Artworks

Five Great Myōō, Tōji lecture hall

Artwork · Anonymous · c. 839 · sculpture · Tō-ji Temple

Part of the sculptural mandala of twenty-one images on the altar of the lecture hall (kōdō) of Tōji, which Kūkai planned after becoming abbot in 823; their eye-opening ceremony was held in 839, four years after his death. Dainichi sits at the centre with the four transcendental Buddhas, the five Kokūzō bodhisattvas to the east, the five Myōō to the west, the Shitennō at the corners and Bonten and Taishakuten between them — probably Kūkai’s own synthesis of old and new. Fudō sits on a base of rectangular shapes abstracting a rock, a lasso in his left hand and a vajra-handled sword in his right, his hair in a braid and two tusks pointing up, his eyes looking down; Mason suggests that he follows a drawing Kūkai brought from China and begins the “Daishi” lineage of Fudō images. The Myōō are carved largely from single blocks, coated with gofun and painted in bright colours. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 130–132, figs. 156, 158. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.