Materializing the True Body in Medieval Japanese Relics and Reliquaries (Frisbie & Quist)

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In this episode, art historians Dr. Rachel Quist and Sarah Frisbie of Case Western Reserve University discuss the definition and historical origins of Japanese Buddhist relics and how they proliferated. Delving deeper into this definition, they consider how the relic stood in for, channeled the power of, and indeed became the Buddha-body. As Quist and Frisbie discover, the materials used for relics and reliquaries—wood, crystal, coral—affected their reception and increased their potency. Linking the conversation to Western Europe, Quist and Frisbie also consider instances in which comparative study leads to new insight. Tensions between the material and immaterial, visible and invisible, being and nothingness abound, animating questions of how objects might facilitate relationship to those beyond and above.

Episode corrections:

• The story of the pious woman who gifted a relic to one of her relatives appears in Hokkeji shari engi 法華寺舎利縁起 (Karmic origins of Hokkeji) (beginning at 13:45). The woman's name was Shu-amidabutsu, and in the story, she actually gifted a relic to her son (rather than her brother). Interested English speakers can find a translation of this story in Paul Groner, “Icons and Relics in Eison’s Religious Activities,” in Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, ed. Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf (Stanford University Press, 2001), 130.

• The ritual manual mentioned at minute 36:55 is often addressed by its abbreviated name Jishi nenju hō 慈氏念誦法 (Jishi incantation ritual)—Jishi (Compassionate One) is another title by which Miroku (Skt. Maitreya, Ch. Mile) is addressed. The name derives from Chinese, in which the same pair of characters (慈氏) is used. The portion of Jishi nenju hō discussed in this episode explains that if a person enshrines seven grains of relics in the peak (chōjō 頂上) of a Miroku sculpture, the sculpture's eyes will move, and the person will be granted future benefits, including enlightenment and an audience to Miroku’s conferral of the Dharma (juki seppō 授記説法) when he descends to earth to become the Buddha of the next age.

Sarah Frisbie is a first-year doctoral student studying medieval art history at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She studies the religious art of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe, particularly of France. Trained as both an Africanist and a European medievalist, she often applies her work on theology, materiality, and visuality to a broader medieval world. 

Dr. Rachel Quist is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University. Her research focuses on Buddhist sculpture in Japan from the 7th to 14th centuries, with attention to how the icon can facilitate and illuminate connections between the viewer, the natural world, and the divine. Her most recent projects delve into the relics and reliquaries of medieval Japan.

Episode promo image credits:

• Shrine with Reliquary in the Shape of a Treasure Casket Seal Stupa Hōkyōin-tō, Accompanied by the Lotus Sutra, black lacquered wood, gilt bronze, H 25.7, W 19.8, D 12.5 cm; Kamakura period/13th century; Nara National Museum 1258 (工268).

• Select objects of offering from inside the outermost bowl (right) and lidded bowl (left). After Hōryūji Hozon Iinkai, ed., Hōryūji Gojū-no-tō hihō no chōsa (Nara: Hōryūji, 1954), color plate 2.

  
  

Further reading:

• Brinker, Helmut. “Anointing with Eyes, Raiment and Relic: Insights from the Cologne Jizō.” Impressions, no. 34 (2013): 150–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42597907

• ________. Secrets of the Sacred: Empowering Buddhist Images in Clear, in Code, and in Cache. Spencer Museum of Art in Association with the University of Washington Press, 2011.

• Glassman, Hank. “The Relic and the Jewel: An Eleventh-Century Miniature Bronze Pagoda to Hold the Bones of a Young Queen.” In Women, Rites, and Ritual Objects in Premodern Japan, edited by Karen M. Gerhart, 182–220. Brill, 2018.

• ________. “The Nude Jizō at Denkōji: Notes on Women’s Salvation in Kamakura Buddhism.” In Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Pre-Modern Japan. Edited by Barbara Ruch, 383-413. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2002.

• Groner, Paul. “Icons and Relics in Eison’s Religious Activities.” In Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, edited by Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf, 114-150, 230-239. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

• Morse, Samuel C. “Revealing the Unseen: The Master Sculptor Unkei and the Meaning of Dedicatory Objects in Kamakura-Period Sculpture.” Impressions 31 (2010): 24-41.

• Rambelli, Fabio. Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2008.

• Rhi, Juhyung. “Images, Relics, and Jewels: The Assimilation of Images in the Buddhist Relic Cult of Gandhāra: Or Vice Versa.” Artibus Asiae 65, no. 2 (2005): 169–211. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25261829

• Ruppert, Brian Douglas. Jewel in the Ashes: Buddha Relics and Power in Early Medieval Japan. Harvard University Asia Center, 2000.

• Schopen, Gregory, “The Fragrance of the Buddha, the Scent of Monuments, and the Odor of Images in Early India.” Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 101 (2015): 11–30.

• Sharf, Robert. “The Buddha’s Finger Bones at Famensi and the Art of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism.” The Art Bulletin 93, no.1 (March 2011): 38–59.

• ________. “Visualization and Mandala in Shingon Buddhism.” In Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, edited by Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf, 151–197. Stanford University Press, 2001.

• Walley, Akiko. "Strike a Chord: The Principle of Resonance in Early East Asian Buddhist Reliquaries." In Refiguring East Asian Religious Art: Buddhist Devotion and Funerary Practice, edited by Wu Hung and Paul Copp, 21-51. Center for the Art of East Asia, Department of Art History, University of Chicago; Art Media Resources, Inc, 2019.

Episode transcript:

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Sarah Frisbie: Welcome to season five of the Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast, presented to you by the Medieval Academy of America. The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast strives to showcase scholarship that broadens public understanding of the Middle Ages beyond Western Europe, reaching across disciplines and geographies.

My name is Sarah Frisbie, and I'm a first-year doctoral student studying medieval art history at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. My research focuses on intersections of theology and materiality. This episode is entitled Materializing the True Body in Medieval Japanese Relics and Reliquaries. Today, I will be interviewing Rachel Quist, Assistant Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University. Her research focuses on Buddhist sculpture in Japan from the seventh to fourteenth centuries, with attention to how the icon can facilitate and illuminate connections between the viewer, the natural world, and the divine. Her most recent projects delve into the relics and reliquaries of medieval Japan.

Well, thank you so much for being here. I'm very excited to speak with you about this. I know you've been doing a lot of research recently about this topic, and I'm really excited to speak with you as well 'cause it dovetails not only with my research on, um, medieval reliquaries in Europe but also with, some of the coursework that I've been doing as well. So I'm very excited to speak with you today. 

Rachel Quist: Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me. 

Sarah Frisbie: I think we should probably start off with the basics for our audience. What's, um, what's a relic in Buddhism? 

Rachel Quist: At the kind of the most fundamental level, a relic in Buddhism can be a physical remain of the Buddha, a fingernail, a fragment of bone.

A relic can be something that the Buddha owned or that had contact with the Buddha. Sometimes they're called contact relics. And a relic can also be the Dharma, the written, Dharma. So I led with the body of the Buddha, but, um, there are some kind of ways that you can frame your thinking in which, the Dharma itself is the fundamental relic, and the body of the Buddha is a relic because of the way that it contains or creates the presence of that Dharma.

So, you'll find, stupas, a stupa being initially a kind of tumulus or a mound-shaped monument that predates Buddhism, uh, but in a Buddhist context comes to house relics. You might find that stupas contain relics in any of these forms. Um, and most commonly Those would be a textual relic perhaps a portion of a citra, more often a, a dharanī. Additionally, you can find ashes, bone fragments, be they real organic bone fragments or fabricated by human hands. And then if we go further into different interpretive frameworks, you can find things that while a person that is not raised in the traditions that we're speaking about for example, the tradition in which these objects are enshrined, they might look at that and say, "That is a piece of lapis lazuli. That is a pearl." For someone else in, in a Buddhist framework, those are relics, and there's no need to see them as anything other than a physical relic of the Buddha. 

Sarah Frisbie: Wow. So It could be part of the Buddha's body, it could be contact, or it could be the word of the Buddha and the, the message that the Buddha was trying to get across.

Could you define the word dharanī as well for people? 

Rachel Quist: Many people here have probably heard the word mantra before. Um, it's kind of entered broad English colloquial speech, and it's a, crystallization of a, of a, major concept. A dharanī can be likened to that. It's, it's somewhat longer. You can almost think of it as a formula that condenses the dharma into maybe a, a sentence length or a few sentences length, of ideas. And, so a dharanī would be perhaps transcribed on a piece of paper that might serve as a kind of amulet and then enshrined within a, a stupa, perhaps placed in some sort of a case that would contain it safely, and then that would be installed inside a stupa. Or in cultures where the form of a relic-holding monument takes new shapes, you find more tower-like shapes that are often called pagodas, for example. The, uh, the dharanī is a, very, very old way of distilling the dharma into these potent formulas. 

Sarah Frisbie: Great. And you mention the stupa, and if I remember correctly, isn't the circumambulation of stupas and the veneration of relics, the enshrinement of relics within the stupa, isn't that focused in India? Like how, how does this tradition of relic veneration get over to Japan? 

Rachel Quist: Oh, yeah. The stupa itself does originate in the Indian subcontinent, and you are absolutely correct to indicate that the practice of circumambulating a stupa is a practice of worship. So the culture of relic worship, of relic veneration and enshrinement, it has a lot of stops that it makes along the way before it, it arrives eventually in Japan.

And so if you look at the trajectory of Buddhism as it moves into, for example, China, uh, Korean Peninsula, and into Japan, you see that in various cultures, in various ways, the importance of relics as a subject of veneration persists. New texts, new canons also develop in different geographic contexts that kind of support new understandings or revised understandings of what relic veneration might look like.

How can we understand these various objects to be a relic if- there was only one Buddha, there was only one Shakyamuni that becomes the Buddha of our age, and so how can there be, how can there be relics in all of these far-flung places that genuinely belong to him? You have all of these different ways in which, the understanding of what is a relic or what can be a relic perhaps takes new shapes. Uh, so as these kind of textual developments are happening, veneration is moving eastward, and eventually it finds its way into Japan in about the, in the 6th century of the Common Era. In the 6th century, one of the kingdoms in the Korean Peninsula sends an envoy to the Japanese court, uh, and with that envoy they send, uh, images, texts, and relics of Buddhism.

And they say basically they're trying to promote this religion as, uh, an efficacious way to, promote merit, to protect, one's, one's realm, essentially. Many of the earliest, religious practices or ritual practices that can be tied to Buddhism and that are being carried out by the Japanese court do relate to for example, ensuring an abundant harvest or ensuring safety of borders.

And so all of this really early development of Buddhist presence in Japan coincides with that moment, uh, when Relics are introduced, uh, along with images and texts. I don't want to make it sound like the only thing that people were focused on was relics. 

Sarah Frisbie: Mm-hmm. So they're all a package deal.

Rachel Quist: And it's not an overnight, very smooth transition. There are conflicts between various noble families, some of whom are interested in promoting this new religion and accepting it, and some of whom are interested in maintaining the preexisting practices, worship methods. And after some conflict and some portents that seem to promote one side or the other eventually we do see an adoption of Buddhism and a synthesis of Buddhism into the preexisting ritual life and environment of the court and of the various noble families.

Sarah Frisbie: Mm-hmm. And I'm assuming that a lot of that integration of Buddhism into current practices or existing practices more so in Japan would've come with its own host of theological, theological figurings out, which is what I'm particularly interested in as a scholar of medieval Europe. Listeners of this podcast might be more familiar with medieval European and Christian relics which are either parts of the body of a saint or objects that have touched the body of the saint, which is much like the relic in Japanese Buddhism and Buddhism elsewhere.

We think of Christian relics as partial, but as standing for the holy body as a whole and channeling the sanctity of that body. Would you say that this is unlike or like the concept of the relic in Buddhist Japan? It's what we call pars pro toto.

Rachel Quist: So I see overlap, and my first answer indicated that there is a degree to which it depends who you're asking, what your, what your, uh, scriptural or lineal context is. And so, um, I won't say that everyone will agree with my exact conception, but generally speaking, relics are a genuine and pure presence of the Buddha.

And there is this understanding that a relic establishes the presence of the Buddha, establishes the presence of the Dharma, essentially an understanding that the Buddha and the Dharma are one and the same. And so there's a term that is translated into English as a field of merit.

Essentially you can, you can understand a relic as establishing a field of merit, generating a kind of space around itself within which one that encounters that space or enters that space is in the presence of the Dharma, and and might generate merit in that, in that way. And so there For, for most of the worship and ritual contexts that I've researched, I would say that it's not necessarily partial or a way to channel, but it is understood as a genuine presence.

Um, I do know of some similarities anecdotally, and I say anecdotally regarding my familiarity with Christian relics, but I know of some similarities, to, Christian relic understanding. I've been given to understand that in Christianity, relics can sometimes be seen as having agency, and, and so that is something that, appears in Buddhist relic understandings, and specifically there are plenty of stories in Japanese Buddhism that are a hoot and a half that, um-

tell you, you know, uh, this relic, uh, previously belonged to this very pious woman, and her brother was sad because he didn't have a relic of his own, and, and his sister had two, and so he entreats her, "Can I have one of these relics?" And, and she's very kind, and she says yes, and he enshrines it and prays to the, uh, to the relic regularly. But one day he opens the case in which it was enshrined and sees that it's not there, and he's so ashamed, and he eventually learns that the relic has actually traveled back to his sister. And so it's this example of the relic wants to be where it wants to be, and, um, there are other cases in which relics have created more and more and more of themselves as a kind of sign of showing that the relic itself perhaps wants to spread to more places and establish the Dharma in more places.

And that's one of the ways we also square this circle of logically we might think that, um, the amount of relics of one person that could possibly exist would be limited in some way, would be finite in some way. But this kind of allows relics to travel- across the world and to exist in a volume that by now is probably the size of multiple Shakyamuni-sized people.

Um, and, and so it, it really does this, this, one of those numinous qualities of relics is, is, that I think is shared with relic understandings in at least some Christian traditions is, is this sort of willpower that they have to move and shape-shift and, and generate more of themselves. 

Sarah Frisbie: And that agentic quality seems to be very, in tune with the will of the Buddha himself as well, the Buddha Shakyamuni spreading the dharma. I find that very fascinating that, that the relics would not only be the body, but that they would also carry qualities of, of the Buddha himself.

Rachel Quist: Absolutely.

I think that's a really astute connection because we know from various accounts of the Buddha's life that once he achieves nirvana, he doesn't necessarily have to stick around in a physical form. He makes the decision to remain in this world and to guide, the sentient life that still remains in this world of illusion and attachment to help guide them toward understanding, to help them increase their merit and their good conduct, and to, uh, eventually, ideally get to the point where they themselves can achieve enlightenment and Buddhahood.

So, um, it... there is this sense of, of, you know, the compassion that it, that it takes to stick around and, and to help as many people as you can to, to achieve that greater understanding and that improved conduct. And many of the practices, it's not just relics that seem to, you know, possess qualities that echo those sentiments.

There's also, just the fact that many practices within Buddhism emphasize spreading the dharma. So creating as many copies of a sutra as possible, or spreading images as much as possible to spread knowledge or exposure to the dharma as far and wide as can be. So you see in, in many forms throughout Buddhism, this idea that spreading the dharma is a fundamental core way to accrue merit and to generally improve the condition of sentient life as a whole.

Sarah Frisbie: Where does the question of vision come in? Or is there any instance in which a relic might look like the Buddha and how does that track with those, those theologies of the relic as well? 

Rachel Quist: That's such an interesting question. Um, there are relics, material things, uh, other than texts, other than human remains, and other than a, a, an object that was owned by the Buddha.

There are things that are enshrined as relics. Um, so crystals and stones, sometimes coral. There are all sorts of objects that one might say, how could that be a relic? It's not bone, it's not crematory remains. But they are all the same enshrined as relics. One of the ways that we can understand that sort of visual connection between these objects that are enshrined as relics and the body of the Buddha is to think about, for example, the physical markers that, that define the body of a Buddha.

There's this idea that the Buddha had all of these physical qualities, idealized qualities that expressed or embodied his sacrality. And you might have noticed that images of the Buddha have a sort of dome-shaped protrusion on their head, which is called an ushnisha. In most of the images where you see that, it's not going to be purely a hairstyle. It's a cranial protrusion on top of the head that you can understand as creating a greater capacity to [00:19:00] house the massive universal understanding that the Buddha gained through enlightenment. You might see that the Buddha has, a wheel design on the palms or the soles of the foot or webbed fingers.

These are all the signs of a, of a great man essentially that date back to some of the earliest conceptions of the idealized body in the Indian Buddhist context. But in addition to those qualities, some of the other physical markers really focus in on radiance. There's this idea that the, the entire body of the Buddha has this golden radiance to it, that his hair is such a deep shade of lustrous glossy black that it actually appears blue. There's another attribute you might have seen on Buddha images where between the, the [00:20:00] eyebrows a little higher up, but just between the eyebrows, there's a small circular protrusion, um, that is Purely iconographically speaking, it's a small tuft of hairs, a coil of hairs perhaps that, uh, is called an urna that, um, emits a radiant light.

And so one of the things we can think about when we look at some of the objects that are enshrined as relics is their luminous quality, their radiance. We can tie this all back to the prominence of the jewel as a potent, uh, symbol or, or even material in Buddhism. There's this idea that when the Buddha's body was cremated, all of the illusion of the physical form is stripped away, and all that remains when the ashes blow from the pyre is this bright, shining jewel. And so from stories like that, from understandings like that, we can see this developing, uh, equation between j- jewels and, semi-precious stones and the, physical relics of the Buddha. 

Sarah Frisbie: So the physical form upon cremation of the Buddha is stripped away, and you're left with these small, teeny-tiny relics- Mm-hmm crystalline relics. And then in many cases, don't you put them back into an image. They're enshrined in reliquaries, or they're enshrined physically in images. So how, how, how were people wrestling with that? Were they wrestling with that in, in medieval Japan? People seeing the crystalline relic and being like, "This doesn't look like the Buddha. What do I do with that?" But then also more learned audiences who know, okay, well, this purification through fire, this distillation of essence into these relics, um, strips away all the illusion of, of semblance. Like, we're not getting something that resembles visually anymore. 

Rachel Quist: I think it's, it's an interesting question because the answer kind of depends on how wacky you wanna get.

Because I could be a little bit abstract and I could say that many of the forms of reliquaries that we see are a sort of geometric distillation of the form of a Buddha. Mm. So, uh, there are various ways in which you can take the silhouette of the seated meditating Buddha, and the silhouette of a stupa or various tower-shaped stupas. So not the tumulus mound that I mentioned earlier, but something that is maybe more familiarly known as a pagoda. So you can take these various shapes, and you can kind of abstract them to, to map onto the, to the form or the shape of a seated meditating Buddha. And so in a sense, if we really want to, we can think of stupas as Buddha images, and we can think of Buddha images as stupas.

Mm. Whether or not they all enshrine relics, there is this, um, opportunity or possibility of, of likening these forms to the body of the Buddha in, in one way or another. With one of the more explicitly geometric but also explicitly referential to the organic seated body being the five-tiered the five-tiered stupa or the gorinto form that, um, that is, I would say so common in Japan that you could probably see several of them in a day if you're in the right part of the country and not even necessarily notice them.

But it's this form of like a cube with a sphere on top of that. On top of the sphere is a triangle, and then a semi-sphere, and then a jewel shape. And there are diagrams showing that each of those five shapes maps onto a different part of the seated figure in meditation. And so there are all sorts of ways in which the stupa or the pagoda, however you'd like to call it, can be seen as the body of a deity in a more anthropomorphic form. 

Um, so there's this abstraction happening. Um, so you can kind of look at any image as a reliquary in that way if you want, but if we're just looking at the way that people are describing images, so just textual accounts, records in which a monk is , "This image was made, these relics were humbly enshrined within and it was consecrated and venerated," the language being used is always image, uh, or, or, or a word that indicates a Buddhist image. The language does not shift over to, um, to phraseology that would indicate that the, that the image is being understood as a reliquary in and of itself. Um, but there are reliquaries frequently enshrined inside images, and there are even, in some cases, reliquaries being held by images. Uh, so sometimes they're exterior and sometimes they're interior

Sarah Frisbie: wow. So it's very complex, and it sounds like there are a lot of things that look like and a lot of things that more so seem like or signify. 

Rachel Quist: Well, I will say that, um, this is another one of those moments where your perhaps lineal context matters because there are contexts or there are schools of Buddhism in which what we would call the signifier and the signified are truly understood as separate. And then there are some contexts in which they are considered as that boundary is collapsed. The signifier is the signified. There are several esoteric contexts in Buddhism that you might, in a Japanese context, associate with the Shingon school of Buddhism, wherein, representation becomes presence and that boundary is collapsed. And there are other contexts in which someone might say, "No, this is really a representation that, you know, is helping me channel my understanding or, or channel my, my practice so that I can, uh, dispel my delusions." But it, it depends on the degree to which we, um, we understand the, the nature of the Buddha to reside within all things or not.

Um, the or not being more closely aligned with contexts in which representation is representation and not necessarily presence. 

Sarah Frisbie: Wow. So we've got, like- Anything ranging from everything is a Buddha to, well, this is a representation of the Buddha and we're just going to, to leave it at that and let that- 

Rachel Quist: Mm-hmm

Sarah Frisbie: bound our understanding. 

Rachel Quist: Everything is a Buddha that doesn't necessarily realize that it's a Buddha yet. 

Sarah Frisbie: So I'm interested in the containers for these relics in- Mm-hmm ... Japan specifically. Um, so the reliquaries that enshrine them. And what do they, what do they look like in Japan? You, you talked a little bit about it already, but I'm wondering the types that we're looking at.

Rachel Quist: We've got all sorts. One of the most common types that you'll see is the five-tiered five-tiered stupa, five-tiered tower, depending on how you'd like to translate the kanji which has these five stacked geometric shapes. You've maybe seen them in a cemetery. If you've been to a cemetery in Japan, they're all over the place. So that's one common shape. You might see various ways of enshrining a crystal or a glass orb that contains relics within, and then it encircled in flame, in a flame motif, which we can also refer to as a mandorla. The shape of a jewel encased in flames is called a flaming jewel, um, very straightforward. They're often placed on top of a lotus pedestal, and that lotus pedestal might be borne by an image of a turtle. It might be standalone. It might stand on top of, uh, a vajra, which is a form that refers to thunder and is ... actually a ritual implement that stems from what is initially a kind of weapon, and then in a Buddhist context becomes an object that is, held or displayed in, in several ritual contexts, for example. So you might see, uh, those types of reliquaries. Essentially she- Wears 

Sarah Frisbie: many hats. 

Rachel Quist: Yeah, pretty much. You might notice that there are architectural types of reliquaries, um, with one of the kind of iconic versions of those being the hyakumantō, and that name literally translates to one million pagoda. In the eighth century, there is an empress, uh, Empress Shōtoku, and she has another reign title because she rules twice. She's called Empress Shōtoku at one point, and she's called Empress Kōken at another point. But she has this massive patronage project to create one million small, wooden reliquaries. They're quite small. They're about maybe eight or nine inches tall and they have this kind of, uh ... If you've ever looked at a pagoda you see that there are these kind of layers of several roofs, gabled roofs, and then a pillar that comes from the top and has several circular disks surrounding it.

A hyakumanto will basically take this form and distill it into a, a circular pedestal with three circular roof-like protrusions coming outward from the center, and then the pillar with the with the circular disks. It's a very round shape, and then at the very top, you'll actually see a small jewel-like form.

So this kind of distills the shape of a pagoda into a more, um, rounded, uh, form, and, uh, it's actually a dharanī, um, that serves as the relic for these, for these small reliquaries. And then there are also reliquaries made at later points that echo this form as well. It becomes its own kind of reference point.

And so she commissioned this project, uh, as a kind of expression of gratitude for what she understood to be the assistance of Buddhist deities in suppressing a rebellion, uh, in the mid-8th century, and so she enshrines them at a major site of imperial patronage called Horyuji, and they develop their own significance from that point on.

Sarah Frisbie: Wow, so you have these, these reliquaries, these, these pagodas all over, all over Japan, I guess, at that point. 

Rachel Quist: So while many of, many reliquaries are, are largely not visible to people- Mm ... but you will see the shapes that reliquaries take kind of appearing in, in different forms. For example, the five-tiered stupa is a very common shape for a grave marker to take.

Sarah Frisbie: So it sounds like even if the reliquaries themselves aren't visible, the imitations of the reliquaries are visible. Yeah. Do we ever have relics that are visible, or are they always enshrined completely within reliquaries? 

Rachel Quist: So relics are sometimes visible depending on the context.

So for example, if we consider reliquaries for which the relics themselves are enshrined in a glass, crystal, or otherwise transparent orb you'll be able to see the relics, or whatever has been enshrined within. Reliquaries of that kind are not necessarily going to be visible, and when they are visible, they will often have a limited audience people that are part of an inner circle, whether that is class-based or based on the hierarchy of a temple or a combination of factors. The two are often intertwined. One type of reliquary that I find really exciting 'cause I've, I've ... as you can see from me mentioning it a few times is the five-tiered stupa the gorinto. And while gorinto were largely enshrined within images, it is interesting to note that a great deal of them are made from crystal.

And I am aware of at least one image that according to 13th-century accounts of that image it's a seated form of, uh, a Bodhisattva named Miroku in Japanese or Maitreya in Sanskrit, who has his hands palm on palm resting in his lap in a meditative gesture or mudra. If you go look at it, it's at Daigo-ji which is a temple in Kyoto. And if you look at that image today, the reliquary in its hands is a gorinto made of wood and colored gold. Mm. But 13th-century accounts of this image indicate that the reliquary that this image was holding was a crystal gorinto. Wow. And even more exciting still, x-ray photography of this image shows that within the the crown of the head or the topknot area, you can actually see the silhouette of a gorinto enshrined within the head.

And based on some kind of perceived translucence in that, um, x-ray imaging, it seems that it's a crystal gorinto that contains relics inside. And so we can ask, well, was the original crystal gorinto moved inside the topknot? Did it perhaps originally have one in the topknot and one in its hands? I like to think it's the latter.

There is a ritual manual that was very important at the time that this image was made in 1192, and it's an image of Miroku, and he's in the form of a Buddha who is named Dainichi- Mm-hmm ... or in Sanskrit, Mahavairocana. And to condense some very complex secret teachings into- a smaller soundbite, we can say that this image is merging Miroku's identity with Dainichi's identity, or perhaps even demonstrating that they are one and the same. And so there is a text that is fundamental in disseminating these ideas, and within that text, there is a guidance that says that if you enshrine seven grains of relic within the topknot, uh, or within the peak of a Miroku sculpture, then the eyes of that image will start to move, and the person that, um, has, has performed this practice will be ensured all of these great benefits in the future. And so there is precedent to suggest that there would have been relics enshrined in the topknot of that image prior to any potential change of the exterior iconography, um, and that that might have been understood to enliven the image. So- Whoa ... yeah. 

Sarah Frisbie: So let me get this straight. So Miroku's the image, and then we've got this probably, maybe crystal gorinto in the topknot- has relics inside most likely, that are also most likely probably crystalline in nature. 

Rachel Quist: I can comfortably say that many reliquaries, many gorinto that are made of crystal, that have been, um, removed from whatever context in which they were enshrined, do contain crystalline or mineral relics. I wouldn't be comfortable guessing that based on the X-ray imaging, but based on kind of external context, the frequency with which I've seen crystalline relics in crystal gorinto, in that way I'm comfortable saying I wouldn't be remotely surprised if that was the nature of the relics within this reliquary.

Sarah Frisbie: That's fantastic.

Rachel Quist: It's one of my favorite images in Buddhist sculptural history, and, it's also one of the earliest known images in Japan to... or surviving, I should say, uh, that has crystal inserts, crystal lenses to form the eyes of the image. And so one thing that I'm currently looking at in my own research is a potential material connection between making a reliquary that is made of crystal and making lenses to form the eyes of the image that are made of crystal, and the degree to which we can consider crystal itself to be an enlivening or an animating material. And part of the reason that I'm, I'm so excited about that portion of the ritual manual that I just described is because it makes a direct reference to the animation of the eyes. Mm-hmm. And so what does crystal do as a way of, of depicting eyes? One thing it does is that it catches light, and it creates a sort of lifelike appearance of eyes.

I've been really thinking a lot, uh, in my own research about this kind of agentic quality that crystal has to potentially empower and enliven the image, and that's one additional facet of What I find so exciting about relics that, are made of crystal, reliquaries that are abstracting the form of the seated Buddha and that are made out of crystal, and this understanding that form and materiality can potentially become what they are referring to.

Um, so I think it's a really exciting area essentially. 

Sarah Frisbie: It's a super exciting thing, and it's really fascinating to me how the Buddha is simultaneously, like, in the world, in all things, and beyond, beyond all things, like in form and beyond form. And the fact that the Buddha is found as such an important touchstone, for so many people in these physical materials as well, is just really... it seems paradoxical. 

Rachel Quist: It is really interesting because I think a lot of people are accustomed to thinking of Buddhism and a sort of anti-materiality or a non-materiality and to be a broken record once more, it often depends on the the school that you're looking at, the understanding of Buddhism that you're looking at. But At the same time, some of the earliest surviving Buddhist texts describe how to appropriately enshrine and venerate relics, and many of them will describe specific precious materials that are appropriate to use when enshrining the Buddha's body or when enshrining relics. And among those you'll see examples of minerals and gemstones. Uh, you'll see coral, [00:42:00] crystal, sometimes pearl shows up. Gold and silver are appropriate materials. So really fine luxurious, highly treasured materials. But at the same time, there is an understanding that not everyone can do this, and that is not something for which they should suffer. So fundamentally, this goes back as well to the fundamental importance of spreading the Dharma.

If you don't have the means to perform these fantastic acts of materially luxurious and rich veneration of the Buddha, you can do something as simple, as humble as the taking clay to form a stupa shape, and perhaps enshrining a scroll of text within. There are very humble ways that you can spread the Dharma and create a small stupa, a small encasement for relics in the form of dharanī, which, that too is a way of appropriately venerating the Buddha. And so there is a lot of room for things that seem fundamentally different from each other to coexist. On the one hand, this very humble form of spreading the Dharma, and on the other, this understanding that, you know, the finest, most precious materials in the world can be likened to the body of the Buddha, and are thus appropriate to enshrine the Buddha 

Sarah Frisbie: So we end up, I suppose then, with a tradition of veneration of relics that becomes, very accessible in many ways.

And when we're talking about materializing the body, it's, it's not just materializing it for some people. You've got more remote shrines is what it sounds like, but you have this access to the Buddha's body in a way that seems almost revolutionary. Like he's not just in one place.

He's now a body that can be transferred everywhere and that can be spread, and that seems to go back pretty full circle with what you were talking about with the Dharma at the very beginning of our conversation. 

Rachel Quist: Yeah. And I think that it's so important to also consider the oldest expressions of these ideas as well, because turning back to the story of the life of the Buddha and, and then the immediate aftermath his life his physical form expires and he en-enters a a stage called parinirvana. It's the, the complete extinguishment of his human corporeal form, and he's cremated. And at the time of his cremation, there is some - conflict, I will say, some disagreement about how his relics should be enshrined, divided, who should have access to them. Eventually it's decided that eight kings will be able to portion out the relics equally and enshrine them in stupas in their own territories, and that additionally, The surface on which these relics were cremated then becomes their own kind of site of worship as well.

So there's this understanding at a very early point of the Buddha's relics being spread to eight disparate spaces to spread the Dharma. And then one of the kind of fundamental moments in the spread not only of Buddhist relics, but of Buddhist monuments, of Buddhist visual presence throughout the Indian subcontinent and beyond, is the reign of a king named Ashoka in the, 3rd century BCE. He basically has his own kind of moment in life where he comes to terms with his previous immoral conduct, decides to become a fervent Buddhist and to spread Buddhism within his realm. And one of the things that he's supposed to have done is to take the relics of the Buddha and to redistribute them into 84,000 monuments. 

Sarah Frisbie: Oh my goodness. 

Rachel Quist: 84,000 being a really powerful number in Buddhism as well. It's the ... There's this understanding of the 84,000 Dharma doors or the 84,000 teachings of the Dharma.

If we really get into the weeds, 84,000 is one of those numbers that essentially stands in to mean an insurmountable quantity. Mm. But at the same time, it is treated in this kind of exact way, um, at the very least in our understandings of this, you know, this great deed that Ashoka carries out. But essentially he, in order to spread the Dharma far and wide, he redistributes these relics, and he redistributes them in recognizable monuments that contain the Buddha body as well.

So for many people thinking about visibility, for many people, it's not the small-scale reliquary or other small-scale encasement that holds the relics. It is often the vast monument that whether it's something that they can only see on the horizon, or whether they can actually approach the monument more closely, that monument becomes the stand-in for the body of the Buddha in a way that whether or not they can en- envision or know for sure that relics are in there, they see that form, and that becomes the Buddha in a sense.

Sarah Frisbie: Wow, that's absolutely amazing, and absolutely incredible how potent that is for a viewer. I'm really appreciative of all of the insight you've given into relic veneration practice in, medieval Japan and I'm very grateful for your time. This has been a fascinating conversation. I'm really excited for all of the implications that it holds for how we think about a global Middle Ages, how we think of these different themes that can really connect a lot of our, a lot of our scholarship.

So thank you so much. 

Rachel Quist: Thank you. This was a blast. I really, I really hope that people will get excited about relics and reliquaries in the global context as well as in my own little corner. 

Sarah Frisbie: Well, we certainly are. At least I am. So thank you.

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