You are here

Home

Wondering, Reading, Doubting: The Legacy of Scholarly Monks in Medieval Japan

Submitted to Program Units
1: Japanese Religions Unit
2: Buddhism Unit

Chris Callahan,, Presiding

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

This panel looks to subjects conventionally categorized separate from Buddhism knowledge to examine the varied roles of scholarly monks as interpreters and producers of religious knowledge in medieval Japan. While recent studies on doctrinal debates (rongi) and Buddhist seminaries (dangisho) have shown how scholarly monks bridged intellectual, social, and political spheres, attention to medieval scholarly practices often remains limited to Buddhist doctrine. Instead, each paper analyzes the use of different spheres of knowledge by medieval scholarly monks, including discourses on music, medicine, regional deities (kami), and the precepts. In each case, we find multiple systems of knowledge and understanding in dialogue, rather than being appropriated within a Buddhist intellectual hegemony. Together, the papers highlight the knowledge and interpretative practices of scholar monks, and methods for recentering our modern research around medieval perspectives.

Papers

  • Yagi Morris, McGill University

    Envisioning the Biwa: A Scholar-Monk’s Attempt to Re-Construct the Imperial Rule

    Abstract

    The works of the scholar-monk Monkan Kōshin (1278–1357) have become an emerging topic in the study of Japanese esoteric Buddhist thought. This presentation examines the Kinpusen himitsuden (‘The Secret Transmission of the Golden Peak’), an esoteric Buddhist ritual and mythological text compiled by Monkan in 1337 at the southern court’s refuge palace in Yoshino at the start of the civil war of the Nanbokuchō period. It focuses on a unique section of the text dedicated to the goddess Myōonten and her symbolic form, the biwa/lute, which epitomizes in the text the non-duality between religious and political sovereignty. Following an exploration of the biwa that goes back to early Confucian sources, to transmissions of musical liturgies from the Tang and to the inauguration of biwa initiations in Japan, the discussion reveals the central role of played by scholar-monks in constructing imperial legitimation.

  • Andrew Macomber, Oberlin College

    The Demon Multiple: How Scholar-Monks Make Disease Pathogens Hang Together

    Abstract

    In this paper, I discuss how Buddhist scholar-monks in medieval Japan responded to disease outbreaks through knowledge management. In the twelfth century, following a devastating cascade of natural disasters, the nobility in the capital of Heiankyō (today’s Kyoto) found themselves facing an unprecedented disease. Whereas for centuries diseases were understood to be caused by resentful spirits, this new disease had an unusual cause: physical corpses. As the nobility fumbled against this curious postmortem contagion, Buddhist monks belonging to the Jimon lineage of the Tendai school invented a new healing ritual, which they crafted through the creation of a pair of ritual manuscripts. Rather than consider this ritual in terms of performance—a common approach in ritual studies—in this paper I examine these ritual manuscripts as epistemological sites, textual spaces in which Buddhist monks sought to produce compelling and coherent knowledge about disease and the pathogens imagined to cause them. 

  • Jesse Drian, University of California, Los Angeles

    Compiling and Comparing: The Work behind the Shōbōrinzō’s Itsukushima Shrine Origin Narrative

    Abstract

    In this presentation, I will discuss how the Shitennōji monks who compiled the Shōbōrinzō, a fourteenth century hagiography of Prince Shōtoku, incorporated an Itsukushima Shrine origin narrative into Shōtoku’s life story. Beyond explaining how the compilers framed Itsukushima as an example of Shōtoku unifying the realm by connecting sacred places across the archipelago, I will examine how the work of compiling origin narratives led to new connections between sacred places and deities. Focusing on different approaches to selecting and organizing a list of deities who revered Buddhism added to the end of the origin narrative, and particularly the inclusion of Zenkōji, in manuscript variants of the Shōbōrinzō, I will demonstrate that the scholarly monk compilers’ comparison of origin narratives as sources of religious and historical knowledge inspired new understandings about the relationships between Buddhas and kami deities, and the sacred spaces in Japan and the Buddhist world.

  • Or Porath, Tel Aviv University

    Breaking the Precepts into Sets: Exegetical Treatises on the Sannō Deity

    Abstract

    Is it true that Japanese monks were less invested in monastic discipline than their counterparts in China and Tibet? Scholar-monks in Japan actively engaged in deciphering precepts, particularly the concept of kaitai, that constructed the precepts as a material force in the practitioner's body. This notion advocated absorbing the precepts within the body rather than adhering strictly to monastic codes. The paper explores how Tendai scholar-monks constructed the relationship between the precepts and Japanese regional gods, how they prioritized the sacralization of gods over Buddhas and how they reshaped the pantheon into a form of henotheism. In doing so, Sannō, the protective deity of the Tendai school, surpassed other deities through embodying the precepts while foundational principles underpinning the monastic code were rooted in Tendai doctrinal concepts. This perspective allowed the incorporation of Buddhist ideas to celebrate kami and justify antinomian behavior within a veritable discourse of Medieval Shinto.

Responding
Chris Callahan,
Audiovisual Requirements

Resources

LCD Projector and Screen
Podium microphone

Full Papers Available

No
Program Unit Options

Session Length

2 Hours

Schedule Preference

Sunday, 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM
Schedule Info

Monday, 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM

Tags

Buddhism
scholar monks
knowledge production
Shinto
Benzaiten
Monkan Kōshin
the body
politics
Religion
disease
demons
knowledge management
corpses
Itsukushima Shrine
origin narrative
engi
Shōtoku
sacred space
precepts
discipline
monastic code
Sannō

Session Identifier

A25-213