A Primer on Japanese Hell Imagery and Imagination - Occidental ...

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Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
description. One of these became a common subject of text and painting as an
afterlife objective: the Buddha Amida’s (Sk. Amitâyus or Amitâbha)
Western Paradise (Saihô gokuraku ) or Pure Land (Jôdo ). 11 Early
texts do not specify the relationship between hell and the Pure Land, but they
were routinely paired in later eras. The accumulation of geographies gave rise
to many discrepancies. The dynamics of karma, however, trumped logistics.
Zhengfa nianchu jing (Jp. Shôbô nenjo kyô), an enduringly influential
treatise on the nature and repercussions of karma, for example, describes
how internal impetuses manifest as physical circumstances. 12 The text explains
damnation with a metaphor comparing the heart-mind or its workings to a skilled
painter who creates hell and other realms of transmigration just as artists conjure
up worlds through their paintings. “Black karma,” evil acts that bring on the recompense
of suffering, leads the heart’s painter to take up black pigment to depict
hell with black iron walls and people bound and burnt until their bodies are blackened.
One’s own karma creates this “painting,” not anyone else’s actions. 13 Contemplation
of the heart-painter’s operation encourages readers to strive for the
elimination of all acts, good or evil, that perpetuate reincarnation. 14 The text
treats other realms of rebirth similarly, but its most convincing argument against
transmigration depends upon extensive, vivid descriptions of hell. Zhengfa
nianchu jing inspired many efforts to convey these descriptions in visual form.
Visual Interpretations
Notwithstanding numerous textual descriptions, no Indian images of hell seem
to have survived the ages. Pinaiye zashi (Jp. Binaya zôji), an explanation
of miscellaneous matters in the vinaya, the rules governing monastic life,
contains instructions for the placement of hell imagery in monasteries. Descriptions
of imagery in it resemble what is left of a fifth-century painting at Ajaṅṫâ
of a “wheel of the five realms of birth and death” (goshu shôji no rin ),
but the image is too severely damaged to ascertain how it may have depicted hell. 15
It is impossible to pinpoint when Indian ideas about hell first began to influence
Chinese culture. We know that Buddhism was introduced to China around the
first century C.E., translation of Mahâyâna sutras and commentaries into Chinese
commenced in the second century, many texts were translated during the fourth
and fifth centuries, and Chinese conceptions of hell were well established during
11 Other famous buddha lands belong to the buddhas Ashuku (Sk. Akṡobhya), Yakushi
(Sk. Bhaiṡajyaguru), and Dainichi (Sk. Mahâvairocana).
12 The second century C.E. Sanskrit original does not survive. On this dating, see Mizuno 1996,
p. 289.
13 T 17:23c.
14 T 17:135b.
15 See Pinaiye zashi (Genben shuoyiqieyoubu pinaiye zashi , Jp.
Konpon setsuissaiubu binaya zôji), a Sarvâstivâdan-school text, at T 24:283ab. The dating is
unknown, but Yijing translated it into Chinese in 710. The painting is in Cave 17. See Teiser
2006, pp. 76–103. Images of hell dating from the seventh through the tenth centuries also survive
at Kizil, Borobudur (Barabuḋur), Bezeklik, and elsewhere. See Takata 1969, pp. 291–96.