National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties
of National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan

All eight volumes of this edition of the Lotus Sutra were found together within the body of the Jizo bosatsu (Skt., Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva) statue from Shinzen’in Temple at Todai-ji, the Shingon monastic complex in Kyoto. The volumes were transcribed in the ippongyo format (with one scroll for each chapter( and have a vow appended to most of the chapters. From the vow inscriptions, we know that the sutra was copied from the sixth to eighth months of Shoo 1 (1288) primarily by Todaiji monks as an act of connecting with the Buddha and for the sake of storing them into the newly carved Jizo statue of Shinzen-in Temple at Todai-ji. Moreover, the vow inscription at the end of Chapter 9 by a priest named Jikan indicates the height of the Jizo statue as two shaku (approximately 60.6 cm) and six sun (approximately 18.18 cm). The sutra set must have been ordered to be approximately 15.5 cm in height due to the relatively small inner space within this statue, which measures nearly 80 centimeters in height.