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

The Life-Extending Fugen Ritual is an esoteric Buddhist ritual to pray for increased profits and longevity. The principal image of worship for the ritual is the Life-Extending Bodhisattva Fugen (Skt. Vajrāmoghasamayasattva), whose iconographies can broadly be divided into those with two arms and those with 20 arms. The Tendai school reportedly preferred the former, while the Shingon school preferred the latter. This painting was preserved at Shōren-in Temple, a Tendai temple whose abbacy (monzeki) was traditionally held by members of the imperial family. The depiction is typical for the two-armed Life-Extending Fugen, with a single-pronged vajra pestle in the right hand and a single-pronged vajra bell in the left. The deity rides on a three-headed elephant standing on a “great vajra wheel” supported by dozens of smaller elephants. This iconography follows that described in the Sutra of the Most Victorious Vajra Dharani of the Life-Extending Bodhisattva Fugen (J. Fugen Enmei kongō saishō darani kyō), a text translated into Chinese by Amoghavajra (705–774). Despite some minor differences, the depiction is quite similar to a painting owned by Matsuodera Temple that dates to the late Heian period (794–1185).

Supplemental pigments were added in later periods, and the section from the figure’s five-wisdom crown upward is replacement silk. Despite these repairs, the painting retains many elements typical of Heian Buddhist painting, like the mild round face of the bodhisattva, the fine lines of cut gold leaf tracing the drape of the clothing, and the original bright pigments that can still be discerned despite blackening from lamp soot. On the other hand, the inside of the halo is colored in silver paint without any use of gold leaf, and the white elephant, which is often adorned with flowers and bells, has no ornaments. These restrained decorative qualities differ from the Matsuodera Temple painting and suggest the work dates to the early Kamakura period (1185–1333), rather than the Heian period.