The Hidden Link: Tracing Liao Buddhism in Shingon Ritual

The discovery of two grains of the Buddha’s “authentic” bodily relics—a white grain purportedly from the Buddha’s bone and a red grain from his blood—in the upper relic crypt of Chaoyang North Pagoda 朝陽北塔 (1043–44) brought immediate fame to this architectural monument from the Liao dynasty (907–1125) (Fig. 1). This discovery, which occurred during the monument’s restoration in 1988,¹ made Chaoyang, a small city in Liaoning

Figure 1.

Chaoyang North Pagoda. Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province, China. Liao dynasty, 1043–1044.

[Photograph by Youn-mi Kim.]

Figure 2.

The relic crypt from the twelfth eave of Chaoyang North Pagoda (with its southern panel removed for display). Beita Museum, Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province.

[Photograph by Youn-mi Kim.]

Province, an important pilgrimage site for Buddhists. Today the modern square created around the pagoda after the restoration and excavation is crowded throughout the year with locals and visitors circumambulating the pagoda as an act of veneration.

My research, which I believe deepens our understanding of this important pagoda, concerns the immediate spatial frame pertaining to these Buddha relics: the relic crypt installed in the center of the twelfth eave of the pagoda in 1043 (Fig. 2). This relic crypt is fascinating in that it illuminates a previously unknown relationship between the Liao dynasty and an important Japanese esoteric Buddhist ritual of the late Heian period (794–1185). The Buddhist practices of the Liao dynasty have been given little attention, compared to those of other Chinese dynasties, partly because so few historical documents written by the Liao remain,² but more critically, because of a scarcity of records on Liao Buddhism.³ The study of Liao Buddhism, however, is indispensible for understanding the religious landscape of medieval East Asia. The Liao Empire developed unique Buddhist doctrines and practices,⁴ and as this paper shows, its impact on the neighboring countries’ Buddhist practice was probably more influential than previously assumed.

The study of Liao Buddhist practices can be greatly supplemented by the visual and material data (that is, artifacts and inscriptions) that have been discovered during archaeological excavations over the last several decades.⁵ Unlike the textual data, however, the archaeological data speak only when we disentangle their meaning through interdisciplinary analyses. Otherwise they remain as beautiful but mute objects sitting inside museum showcases. This paper attempts to find a voice for the rich artifacts from the upper relic crypt of Chaoyang North Pagoda, now housed in the North Pagoda Museum. The relic crypt provides a rare opportunity to reconstruct a Liao-dynasty esoteric Buddhist ritual. Designed as a ritual altar in miniature, the relic crypt informs us about the actual practice of a particular Liao esoteric Buddhist ritual. Because so few relevant textual records are available about ritual performances from the Liao period, information that would help us to decipher the design of this relic crypt, this research instead uses late Heian Japanese ritual documents that are approximately contemporaneous with the Liao pagoda, as well as Tang-dynasty ritual manuals. These medieval documents confirm that the Liao relic crypt was a miniature ritual altar related to the famous Buddhist incantation known as Uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī (Superlative Spell of the Buddha’s Crown). Since the ritual altar was probably modeled on contemporaneous Liao Buddhist ritual, this find provides an ideal opportunity to reconstruct a specific Liao dhāraṇī ritual.

Even more interesting, a comparative analysis of the Liao archaeological data and the Japanese documents reveals that this type of Liao Buddhist ritual was later transmitted to Japan, where, in the twelfth century, it gave birth to a new Shingon 眞言 School esoteric ritual known as the Nyohō Sonshō 如法尊勝. The Nyohō Sonshō Ritual was one of those rituals that served to reinforce the Shingon School’s connection to the retired emperor and to solidify its own political power during the late Heian period.⁶ This ritual has long been assumed to be an indigenous Japanese practice because its usage of the...