. the tji lecture hall statue mandala 959
had been sponsored by previous emperors at the Nara temples; he
cited imperial sponsorship of lectures on the Benevolent Kings Sūtra
in Enryaku 25 (809, the year Kūkai was called to Takaosanji).^29 In his
petition, Kūkai invoked the historical continuity of ritual. I similarly
propose that in the Lecture Hall sculpture program, visual and rit-
ual continuity worked together to secure acceptance for Kūkai’s new
teachings.
Despite the continued prominence of the temples in the former
Heijō capital during the early Heian period, the political, symbolic,
and rhetorical significance of Tōji—one of only two state temples in
the new capital—as a mikkyō monastery ensured that the monastery
and Kūkai’s activities became part of the new sacred ritual economy
and visual cosmology of Heian-period Japan. The Tōji Lecture Hall
altar was a key visual expression of this cosmology. In order to choreo-
graph continuity at Tōji, the “Shingonshū” temple in the new capital,
Kūkai seems to have instituted and continued rites for nation pro-
tection, especially those featuring the Benevolent Kings Sūtra. He is
thought to have imported several versions of the mandala described
in the sūtra, which illustrate the primary divinities in their respective
directions.
There are several recensions of the Benevolent Kings Sūtra. The
Ninnō-e and Ninnōkyō-hō rituals are based on two different “transla-
tions” of the Benevolent Kings Sūtra, but only the latter used mandalas
as the basis for its efficacy. Yet one version is not “exoteric” in the early
mikkyō context, even if the two sūtra translations and their contents—
and their goals—are distinguished. Both are part of mikkyō praxis and
Buddhist goals for state protection. The Lecture Hall altar is strongly
linked to the mandala imagery for the mikkyō rites of the Benevolent
Kings Sūtra.^30
The Benevolent Kings Sūtra and its rituals are concerned with “the
hierarchy of cosmic authority as founded on a single underlying con-
tinuity and expressed in ‘geographic’ terms,” with numerous plays on
conventional “exterior” and “interior” kings or rulers of the mind or
(^29) The title Ninnōgokoku hannyaharamitsukyō is used, a variant name for the
Amoghavajra “translation” of the Benevolent Kings Sūtra imported by Kūkai.
(^30) In addition to Ninnō-e (non-esoteric) rites performed there, the Tōji Lecture
Hall was described by the monk Kakugyō, which he had witnessed in his youth (late
twelfth century) as having painted pillars with one hundred buddhas, one hundred
bosatsu, and the one hundred arhats, a combination seen only in the “non-esoteric”
Ninnōkyō.