Ten Recitations〈Vol. 52〉

Jūjuritsu, Volume 52: A Buddhist Scroll Copied for the Dead in 768

On the thirteenth day of the fifth lunar month of 768, court scribes in Nara finished another roll of Buddhist scripture. They were near the start of a project that would run for years and consume thousands of sheets of paper. One of those rolls, catalogued today as Jūjuritsu, Volume 52, has lasted twelve centuries and now belongs to Ishiyama-dera, a temple on the Seta River in Shiga Prefecture.

Read the columns of black characters and you will not find a sermon, or any account of the Buddha's previous lives. You will find rules: what a monk may eat and when, how he should wear his robe, the proper way for a community to admit a member or settle a quarrel. This is a book of religious law, and it was copied by order of the woman who then sat on the Japanese throne.

What the Text Actually Contains

The title Jūjuritsu means roughly "the Vinaya in ten recitations," after the ten divisions into which the work is arranged. Vinaya is the branch of Buddhist literature that governs monastic life. Sutras preserve the teachings and treatises argue doctrine; the Vinaya tells monks and nuns how to live together without the community falling apart.

This particular code belongs to the Sarvāstivāda school of early Indian Buddhism. A succession of monks translated it into literary Chinese between 404 and 409. The Kashmiri master Puṇyatāra began the work, the renowned Kumārajīva carried it forward, and Vimalākṣa brought it to completion. The full translation fills sixty-one rolls, and Volume 52 sits deep in the latter part of the text.

What fills those rolls is exhaustive. The code lists 257 precepts binding on a fully ordained monk and 355 on a nun, with detailed procedures for ordination, the rainy-season retreat, and the handling of property and disputes. To a modern eye it can read like the bylaws of an institution. For an eighth-century court that had made Buddhism a pillar of the state, copying the entire canon, rulebooks included, was a way of completing a sacred whole and earning religious merit.

An Empress, a Rebellion, and a Canon for the Dead

The sovereign behind the commission had already worn the crown once. She first reigned from 749 as Empress Kōken, stepped down in favour of Emperor Junnin, then returned to power after a violent crisis. In 764 the powerful courtier Fujiwara no Nakamaro, also called Emi no Oshikatsu, rose in revolt and was killed. Junnin, bound to him by marriage ties, was deposed and exiled to the island of Awaji, where he died the next year. The retired empress took the throne a second time and reigned as Empress Shōtoku.

In 767 her court set about producing a complete Buddhist canon, an issaikyō running to several thousand rolls. Scholars know the set as the Jingo-keiun sutras, after the era name stamped in their colophons, or simply as Empress Shōtoku's votive canon. The Ishiyama-dera Jūjuritsu is one roll of that vast offering.

For whose soul was the merit intended? The dedication speaks of a "former sage," and historians have not settled who that was. Some read it as the deposed Junnin, whose lonely death the empress may have wished to console. Others argue for her own father, Emperor Shōmu, the great patron who had raised the Great Buddha of Nara. The scroll keeps the ambiguity to itself.

A smaller puzzle hides in the writing. In dating the work, the scribes swapped one expected character for another, avoiding a graph that was taboo in Tang China because it appeared in the personal name of an ancestor of the founding emperor's house. Japanese copyists followed the continental convention without question. The substitution is a quiet measure of how closely Nara high culture tracked the court etiquette of China.

Rolls from this commission share a distinctive look. The paper is hemp, steeped in a yellow dye drawn from the bark of the Amur cork tree, a colour prized for its richness that also kept insects away. The brushwork is large and confident, shaped by the bold style of the so-called Daijōmu scriptures associated with Emperor Shōmu. Together with a parallel set linked to Yakushi-ji, these scrolls count among the finest sutra copying of the late Nara period. The government designated the Ishiyama-dera Jūjuritsu an Important Cultural Property in 1953.

Seeing the Scroll, and What to See Instead

A note of realism for visitors: a twelve-hundred-year-old paper scroll is not laid out in daylight for casual viewing. The Jūjuritsu is conserved, not kept on permanent display. Ishiyama-dera does show treasures from its collection at the Hōjōden hall during its spring and autumn exhibitions, so anyone hoping to glimpse the temple's old manuscripts should check what is on view before the trip.

The deeper reason this scroll ended up here is worth knowing. Ishiyama-dera never burned in the wars that destroyed so many old temples, and so it preserved an extraordinary library of texts, statues, and documents. Among its holdings is an entire Buddhist canon of more than four thousand rolls, kept in a raised repository whose pillars stand partly on bare rock.

That rock is the second thing to understand about the place. The temple sits on a great outcrop of wollastonite, a pale crystalline stone formed where limestone met granite deep underground. An exposure this large is rare, and it is protected as a Natural Monument. The stone gave the temple its name: Ishiyama means "stone mountain."

Two buildings rank as National Treasures. The main hall, rebuilt in 1096, is the oldest surviving structure in Shiga and clings to the slope on tall pillars in the stage-style construction also used at Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto. At its eastern end is the small room where, by tradition, the court lady Murasaki Shikibu conceived The Tale of Genji during a temple retreat around the year 1004. Above the rock stands the pagoda, built in 1194, the oldest two-storied pagoda in Japan whose construction date is documented. Inside sits a seated Dainichi Buddha carved by the master sculptor Kaikei.

Around Ishiyama-dera

The temple stands at the southern end of Lake Biwa, where the lake narrows into the Seta River, in the city of Ōtsu. From a pavilion on the eastern ridge you can look out over the water; the autumn moon seen from this spot has been celebrated for centuries as one of the Eight Views of Ōmi. The grounds are planted for every season, with plum and cherry in spring, irises through summer, and maples in autumn, which is why the temple is often called a temple of flowers.

Reaching it is easy. From Ishiyama-dera Station on the Keihan line it is about a ten-minute walk along the river. From JR Ishiyama Station a short bus ride brings you to the gate. Drivers can leave the Meishin Expressway at the Seta-nishi or Seta-higashi interchange, roughly ten minutes away. Kyoto lies close enough to fold the visit into a day in the old capital.