Portraits of Pious Women
in East Asian Buddhist Hagiography:
A Study of Accounts of Women who Attained Birth in Amida's Pure Land *
Christoph KLEINE
This study deals with Chinese and Japanese accounts of women who were allegedly born in Amida's (skt. Amitàbha or Amitâyus; chin. Amituo)1 Pure Buddha Land of Utmost Bliss (gokuraku jôdo; skt. Sukhàvatî), written in or before the 14th century. In the first part of this paper some remarks on the theoretical and methodological problems regarding the definition of the term "hagiography" will be made. In the second part it shall be demonstrated that the texts in question, the so-called "birth accounts" Gap. ôjôden; chin, wangshengzhuari), can be defined as hagiographies. This is important to note because as such they follow certain patterns, which must be kept in mind when it comes to analyzing and interpreting them. The third part deals with the structure and purpose of the collections of birth-accounts, followed by an analysis of the contents of the accounts of women. In the final part of the study the Japanese standard interpretation of "birth accounts of women" will be criticized. It is shown that a largely sectarian interpretation of the djôden as well as the neglect of the specific literary character of the texts as hagiographies inevitably leads to serious misunderstandings.
Hagiography : its form, its contents, and its purpose
In the title I have used the term "Buddhist hagiography" which might need some clarification. In European Christianity until medieval times hagiographia meant "sacred scriptures" (Uytfanghe 1987, 151). In the course of time, however, the term came to mean almost exclusively "written life accounts of saints". For this definition of hagiography two elements are crucial: the fact that hagiographies are (1) at least technically or superficially somehow biographical in their literary form, and (2) that, regarding its contents, the protagonist of the life account is conceived of as a saint or
* The research of which this paper is one result was made possible by a grant from the École française d'Extrême-Orient and the European Science Foundation, Asia Committee. I would like to express my gratitude for their generous support. I would also like to thank Maya Нага for correcting the English text and for her helpful suggestions. 1. For the sake of consistency I will use the Japanese pronunciation for technical terms throughout the text. Exceptions are only made in cases where those terms are generally known in their Sanskrit version (e.g. samgha, Mahâydna, etc.). Personal names and titles of literary works will be given in the original language. The names of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas will be given in their better known Sanskrit version. In the case of Amida, however, I chose to use the well-known Japanese pronunciation, since in East Asian Buddhism the name refers to both Amitàbha, the Buddha of "Immeasurable Light", and to Amitàyus, the Buddha of "Immeasurable Life".
