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of religion (Klein 2003; Scheid and Teeuwen, eds., 2006), and the
Kongōbuji temple complex he established transformed Mount Kōya’s
spiritual landscape. The visual arts, too, were indelibly impacted by
esotericism, in the development, for example, of numerous variations
of mandalas (Gardiner 1996; ten Grotenhuis 1999), and the mandala-
related theories Kūkai introduced inspired practices of land sacraliza-
tion in the medieval period, while the new interpretation of dhāraṇī
influenced the functions of poetry in later ages (Kimbrough 2005). The
concept of kaji that Kūkai introduced is still applied today in some
healing practices (Winfield 2005). As much as Kūkai’s achievements
in his lifetime were historically contingent, they were generated by
the mind of a highly intelligent, creative, and spiritual figure whose
personality emerges from his writings and the documentary sources
as ambitious and charismatic—such qualities the very stuff of the later
devotional cult that could expand to answer a plurality of needs.