The
Chusonji-kyo Sutras
If you ever visit the Kyoto National Museum, look
for Buddhist manuscripts in Room 13 (Calligraphy), on the 2nd Floor
of the New Exhibition Hall. Have you ever heard of a sutra?
Sutras are sacred scriptures of Buddhism that tell of the Buddha's
teachings. Just like the Bible or Koran, sutras were carefully copied
by hand before the days of the printing press. Such hand copies
are called "manuscripts." Sutra manuscripts would then
be given to a temple as an offering to the Buddha and thereafter
stored within the temple's Sutra Hall.
Today we are going to talk about a set of famous sutra manuscripts
called the Chusonji-kyo. Actually, the official name for
the Chusonji-kyo is the "Issai-kyo in Alternating Gold
and Silver Characters on Blue Paper." This is becuse the
sutras are written in alternating rows of gold and silver on paper
that has been dyed navy-blue! This set of sutras were first offered
to the Buddha at a temple called Chuson-ji in the town of Hiraizumi,
in the southern part of Iwate Prefecture in Northern Japan. That
is why thjese sutras are together called the Chusonji-kyo Sutras.
Though located in the remote northern provinces, the city of Hiraezumi
has been famous down through Japanese history. At the end of the
Heian Period in the 12th Century, it was ruled by three generations
of the Fujiwara family, lead by Kiyohira, Motohira and Hidehira.
These three men made the area into one of a flourishing, lavish
Buddhist culture. The representative building of this culture was
a golden temple hall called the Konjikido, which was richly
decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay and gold leaf. The famous haiku
poet Matsuo Basho visited the Konjikido in 1689 and wrote the following
haiku poem about the place:
Untouched by
The rains of May
Shining Hall
Next let me tell you about the Issai-kyo. The Issai-kyo
sounds like it might be a sutra, because kyo means sutra
in Japanese, but actually the Issai-kyo is composed of not
only sutras but also of Buddhist regulations, explanations of the
sutras and more! The Issai-kyo is in fact the entire corpus
of Buddhist scriptures and consists of almost 5400 volumes!
When you consider that over 90,000 sheets of special blue paper, not
to mention all the gold and silver ink, were needed in order to make
manuscripts of the complete Issai-kyo, it becomes clear that this
was an extrordinarily expensive project! It also must have been an
extremely time-consuming, requiring a huge number of skilled scribes!
The person who initiated this enormous project was Fukiwara Kiyohira
(1056-1128), the first of the three-generation line of Fujiwara rulers.
The actual copying began in February 1117 and ended nine years later
in March 1126. The sutra in the photos below is from only one of the
thousands of volumes of the Issai-kyo!
Daijo Hibundari-kyo Sutra, Volume VI
(Detail, frontpiece)
25.5 x 423.0 cm
Heian Period (12th Century)
Handscroll, gold and silver on dark blue paper
Important Art Object
(Kyoto National Museum)
Before the text of the sutra begins there is a painting called the
frontpiece. This frontpiece is actually on the inside of the cover.
The frontpiece of this sutra has a painting of the Buddha giving
a sermon to his disciples In addition to this theme, other frontpieces
show scenes of the stories told in the sutras or of customs of the
day.
Daijo Hibundari-kyo Sutra, Volume VI
(Detail, front cover)
Important Art Object
(Kyoto National Museum)
The cover of the sutra is the area that ends up on the outside when
the sutra is rolled up completely. This sutra has a pattern of hosoge
flowers and arabesque vines on the cover. Both the frontpiece and
cover paintings are executed in gold and silver, like the characters
of the sutra itself. Each line of the sutra is surrounded by a thin
frame painted in silver.
Next lets lets take a look at the text of the sutra itself. Each
character is written carefully and neatly, but in addition to that,
do you see how the gold and silver letters themselves gleam in the
light? This is because after the manuscript was copied, the gold
and silver characters were polished up and down with the horn of
a wild boar! If you change the angle at which you look at the letters,
you can still see the polishing scratches! This was the secret to
making the characters look so beautiful. It must have taken a long
time to polish all those characters!
Why do you think they decided to write the characters on blue-dyed
paper in silver and gold? Well, for one reason, blue is the color
of the precious stone lapis lazuli, one of the Seven Buddhist Treasures
(seven precious metals or stones that are used to decorate the Buddha
and his surroundings). Lapis lazuli was thought to cover the ground
in the Buddha's paradise. Gold and silver are also among the Seven
Treasures. Using the colors of the Seven Treasures to write the sutras
made the Buddhas teachings seem even more impressive and magnificent.
Naturally, Kiyohira hoped that by undertaking this project, after
death, he himself would be reborn in the Buddha's Pure Land Paradise,
decorated with the Seven Treasures!
In the late Heian Period, many sutra manuscripts were made with gold
on blue paper. The alternating of gold and silver on blue paper, however,
was extremely rare. On top of that, the fact that the entire Issai-kyo
is written in alternating gold and silver characters make Chusonji-kyo
Sutras unique not only in Japan but in all of Asia!
Today, there are about 4,500 volumes of the Chusonji-kyo Sutras still
in existance. Of these, over 4,200 volumes are now owned by the temples
on Mt. Koya, the center of the Shingon Sect of Buddhism. The original
temple of Chuson-ji now owns only about fifteen scrolls. 
Daijo Hibundari-kyo Sutra, Volume VI
(Detail, endpaper)
Important Art Object
(Kyoto National Museum)
Text by Eikei Akao, Department of Fine Arts
Illustrations by Satoshi Ichida, Department of Public Relations
English Translation by Melissa M. Rinne, Department of Archives
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