950 cynthea j. bogel
was realized before Kūkai’s arrival. Completed around 810, its honzon
, or main icon, was a seated statue of the Shichibutsu Yakushi
( Seven Masters of Medicine Buddha), flanked by Nikkō and
Gakkō bodhisattva statues.^6 The primary icon intended for the unre-
alized Lecture Hall was probably a Thousand-Armed Kannon statue,
which was eventually installed in the Tōji Refectory in 877. Before the
Heian period, lecture halls contained a raised altar with statues, and
the large surrounding space was used for state rites in which sūtra
recitation was the focus, such as the Shōman-e held at Hōryūji and the
Yuima-e and Saishō-e held at Kōfukuji. In mikkyō monasteries created
during the early Heian period, lecture halls continued these earlier
functions but they were smaller. Significantly, they gradually came to
supplant the main halls (Kondō or Hondō) as the primary hall for the
worship of icons.
Nine months after Kūkai arrived at Tōji, a decree from Emperor
Junna (786–840) authorized fifty monks of the “Shingon sect”
(Shingonshū )—and no other sect—to reside at Tōji, giving
public name and legitimacy to the new teachings.^7 At least twelve of
the fifty monks were from Tōdaiji, the head state monastery in the for-
mer Heijō capital (present-day Nara).^8 Their presence among the
monks who would populate Tōji was evidence of the affiliations that
Kūkai had formed with Nara. Based in part on Kūkai’s observations
in Tang China, Japanese mikkyō temples developed halls for mikkyō
initiations, or abhiṣeka, which are of central importance to Shingon
training and transmission. In 822, prior to his appointment at Tōji,
Kūkai was permitted to establish the first state-approved mikkyō ini-
tiation site, or Abhiseka Hall (Kanjō’in ̣ ) at Tōdaiji in
Nara,^9 but Tōdaiji itself did not become a Shingon center.
(^6) These icons were destroyed in the 1486 fire that destroyed several of the Lecture
Hall statues. 7
For the decree, see Dajō kanpō jinbushō, dated Kōnin 14 (823).10.10, Tōbōki 7,
Sōhō-jō, ZZGR 12: 21; and KZ 5: 435. Quoted in NCKSS-jys 1: 59 (shiryō 4). See also
Hakeda 1972, 55.
(^8) Sōgō chū Tōji bettō sangō of Jōwa 4 (836).4.5, in the Tōbōki 7, ZZGR 12: 141b–142b
and cited in Abé 1999, 60–61, 468, n. 165. Given the slow progress of construction at
Tōji and at Saiji, the other state-sponsored temple, it is not surprising that so many
of the priests assigned to Tōji were Nara clerics.
(^9) The name for Tōdaiji’s Abhiṣeka Hall has changed over the centuries.