著者

江上 綏

雑誌

美術研究 = The bijutsu kenkiu : the journal of art studies

巻号頁・発行日

no.327, pp.1-21, 1984-03-15

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The Enryakuji, Shiga, owns two old sets of indigo-paper Lotus Sutra with cover paintings and frontispieces, which seem to have been handed down by the temple from the Heian Period. One is a set with gold and silver text which the auther presumes to be from about the second quarter of the eleventh century of the late Heian Period (See No. 309 of Bijutsu Kenkyū), and the other is a set with silver text. The latter is the main subject of the present paper. Vols. 2, 3, 5, and 7 of this version retain their original covers with cover paintings and frontispieces in gold and silver on the outside and inside (Pls. I to IV-a). The covers of Vols. 1, 6 and 8 (PI. IV-b, figs. 31 to 35) are later replacements made with blank parts from the text portions of certain scrolls of the set when the set was repaired. Each of them also has a cover painting and a frontispiece both in silver, the frontispiece being drawn over the ruled lines for text. As for the original portions of the set, there are several unique points compared with many of the remaining examples of this kind of illuminated sutra sets. The width (height) of the scrolls is extraordinarily large measuring over 28 cm (See Charts 1 and 3); The cover paintings are rare, stiff style of Tiang type imaginary floral scrolls; The frontispieces are unique in style with extremely stylized depiction of figures ; The text calligraphy is different from ordinary calligraphy styles of Chinese and Japanese sutra manuscripts from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, the time period in which the production date of the set would be put. The dates and provenances proposed by scholars for the work vary. Korea and Japan are referred to as its provenance and the presumed dates range at least from the ninth century to the tenth century. The original frontispieces of this version, those of the Lotus Sutra version without the Opening and Closing Sutras (so-called eight-scroll version) owned by the Honkōji (Pls. V and VI), and that on the isolated Lotus Sutra Vol. 6 cover in the Hofer Collection kept at the Fogg Art Museum (fig. 23) are known to be close in terms of the choice of the subjects and general compositions. The former two versions are particularly close. The cover paintings of these two versions, as well, are the same kind of Tang type imaginary floral scrolls,while that of the Hofer fragment is of a different kind although it also is a T'ang type imaginary floral scroll design. It is not only the case with the Enryakuji silver-text version but also with the other two versions mentioned just above that the scholars' dating and provenance judgement vary. The present author, by comparing the styles of their cover paintings, frontispieces and text calligraphy to one another and to the styles of various works in different fields of visual art, demonstrates the idea that the Honkōji eight-scroll version is Chinese or Korean or Japanese work of the eighth century, that the Hofer version is a Chinese or Korean (perhaps Chinese) work of the end of the eighth century or the ninth century and that the Enryakuji silver-text version is a ninth century Korean. Ornamentations of other sutra works such as the late eighth or early ninth century Bommōkyō in the Tokyo National Museum, the late ninth or early tenth century Hannyashingyō in the Jinkōin and the Kongōshōji's Lotus Sutra set, perhaps datable to the late tenth century, were used for the comparison, together with Shōsōin handicrafts, Chinese stele decorations, Chinese, Korean and Japanese calligraphic materials, Tun-huang murals and others. The generel tendencies found in the measurement of the width of the Chinese, Korean and Japanese indigo-paper and purple-paper sutra scrolls from the eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries were taken into consideration for presuming their provenances, particularly that of the Enryakuji version, in this paper. It is a widely accepted theory that the Honkōji eight-volume version is later than the Enryakuji silver-text version. The theory about the order between the two in the present paper is the opposite. As for the covers of Vols. 1, 6 and 8 in the set in question, most scholars consider that they were made in the late eleventh or twelfth century. The present author theorizes that their cover paintings and frontispieces clearly manifest a style in between those of the Kongōshōji indigo-paper Lotus Sutra set which he thinks to date from the end of the tenth century or thereabouts and the Enryakuji gold-and-silver-text version of Lotus Sutra which he ascribes to the second quarter of the eleventh century, thus implying that the version in question was equipped with these supplementary covers as a part of repairs perhaps in the first quarter of the eleventh century, a century odd after the original production of the set. The present paper is thus an attempt to contribute to the establishment of the chronology and conceptions on provenances of the ornamental and ecclesiastical painting on this sort of early sutra manuscripts. The author is of opinion that the stylistic and iconographic development of such illuminations should be studied on the basis of this kind of fundamental efforts.