Word Embodied: The Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas in Japanese Buddhist Art (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

In this study of the Japanese jeweled pagoda mandalas, Halle O'Neal reveals the entangled realms of sacred body, beauty, and salvation. Much of the previous scholarship on these paintings concentrates on formal analysis and iconographic study of their narrative vignettes. This has marginalized the intriguing interplay of text and image at their heart, precluding a holistic understanding of the mandalas and diluting their full import in Buddhist visual culture. Word Embodied offers an alternative methodology, developing interdisciplinary insights into the social, religious, and artistic implications of this provocative entwining of word and image. O'Neal unpacks the paintings' revolutionary use of text as picture to show how this visual conflation mirrors important conceptual indivisibilities in medieval Japan. The textual pagoda projects the complex constellation of relics, reliquaries, scripture, and body in religious doctrine, practice, and art. Word Embodied also expands our thinking about the demands of viewing, recasting the audience as active producers of meaning and offering a novel perspective on disciplinary discussions of word and image that often presuppose an ontological divide between them. This examination of the jeweled pagoda mandalas, therefore, recovers crucial dynamics underlying Japanese Buddhist art, including invisibility, performative viewing, and the spectacular visualizations of embodiment. WORD EMBODIED: The Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas in Japanese Buddhist Art 3 CONTENTS 7 Illustrations 9 Acknowledgments 15 Introduction 19 1. Performance and Iconicity in the Jeweled Pagoda Mandalas 39 2. The Historical Context of the Mandalas 71 3. Medieval Textual Images 140 4. Dharma Relics in Medieval Japan 186 5. Buddhist Reliquaries and Somatic Profusions 211 Conclusion: Creating a Salvific Matrix of Text and Body 236 List of Names and Terms 255 Abbreviations 262 Notes 263 Bibliography 285 Index 301 HARVARD EAST ASIAN MONOGRAPHS 311 "Examines the Japanese Buddhist jeweled pagoda mandala paintings, unpacking their revolutionary use of text as picture to show how this visual conflation mirrors important conceptual indivisibilities in medieval Japan. The textual pagoda projects the complex constellation of relics, reliquaries, scripture, and body in religious doctrine, praxis, and art" ... Provided by publisher Halle O’Neal unpacks jeweled pagoda mandala paintings and their revolutionary entwining of word and image to reveal crucial dynamics underlying Japanese Buddhist art—including invisibility, performative viewing, and the spectacular visualizations of embodiment.