Unearthing Practice: Networked Authenticity and Sutra Interment

Abstract

abstract: In this article, I conduct a case study of sutra-interment rituals conducted at Buzōji in northwestern Kyushu. Placing twelfth-century practices of sutra burial into creative dialogue with twentieth-century practices of sutra excavation, I propose a model of "networked authenticity." Thinking about authenticity as networked—distributed across several interconnected nodes—rather than as generated from any single point provides a way of valuing devotional attention as sincere and meaningful, even when aspects of specific instances of devotion may be imperfect. This model opens a way to evaluate the efficacy of imagined traditions, rotted manuscripts, looted sites, and apocryphal texts by recognizing them as part of a larger, interconnected web whose strands may span centuries. I show that sacred texts are products of social negotiation around meaning and authenticity, not the sources of it. 摘要: 本稿では 12 世紀と 20 ・ 21 世紀武蔵寺経塚と写経埋納法会をケーススタディとして、信仰的な「信憑性」の構造を考察する。結論としては、信憑性の源流は一つ (例えば経典) ではなくて、却っていくらの要素、つまりネットワークで組み立てされる。