Paper short abstract:

The presentation examines the transposition of the imperial ritual stage, as orchestrated by Daigoji monks, to the cultic reality and literary landscape of Kinpusen in the Kinpusen Himitsuden, an esoteric Buddhist text written in 1337 by Monkan Kōshin for the legitimation of the Yoshino court.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation examines the transposition of the imperial ritual stage, centered on the wish-fulfilling jewel, to the cultic reality and literary landscape of Kinpusen in a medieval esoteric Buddhist text. Entitled the Kinpusen Himitsuden (‘The Secret Transmission of the Golden Peak’), it was compiled by Monkan Kōshin in 1337, soon after the establishment of the southern court’s refuge palace in Yoshino. As the colophons indicate, the text was written for the protection of the state, the glorification of Zaō, the tutelary god of Kinpusen, and for the emperor’s ritual practices (referring to Go-Daigo). The presentation attends to the question of how the intertwinement of distinct ritual and literary/cultic traditions within the text produced this structure of legitimation in direct relations to the reality of the war.

On the one hand, the text is grounded in the cultic structure of Ōmine and it narrates well-known legends that circulated in the area at the time of its composition, revealing Monkan’s concern with local knowledge as a source of legitimation. On the other, as part of Monkan’s corpus on the sanzon gōgyō rite, the text is ingrained in esoteric Buddhist discourses on attainment and in a ritual system that first developed from the interaction between the Heian emperors and esoteric Buddhist monks, most prominently of the Ono lineage of Daigoji.

I focus on a section of the text that articulates Zaō as an embodiment of the central Buddha of the imperial Nyohō sonshō rite, and the mandala incorporated in the text, as a Sonshō mandala, comprising Dainichi/Sonshō and the two Wisdom Kings, Fudō and Gōzanze. According to 13th century texts describing the ritual platform of Daigoji, this tripartite structure represents, the non-duality of acquired and inherent enlightenment, of the Kongōkai and Taizōkai mandalas. The text further associates Zaō with the wish-fulfilling jewel, the central object of worship upon the imperial ritual stage and the honzon of the Nyohō sonshō rite. This section of the text demonstrates not only the dissemination of secret knowledge and the interfusion of distinct ritual realities but also the innovative potential embedded in moments of crisis.