Artist: Matsubara Shôgetsu
Size: 145 x 118 cm
Technique: Paper
These sumptuously decorated mandalas preserve the iconography of the Mandala of Both Worlds as passed down in the Shingon School. The Diamond World manifests absolute wisdom, while the Womb World represents great compassion. Together they create the indestructible world of the Cosmic Buddha Dainichi Nyorai (Sanskrit: Mahavairochana Buddha). Diamond World Mandalas of the Shingon School are composed of nine equal-sized square assemblies. The viewer first encounters the square in the center, called the Perfected-Body Assembly, and enters other assemblies in a clockwise sequence. In the center of the top row is the sixth square, the One-Mudra Assembly. There, Dainichi sits with his hands placed in the gesture called the wisdom-fist mudra (chiken-in), in which the right fist encloses the index finger of the left hand. In the Womb World Mandala, Dainichi appears seated in meditation at the heart of an eight-petaled lotus at the center of the mandala and emanates an essentially infinite hierarchy of forms, represented here in the surrounding rows of various images of buddhas, bodhisattvas, guardians, and symbols. The signature in the lower left corner of this Womb World Mandala reads "Painted by Matsubara Shōgetsu at the age of 64." The storage box for this scroll is decorated with the Tokugawa family crest, suggesting it may have belonged to the Tokugawa family"s temple, Zōjōji, in Edo. The artist Shōgetsu was active as a professional Buddhist painter in the early nineteenth century. During important ceremonies such as ordination, commemoration of founders of the school, memorial rites, or the initiation of new temple buildings, the mandalas are typically hung facing each other, with the Womb World to the east and the Diamond World to the west.
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