead in the production of koshiki, and Jokei was the most prolific author across time periods. …