{"content":[{"text":"T \n he Heike nōkyō, a twelfth-century set of thirty-three scriptural scrolls \n preserved at Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima Prefecture, is one of the \n most sumptuous and elaborate examples of medieval Japanese illustrated \n Buddhist scriptural manuscripts. One of the scrolls, the “Devadatta” chapter of \n the Lotus Sutra, bears a frontispiece that features the Dragon Princess, the cel- \n ebrated protagonist of the chapter (figure 1). The illustration is arguably the \n most sublime representation of the princess in visual art. Although recent stud- \n ies of the Dragon Princess have made her famous for her sudden change of sex \n and transformation into a Buddha, the princess in the frontispiece simply offers \n her jewel to the Buddha. She shows no sign of physical metamorphosis. What \n sort of interpretive strategies are required to understand her act as represented \n in the frontispiece?","bbox":{"left":0.135802,"top":0.181762,"width":0.704075,"height":0.257046}},{"text":"Engi Literature and Buddhist Scriptural Narratives \n This article aims at illustrating an intrinsic affinity between medieval Japanese \n engi 縁起 materials in textual, performative, and visual genres, and Buddhist \n scriptural materials. The prevailing consensus among scholars has long held \n that the term engi is an appropriation of the Buddhist doctrinal term “depen- \n dent co-origination” (Sk. pratītyasaṃutpāda), which is translated in the Chinese \n canon as innen shōki 因縁生起 (Ch. yinyuan shengqi) and abbreviated in more \n common use as engi (Ch. yuanqi). However, the concept of dependent co- \n origination means that all things in the world are intrinsically neither rising nor \n ceasing; everything originates from its non-origin. Obviously such a philosophi- \n cal idea would not accord well with medieval engi narratives, which are designed \n to account for the specific provenance of temples, shrines, or other sacred sites, \n the divinities worshipped there, and/or visual and material representations of \n those divinities. \n Although it is not as well known today, an alternative etymology links the word \n engi to another significant Buddhist term, namely, nidāna (Jp. nidana; Ch. nituona \n 尼陀那), which literally means origin (sho 緒), provenance (hokki 発起), cause (in \n 因), and original cause (shoin 所因). More importantly for this article, nidāna is","bbox":{"left":0.135802,"top":0.457029,"width":0.704103,"height":0.36582099999999995}},{"text":"* All the illustrations in this article have been reproduced from images in the Itsukushima \n jinja kokuhōten (Nara Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan 2005) with permissions by Nara Koku- \n ritsu Hakubutsukan and Itsukushima Jinja. All the art objects illustrated in this article are \n possessions of Itsukushima Jinja.","bbox":{"left":0.135801,"top":0.845229,"width":0.7037089999999999,"height":0.06575900000000001}},{"text":"28","bbox":{"left":0.477125,"top":0.922709,"width":0.021058999999999994,"height":0.02126399999999995}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}