History of Pure land Buddhism

English translation of the French language text “History of Pure Land Buddhism”

Art, “the fourth basket” of Buddhism, ^¹ has often depicted Amitabha’s Paradise. It was displayed, in the T’ang epoch, in great compositions, “a favourite mural decoration of Chinese Buddhist Temples”, ^² which were almost immediately imitated in Japan. A legend was current on this subject, which appeared ready formed before the middle of the seventh Century. It figured indeed in the Si-yu tchouan-ki, or “Narratives concerning Western countries”, a work long since lost, but which is found quoted in a “Collection of Miracles” compiled in 664 by the Monk Tao-siuan.

A “Bodhisattva with the five supernatural powers”, belong to the Temple of Ki-t’eou-mo in India, had gone to find Amitabha in his Paradise to tell him that the vows of human beings desiring to be re-born near him were not proving effective, for lack of an image able to excite their ardour (earnestness). Amitabha promised to give him one. When the Bodhisattva returned to his Temple, the image was already there. It showed Amitabha surrounded by fifty Bodhisattvas, all seated on lotus flowers placed on tree leaves. The man made copies of it which he dispersed. A nephew of Kasyapamatagan, the Monk who had come to bring the True Law to Lo-yang following on the dream of the Han Emperor Ming-ti, came in his turn to China and brought there the marvellous image. It spread rapidly there. Persecutions caused it to disappear almost everywhere, but under the benevolent reign of the Souii Emporer Wu (581 - 604), a specimen of it, which had been carefully hidden, was handed once to the Monk Ming-hien. A painter of repute was then living, among the Ts’i of the North. Having seen the image, he made several copies of it which were much appreciated in the capital and in the monasteries. They were reproduced in all the Temples, on the wall facing south. ^³

This legend, which is found in a slightly different form in another work of the same epoch, ^⁴ had the twofold object of substituting Amitabha’s cult for Maitreya’s in popular favour, and of supplying a sort of canonical authority to the then most widespread image of Amitabha’s Paradise, by vouching (attesting) for its supernatural origin.

It appears in fact that the prototype of the image of the Pure Land may have been created in the sixth Century by Tsao Tchong-t’a, who is rightly regarded as one of the main founders of Buddhist art in China. Between 577 and 589, this artist covered with frescos the walls of the K’ai-yuan Temples at Tch’ang-ngan. In the course of the two following centuries, the greatest masters of the age decorated in the same manner the other sanctuaries of Tch’ang-ngan, then those of Lo’yang. All these works disappeared in the storm of 841 - 845. The edict of proscription brought by Wu Tsong against the foreign religion, which destroyed nearly six thousand monasteries and forty thousand Buddhist Temples, which compelled the return to the lay state of 260,000 Bhikshus and Bhikshunies, caused to perish by the same stroke an enormous quantity of objects of religious art. ^⁵ Nevertheless we may still judge what the great Amidist paintings of the T’ang were either by those which remain at the Kondo (“the Golden Pavilion”) of the Horyuji at Nara (Japan), paintings probably carried out at the beginning of the eighth Century by Korean artists of Chinese education, and whose techniques still recalls that of the Indian frescoes of Ajanta, or by some of the most ancient frescos of Touen-huang (Cha-tcheou, the Saciou of Marco Polo), which the Tibetan domination of the ninth Century served from ruin.

The Von Le Coq mission discovered at Chotscho, in the region of Turfan (Central Asia), a few fragments of “Paradise” which were not posterior to the eighth Century; but there remains only a very little of it. ^⁶ At Tuan-huang, on the contrary, in the numerous sanctuaries explored by Sir Aurel Stein then by Paul Pelliot, there continued to exist all kinds of frescos and paintings on silk, several of which are of interest to us here. Some at least of these are still in very good condition. The majority are undated; doubtless this is due to the fact that the lower part of the walls painted in frescos or of the rolls of silk has generally deteriorated; but, thanks to certain peculiarities of custom, especially that of the donors, an approximate date can be assigned at least in certain cases. ^⁷ The variations to be observed in the style, composition, colour, treatment, likewise allow a certain number of types to be distinguished and even, more hypothetically, some lines of evolution to be traced back.

Tuan-Huang, the first sanctuary of which was founded in 366, is the first in date of the artistic centres of Chinese Buddhism. Without being for the most part original masters, the painters who succeeded one another there during the centuries were often very expert decorators, and it does not seem, moreover, that the style or the subject of their works lags appreciably behind the other centres of Buddhist art in China. ^⁸ Among their numerous “Paradises”, there are some sumptuous and complete; there are others which are simplified and reduced. Among the first one can still distinguish a classical type, and representations of a freer aspect.

The classical type reproduces exactly in image the description given in the Amitayurdhyana-sutra, and, as regards some complementary details, the indications of the Kouan-king chou, a work of Chan-t’ao (seventh Century). The main subject is habitually framed (customarily bordered) at right and left, by two lateral bands divided into small compartments, where there are represented, conforming to the sutra, scenes taken from the legend of Queen Vaidehi, or from the Jatakas of Amitabha (according to the Long Sutra), or from Sakyamuni’s preaching on the Pure Land; or again they are little illustrations explaining, always according to the Meditation Sutra, the various possible ways of contemplating this Land. ^⁹ The picture itself is often of great magnificence and shows a great profusion of details. It calls for a crowd of personages and various accessories, arranged according to a well-defined plan, which is almost the same in Amitabha’s Paradise as in the Paradises of other Buddhas - that is why it is open to doubt whether it is always a matter of the first-named. One cannot always tell either for certain whether the picture shows Amitabha according to Sakyamuni’s preaching, or the preaching of Sakyamuni concerning Amitabha, as indeed appears to be indicated by the teaching gesture (dharmacakra-mudra) of the central Buddha. The vignettes at the sides, when there are any, do not furnish a certain criterion. Besides, perhaps a choice is not always open, at least between Amitabha and Sakyamuni. Sometimes undoubtedly, it is indeed one of the two: for example, in plate 303 of Paul Pelliot’s Caves of Tuan-huang (vol. V), the central Buddha is Sakyamuni, while the three figures floating above, on the coils of vapour issuing from his forehead, are the objects of his teaching: Amitabha and his two attendants; in other cases, on the contrary, the nine lotuses displayed at the feet of the central Buddha plainly appear sufficient to designate him as Amitabha. But also perhaps certain “ambiguous representations” from Tuan’huang would seem to wish to show us “a Sakyamuni giving in his own person the revelation of Amitabha, this changing, by an imperceptible glide, into an Amitabha revealing himself in the person of Sakyamuni”. A glide so much the more natural since, while on the hand the Amidist sutras took care to “subordinate the whole theory of the Pure Land to the teaching of Sakyamuni”, on the other, the transcendent preaching of Sakyamuni, surrounded by his supernatural assembly of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, itself tended, as can be seen in the Lotus, “to be conceived as a paradisal scene”. ^¹0

These kinds of superimposition could clearly have been “as frequent as ancient in Buddhism”. In this way, the Sakyamuni of Bodh-gaya has become the prototype of the statues of Maitreya. During a period named by Paul Mus the age of “middle Mahayanism”, and which is precisely that when the doctrine of the Pure Lands begins to spread about, the historical Buddha has not yet lost, even in the Far East, his importance; his glorious preaching in the open sky, as the Lotus described it, serves as a model for all the representations of Paradise; the idea of the fundamental identity of Sakyamuni and Amitabha is not as yet translated (interpreted, expressed) by a pure and simple substitution of the second for the first. The former will begin to be forgotten, or considered as a kind of abstraction and more or less abandoned by the devotees of Amitabha only later, when Islam, invading Central Asia, will have cut the Far East off from India. But up to the eighth Century, the devotion to Amitabha has no more eliminated Sakyamuni from an art like that of Touen-huang, “than at Yunkang and Long-men the apparent iconographic predominance of Sakyamuni excluded the special worship of Amitabha, through the person and image of the historical Buddha”. ^¹1 This eclecticism has left traces in the texts. In 692, when Yi-tsing, writing his memoirs, wished to show the zeal of his old master Shan-yui in the cult of Amitayus, he said that “the place of incense, cleaned and decorated by him, was as beautiful as the lotuses of Sukhavati, which displayed themselves for the nine classes of saved beings:, and that “the place of the Sutras, decorated by him, made one think of the cloud which floats above Vulture’s Peak, raining down the four flowers”. It is in the same spirit that an inscription from Long-men celebrated in the Buddha, or diverse manifestations, “the marvellous Being, always one and the same”. ^¹2

Consequently, whether Amitabha’s or Sakyamuni’s, or simultaneously belonging to both, “half-Gridhrakuta, half-Sakyamuni”, the most classical Paradises comprise a vast landscape, decorated with light architecture: aerial pavilions built on piles, towers, porches, canopies or umbrellas, terraces with balustrades and steps. On the trees of precious stones, sacred birds alight; all around can be seen flying figures of apraras, heavenly ballerinas, or small Buddhas descending on clouds. Groups of the elect dance to the sound of varied instruments which are played by groups of genie musicians. In the foreground, a pool covered with lotuses: it is the “lake of the seven jewels, filled with water having eight wonderful effects, paved with pure gold, having on its four sides staircases and avenues of gold, silver, crystal and glass”. From the Buddha to the little children representing newly arrived souls, all the personages arise from the lotus calyse, the stem emerging from the pool. The central Buddha is seated in majesty on the lotus which lifts him above all the limitations as likewise all the impurities of time and space. He diffuses light around him. His stature is superior to that of his two great attendants and all the other inhabitants of his Kingdom. In front of him rises an altar table, with two Bodhisattvas bearing offerings. While the pavilions are Chinese in style, the costumes have remained Indian. A perfect symmetry regulates the whole. ^¹3

This type of Sukhavati is identical, from Turkestan to Japan. ^¹4 The numerous examples of it which exist at Tuan-huang as well as the rigidity of plan and the minute details of execution which reveal themselves in it, entailing a certain dryness, lead one to believe that it is the result of an already long evolution and that it was fixed before the eighth Century. Some pictures, nevertheless, deviate from it. Thus a fresco, very well preserved, is distinguished by the total absence of pavilions; the costume of its donors and certain peculiarities of style approximate it to the art of Yun-kang and Long-men. A large Paradise on silk, also in an almost perfect state, shows Amitabha and his two assistants under their canopies supported by carved poles and flowering trees; behind them, rises a wall of marble blocks of various colours, above which rise up two bamboos. There are many apsaras, Buddhas on clouds, souls in the form of the newly born with little floating robes; but no pavilions, musicians or dancers. In place of the altar there can be seen a sacred vessel rising from a lotus and two small kneeling Bodhisattvas. On the lake, in the foreground, a raft carries a set of symbolic animals, one of them a phoenix. Eight Bodhisattvas are arranged (ranged) on a long terrace, framing two children bearing flowers and fruits; at the extremities there are three donors, kneeling on mats. The background is empty. The figures are graceful and dignified, the design (drawing) swift and bold (free), the colours at once fresh and unobtrusive. There is no question of a stereotyped representation here. ^¹5

Other pictures from Tuan-huang offer us cut down (reduced) models. Some are of the tenth Century, the last century of artistic activity at Tuan-huang, although it cannot for all that be affirmed (with certainty), that they mask the end of a regressive evolution. ^¹6 Several still feature the lake and the balustraded terrace, but the orchestra, dancers, and newly-born are no longer to be seen; Amitabha’s escort has grown rarer (scarcer); he is surrounded now (for example) only by six Bodhisattvas, and four Lokapalas (guardian Kings of the four points of space), to which the donors are added. Sometimes the lake itself has disappeared, likewise the altar or the vessel with the two praying figures; however certain details, such as two trees with star-shaped leaves forming a flowery vault (arch) above the Buddha, show that it is still a matter of a Paradise. Once at least, Paradise is represented in miniature above the head of Amitabha. Finally, everything is reduced to the Triad. ^¹7

Taken in all its breadth, the subject of Sukhavati, the subject of Sukhavati scarcely lent itself to the sculptor’s art. However, some Wei sculptures succeed in schematically symbolising the Pure Land with a palace terrace, one or two trees, one or two heavenly personages. ^¹8

There are also more complete Sukhavati’s, constructed in relief with detached pieces. Certain of them are true works of art, such as the “magnificent” model from the collection, gathered together not long ago in St Petersburg, by Prince Oukhtomeky. ^¹9 A Japanese document of the year 767 enumerates also a whole list of statues, the entirety of which must have likewise formed an Amida Paradise. There are finally more popular representations in more fragile materials. In the monasteries of Tibet there can be seen “Sukhavati’s in wood and in paper, of the order of our Christ Child cribs, with accessories and personages in hundreds. Mountains, rivers and lakes, forests, lotus flowers with the souls which emerge from them. In the middle, in a Temple, Amitabha; from his navel there emerge variegated ribbons emitting rays and joining statues of Padmapani, Gautama, Tsonkhapa. Above float clouds with strange forms, with dakinis, daughters of air.”^²0

If we confine ourselves to generalities, analogies to all the religious horizons come forward numerously. How could this Western Paradise fail to remind us - allusion to it has already been made in connection with Plato - with those “Blessed Isles” dreamed by the Greeks and other peoples. Isles where “golden flowers shine”, isles whose elect “weave garlands and crowns (wreaths)”, sang Pindar in his second Olympic. How could it fail to evoke the high places of Olympus, “which no wind troubles, where everywhere a pure air devoid of haze is spread around, everywhere circulates (flows) light of sparkling lustre”. ^²1 Or again, the “Garden of the Hesperides” of Western Europe, the “Var” of the Iranians, the “Field of Reeds” of Egypt or its Paradise of Osiris? Old China had also conceived the notion of an enchanted palace built in the Kun-lun Mountains and inhabited (dwelt in) by Wang-mou, “the royal Mother of the West”. ^²2 “Sukhavati, the Indian Atlantis”, M. Alfred Foucher says furthermore. . .^²3

Finally, a whole aspect of Christian descriptions of Paradise correspond in some way to the Amidist descriptions. Before certain T’ang frescos, still more perhaps before certain Japanese paintings, with their delicate colouring, their exquisite landscapes, their groups of the elect, their charming genie musicians, we naturally call to mind the paintings of Fra Angelico. ^²4 These latter, however, appear all together (as a whole) more naive and less childish - for it is a kind of childishness which the charm of the image does not dissipate nor the very depth of the thought, while a certain order of spiritual experience is lacking.

We think again of the Paradise of Dante, where, in an “exquisite harmony”, light, music and the dance are conjoined. We could also call to mind certain stained glass windows of our cathedrals, whose music of light “seems to hold captive in its range of colours the magic of a marvellous country”: such as the North rose-window of the Sens Cathedral, called “the heavenly concert (harmony)”, the Christ of which occupies the centre, while around him the angels celebrate his glory in an endless harmony; it is “composed of colours so delicate, so pure, so chastely gay, that it can be compared, without any metaphor, to a lake of limpid light. The eye is at once refreshed and caressed by it, swims in it, expands in it, truly is in paradise”; ^²5 and several of the winged musicians of the rose-window are playing, surely, instruments like those of Sukhavati: the harp, drum, bells, lute? But one of the most remarkable analogies is perhaps that supplied by St. Ephraim’s hymns, with a symbolism at once so sensuous and pure, which sing the “Garden of Life”, - though everything there be both closer to our earth by the naturalness of the setting (the trees are real trees, bearing leaves, flowers and fruits all real) and more remote, more “de-natured” by the mystery and strangeness of the resonances: a place of airy delights, traversed by fragrant breezes; marvellous trees of unparalleled luxuriance and fruitfulness; foliage shading the elect, in the midst of flowers and fruits; sparkling and refreshing dews; magnificent feasts which do not weigh down; fountains where beauty is renewed; a gathering of all around Him who sustains and fills the universe, and a satiating with his Glory . . .^²6 To be sure, all these comparisons are justifiable. They can be instructive. ^²7 Nevertheless, if our desire is not to study the religious “psyche” through its symbols or to scent out generally in humanity the eternal “nostalgia for Paradise” which obsesses it, but to make an historical work by analysing and specifying a particular religious achievement, it will be of more moment to observe how Amidism has specified after its fashion, that is, how it has “Buddhified” - and how it has, in Buddhism, “Amidized” - one of the constant dreams of humankind.

For this purpose, the Western Paradise must be brought into relation with the career and the “Vow” of its sovereign. A career and Vow which, entirely like the Paradise itself, reproduce a common scheme. They are, in the Great Vehicle, generic notions. The “Vow”, Pranidhana - this word designates all at once what we understand approximately by vow, resolution, promise and stipulation - is one of the four paramitas (virtues, perfections) which are added to the classic list of the six original paramitas. ^²8 The same thing, in broad outline, was therefore said of every great Bodhisattva, and was related in greater detail of some among them, notably the future Aksobhya. ^²9 The Gandavyuha-sutra, which is a part of the Avatamsaka, expounds at length the ten “vows” of Samantabhadra, and the Srimaladevi-sutra, those of Princess Srimala. Just as there is a number of “Pure Lands”, so there is a number of “Original Vows”. But within one and the same genre, the sorts vary. The Mahayanist scholasticism usually classes the vows of future Buddhas in five or even in ten categories. From another point of view, it distinguishes two kinds: there are the “vows for Bodhi” and the “vows for the welfare of beings”. ^³0 It is a vow of the first kind that Sakyamuni pronounced, according to the Lalitavistara, at the moment when he came to sit under the tree of Bodh-gaya: a vow of the second kind, according to the Sutra of Admirable Proceedings, in a previous existence. Certain original vows participate at the same time in both kinds. Thus in the case of the Bodhisattva Kshitigarbha (Ti-tsang), who made the vow to save all beings sunk in evil. So again in the case of our Buddha. His proceeding realises at the same time the idea of the “pure vow” or “vow without design” (an-abhoga-pranidhana), an act freed from all desire or utilitarian aim, and this it is which was to assure its so wonderful efficacy, starting from the moment when he who had pronounced it should have obtained the illumination which makes Buddhas.

According to the pure Mahayanist doctrine, the future Amitabha was to begin with only an ordinary being, like each of us. A whole system of Jatakas developed in China with regard to him, as in India concerning Sakyamuni. At last one day, the Long Sutra tells us, in times still very ancient, he entered on the career of Bodhisattva. It was the epoch of the Buddha Lokesvara-raja (sovereign King of the World), the eightieth of the known series of earthly Buddhas the first of which was Dipamkara. He himself, then, was a King. Converted by the preaching of Lokesvara, he gave up his throne to become a Monk, under the name of Dharmakara (mine of the Law; Japanese: Hozo). Then, on the threshold of his long career which was to end in transforming him into a Buddha, he pronounced a “Vow”, pranidhana, and it is through the effect of this “Vow” that since then every being who invokes him is called to leave the life of this world “in the peace of the spirit” and to be reborn in his Paradise. It is “the unfailing oath”, the “vow which overlooks no-one”; “those who know the Law and those who do not know it, the thread of the Oath will collect them all”. ^³1

Dharmakara’s Vow comprised forty-eight points (or, according to the Texts, forty-nine). The essential point is the eighteenth (or nineteenth), worded as follows: “If I am to become a Buddha, but I am unable to come, surrounded by the Blessed, to meet him who will have manifested trust in his heart, who will have achieved all the virtues, and who will have uttered, at the moment of death, the desire to be reborn into my country - if I cannot do this, then, I do not accept the illumination of a Buddha”. ^³2

In another form, the promise is the same in the Short Sutra. The Chinese version of Kumarajiva puts it in these terms: “If a good man or woman, having heard the name of the Blessed Amitabha pronounced, grasps this name and holds it tight, without ever wavering in his trust . . . at the point of death the Blessed Amitabha will appear to him, escorted by numerous souls in glory, etc” ^³3 The promise is the same again in the Meditation Sutra, which reverts several times to the scene of the Buddha’s appearance, in connection with each of the categories of the dying destined to be reborn in the Pure Land. According to their degree of merit and ripeness (maturity), some will see Amitayus himself coming to look for them in all the brilliance of his glory, escorted by a vast retinue, bidding them welcome and holding out his hand in order to set them on a diamond throne; for the others, the Buddha will come only in slightly less splendour, or even he will show them only his magically created appearance; to those still less meritorious he will send only some hundreds of Buddhas to meet them, and in the least glorious cases these Buddhas themselves will be merely Buddhas created for the occasion, or indeed the whole appearance will consist of a beautiful golden lotus, like the disc of the sun. . . ^³4 But, in substance, the boon of the Vow is always the same, and the ecstatic dying person has the full conviction that his Buddha is coming to take him.

Such then is the Vow made by the Bhikshu Dharmakara before the Blessed Lokesvara, and the presence of a vast assembly of gods, “ascetics” brahmans and asuras. ^³5 Such is the promise which forms “the keystone of the entire Amidist dogma”. ^³6 Faith in this vow underlies all Amidist practices. The vow has inspired many kinds of practice, simple and complicated, easy and laborious. It has orientated the religious life of its believers into very diverse ways (paths). We shall have occasion to describe at least some of these. Let us be satisfied for the moment with focusing our attention on the vow itself.

All the hope of the devotees of Amitabha was in fact itself centred in the thought that they were to benefit from this Vow. This hope was already ancient ^³7 when it was expounded anew, in a thrilling (moving) fashion, by the Japanese Genshin (or Enshin) at the beginning of his great Treatise Ojoyoshu, written about the end of the tenth Century. Genshin devotes a volume of the Ojoyoshu to describing the ten happinesses (blessings) of rebirth in the Western Paradise. The first of these ten blessings is secured by the arrival of Amida and his attendants beside the dying.

“He who, for many years, has wholeheartedly amassed the merits of prayers addressed to Amida, spontaneously experiences the joy, in the moment of death, of coming into contact with Amida. Indeed, in accordance with the fundamental Vow of the Tathagata, the latter appears quite distinctly before the eyes of the dying, followed by all the Bodhisattvas and thousands of the Blessed, spreading a sacred light. Then, the Great compassionate Kwannon (Avalokitesvara), stretching out his arms of blessing and offering the seat in the shape of a precious lotus, arrives in front of the believer. The Bodhisattva Seishi (Mahasthamaprapta), accompanied by innumerable Sravakas, Pratyekabuddhas, Bodhisattvas and Blessed ones, while uttering praises gives him his hand and draws him up. At this moment, the dying man sees all that with his own eyes, he feels intense joy in his heart and his very body entering into the bliss of contemplation. He knew very well beforehand that at this moment of closing his eyes in his humble dwelling, he would find himself sitting in the manner of the Buddha on the lotus seat, and that preceded by Amida himself and his entire retinue of Bodhisattvas, he would have the privilege, in this brief moment when he would again repeat the sacred Name, of being reborn into the world of the Western Paradise”. ^³8

The Ojoyoshu is not satisfied with then setting out in the greatest detail the variety of paradisal joys, from “the first opening of the lotus” to the final “progress in the way of the Buddhas”. Like the frescos where the two contrasted regions are pointed side by side, it likewise gives the topography of the hells, from “the hell of repetition” to “the hell without interval”, that is, without intermission, without respite, the most terrible of all. ^³9 It describes the various torments suffered there. It leads its reader through the successive abodes where reside the souls unable as yet to gain access to the Pure Land. In the West, a St. Bernard, ^⁴0 a St. Hildegard, ^⁴1 will do the same for the torments of hell. So too will Dante. More than once the descriptions of the Ojoyoshu have been compared with those of the Divine Comedy. ^⁴2 In order to explain certain rather striking resemblances, the hypothesis of a common source, to be sought in India, has even been proposed. ^⁴3 Certainly the object of the two writers is essentially the same. The comparison, nevertheless, causes above all a contrast to stand out, as much from the point of view of cosmological schemes and religious ideas, as from the point of view of literary art. ^⁴4

At once a writer, and more than a writer, Genshin was a painter, like several other famous Amidists. He employed his art to spread his faith, and it may be through this means that he exercised the most pervasive influence. To him there is generally attributed the creation of the “descents of Amida” (in Japanese: Raigo, Raiko, “come to the meeting”) which Japanese art shows us in great number. ^⁴5 It is a matter mainly of paintings, almost all of which can be reduced to three or four essential types.

The oldest type appears to be that called “Amida and the twenty-five Bosatsus” (Blessed Ones, Bodhisattvas). It is the “Mukae-no-mandara”. It marks the transition from the great representations of Paradise more than two centuries before. The number twenty-five is moreover only approximate. There could be admired a short time ago, in one of the Temples of the Koyasan (Yamado), seat of the Shingon sect, a vast panel four metres twenty long, unfortunately cut into three parts, which an inscription put on its back in 1587 vouches to have been painted by Genshin himself at the age of twenty-four, that is, in 965. In fact, M.H. Minamoto, who has subjected it to a searching examination, judges that it is difficult to assign it, just as it is, a date before the end of the eleventh Century; but it might be indeed the faithful copy of a work by Genshin. ^⁴6 It is possible even that this type of “Descent” is considerably prior, since it may have been created in China towards the end of the T’ang dynasty, to the eighth Century, and imported to Japan at the beginning of the Fujivara epoch. ^⁴7 The great panel of the Koyasan has thirty-two figures. Amida is in the centre, seated in Indian style, on a lotus borne up by clouds. His face, full of sweetness, has “this roundness of features, this impersonality, this absence of characteristic expressions, but also this calm, this serenity” which the painters of the Far East generally give to the faces of Buddhas. His garment, ringed with gold cords, covers his two shoulders but allows his chest to be seen. His right hand is raised, his left lowered: it is the jobon gejo, or gesture “of the lower degree of the higher paradise”. To his right stands Seishi (Mahasthamaprapta; Chinese: Tai-shih), hands joined; to his left, Kwannon (Avalokitesvara; Chinese: Kuan-yin) holds a small golden pedestal of lotus shape, as recorded (stated) in the test of the Ojoyoshu, in order to receive the soul of the deceased. Further away, on each side, are arranged two symmetrical groups of musicians and singers, with smiling faces, sparklingly youthful. On all sides bright colours add to the impression of radiant joy. The detail of the lotus borne by Kuannon already specifies the scene; but what shows better still, despite the sitting position of the Buddha, that we are no longer in the presence of a “Paradise”, but of a “Descent”, is the general movement of the picture, obtained notably by the form given to the clouds:

More original, more independent of the old Sukavatis, more striking too, is the type of Amida hastening up behind the mountains, called “Yamagoshi Amida”. Genshin has not created it entirely. In fact, at Tuan-huang there can be seen a great Buddha with half his body rising up behind a mountain mass: it is Sakyamuni responding to the call sent to him by Queen Vaidehi from her prison, as the Amitayus-dhyana-sutra explains. Already, in accordance with the process pointed out above, “we must be of the opinion that he has been put there as a symbolic representation of Amitabha”, for the sutra text did not mention the mountain. ^⁴9 If consequently he has not created the type, Genshin has at least put his stamp on it. He would have beheld it, at the age of fifty-three, in a miraculous vision, at the end of a long night passed entirely in the invocation of the Buddha. The dawn would, for him have blended with this apparition. It was in the winter of 994. The text in which he explains these circumstances is still extant. In this new type, Amida is most often accompanied by his two usual attendants; there may be other personages too, of lesser importance and stature. Sometimes, as in the picture painted by Genshin, the three figures are drawn gigantic (that of Amida larger than the two others), ^⁵0 half their bodies showing, behind a line of crete, while in the foreground the earthly landscape is still wholly steeped in night. Sometimes, the two attendant Bodhisattvas have already passed over the crete, clearing the way for their Buddha. Sometimes finally the cloud which carries Amida himself has already commenced to descent into the valleys, which are filled with a golden light. The Buddha’s arms are sometimes excessively lengthened, in token of the power and eagerness with which he comes to gather in his devotees.

In the picture due to Genshin, the silhouette of Mount Hisi, “visible from Kyoto, and familiar to all Japanese” can be readily recognised. Other pictures show the thatched cottage of the faithful towards which Amida is making his way. ^⁵1 Whatever the variants, a common and essential characteristic of this type of “Descent” consists in the pronounced contrast between the two parts, upper and lower, of the picture. There are two zones: one, earthly, plunged in darkness; the other heavenly, wholly luminous, and which one feels encroaching. One the one hand there is the glorious radiance emanating from the three supernatural figures, and on the other there is the green and gloomy freshness of the wooded hills: but at the same time we feel a profound though secret harmony, between this approach of the higher world and the serenity of Nature. Amida shines on human misery like a morning sun of compassion. A mysterious and calm force readies itself to grasp the poor realities of this world so as to absorb them in its joy. A short poem, due to a contemporary of Genshin, expresses well the impression experienced:

Such images, ^⁵2 writes M.H. Minamoto, exert a very strong influence on souls. That comes from causing them to apprehend “the contact of the real world with the ideal world. The other Buddhist images depict the Pure Land or the Hells, without trying to explain a doctrine” which always leaves to the “self” the simple attitude of the spectator. On the contrary, in these images of the Descent, the “self” is bound to the represented world; what they manifest is not solely an objective world: it is at the same time a subjective world, where the “self” also plays a part. Whence their power of suggestion?

We think while contemplating the most beautiful, of the inrush of the divine Peace admirably described by Father Surin in his Treatise on the Love of God: a Peace which descends on the soul, without violence but impetuous, like a sea which has broken its embankments; its waters advance in the greatest calm, not a breath of wind ripples them; it comes in majesty, like an element of the other life, with a sound of heavenly harmony; it spreads in its fullness, carrying with it the goods of God and the riches of his Kingdom, and just as Amida is announced by his two messengers, it has its forerunners in the angels who precede it, like the halcyons and birds which indicate the arrival of the waters. ^⁵3

Certain forms of “Descent”, more complicated than Genshin’s, are relatively late. Thus the “Descent of the Nine Classes”, an example of which decorates the doors of the Hoods of Uji. The type was created, it appears, in the opening years of the eleventh Century. ^⁵4 Allusion to it is made in this description from the No Kashiwazaki:

This type approximates to that of the “twenty-five Bosatsus”. The “rapid Descents” (Soraigo) do not appear before the end of the Kamakura epoch.^⁵6 Slightly anterior is perhaps yet another type: Amida bringing the dead person into his Paradise. ^⁵7 Representations of it have remained rather rare. Much more often, by cutting down, the picture of the Descent comprises no more than “the Three Honoured Ones”, that is Amida in the centre, seated or standing, with Seishi on his right and Kwannon on his left, always smaller than he. Each of them is borne on a lotus. We revert from the kind to a static type, very ancient in painting as in sculpture, that we can understand moreover as a reduction of the “Paradise”: the group styled “Triad” or “Amida Trinity”. The frescos of Tuan-huang offer some beautiful specimens of it, as they already offer an anticipation of the “Descent”. A beautiful Triad, in gilt bronze rises above a kind of small portable altar supposed to have been brought from Korea to Japan in the opening years of the eight Century and offered to the Empress, wife of Shiomu-Tenno. There is seen “a small seated Buddha, with a calm and noble face, with lowered eyes . . . between two small Bosatsus short and heavy. Behind and vertically rises a plate decorated in three slight reliefs with figures kneeling or sitting in the middle (midst) of streamers which undulate, enveloping them with a harmonious rhythm.” ^⁵8 The refined art of this group is thoroughly Chinese. In other Triads, peculiar to Japan, Kwannon and Seishi are kneeling down. ^⁵9 It appears that when all three personages are standing we are in the presence of a condensed “Descent”.^⁶0 The general arrangement of the “Amida Trinity” makes one think of that of our crucifixes where Christ is surrounded by the Virgin and St. John. ^⁶1

At the same time as in works of art, the belief in the Pure Land and in the Descent of Amida gave rise, even outside sects purely Amidist, to various liturgical ceremonies. In Japan, from the tenth Century and perhaps sooner, there was celebrated, according to the information of the Chinese Chan-t’ao, a festival on the evenings of the spring and autumn equinoxes, when the sun was setting precisely in the west. ^⁶2 The “Ceremony of the Descent”, celebrated for the first time by Genshin himself, also enjoyed a lively success. “All the assembled communities”, we read in his biography published shortly after his death, “young and old, religious and lay, free-thinking and devout, all unconsciously shed tears, and through that created the possibility of being reborn in the Western Paradise”. The ceremony might develop into a procession. In his intimate Diary, in the year 1080, Minamoto Toshifusa tells of a procession of the Descent in which he had taken part, in Kyoto, on the dry bed of the Kamogawa River.^⁶3 Two other kinds of rite are connected with it. One, the Mukaeko, is a religious drama, still actually practised in Taimadera. ^⁶4 The other is the Riujugyogi, a rite for the moment of death. It was in current use as early as the Fujivara epoch, and it too has continued to exist since then. A picture of Amida descending from the Pure Land with the twenty-five Bosatsus is placed in such a way as to be seen by the dying person. Also a standing statue of Buddha is put before him, holding in his left hand a small cord made of five intertwined threads of different colours. ^⁶5 The other end of the cord is fastened to the right hand of him whom Amida is coming to fetch. All those present repeat the nembutsu and sing the Raiko Wasan, a hymn of praise to the Buddha expressing the desire that he might come himself to fetch his faithful ones in order to introduce them into his Land. ^⁶6 There again we recognise the care taken to establish symbolically the contact “of the two worlds”, ^⁶7 this of our wretched existence and that which is the entire hope of the dying.

2Sir Aural Stein, Serindia, 4 vol. (Oxford, 1821); Paul Pelliot, The Caves of Touen-Huang, especially vol. V, plate 303. See also, for example, in the Linossier Miscellanies, (1933), vol. 1, plate 2, or, in René Grousset, The Civilizations of the East, vol. IV, (1933), p. 45, figure 31 (Guinet Museum); or, in Louis Reau’s Universal History of the Arts, vol. 4, (1939), The Art of China, by Serge Elisseeur, pp. 321 - 322: a wall painting from cabe 139 A of Touen-Huang.

3Paul Pelliot, The Frescos of Touen-Huang at the Frescos of M. Eumorfopoulos, in Review of Asiatic Arts, vol. V, (1928), pp. 154 - 155. It is the 37th miracle in chapter 2 of Tao-siuan’s collection. This does not indicate its source, but it is given by another work dated 668.

5Donald Siren, History of Chinese Painting, (Annals of the Guinet Museum), vol. 1, (1934), pp. 29 - 36, and 85. The Chinese Temples being made of a framework of wood and poorly baked bricks, the least fire would wipe out everything.

6Raphael Petrucci, Essay on the Buddhist Paintings of Tuan-huang, the Mandalas, in Sir Aurel Stein, Serindia, vol. III, p. 1402. A von Le Coo, Chotscho, (Berlin), (1913); Archeological Exploration at Turfan, (Guinet Museum, Popular Bibliography, vol. 35, 1910).

8CB. Paul Pelliot, The Caves of Tuan-huang. But there were already Sukhavati’s before Chan-t’ao. CB. H. Minamoto; in Linossier Miscellanies, vol. I, pp. 109 - 112.

9Oswald Siren, op. cit, vol. I, pp. 17 - 22 and 37 - 41. Arthur Waley, An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting, (London), (1923), pp. 1126 - 1129. Miss Lorimer, in yule, MarcoPolo, vol. I, p. 460, etc. Raphail Petrucci, in Serindia, vol III, p. 1404, thinks that the collection of Sir Aurel Stein alone contains more than a dozen examples of this type.

1² I-Tsing, Report on Religion as Practised in India and Malaysia, C. XI (translated J. Takakusu), (Oxford), (1896), p. 202. Edward Chavannes, Archeological Mission . . ., 1, 2, pp. 345 - 346.

1⁴ On the painting of Amida’s Paradise at the Byodo-in, near Kyoto, which dates from 1053, CB. M. Anesaki, Buddhist Art, (1915), p. 27. The painting is very damaged, but something still remains of the primative (pristine) splendour of the colours and composition.

1⁷ R. Pethucci, loc. cit, p. 1408. In Tibet, where Amitabha Paradises are very numerous, the influence of Chinese models is frequent; sometimes however the whole setting of pavilions and gardens has disappeared, only long trains of Monks and Bodhisattvas are to be seen. CB. G Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, pp. 370 - 371, p. 49 - 50

1⁹ Albert Grunwadel, Mythology of Buddhism in Tibet and Mongolia, based on the lamaist collection of Prince Oukhtomsky (translated Ivan Goldschmidt), (Leipzig, (1900), pp. 118 - 211

2⁴ The comparison has been made several times, notably by E.F. Fenellosa, Art of China and Japan, (translated Gaston Migeon), p. 125, with regard to a fresco of the Chion-in of Kyoto: “large, original vision . . . where the angels have the charm and childish innocence of the angel musicians of the panels with a gold background of the Angelico in the Uffizii”; or by Maraharu Anesaki, Buddhist Art in its relation to Buddhist Ideals, with special reference to Buddhism in Japan, (Boston, New York), (1915), p. 28.

2⁶ Edmund Beck, O.S.B., Ephraems Hymnen uber das Paradies (Studio Anselmiana 26), (1951). See in particular, pp. 70 -

73, 97 - 103, 120 - 121, 127, 156, 189. CB. Ruysbrocck, he Seven Degrees of Spiritual Love, ch. XII: heavenly melodies;

The Mirror of eternal salvation, ch XX: “And Jesus will shows us him glorious face clearer than the sun, and we shall hear

his kind voice sweeter than any melody”. Works, French translation, vol I, pp. 248 - 257 and 137.

2⁹ CB. The Sutra of Admirable Proceedings by which the Buddha rewards good deeds, translated Paul Mus, in Bulletin of the French School of the Far East, vol. 33, p. 923.

3⁰ Hiuan-tsang, Vijnaptipatratasiddhi, translated L. de la Vallée Poussin, vol. 2, (1929), pp. 623 - 624. The Hymn on the life and vows of Samantabhadra (Bhadracaripranidhana), by Hokei Idumi, in The Eastern Buddhist, v (1930), pp. 226 - 247.

3⁷ CB. Nagarjuna, Dasabhumivibhasa-sastra, translated by the same Kumarajiva: “The promise is made that, to those who aspire to beome Buddhas and invoke the name of Amida, he will visibly appear at the proper time. I therefore entrust my fate to this Buddha, relying on the force of his Vow”. (L Wieger, op. cit., p. 12).

3⁸ Ojoyoshu Genshin’s Ojoyoshu, collected Essays on Birth into Paradise, translated from the Japanese by A. K. Reischauer in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 2nd series, vol. 7, 1930. The passage quoted here has been translated in the Linossieur Miscellanies, vol. 1., p. 103. CB. Methodius of Olympus, Banquet, 8, 3: “As soon as the virgin souls leave this world, the angels come to meet them and accompany them with songs to the fields of immortality.” On Genshin, see below, ch. 7.

3⁹ It is the great Avici (Chinese: A-p’i), situated in the utmost depths of the infernal world. CB. Hobogirin, I, p. 6. The hells are described by Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakosa, ch. 3, p. 58 - 59, (translated la Vallée Poussin, III, pp. 148 - 156).

4³ In this introduction to the English translation of the Ojoyoshu (loc. cit., pp. 16 - 97). A.K. Reischauer compares the two

works of Genshin and Dante, likewise noting the analogies and differences, without attending to the possibility of a common

source for certain details. According to Angelo de Gubernatis, The Indian Type of Lucifer in Dante, (Il Giornale Dantesco, III, 1896, pp. 49 - 58).

4⁴ Masaharu Anesaki, Buddhist Art . . . (1915), p. 28; History of Japanese Religion, with special reference to the Social and Moral Life of the Nation, (1930), pp. 152 - 153. Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism, (1935), p. 303. Genshin’s vocabulary is poor, and his descriptions are monotonous.

4⁵ In Tibet, certain Paradises are Descents at the same time; at the bottom of the picture, a second Amitabha smaller, makes

his way towards earth: G. Tusci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, pp. 364 - 365, pl. 39.

4⁶ The Icongraphy of the Descent, loc. cit,., pp. 107-108. According to a tradition, it is Kobo Daishi himself, the founder of Shingon, who transferred this picture to the Koyasan, centre of the sect. Indeed, it appears that the picture, kept quite for a long time at Mount Hisi, may have been entrusted to the Koyasan only in 1571, at the time of Nobunaga’s attack. It has remained there ever since then, the joint property of twenty Temples. It was still there, about twenty years ago, in the Hashiman Hall of the Sanjunji Temple. CB. M.H. Minamoto, loc. cit., and Georges Megeon, In Japan, p. 67. Genshin has composed a “Psalm of the Twenty-five Bosatsus”.

4⁷ M.H. Minamoto, loc. cit., p. 113. According to this author, “the romantic idea” which has inspired the iconograpy of the Descent would correspond very well to the mentality dominant in China under Emperor Hiuan-tsong (713 - 755). Among the other “Descents”, there will be noted that of Kofuku-in (Nara suburb), which probably dates from the Kamakura epoch, and that of the Jofuku-in in Kyoto. The latter, which is a superb kakemono, shows the Bodhisattvas all standing, dancing or playing music, in a great variety, unsurpassed, of expressions and attitudes. (M.H. Minamoto, loc. cit., p. 121).

4⁸ Nô Seiganji, describing the signs which forestall the arrival of a Buddha. G. Renondeau, op. cit., p. 142, Kokka, May 1912, p. 245. Serge Elisseeu, loc. cit., p. 411. Japanese Temples and their Treasures, 319. Noritaka Tsuda, Handbook of Japanese Art (Tokyo, 1936), p. 96. René Grousset, History of Asia, vol. III, pp. 355 - 356. Jean Buhot, in the General History of Religions, by Gorce and Mortier, vol. 4, p. 494, etc.

5² Jean Buhot, History of the Arts of Japan, vol. 1, p. 217. M.H. Minamoto, loc. cit., pp. 127 - 128; CB. vol. 2, pl. IX. O. Kummel, The Art of the Far East, plates 40 and 41 (“Descent” from the Konkai - komyuji of Kyoto, thirteenth Century; gold and colours on silk). Serge Elisseur, op. cit., p. 411. Rene Grousset, The Civilisations of the East, vol. 4, p. 114. Japanese Temples . . ., p. 461. Sean Buhot, in General History . . ., p. 493. M. Anesaki, Buddhist Art . . ., p. 28. In a picture preserved at the Kokkeji (Yamato), the portrait of Amida seems to date from before the Fujivara period; it would therefore be prior to Genshin’s creation. But this was not originally a “Descent”: Kwannon and Fugen (= Samantabhadra, who is fifth in the list of the twenty-five Bosatsus accompanying Amida) (not Seishi) have been added later; the picture lacks unity and, if Amida’s face “radiates a mystical and profound spirit”, Amida does not descent. CB. M.H. Minamoto, loc. cit., pp. 106 - 107.

5³ J. J. Surin, Treatise on the Love of God (ed. Bouix, 1882); pp. 280 - 282. CB. Fenelon, Christian Sentiments and Opinions, 33: “The world flies like a deceiving shadow, and eternity already advances to receive us”.

5⁴ M.H. Minamoto, loc. cit., p. 108. Such was also, no doubt, one of the figures which decorate the temple of Amida at Hojoji (destroyed by fire at the beginning of the eleventh Century), according to the Eiga Monogatari: it was “the image of the lotus seat of the nine degrees”, and “that appeared to be the Descent of the Blessed One”. (ibid)

5⁶ I., ibid., p. 121. A large picture of the Kamakura epoch, preserved in the Konkai-komyoji (kyoto), shows in its central panel the Amida triad coming behind the mountains, while two other panels represent the three superposed worlds: hells, earth and Paradise. The whole is inspired by Genshin’s descriptions. CB. Noritake Tsuda, op. cit., pp. 349 - 353 (and figures 221 and 222).

5⁷ This type of picture, says M.H. Minamoto, p. 121, “Causes a feeling of peace to be born, analogous to the impression felt at the moment when the wind ceases, and the waves are calmed, or indeed to the feeling of relaxation experienced at the end of a feast. The whole movement of the representation develops towards a world which no longer has any contact with the spectator; the impression is nevertheless less strong than that which emerges from the “Descents”. This type dates from the Kamakura epoch.” According to G.B. Sansom, Japan, History of Japanese Civilisation (French translation 1938), p. 302, there is still contributed to Genshin “a great picture showing Amida with Kwannon and Seishi, welcoming one of the faithful to Paradise. Members of the heavenly host with joyous looks, are seated making music, in the midst of dazzling clouds, and in the foreground there is an outline of a pleasant landscape”; is there not here, perhaps, a confusion with the picture of the “Descent” described above?

5⁸ G. Migeon, In Japan, pp. 183 - 184. CB. Noritake Tsuda, Handbook. . ., p. 47 - 48 and 478 - 484, with the figures 331 - 334 Iamida Triad of the Joryuji, Yamato; T’ang art). O. Kummel, op. cit., plates 10 and 11, etc.

6⁰ The most ancient Triad standing is perhaps that of the Sekyo-in, in Koyasan. This form underwent a very great development in Japan in the fourteenth and fifteenth Centuries. It was known in China towards the end of the Sung or the beginning of the Yuan. A Japanese tradition attributes the creation of it to Sensei (T 1127), but it is possible that the type was older. In the Sukhavati-vyuha it could be read: “Amida is in the middle, standing in the air; Kwannon and Daiscishi, the great servants, are standing on each side.” CB. M.H. Minamoto, loc. cit., pp. 125 - 126.

6¹ In the same document of 767 spoken above, note 9, it is a matter of other statues, which must have formed a “Descent”. CB. M.H. Minamoto, loc. cit., p. 123. The type of the Triad is not uniquely peculiar to Amida; it occurs with Sakyamuni (between Yakuo and Yakujo: a group executed by Tori Busshi in 622), or with Yakushi (between two Bodhisattvas: by Gyogi). C.B. E.F. Fennellosa, Art of China and Japan, p. 49; and below, p. 82.

6² M.W. de Visser, Ancient Buddhism in Japan, (193 - ), pp. 367 - 368. G. Renondeau, op. cit., p. 103. C.B. of the French School of the Far East, vol. 31, p. 289. The Sukhavati meditation, facing the setting sun, is one of the exercises recommended by the Meditation Sutra, (supra, chapter 2). A legend had it htat the west door (gate) of the Shitenuoji temple, constructed by Prince Shotoku on a hill skirting the western sea, opened exactly opposite the easter gate of the Pure Land. C.B. Shu Osumi, History of the Religious and Philosophical Ideas of Japan, (Kyoto, 1929), p. 114.

6³ Suisaki, quoted in Linossier Miscellany, vol. 1, p. 105. C.B., ibid., pp. 104 - 105, a quotation from the novel Eiga Monogatari, whose action is placed about the end of the tenth Century: “At the moment (time) of the Bodai ceremony, in the Urin temple of the Mitsuji monastery of Ro-Kuhara, the ceremony of the Descent of Amida is also celebrated”.

6⁴ C.B. S. Ogushi, One Raîko Art in Kokka, 1940 - 1941. The author studies from this point of view the paintings of the Hoôdô in Nara (C.B. Buddhist Bibliography, 1950, no. 1321).

6⁶ C.B. Honen the Buddhist Saint, ed. Coates and Ishizuka, p. 522, note 17: “A bell called shogo is sung, in order to shut out all other sounds and help the invalid to concentrate his mind upon the object of desire. This is frequently repeated, - say twice in a day, if it is supposed that death is drawing near.”

6⁷ M.H. Minamoto, loc., cit., pp. 104 - 105 and p. 115. C.B. Kokka, May 1912. The Jodo Doctrine and its Characteristic Fine Arts, p. 244: “In the famous painting of Amida and two deities at the Konkwai Komyo-ji Temple, there are still some coloured threds left hanging from one of the hands of the figures in the painting.”