Bùguàn líng děng jì 不灌鈴等記
Notes on the No-Anointing Bell etc. by 真寂親王 (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Shingon ritual-note compendium by Shinjaku Shinnō 真寂親王 (886–927), the imperial-prince-monk son of Emperor Uda 宇多. Although the catalog meta and the krp-titles.csv leave the author blank, CANWWW unambiguously attributes the work to Shinjaku Shinnō, and the terminal colophon — “Engi 22 (= 922), 1st month, 8th day. Śramaṇa Shinjaku.” (延喜二十二年正月八日 沙門眞寂) — confirms the attribution. The work is one of the few surviving direct documents of early-Heian imperial Shingon practice and a valuable witness to the Jitsue lineage (the work explicitly cites the “secret oral teachings of Sōzu Jitsue, recorded by Yakushin” — 已上實惠僧都祕口。益信記之).
Abstract
Authorship and dating: Shinjaku Shinnō, born Saneyo Shinnō 齊世親王, was the seventh son of Emperor Uda. He took ordination at Ninnaji 仁和寺 under his father’s mentor Yakushin 益信 (827–906) and rose to the rank of hosshin’ō 法親王 (“Dharma-prince”). His scholarly contribution to the Hirosawa-ryū 廣澤流 lineage was to preserve, in writing, the oral teachings transmitted from Jitsue 實慧 through Yakushin. The colophon dates the work to Engi 22 (= 922), 1st month, 8th day, when Shinjaku was 36 years old, five years before his death. notBefore = notAfter = 922 is exact.
Doctrinal content: the work opens with Acala’s three samaya and the summoning-mudrā (shézhào yìn 攝召印) — formed by internal-fingers’ interlace with the two little fingers raised hook-like, the Acala mantra being recited. There follow the five-wrathful-king grand summoning mudrā (外縛五古印 — external-bind five-pronged seal), the three-family encompassing mudrās for the bodhisattva-master (三部總攝大阿闍梨印), and the eight-petalled lotus throne visualization with the nine deities of the Dharma-Realm Palace (法界宮中壇場上有字成八葉大蓮花…).
The work then turns to procedures involving the bell (líng 鈴) — the title-naming ritual — including the non-pour anointing (bù guàn 不灌) variant in which the bell is not actually poured but only ritually intended. There follow notes on the endless treasury mudrā and mantra (無盡藏印言), the great-wisdom sword mudrā (大惠刀印), and the mudrās and mantras of the four great kings (四大明王等印言). A historical note states: “This is the original ground of the Mantra Vehicle. For imperial-house prayers, the Daishi [Kūkai] was the first to perform it; the spiritual response has been very great.” (眞言最初場。公家御祈。大師始令行之。靈驗尤有之). Names of the original ritual lineage are then given: homa altar: Jitsue daitoku; twelve devas: Shinsai 信濟; sacred bull: Shinga 眞雅 (護摩壇實惠大徳十二天信濟聖天眞雅).
The work is one of the earliest written documents of imperial-house Shingon ritual in Japan and a key witness to the Yakushin → Shinjaku transmission line.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- Shinjaku Shinnō is treated in standard reference works: Mochizuki Bukkyō daijiten s.v. Shinjaku Shinnō; Heian jiten s.v. Saneyo Shinnō; and in the Ninnaji shi monastic histories.
Other points of interest
The work preserves one of the earliest extant traces of imperial-prince esoteric Buddhism in Japan and documents the institutional importance of imperial-house prayer-rites (kōke on-inori 公家御祈) in early-Heian Shingon — the very same political-religious tradition that Kūkai had founded with his abhiṣeka of Heizei Tennō a century earlier (see KR6t0167).