. the mandala as metropolis 721
plans of early Chinese palaces as well as the architectural elements of
the typical sihe yuan courtyard dwelling. The second section
argues that the Diamond World Mandala visually evokes the tic-tac-
toe–like grid plan of the Zhou dynasty wang cheng , or emperor’s
city, as documented in the classic Rites of Zhou (Zhouli ). The third
and final section argues that when displayed together in Japan, as they
probably were from 835 onward,^4 the Two World Mandalas reflect the
double-palace system of earlier eighth-century Sino-Japanese capitals,
which housed religious and political functions of the court in Minis-
tries of the Right and Left, respectively. Kūkai’s claim that these pow-
erful paintings were “as useful to the nation as walls are to a city”
( Shōrai mokuroku 532; Hakeda, trans. 1972, 141)
is perhaps due to these urban and architectural associations.
- The Womb World and Chinese Architecture
The Womb World Mandala can be organized according to several
alternative layouts. On the one hand, the twelve enclosures can be
grouped into an I-shaped plan with flanking halls (figure 1). Alterna-
tively, the halls of this step-pyramid mandala palace can be grouped
into three or four layers, depending on whether one adopts Amogha-
vajra’s or Śubhākarasiṃha’s interpretation of the Dainichikyō.^5
The I-shaped layout with flanking halls is called a gong plan, named
after the Chinese character gong , for work or construction (not to
be confused with its homonym for palace, gong ). This layout is one
of the long-standing tropes in Chinese architectural history, arguably
dating back to the Zhou-dynasty Ancestral Hall, which was charac-
terized by two horizontal halls connected by a central enclosure that
was encircled by a ring of peripheral cells. Likewise, the Womb World
(^4) In 835, Kūkai performed the first mishuhō New Year’s rite in the specially con-
structed Shingon-in sanctuary within the imperial palace. According to the Record of
Yearly Rituals handscroll (Nenjū gyōgi emaki, scroll 6, section 4), during this ritual
for the protection of the state both mandalas were displayed on the side walls, with
images of the five wisdom kings (godaimyōō) in front. As this scroll is Sumiyoshi
Jōkei’s seventeenth-century copy of Tokiwa Mitsunaga’s lost twelfth-century original,
it is possible that its configuration illustrates contemporary twelfth- or seventeenth-
century practices, which may or may not have diverged from Kūkai’s original instal-
lation plan. To my knowledge, however, no evidence to date suggests any variation
from Kūkai’s original configuration (Mason 1993, 135, fig. 158).
(^5) All the following references to Amoghavajra’s and Śubhākarasiṃha’s differing
interpretations come from Snodgrass 1988, 184–85.