Japanese Mandalas: Representations of Sacred Geography

Introduction

The seeds of the banyan tree often germinate in the branchesof othertreeswherebirdshavedroppedthem. The young banyan sends out aerial shoots that take root upon reaching the ground,forming trunks to support broad, horizontal limbs. Branches of those limbs continue to put forth more prop roots until the host tree is obscured, even crowded out.The banyan is admired in India,and elsewhere in Asia, because it is so powerful. The spread of the Buddhist mandala from India to Japan can be likened to the spread of the banyan tree. Many Japanese mandalas—interpreted broadly as representations of sanctified realms where identification between the human and the sacred occurs—are based on Buddhist doctrines originally brought from India to China. Those doctrines germinated and took root,nurtured by elements in the Chinese (host) culture. Eventually, through the process of new organic growth, the doctrines and their visual representations could no longer be readily identified with either the original seeds that had germinated or the host culture. The process occurred again when Chinese Buddhist mandalas, introduced into Japan, helped inspire new mandalic forms that have no apparent parallels on the Asian continent. In this book I investigate certain paradigmatic mandalas from the Japanese Esoteric Buddhist, Pure Land Buddhist, and kami-worshiping (Shinto) traditions. At first glance, these pictorial images seem very different. Looking more closely,we can see meaningful interrelations among the configurations . These connections enhance the potency of the outwardly disparate forms and testify to the reciprocal development of these pictures of sacred realms. Many Japanese mandalas display a complex mixture of Indian Buddhist elements , pre-Buddhist Chinese elements, Chinese Buddhist elements, and indigenous Japanese elements. Their appearances relate to the ways in which succeeding generations of thinkers appropriated and transformed elements according to changing cultural and religious inclinations. Japanese mandalas have developed by activating,transforming,sometimes obscuring, but always by interrelating with their past origins.In this book I attempt to explain why Japanese mandalas look the way they do and how certain visual forms came to embody the sacred.1 This exploration of Japanese mandalas, chiefly iconological, also chronicles an intermingling of visual, doctrinal, ritual, and literary elements that is characteristic of the Japanese religious tradition as a whole. As an art historian, my primary interest is visual material. My assumption is that visual material often yields insights not attainable through textual analysis alone. In Esoteric Buddhist usage, the word “mandala” usually indicates a circular or square configuration, with a center that radiates outward into compartmentalized areas. The deity at the center of the configuration, who signifies absolute truth, engages in reciprocal interactions with figures in the outer precincts, who signify manifested aspects of that truth.A practitioner,visualizing and meditating on the«  » Introduction mandala’s peripheral elements, unites these outer manifestations in the center of the mandala and then internally absorbs the mandala as a whole. From the early eleventh century on, Japanese began to use the term “mandara” (a transliteration of the Sanskrit “ma≠∂ala”) for other kinds of religious painting, not just schematic Esoteric mandalas. These included representations of the paradiselike, Pure Land abodes of Buddhist deities and also depictions of the shrines and environs dedicated to the sacred forces of the indigenous kamiworshiping faith, which is conventionally called Shinto. Following the Japanese example, I will interpret mandala/ mandara in the broadest possible sense. Introduction to the Mandala The Sanskrit word “ma≠∂ala” suggests a circle,disk,or sacred center (la) that is marked off, adorned, or set apart (ma≠∂). The mandala,a kind of cosmic ground plan or map,lays out a sacred territory or realm in microcosm, showing the relations among the various powers active in that realm and offering devotees a sacred precinct where enlightenment takes place. Franklin Edgerton concisely defines “mandala” as a“spot of ground marked out and ceremonially prepared,” or as a“piece of ground specially prepared in honor of a Buddha or saint (for him to sit on), or for the performance of a sacred rite.”2 Even today, Tibetan Buddhist monks recreate what must have been among the earliest kinds of twodimensional mandalic forms in India when they construct sacred diagrams out of colored sand and, after performing the required ceremonies, erase the diagrams to avoid any defilement. In virtually every Buddhist text the term “bodhima≠∂a” appears, referring to the place or platform where, in about the year  ..., the historical buddha ∏âkyamuni attained enlightenment (S. bodhi or sambodai; J. bodai or...