ボードガヤー出土の10-11世紀漢文石刻資料と訪天僧の奉獻品

Abstract

Chōnen (938-1016), an eminent Japanese monk known for bringing the legendary Shakyamuni statue in Seiryō-ji from the Song Dynasty China in 985, was recorded to have planned a journey to India but aborted it in the end. Indeed, there is no confirmation of any Japanese monk who traveled to India in the pre-modern period. In contrast, records show frequent movement of monks between China and India between the 10th and 11th century around Chōnen's sojourn in Song. Attesting to this are inscriptions dedicated by Chinese monks found at Bodhgaya, a sacred pilgrimage site where Buddha was believed to have attained enlightenment. A. Cunningham listed six inscriptions in his report published in 1892 ; all contain records related to the production of Buddhist images or stupas and are thus highly valuable. For instance, three stone slabs carved in 1022, narrate the donation of a monastic robe (sk. kāsāya) by a monk from Kaifeng, and a stele dated to 1033 records the carving of a stone pagoda for the Northern Song Emperor Renzong and Empress Dowager Zhuangxian. While these inscriptions have been attracting academic attention since the late 19th century from scholars like E. Chavannes, the interpretation of their content is far from being resolved. The location of two of the six inscriptions is unclear, but the remaining four pieces are kept in the Indian Museum of Kolkata, which the author has recently had a chance to examine. This current article reintroduces the six inscriptions and discusses the relationship between Buddhist translations during the Song dynasty and donations made by Chinese pilgrim monks in Bodh-gaya as well as other problems relevant to these inscriptions. A notable scholarly trend in recent years is the increasing interest in the interrelations between the knowledge of pilgrimage sites in India and the development of Buddhist art in East Asia. While research for the period between 7th and 9th century has witnessed major progress thanks to a large accumulation of existing literature on the Tang dynasty Buddhist art and the concurrent situations in Korea and Japan, the situation in subsequent periods is shrouded in obscurity due to the lack of available materials. If this current article can be of any contribution to the latter, it will not only provide a new perspective to the Sino-Indian relations, but also cast fresh light on Japanese monks who went to the Song dynasty such as Chōnen and open up new possibilities to assess the impact of these individuals on the development of Buddhist art in the Heian Kamakura period.