The weaving of mantra : Kūkai and the construction of esoteric Buddhist discourse
Type
Book
Authors
ISBN 10
0231112866
ISBN 13
9780231112864
Category
Publication Year
1999
Publisher
Subject
Shingon (Sect)--Doctrines.; Kūkai,--774-835.
Description
xviii, 593 pages : 24 cm; Chronology of Kūkai's interaction with the Nara clergy. -- Introduction. Kūkai and (very) early Heian society: a prolegomenon. -- pt. I. Origin, traces, nonorigin. Kūkai's dissent: Of mendicancy and fiction ; Journey to China: outside Ritsuryō discourse ; (No) traces of esoteric Buddhism: dhāraṇī and the Nara Buddhist literature. -- pt. II. Cartography. Category and history: constructing the esoteric, I ; The discourse of complementarity: constructing the esoteric, II. -- pt. III. Writing and polity. Semiology of the Dharma, or, The somaticity of the text ; Of mantra and palace: textualizing the emperor, calamity, and the cosmos ; A genealogy of mantra: Kūkai's legacy. -- Postscript.; "The Buddhist priest Kūkai (774-835) is credited with the introduction and formal establishment of tantric - or esoteric - Buddhism in early ninth-century Japan and the founding of the Shingon school. In The Weaving of Mantra, author Ryūichi Abé examines this important religious figure and his profound influence on Japanese culture. Abe contends that the importance of Kūkai's establishment of esoteric Buddhism lay not in the foundation of the Shingon sect but in his creation of a general theory of language grounded in the ritual speech of mantra." "The Weaving of Mantra embeds Kūkai within the fabric of political and social life in ninth-century Japan and explains how esoteric Buddhism played a critical role in many societal changes in Japan - from the growth of monasteries into major feudal powers to the formation of the native phonetic alphabet, kana. As Abé illustrates, Kūkai's writings and the new type of discourse they spawned also marked Japan's transition from the ancient order to the medieval world, replacing Confucianism as the ideology of the state."--Jacket.;
Biblio Notes
39633824
Number of Copies
1
Library | Accession No | Call No | Copy No | Edition | Location | Availability |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Main | 99008111 | BQ8999.K857 A34 | 1 | Yes |