Throughout the eighth century, the court sought to
bring Buddhism under civil control through the pro-
mulgation of regulations (soniryo) governing the ordi-
nation, offices, and activities of monks and nuns.
Court ambitions for a national Buddhism adminis-
tered from the capital reached its apogee during the
middle of the century, with the government’s dedica-
tion of the great bronze buddha image of Todaiji in
Nara and the founding of national monasteries
(kokubunji) in the provinces. What came to be known
as the Nara schools of Buddhism represent simply the
curriculum of the scholar monks of Todaiji and other
officially recognized institutions in the capital, a cur-
riculum of particular Buddhist texts for the study of
which the government came to sponsor an annual al-
lotment of ordination rights (nenbun dosha).
Though the court would continue to claim au-
thority to regulate the religion, the vision of a na-
tional Buddhism did not survive the Nara period.
Already in this period, it is clear from government ef-
forts to restrict it that Buddhism was taking on an
independent life of its own, in the proliferation of un-
official monasteries sponsored by the laity (chikishiji),
the development of independent centers of Buddhist
practice, often associated with sacred mountains, and
the unauthorized activities of popular preachers,
healers, wonder-workers, and the like. These trends
toward an independent Buddhism would only in-
crease as the religion spread throughout the country
and into all levels of society during the succeeding
Heian period.
The growing autonomy of Buddhism in the Heian
period was occasioned not only by the diffusion of the
religion to the populace but by the consolidation of
power in the monastic centers. Just as the major aris-
tocratic families came increasingly to dominate the
court through the independent means provided by
their private land holdings, so too certain monasteries
acquired extensive property rights that made them sig-
nificant socioeconomic institutions. As such, they were
players in Heian politics, supported by, and in turn
supporting, one or another faction at court; as a result,
their elite clergy interacted with, and was itself often
drawn from the scions of, the aristocracy. This devel-
opment produced what is often referred to as Heian
“aristocratic Buddhism,” with its ornate art and archi-
tecture, its elegant literary expression, and its elaborate
ritual performance.
The new style of autonomous Buddhist institution
is well represented by Todaiji, with its historic status
as a national shrine, and the great Kofukuji and Ka-
suga Shrine complex, with its links to the powerful Fu-
jiwara clan. But the Nara monasteries were challenged
and often superseded by institutions in and around the
new capital of Heian (modern Kyoto), of which the
most historically influential became Enryakuji, on
Mount Hiei, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Toji.
The former was the seat of the Tendai school; the lat-
ter was the metropolitan base of the Shingon (which
had established itself on isolated Mount Koya). Like
Todaiji, Kofukuji, and other major monasteries, these
institutions not only held significant land rights but
developed networks of subsidiary temples that made
them, in effect, the headquarters of extended organi-
zations. The identity of the Tendai and Shingon orga-
nizations was ritually reinforced by the adoption of
new, private rites of ordination (tokudo) and initiation
(kanjo) that supplemented and in some cases even re-
placed the standard rituals of Buddhist clerical prac-
tice. Thus, the first steps were taken toward a division
of the Buddhist community into ritually distinct and
institutionally separate ecclesiastic bodies.
It is sometimes suggested that these great Buddhist
institutions went into decline at the end of the Heian,
to be replaced by the new Buddhism of the Kamakura
period. In fact, such was their power and prestige that
they continued to exercise great influence well into
medieval times, as what is sometimes called by histo-
rians the exoteric-esoteric establishment (Kenmitsu
taisei). Just as the rise of the provincial warriors in the
Kamakura did not displace the old court aristocracy
but rather added new layers of power, so too the de-
velopment of new Buddhist movements did not re-
place the establishment but introduced additional
options of religious belief, practice, and organization.
While some of these options were resisted by members
of the establishment, others were welcomed and, in-
deed, incorporated into the catholic Buddhism of the
great monasteries.
The decision to resist or accept rested heavily on the
degree to which spokesmen for the new movements
aggressively sought patronage in order to establish sep-
arate institutions. Thus, to cite the two most conspic-
uous examples of the time, while many within the
Nara-Heian establishment saw both the Pure Land
preachers’ call to faith in AMITABHA(Amida) and the
Zen masters’ emphasis on meditation as legitimate
forms of Buddhist teaching, they opposed those ver-
sions of the teachings that sought to convert the laity
to the new movements as alternatives to other forms
of Buddhism. In this issue, we see not simply a famil-JAPAN