Gilt bronze reliquary of secret-visualizaton jewel Booktalk: Jewel in the Ashes: Buddha Relics and Power in Early Medieval Japan

February 1, 2001

Gilt bronze reliquary of secret-visualizaton jewel
Booktalk: Jewel in the Ashes: Buddha Relics and Power in Early Medieval Japan
Professor Brian Ruppert (Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultures and Religious Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Discussion with Professor D. Max Moerman (Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM

This study addresses the relationship between the veneration of Buddha relics and the appropriation of power in early medieval Japan. Focusing on the ninth to fourteenth centuries, it analyzes the ways in which relics functioned as material media for the interactions of Buddhist clerics, the imperial family, lay aristocrats, and warrior society and explores the multivocality of relics by dealing with specific historical examples. Brian Ruppert argues that relics offered means for reinforcing or subverting hierarchical relations. The author’s critical literary and anthropological analyses attest to the prominence of relic veneration in government, in lay practice associated with the maintenance of the imperial line and warrior houses, and in the promotion of specific Buddhist sects in Japan.

Co-sponsored by the University Seminar on Buddhist Studies