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Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 7.2 (2024): 294–332; https://dx.doi.org/10.15239/hijbs.07.02.09
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ritual and Materiality in Buddhism and Asian Religions)
The Material Imagination of a Japanese Tendai Welcoming Descent of Amida Embroidery
Carolyn WARGULA
Bucknell University
c.wargula@bucknell.edu
Abstract: Sanskrit seed-syllables appear with startling frequency on Japanese images embroidered with human hair from the thirteenth century onward. These embroideries evoke one’s somatic presence and yet also conflate and materially transform the body into sacred word. This paper disentangles the material fabrication and visual program of a fourteenth-century Welcoming Descent of Amida Triad hair embroidery from the Tokugawa Art Museum. In so doing, it seeks to reveal the myriad receptions of this textile that extend beyond Pure Land Buddhist devotion. Turning to the Zōtanshū written by the monk Mujū Ichien, this paper illustrates how hair embroidery was considered a suitable medium for attaining Buddhahood in this very body (sokushin jōbutsu 即身成仏). It then argues that a variety of deathbed rites—chanting the nenbutsu, visualizing the Seed-Syllable A, reciting portions of the Lotus Sūtra and chanting the mantra of Fudō myōō—could all be performed in front of this single embroidery.
Keywords: Tendai Pure Land thought, Amida Buddha, embroidery, tonsured hair, Mujū Ichien, sokushin jōbutsu, ajikan, deathbed rituals
About the Author: Carolyn Wargula (Assistant Professor of Art History, Bucknell University) specializes in Japanese Buddhist art with a focus on the materiality and intermediality of textiles, the social significances of the body, and the role of gendered ritual practices. Her forthcoming book project, Embodied Embroideries: Gender, Agency, and the Body in Japanese Buddhism, examines the mortuary practice of hair embroidery from the late twelfth- to the seventeenth-centuries. After completing her Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh, she served as a Postdoctoral Associate in the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University.
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
