Ryōkai mandara (Mandalas of the Two Realms), Tōji
両界曼荼羅
Artwork · Anonymous · second half of the 9th century · kakemono · Tō-ji Temple
The pair of mandala paintings of the Womb World (Taizōkai) and Diamond World (Kongōkai) — the oldest and best preserved in Japan. In the Taizōkai, Dainichi sits on an eight-petalled lotus at the centre of twelve courts, with the four transcendental Buddhas and four bodhisattvas on the petals; the Kongōkai has nine squares with Dainichi in the wisdom-fist gesture. Yanagisawa Taka has shown that they are Japanese copies of a set made in China for Emperor Montoku and brought back by the Tendai monk Enchin in 859. The figures are drawn in red iron-wire lines with animated hands but without movement in their bodies; the shading makes a decorative pattern rather than modelling. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 126–128, figs. 152–153. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.