A vow written by a nun named Kenkai in homage to the historical buddha Śākyamuni pledges to aspire to Buddhist enlightenment no matter where she is reborn. Remarkably, this small piece of paper and brief text contain striking clues that help clarify the Shōtoku statue’s relationship to Eison (1201–1290), a seminal monk of the Kamakura period, and to the Shingon Ritsu community of lay and monastic devotees that flourished in Japan at the end of the thirteenth century.
The language of Kenkai’s vow is identical to one composed by Eison following the erection of a meditation hall at Saidaiji in 1246, not long after he re-established that temple as a headquarters for his new monastic order.1 Eison promoted his order through proselytization efforts in southern Kawachi Province (present-day Osaka), including the worship of Shōtoku.2 Just one month after building the meditation hall at Saidaiji he bestowed the bodhisattva precepts on 502 people at Shōtoku’s grave in southern Kawachi, and before year’s end he would also perform rites at the temple Dōmyōji,3 a site long associated with Shōtoku. Later documents refer to the 1246 vow as Eison’s “first vow,”4 and it may have been introduced to communities in Kawachi as a liturgical text that functioned in establishing a stronger sense of community among the new converts to the Saidaiji lineage. Kenkai’s inclusion in the Shōtoku statue of her own copy of Eison’s “first vow” may also suggest the talismanic qualities that the vow was understood to possess through its connection to its charismatic author.
References:
1) The full text of Eison’s 1246 vow is reproduced in Jikō 慈光, Saidaiji chokushi Kōshō bosatsu gyōjitsu nenpu 最大勅諡興正菩薩行實年譜, in Saidaiji Eison denki shūsei 西大寺叡尊伝記集成, ed. Nara Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyūjo 奈良国立文化財研究所, pp. 107-206 (Kyoto, Hōzōkan, 1977), 130.
2) David Quinter, “Localizing Strategies: Eison and the Shōtoku Taishi Cult,” Monumenta Nipponica 69:2 (2014), 155.
3) Ibid., 170. Although still known as Hajidera 土師寺 when Eison first visited in 1246, it was later converted into a convent called Dōmyōji.
4) See, for example, the commemorative account of Eison’s life composed in 1300 in Kōshō bosatsu den 興正菩薩傳, in Saidaiji Eison denki shūsei, ed. Nara Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyūjo, pp. 310-318 (Kyoto, Hōzōkan, 1977), 314; and the 1322 Kōshō Bosatsu kōshiki 興正菩薩講式 composed by Eison’s disciple A’ichi in A'ichi 阿一, Kōshō Bosatsu kōshiki 興正菩薩講式, in Saidaiji Eison denki shūsei, ed. Nara Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyūjo, pp. 216-222 (Kyoto, Hōzōkan, 1977), 216.