906 karen j. mack
throughout the land, with the Nara Great Buddha at Tōdaiji as its
center (Miwa 1980, 26).
In 741 Emperor Shōmu commanded that the national temples be
built, which were to include national monasteries called Temples of
the Four Deva Kings of the Golden Light Sūtra Protecting the Nation
(Konkōmyō Shitennō Gokokuji ) after the
state-protection scripture, the Golden Light Sūtra; and national nun-
neries called Temples of the Lotus Elimination of Transgressions
(Hokke Metsuzaiji ) after the Lotus Sūtra.^5 The Golden
Light Sūtra, Lotus Sūtra, and Benevolent Kings Sūtra constitute the
three state-protection sūtras ( gokoku sanbukyō, ). The
Golden Light Sūtra and the Benevolent Kings Sūtra had been expounded
together in the provinces since 676 to protect the state, even before
the national temples were built; the Lotus Sūtra was added once the
national nunneries were built.
The first documented ceremony based on the Benevolent Kings Sūtra
was held in 660 (Nihongi 26, 465), but there is no information on the
images used in the Benevolent Kings Service (ninnō-e, ) until
the ceremony held at Tōdaiji in 753. Along with the hundred images
used for the Benevolent Kings Service of 753, in accord with the older
version of the Benevolent Kings Sūtra (T. 245.8:830a), five images of
the five great powerful bodhisattvas (godairiki bosatsu, )
were included (Kameda 1947b, 139–41; citing Shōsō komonjo 12, 428–
29). It is unclear whether these images were paintings or sculptures,
but they were relatively large, approximately two and a half meters
in height. The Benevolent Kings Service held simultaneously at the
imperial palace and Tōdaiji in 760 also included individual images of
the five great bodhisattvas ( godai bosatsu, figure 1) with the
other hundred images (Kameda 1947b, 141).
The five great powerful bodhisattvas derive from the older proto-
esoteric version of the Benevolent Kings Sūtra, in which these five
bodhisattvas protect the five quarters of the realm of a sovereign who
maintains the three treasures (T. 245.8:833a). The only evidence of
what these images may have looked like in the Nara period comes
from a twelfth-century iconographical drawing of the Nara-period five
great powerful bodhisattvas from Akishinodera. This icono-
(^5) The national temples were apparently not yet completed by 747, at which time it
was ordered that the pace of construction be accelerated.