Fukun-so-Shaku-Shinhen-Mantra

A Nara-Period Sutra at the Heart of a Bodhisattva's Cult

The Fukūkenjaku Jinben Shingon-kyō kept at Sanbō-in on Mount Kōya is a Buddhist scripture copied by hand more than twelve centuries ago, during the Nara period. It survives as eighteen scrolls and ranks among Japan's National Treasures. The text is the Japanese transmission of an Indian sutra known in Sanskrit as the Amoghapāśa-kalparāja-sūtra, the principal scripture devoted to the bodhisattva Fukūkenjaku Kannon.

The Chinese version behind this manuscript was the work of Bodhiruci, a translator-monk who reached the Tang court from southern India and completed his rendering in 707. His full translation ran to thirty fascicles. The set preserved at Mount Kōya consists of eighteen scrolls of that work, brushed out by a Japanese scribe in the eighth century.

What the Scripture Teaches

The name itself opens a door. Amoghapāśa combines amogha, meaning unfailing or never empty, with pāśa, a hunter's lasso. Fukūkenjaku Kannon is the bodhisattva who throws a lasso of compassion that never comes back empty, drawing in every living being to be rescued.

The sutra explains in close detail how this figure is to be pictured and worshipped. It records the mantras and dhāraṇī to be recited, the methods of invocation, the forms of the mandala, and the rewards held out to the faithful. Two of these promises were widely repeated in later Japanese devotion: the twenty worldly benefits, which include freedom from illness and protection from misfortune, and the eight benefits granted at the hour of death, foremost among them a calm passing and rebirth in a buddha land.

The eighth century was the great age of sutra transcription in Japan. Scriptures were copied in disciplined vertical columns of brushwork, an undertaking that was at once a religious act and a matter of state. This manuscript belongs to that period of intense copying, when a single scripture might pass through the hands of trained scribes, proofreaders, and overseers before it was complete.

Why It Became a National Treasure

The set was designated a National Treasure on June 27, 1959, in the category of calligraphy and classical texts. Several factors lie behind that ranking. Complete Nara-period sutra manuscripts surviving in quantity are uncommon, and a set of eighteen scrolls in this condition is rare. The brushwork records the hand and conventions of an eighth-century copyist with unusual clarity. Beyond its physical qualities, the manuscript is an early Japanese witness to the very scripture that defined the cult of Fukūkenjaku Kannon, which gives it weight in the history of Esoteric Buddhism in Japan.

From Text to Sculpture

Part of the scripture's interest lies in what it shaped. Every surviving image of Fukūkenjaku Kannon in Japan traces its iconography back to this text. The best known is the great standing statue in the Hokke-dō, also called the Sangatsu-dō, of Tōdai-ji in Nara, a Nara-period National Treasure with three eyes and eight arms, several of which carry the lasso the name describes. A second is the seated figure carved by the sculptor Kōkei for the Nan'en-dō of Kōfuku-ji, a Kamakura-period work also designated a National Treasure.

Read alongside these sculptures, the manuscript shows a written description becoming three-dimensional devotion. The lasso, the multiple arms, the lotus and the staff are all prescribed in the text the scribes of Kōya copied out.

The original is shown only occasionally. When it does appear, what meets the eye is the steady, measured column-work of a Nara hand, a discipline of writing that aimed for accuracy as a form of merit rather than for personal flourish.

Visiting

The manuscript belongs to Sanbō-in, one of the many sub-temples that line the mountaintop monastic town of Kōya, but it is cared for by the Kōyasan Cultural Property Preservation Association and kept in the Reihōkan, the mountain's treasure museum. The Reihōkan opened in 1921 in a hall modeled on the Phoenix Hall of Byōdō-in at Uji, and it holds twenty-one National Treasures among tens of thousands of objects connected with Kōya. Works on paper as fragile as this sutra are rotated into the galleries only now and then, often a few years apart, so anyone hoping to see the original itself should check the museum's current exhibition before making the trip.

The Reihōkan stands near the Danjō Garan, the central temple compound, a short bus ride or a pleasant walk from the cable-car station. It opens daily from 8:30 in the morning, closing at 5:30 from May through October and at 5:00 from November through April, with last entry half an hour before closing. General admission is 1,300 yen.

Sanbō-in carries a quiet story of its own. It is said to have grown from a hermitage linked to Kūkai's mother, Tamayori-gozen, who came from Shikoku in old age to see her son. Because the mountain then forbade women, she could not ascend, and she settled instead at Jison-in at its foot. After her death the temple was moved up onto Kōya, where it stands today near the approach to the Okunoin.

Around Mount Kōya

Mount Kōya is the monastic center founded by Kūkai in 816 and the head of the Kōyasan Shingon school. The whole mountain was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2004 as part of the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range.

Close to the Reihōkan rises the Konpon Daitō, the vermilion great pagoda at the core of the Danjō Garan. A short distance away stands Kongōbu-ji, the head temple, with its rock garden and painted sliding doors. To the east, the long cedar-lined avenue of the Okunoin leads past tens of thousands of memorials to the mausoleum of Kūkai, who is held within the tradition to remain in eternal meditation. The great gate of the Daimon marks the western entrance to the sacred precinct. Many of the sub-temples, Sanbō-in among them, offer lodging, allowing visitors to join the morning rituals and eat the vegetarian cuisine of the mountain.