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Paper short abstract

The presentation examines how the medieval Tendai compendium Keiran shūyō shū explains rainʼs salvific meaning in linking life giving rain, dharma, wish granting jewel, Buddha relics, dragons, and rice as intertwined sources of material abundance and spiritual awakening.

Paper long abstract

As Brian D. Ruppert points out, the universal human concern with and dependence on rain has, in the case of Buddhism, created not only a rich metaphorical language but also an intricate ritual system centred on rainmaking. In my presentation, I want to take a closer look at how a fourteenth century Tendai compilation of “secret transmissions” (hiden 秘傳) and rituals, the Keiran shūyō shū 溪嵐拾葉集, explained the nature and origin of rain. Its passages underscore the profound soteriological significance attributed to rain in medieval Japanese thought at large and seem to suggest that the proximity between life-giving rain and the Buddhist teaching (dharma) was not merely conceived in terms of metaphor or analogy, but that they rather were functions of each other. Above all, they highlight the nexus between the “wish-granting jewel” (nyoiju 如意珠), relics, and rice. While the wish-granting jewel and the relics were essentially viewed as salvific entities which lead people to awakening through their effectiveness, they were simultaneously understood to be rain-producing. The wish-granting jewel, hidden in a dragon’s liver, was identified with the relics of the Buddha, which were entrusted to the dragon realm because they contain accumulated merits that nourish and lead beings toward liberation. Likewise, the dragons were imagined as ruling over the ocean and thus water and rain. The association of relics with rice further stemmed from translation processes in which the Sanskrit terms śarīra and śāli (the Sanskrit term for rice) became conflated, revealing an etymological and conceptual amalgamation through which material abundance and spiritual awakening are intertwined, casting agricultural fertility itself as a manifestation of salvific action.