Mìzàng jīnbǎo chāo 祕藏金寶鈔
Compendium on the Secret Treasury’s Golden Jewels by 實運 (撰)
About the work
A ten-fascicle Shingon ritual encyclopedia by Jitsuun 實運 (1105–1160), the great late-Heian master of the Daigo-ji Sanbō-in transmission line. Companion to his fifteen-fascicle KR6t0190 Zhūzūn yào chāo and four-fascicle KR6t0192 Xuánmì chāo. Where the former organizes the material by ritual-purpose and the latter by esoteric core teachings, the Mìzàng jīnbǎo chāo organizes the material deity-by-deity through the full Shingon pantheon, producing a kind of authoritative deity-handbook for each of the principal bessen-hō.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: composition window ca. 1130–1160, within Jitsuun’s mature scholarly career. Internal dates and copyist’s notes establish a continuous medieval transmission: a colophon-note records that the ban-zō twenty mouths’ [-of-monks ritual] was performed in Eikyū 2 (1114) at the cloister’s misho-hō; the manuscript notes record copyists’ work in Hōen 6 (1140), 5th month, 28th day; Chōshō 2 (1133), 6th month, 29th day, by the master律師 (Genkai?); Hōen 3 (1137), 6th month, 18th day; and the principal transmission-note Kenkyū 1 (1190), 5th month, 11th day, copied from the autograph of the Daigo Sōjō [= Jitsuun’s successor], with the note “This is the draft state — not to be circulated.” A further note: Shōō 3 (1290), 12th month, 10th day, bestowed on Yamamoto Sōjō.
Doctrinal content: fascicle 1 opens with the standard pantheon-order: Six-Syllable (六字), Dharma-Wheel-Turning (轉法輪), Renwang, Mahāmāyūrī, Cakravartin (金輪). For each, Jitsuun gives:
- Seed-syllable (種子) and three-equality-form (三形).
- Iconography (尊像): for the Six-Syllable, the deity has six arms; the right-side first hand and the left-side first hand each form a specific seal; second-pair hands hold a halberd (left) and a sword (right); third-pair hands hold the moon (left) and sun (right).
- Mudrā instructions, including alternative-school readings: for example, the Six-Syllable root-seal is given according to Kanjuku Daisōzu’s (觀宿大僧都) teaching, in which “the two thumbs press the tips of the middle-fingers, the meditation [-side, i.e. left] palm faces up and the wisdom [-side, i.e. right] palm faces down…”; an alternative reading: “This seal is the root-seal; some hold it to be the Avalokiteśvara seal; also the yin-yang-fanbei seal.”
The work is one of the most authoritative ritual references of medieval Japanese Shingon and was the principal source for subsequent Sanbō-in transmission until the Edo period. Its detailed kuden-style annotation — distinguishing the variant readings of individual masters within the lineage — preserves an exceptional record of mid-Heian kuden practice.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- See KR6t0190 for the broader Jitsuun corpus.