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横川首楞嚴院二十五三昧起請

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Text ID
KR6t0435
Date
986–986
Dynasty
日本

Héngchuān shǒuléngyányuàn èrshíwǔ sānmèi qǐqǐng 横川首楞嚴院二十五三昧起請

Petition-Statutes of the Twenty-Five Samādhi [Society] of the Yokawa Śūraṅgama Hall by 源信 Genshin (撰)

About the work

A single-fascicle constitutional document for the Twenty-Five Samādhi Society at the Yokawa Shuryōgon-in on Mt. Hiei, by Genshin 源信 源信 (942–1017), composed in Kanna 2 / 986. Where the companion Nijūgo zanmai-shiki KR6t0434 provides the liturgical handbook, the kishō — “petition-statutes” — provides the organizational charter of the society: the rules of membership, the obligations of members to each other, the procedures for handling deaths and replacements, and the doctrinal-aspirational framework within which the society operated.

Abstract

The document is structured as a series of 12 articles (jō 條) setting out:

  1. The purpose of the society — mutual support for rebirth in the Pure Land.
  2. The membership — 25 members fixed, replaced as deaths occur.
  3. The vow each member takes upon joining.
  4. The monthly observance — the nijūgo zanmai-e gathering on a fixed day each month.
  5. The deathbed observance — what each member does when another is dying.
  6. The post-mortem observance — memorial liturgies, omen-recording.
  7. The mutual confession practices — periodic mutual disclosure of moral failings.
  8. The economic basis — how the society is supported financially.
  9. The dispute-resolution procedures. 10–12. Doctrinal exhortations and concluding clauses.

The work is historically pivotal as one of the earliest extant monastic-confraternity constitutional documents in the Japanese tradition. The kishō form — a petition-statute with constitutional force — became the model for many later mutual-aid confraternities in medieval Japanese Buddhism, including the kō 講 (devotional fellowship) groups that proliferated through the late Heian and Kamakura periods.

Date. Internally Kanna 2 / 986, contemporary with the Nijūgo zanmai-shiki.

Structural Division

The CANWWW entry (div25.xml, T84N2724) records the work as a single-fascicle text by Genshin with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.

Translations and research

Critical edition: Taishō vol. 84; Eshin Sōzu zenshū, vol. 1. English partial translation and study: Robert F. Rhodes, Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan (Hawai’i, 2017), ch. 4. Japanese: Hayami Tasuku, Genshin (Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1988); Hanayama Shinshō, Ōjō yōshū no kenkyū (Daitō shuppan, 1957).

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