Accepted Paper
Paper short abstract
This paper examines the lexical strategies of the Minōdera engi, a Heian-period origin story about En no Gyōja. Comparing Minōdera engi and Chūbunshō, a coeval children’s literature text, I clarify its departures from orthodox Chinese-style writing and identifies its position within the spectrum.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines lexical strategies of the Minōdera engi (Origin story of the Minō Temple), a Heian-period temple-shrine origin story that not only recounts the founding of Minō Temple (present-day Osaka Prefecture) but also provides a hagiography of En no Gyōja. I compare the lexical and idiomatic strategies of the Minōdera engi with those of the Chūbunshō, a children’s literary text that presents lessons on filial piety and etiquette in parallel verse form. Chūbunshō’s preface attributes its authorship to Bai Juyi (772–846), the Middle Tang poet who profoundly influenced Heian-period Sino-Japanese poetry and prose. Although the attribution to Bai Juyi is clearly a forgery used to boost the authority of the text, its widespread readership is evident from its citation in various collections of Buddhist tales such as the Hōbutsushū (Collection of treasures). Whereas previously known quotations from the Chūbunshō were literal—for instance, “In a text called Chūbunshō ...”—the Minōdera engi incorporates its lexical and idiomatic expressions in multiple passages related to the hagiography of En no Gyōja without naming the Chūbunshō as its source. This noteworthy linguistic strategy treats the Chūbunshō not as a didactic text, but as a collection of literary exempla. In the Heian period, Chinese prose and poetry—such as the Wenxuan (Selections of refined literature)—were actively received, and Japanese scholars composed Sino-Japanese texts modeled on them. However, if these are regarded as the orthodox and central forms of classical Chinese poetry and prose, then texts such as the Chūbunshō and the Minōdera engi can be interpreted as highly self-aware peripheral literary experiments in relation to this orthodox tradition. Moreover, these two works are crucial for understanding the modes through which En no Gyōja, the founder of Shugendō, was represented in connection with the centrality of the classical Chinese literary world.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed): | 本報告は、平安時代後期に成立したとみられる箕面寺（現大阪府箕面市）の由来を伝える寺社縁起であり、役行者伝の一つでもある「箕面寺縁起（みのおでらえんぎ）」の表現について、主に同時期の幼学書（子供など初学者向けのテキスト）「仲文章（ちゅうぶんしょう）」との比較を行うものである。「仲文章」は序文に作者として「白舎人」すなわち中唐の詩人で、平安時代の日本漢詩文に多大な影響を与えた白居易（はく きょい）（772～846）の名前を掲げ、孝養や礼法についての教訓を対句の形式で説く書である。白居易の作というのはもちろん権威付けのための仮託であるが、『宝物集（ほうぶつしゅう）』のような説話集に引用されるなど、広く読まれたことが知られる。従来知られていた「仲文章」の引用が「仲文章と云ふ文には…」のような文字通りの引用であったのに対し、「箕面寺縁起」は役行者伝の一部として複数の箇所で「仲文章」の名前を挙げずにその表現を取り込み、利用しており、「仲文章」を教訓書ではなく、文例集として利用している点が注目される。平安時代の日本では、『文選（もんぜん）』や唐詩のような中国の漢詩文が受容され、また、それらに学んだ日本人の学者による漢詩文が作られていたが、それらを正統的・中心的な漢詩文と考えるならば、「仲文章」やそれを利用する「箕面寺縁起」のようなテキストは、それらを意識しつつも周辺的なものと言え、役行者という修験道における聖なる存在がどのような表現で語られたのかを伝える重要な意義を有している。 |
Liquid Centers and Peripheries in Premodern Shugendō