Sutra from Jingōji Temple

Description

Buddhist believers are encouraged to copy scriptures as a pious act, which may lead them to enlightenment. In the Buddhist world of East Asia it was held that the good deed of transcribing a scripture brought divine favor not only to the copyist, his initiator or sponsor, but also to all human beings and all other living creatures. Needless to say, the making of sets of the Issaikyō (Sanskrit: Tripitaka), the complete collection of Buddhist scriptures, numbering some four or five thousand volumes, brought vastly greater benefit.

Numerous sets of the Issaikyō were made in Japan, China, and Korea, some at the order of emperors, others through donations from the mass of common believers. During Japan’s aristocratic age members of the imperial family and noblemen of the Fujiwara clan who were able to afford the expense vied with each other to donate beautiful illuminated versions of the Issaikyō to temples.

The present scroll, identified as the Konponsetsu-issaibu-binaya, volume VII, book 3, chapter 2, is a fragment of the Issaikyō originally owned by Jingōji temple, Kyoto. The text is, as usual, written in gold dust on indigo-dyed paper, with lines ruled in silver. The frontispiece represents the scene of Śākyamuni Buddha’s sermon at the foot of Vulture Peak.