Biographies of Monks in Japanese Buddhist Literature and Konjaku Monogatari-shū

Abstract

The tradition of “biographies of eminent monks”, kōsōden, was adopted by Japa­nese Buddhist masters from China and developed in various works, including collections of setsuwa tales. There are three components in monastic biogra­phies: the path of the Buddha, retraced by his follower; the role of the monk in the history of the country; ascetic experience, which allows to assign the monk to one of the categories within the community (exegete of the Buddha teaching, miracle worker, merciful helper to the suffering living beings etс.). The genre of biographies partly overlaps with other genres: tales about miracles and about posthumous retribution; the same story, depending on the context, may shift toward one of these genres. “Genkō Era Buddhist History” (“Genkō Shakusho”, 1322) contains about 400 biographies of monks, which are divided in several categories. What categories turned out to be the most extensive in this text – in particular, the biographies of miracle workers – allows us to make some assumptions about the sources the compiler used or at least took into account. One of these sources was “Anthology of Tales from the Past” (“Konjaku mono­gatari-shū”, 1120s). This collection of setsuwa tales showcases the structure of biographies as they differ from texts of related genres based on several series of examples. In turn, a number of stories included in this collection trace back to “Miraculous Tales of the Lotus Sutra” (“Hokke Genki”, 1040s). A comparison of the two texts shows how, with a change in context, the tale about a miracle can become the tale about of a person who experienced a miracle, that is, acquire the features of a life story.