. the dissemination of esoteric scriptures 663
monk Gyōga (729–803), and Eichū (743–816) (Hamada
1986, 484). It is not surprising that specialists of different areas of
Buddhist thought also introduced esoteric teachings, since tantrism in
China was not a school but a movement, and its rituals were widely
practiced by monks of various persuasions.
In the early eighth century, Emperor Shōmu not only planned the
construction of Tōdaiji and its great buddha figure and estab-
lished the network of provincial temples (kokubunji ) and nun-
neries (kokubunniji ), he also actively supported the copying
of sūtras. His wife, Empress Kōmyō (701–760), also a devout
Buddhist, supervised the newly renamed and revitalized sūtra scripto-
rium (Shakyōjo , originally Shakyōshi ), probably as a
result of the arrival of Gembō and Daoxuan. The aim of its first major
project, begun in 741, was to copy and distribute throughout Japan the
Buddhist texts that appeared in the Catalogue of the Buddhist Canon
of the Kaiyuan Years (Kaiyuan-shijiao-lu T. 2154) (Inoue
1966, 345–480). Although esoteric texts do not figure as a separate
category in this catalogue and were mixed in with Mahāyāna sūtras
in general, it does contain a great variety of esoteric scriptures, from
the earlier ones of Jñānagupta, Śikśānanda, Bodhiruci, and the like,
including Chinese and Central Asian apocrypha, to the more recent
ones of Śubhākarasiṃha, Vajrabodhi (671–741), and even
Amoghavajra (705–774) (see Table 1).
Altogether, it is believed that in the Tempyō period alone about
eighty percent of the texts belonging to what Japanese scholars
call “miscellaneous” esoteric Buddhism (zōbu mikkyō ,
shortened to zōmitsu),^ were available; sūtras mainly dealing with
dhāraṇīs and related to individual deities, such as the Eleven-faced
Avalokiteśvara (Ekādaśamukha Avalokiteśvara, Jūichimen Kannon
), the Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara (Sahasrabhuja-
sahasranetra Avalokiteśvara, Senju (Sengen) Kannon ( ) ),
or Avalokiteśvara of the Unerring Noose (Amoghapāśa Avalokiteśvara,
Fukūkenjaku Kannon ). The most popular text was
probably the Dhāraṇī Collection Scripture (Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha sūtra,
Jpn. Darani-shū T. 901) by Atikūta/Atigupta ̣ ,
on which many practices were based (Hamada 1986, 485; Kushida
1964, 35).
A number of the canonical texts of later Japanese esotericism that
Japanese scholars call “pure” esoteric Buddhism (junsei mikkyō
, shortened to junmitsu), related to the Mahāvairocana and