63. THE MANDALA AS METROPOLIS
Pamela D. Winfield^1- Introduction
According to the Shōrai mokuroku (Catalogue of Imported
Items), in 806 the esoteric master Kūkai Kōbō Daishi
(774–835) returned to Japan from China carrying three copies of the
Womb World Mandala (Taizōkai Mandara ) and two cop-
ies of the Diamond World Mandala (Kongōkai Mandara ).
In the Shōrai mokuroku, Kūkai claims that this pair of paintings
depicts the essence of mikkyō doctrines and contains the secrets of
the Buddhist scriptures. Two key sūtras in particular provide the
scriptural basis for the images he brought back: the Womb World
Mandala is based on the Dainichikyō (Mahāvairocana
sūtra), a mid-seventh-century text translated into Chinese in 724 by
Śubhākarasiṃha (Shanwuwei; Zemmui ; 637–735) and Yixing
(Jpn. Ichigyō ; 684–727). The Diamond World Mandala, by con-
trast, is based on the Kongōchōkyō (Vajraśekhara sūtra),
which was translated into Chinese by both Vajrabodhi (Jin’gangzhi;
Jpn. Kongōchi ; 671–741) and his disciple Amoghavajra
(Bukong; Fukū ; 705–774) in the mid-eighth century (Giebel,
“Taishō Volumes 18–21,” in this volume).
A great deal of imagery in the two mandalas is not textually sup-
ported by these source sūtras, however.^2 Most significant for the pur-
poses of this study, is that the overall graphic layout for the so-called
Two World Mandalas (Ryōkai Mandara )^3 is largely absent
(^1) I would like to extend my thanks to Charles D. Orzech, Richard K. Payne, Henrik
H. Sørenson, Cynthea Bogel, and Nancy Steinhardt for their encouragement and help
at various stages of this essay. Any mistakes are my own. 2
Chapters 2 and 11 of the Dainichikyō, for example, enumerate some but not all
of the figures appearing in the Womb World Mandala; it admits that other divinities
belonging to the same buddha family may be added on occasion, and provides no
names for the twelve assembly halls (in ). These are only found in the Hizōki
(Tajima 1959, 59).
(^3) Originally Kūkai only used the term “world” in reference to the Diamond World
Mandala (Kongōkai ), not to the Womb Treasure Ocean Mandala (Taizōkai
). However, the twin homonyms for world (kai ) and ocean (kai ) and