Dāngmá màntúluó gōngshì 當麻曼荼羅供式
Liturgical Service for the Taima Mandala Offering by 證空 Shōkū (記)
About the work
A single-fascicle ritual service-text (供式 gushiki) for the veneration of the Taima Mandala 當麻曼荼羅 — the famous large-scale woven Pure-Land mandala (depicting Amitābha’s Western Paradise with all the architectural and symbolic features of the Guānjīng) housed at Taima-dera 當麻寺 in Yamato province (modern Nara prefecture). By 證空 Shōkū. The Taima Mandala was traditionally said to have been woven by the legendary princess-nun Chūjō-hime 中将姫 in 763 from lotus-fibre threads, and was rediscovered (or doctrinally re-canonized) as a Pure-Land iconographic centre in the early Kamakura period under Shōkū’s direct sponsorship.
Abstract
The text is a liturgical handbook, not a doctrinal treatise: it sets out, step by step, the ritual choreography for a formal kuyō (供養 service) before the Taima Mandala. The opening lines: “First, the dōjō (ritual space) is solemnly adorned. The offerings are of a hundred flavours, or alternatively of forty-eight kinds [corresponding to Amitābha’s 48 vows], with one person sent to sprinkle the water. Next, the assembly stands in line, the junior-rank monks first, processing in silence three circumambulations, each holding a kebako [flower-basket]” (先道場莊嚴 … 大衆列立。下臈爲先。無言行道三匝 …).
The ritual proceeds through (i) the 四智讃 shichi-san (praise of the four wisdoms, sung at the start); (ii) the 如來唄 Nyorai-bai (Tathāgata-praise hymn); (iii) the 散華 sange (scattering of flowers); (iv) the 法則 hossoku (Dharma-rule recitation); (v) the 舍利讃 sharisan (relic-praise); and (vi) the 聲明 shōmyō musical recitations of the relevant Pure-Land sūtras (Amida-kyō, sections of the Wǎngshēng lùn). The closing rite is the 三禮 sanrei (three-fold reverence) and the Eikō (廻向 merit-transfer dedication).
Significance. The Taima Mandala — together with the Chion’in raigō-zu and the Yamakoshi Amida — is one of the three most important medieval Japanese Pure-Land iconographic monuments. Shōkū’s authoring of the kuyō-shiki canonized the Mandala as the Seizan-line iconographic centre and made Taima-dera a Seizan pilgrimage site of the first rank. Shōkū’s affiliation with the Taima Mandala is one of the most distinctive features of the Seizan tradition (versus the Chinzei, which had no comparable iconographic centre); through Shōkū’s promotion the Taima Mandala became the standard Pure-Land iconographic model for medieval Japanese painting and was reproduced in countless Taima mandara fukusha (copies) by Edo-period painters.
Date. Shōkū’s Sai-no-yama and Taima-dera period, c. 1230s; no internal precise date.
Translations and research
No Western-language translation of the kuyō-shiki has been located. The Taima Mandala and Shōkū’s role in its medieval Pure-Land canonization are treated in: Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis, The Revival of the Taima Mandala in Medieval Japan (Garland, 1985) — the standard English monograph; Mark L. Blum, The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2002); Fujimoto Kiyohiko 藤本淨彦, Seizan jōdokyō no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1988); the catalogue Taima mandara: yume to inori no kosumosu 當麻曼荼羅—夢と祈りのコスモス (Nara National Museum, 2013).
Other points of interest
The Taima Mandala’s foundation-legend — that the princess Chūjō-hime wove it from lotus-fibre threads at the request of Amitābha — is one of the most famous Japanese-Buddhist hagiographic narratives and gave rise to a substantial Chūjō-hime literary corpus including Noh, jōruri, and kabuki adaptations. Shōkū’s kuyō-shiki is the principal liturgical document by which the Mandala’s veneration was formalized in Pure-Land tradition.
Links
- CBETA online
- Cf. companion ritual text: KR6t0329 (Mandara hakkō rongi-shō)