. goddess genealogy 901
mid-eighth century, Ishiyamadera is one of the oldest temples in Japan
devoted to the worship of Kannon. Many tales of devotees’ supernatu-
ral dreams and visions of Nyoirin are recorded in the temple’s illus-
trated miraculous history, the Ishiyamadera engi emaki
, the text of which was compiled from 1324 to 1326.^24 Shōbō served
as abbot (zasu ) of Ishiyamadera, where he passed on the Ono
lineage of esoteric transmission to his disciple Kangen (854–
925), who then transmitted it to Shunnyū (Naitō Sakae 2002, 15).
Despite a long historic association between Nyoirin and Ishiyama-
dera, the Kannon icon originally enshrined there in the Nara period
(710–784) probably came to be identified as Nyoirin only later, dur-
ing the Heian period, with the “esotericization” of the temple due to
Shōbō’s presence there (Naitō Sakae 2002, 15; see also Kajitani 2002;
Inoue Kazutoshi 1992, 26–28).^25 Shōbō’s devotion to Nyoirin was so
great that by the late twelfth century he himself was believed to be a
manifestation of the bodhisattva (Hayami 1975, 123). He lived and
practiced for much of his life in the area surrounding Ishiyamadera
in temples within a region that stretched from Yamashina , the
area southeast of Kyōto that served as a main route connecting the city
to the shore of Lake Biwa, all the way to Nara. So it is natural
that this region became the cradle of Nyoirin faith. Today not only
Daigoji and Ishiyamadera but also other historic temples in this area,
including the imperial Shingon temples of Kanjuji and Zuishin’in, still
enshrine important sculptures of Nyoirin.
The oldest known version of the founding legend of Ishiyamadera
(and earliest record of Nyoirin enshrined there) appears in the late
tenth-century tale collection Sanbō ekotoba in a story that portrays
Ishiyamadera as the site of successful prayers to Nyoirin for gold
needed to complete the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdaiji.^26 In this
story, the sovereign Shōmu (701–756, r. 724–749) prays to Zaō
(^24) See BZ 117, 179a–200b. For a modern Japanese translation of the text, see Washio
1996, 60–74.
(^25) The popular medieval association of the two-armed Nyoirin with Ishiyamadera is
evident in the Kakuzen shō and several other ritual-iconographic compendia, includ-
ing the Besson zakki and the Asabashō , among others. See BZ 47,
190b; TZ 3, 220c17–20; and TZ 9, 3190, 196a13–16.
(^26) The Sanbō ekotoba, completed in 984, is an illustrated collection of Buddhist tales
compiled for didactic purposes by Minamoto no Tamenori (ca. 941–1011) for
an imperial princess who had recently become a nun, Sonshi Naishinnō
(966–985), daughter of the sovereign Reizei (950–1011, r. 967–969). See Koizumi
and Takahashi 1980, 314–19; Kamens 1988, 328–32.