@article{oai:tobunken.repo.nii.ac.jp:00006702,
 author = {高田, 修 and Takata, Osamu},
 issue = {253},
 journal = {美術研究, The bijutsu kenkyu : the journal of art studies},
 month = {Mar},
 note = {1. Introduction. 
     2. Priest Kūkai's Rôle in Building the Lecture Hall and Setting up its Statues. 
     3. The Twenty-one Statues in the Lecture Hall and their Arrangement.
          a. Identification of the Statues, Especially of a Group of Five Bodhisattvas.
          b. The Original Arrangement. 
     4. A Unique Mandala-like Composition of Twenty-one Statues and the Mandala for the Benevolent King Sutra Ritual. 
          a. An Outline of the Usual Mandala for the Benevolent King Sutra Ritual. 
          b. A Group of Five Vidyārājas in the Lecture Hall and in the Mandala System. 
          c. A Group of Five Bodhisattvas and their Relation to the Five Quarter Bodhisattvas in the same System. 
          d. Iconography of the Guardian Image in the Lecture Hall: Brahmā and Indra, and Four Lokapālas. 
     5. The Original Vajrayānistic Meanings of the Images in the Lecture Hall.

     1. The construction of the Lecture Hall of the Tōji (Kyōōgokuji) was started in 825 and was completed toward the end of 834 under the supervision of Priest Kūkai. In 1486 the original hall was destroyed by fire and the present one was rebuilt after that time. But it seems that the latter retains the original dimensions rather well. Housed in the building are five Buddhas, five Bodhisattvas, five Vidyārājas, Brahmā and Indra, and four Lokapālas. Except for the six images (five Buddhas and the central Bodhisatt. va), the rest of the existing statues are originals made in the ninth century for this hall. Although they contain repaired parts, they occupy a very important position in the history of Japanese art as the earliest works of sculpture of Esoteric Buddhism. 
     These statues are orderly arranged and form a three-dimensional Karma-mandala. It has long been said to be a mandala particular to the Jênwang-ching (Benevolent King Sutra) ritual. But it does not necessarily correspond with its Kalpa (ritual practice manual), Jên-wang-ching-i-kuei (Taisho 994), the translation of which into Chinese is attributed to Amoghavajra, thus causing some present-day scholars to doubt this theory. The author of the present paper attempts to reexamine the arrangement of the statues in the hall and to determine the peculiarity of the plan of the mandala and its Esoteric Buddhist singnificance by refering to many historical documents and Buddhist literary materials.
     2. While the Tōji was under construction it was given to Kūkai by the imperial court in 823. The construction of the Lecture Hall was his first task in the Tōji. But the plan of the architecture had already been settled by the court and it seems that he just followed it. What he could do to realize his own ideals based on the new religion which he had brought from T'ang China was in the plan of the design of the mandala consisting of the statues in the Lecture Hall. Therefore, though their completion took place in 829, four years after his death, the selection, form and arrangement of the statues could safely be said to have been the innovation of Kūkai himself.
     3. The twenty-one statues in the hall have had traditional names since an early date. As for most of the images, the identification yields no room for question. But in the case of the five Bodhisattavas the identification is not yet settled. According to the author, they are the head Bodhisattvas of the five sections of Vajradhātu-mandala. Four of these five Bodhisattvas show forms identical with or very close to those of the Catur-mudrā-mandala (one of the nine subsidiary mandalas of the Vajradhātu). But the central one, Vajrapāramitā (Vajravajri), seems to be based on the Bodhisattva of the same name in the Kalpa of the Jên-wang-ching.
     The present arrangement of the twenty-one statues is what was formed after the fire in the fifteenth century and it cannot be regarded as the original one. As for the arrangement before the fire, there exist today three drawings of plans of the tenth, twelfth and fourteenth centuries respectively. It is to be noted that there are some differences even among these three drawings. These differences must have been due to the changed arrangements which took place when large-scale repair programs were carried out. The oldest one among the three drawings (dated 922), which was made by Shinjaku, differs clearly from the others in that the positions and combinations of the images are quite rational. For instance, it places the three corresponding deities, Aksobhya (Buddha), Vajrasattva (Bodhisattva) and Trailokyavijaya (Vidyārāja) in the direction of the southeast. This sort of rational arrangement must have been the original idea of the initial planner whose design was intended to form a unified mandala. Moreover, it is noteworthy that this drawing was made no later than about eighty years after the completion of these statues. It shows most probably their original arrangement.
     4. The next question is what kind of mandala was intended to be composed here. Is the heretofore most prevailing theory that it was a Jênwang-ching mandala acceptable? Roughly speaking, there are two types of Jên-wang-ching mandala : one consisting of five Bodhisattvas based on the Jên-wang-ching sutra of the older translation, and the other in which the main images are the five Vidyārājas formed after the practice manual of the Jên-wang-ching of the later translation. Both of these were used in the ritual practice for such purposes as promoting peace and welfare in the state as well as for overcoming supposed enemies. But, the arrangement of deities in the Lecture Hall of the Tōji cannot be regarded as a usual Jên-wang-ching mandala as it includes five Buddhas which are referred to neither in the sutra nor the practice manual of it, and as the five Bodhisattvas here are the head Bodhisattvas of the Vajradhātu-mandala.
     Here we should pay attention to a set of five ink drawings attributable to the five-direction deities mentioned in Jên-wang-ching. They are supposed to have been brought back from China by Kūkai and are now preserved in the Daigoji and in the Tōji in the shape of faithful copies. They illustrate one by one the deities of the five directions—the four cardinal directions and the center-each treating two Bodhisattvas (the Vajrapāņi type and the usual type), one Vidyārāja, and one of the five guardian deities (Indra and four Lokapālas). For the most part, they correspond to the range of deities in the Lecture Hall of the Tōji and, in addition to that, the five Vidyārājas illustrated here have almost the same form as those in the Lecture Hall. We might safely assume that the kinds of deities in the Lecture Hall were determined in reference to this set of drawings. If this is true, the general idea shows that it was derived from the Jên-wang-ching mandala. The problem here, however, is that the five Bodhisattvas in the Lecture Hall take the appearence of the head Bodhisattvas of Vajradhātu-mandala as mentioned above and do not correspond with the five Bodhisattvas referred to in the practice manual of Jên-wang-ching sutra. But, the central one, Vajrapāramitā is apparently a Bodhisattva of this sutra and the others also embody some elements which can be connected with the Jên-wang-ching ritual. Moreover, according to the doctrine of Esoteric Buddhism, these five Bodhisattvas correspond to the five Bnddhas and the five Vadyārājas concerned. In other words, the primary images in the Lecture Hall, consisting of three groups of five deities, are nothing but the five substantial Buddhas and their two types of transfiguration, the Bodhisattvas as instructive being and the Vadyārājas as protectors. This indicates that the primary images in the Lecture Hall of the Tōji have dual characteristics based on the Vajradhātu ritual and the Jên-wang-ching ritual. As to the six guardian figures, five of them (Indra and four Lokapālas) follow what is mentioned in Jên-wang-ching. The other guardian figure, Brahmā, was probably added to make a symmetrical arrangement and to retain the traditional combination of Indra and Brahmā.
     Thus this mandala formed by the twenty-one orderly arranged statues has a double meaning, yet the system of Jên-wang-ching mandala is predominant.
     5. All the signs point to the likelihood that the planner of such a mandala system cannot but have been Kūkai. Certainly Kūkai must have prepared several tentative plans for the arrangement of the deities in the Lecture Hall. A unique mandala called “Daishi Honzon Zu (Mandala Scheme made by Kūkai)”, which seems to be the work of Kūkai, is possibly one of them. This mandala puts emphasis on Buddhas and Bodhisattvas while the five Vadyārājas have only minor significance. It may be the result of placing importance on the Shou-hu-kuo-chieh-chu-ching (Sutra of the Protection of the State Lord; Taisho 997), one of the sutras promoting the peace of the state. A scheme showing the relationship of deities as written in 839 by Shinnen, a disciple of Kūkai, must have been one of the tentative plans as well. Here the elements of the Jên-wang-ching ritual are predominant, and this scheme is very close to the actual arrangement of the Lecture Hall deities. This fact leads us to assume that it become virtually final plan. The composition of the deities for the Lecture Hall's unusual mandala was thus decided, and the plan was fulfilled after his death. 
     Thus Kūkai intended to make the hall the center of his newly introduced Esoteric practices that were carried on as prayers for the peace and welfare of the state. It was closely related to his efforts to meet the demands of the Early Heian Period when the prevalent thought was the protection of the state by Buddhism. In fact, we find in the career of Kūkai that he put stress on the Shou-hu-kuo-chieh-chu-ching and the Jên-wang-ching which he had brought back from China, and tried to promote the new rituals based on these sutras. In short, the deities of the Lecture Hall of the Tōji were planned by Kūkai himself who wanted to realize his ideal. It means that they are not only the objects of worship installed in the Hall, but they also compose a unique mandala for the ritual of Buddhist protection of the state.},
 pages = {1--38},
 title = {東寺講堂の諸尊とその密教的意義},
 year = {1968}
}