Butsuryū-ji Temple

Overview

Butsuryū-ji (仏隆寺) is a Buddhist temple in Uda, a city in the mountains of northern Nara Prefecture, Japan. It belongs to the Shingon school, the form of esoteric Buddhism that Kūkai (空海), known after his death as Kōbō Daishi (弘法大師), established in Japan in the early ninth century. The temple sits in the Heian period (794–1185), the era in which it was founded, and its traditional founding date is 850, the third year of the era name Kashō (嘉祥).

Its setting is one of the things that defines it. Butsuryū-ji lies roughly four kilometres southwest of Murō-ji (室生寺), another mountain temple, on the far side of Mount Murō (室生山). The two temples are linked by old mountain paths rather than by easy road, and both belong to the same world of forested, remote Shingon practice sites in the Nara hills.

History

Butsuryū-ji was established in 850, in the third year of the Kashō era. That places its founding in the middle of the ninth century, a period when Shingon Buddhism was spreading outward from the great metropolitan temples of Nara and Kyoto into the surrounding mountains. The Heian period as a whole ran from 794 to 1185, so the temple's foundation falls in its earlier half.

The temple's location, four kilometres southwest of Murō-ji across Mount Murō, ties its history to that of its neighbour. Murō-ji developed as a mountain centre of Shingon practice, and Butsuryū-ji belongs to the same devotional landscape — a cluster of temples set among the ridges rather than in the flat land of the Nara basin. Mountain temples of this kind served both as places of retreat and as waypoints for pilgrims moving between sacred sites.

What Stands There Today

Butsuryū-ji remains an active Shingon temple in Uda, Nara Prefecture. It stands in the same mountainous terrain it has occupied since the ninth century, on the slopes facing Mount Murō, with Murō-ji four kilometres to the northeast.

The temple is reached through the countryside of eastern Uda, an area of small settlements, forest and terraced ground rather than city streets. Its position relative to Murō-ji means the two are naturally visited together by anyone following the old routes through the Murō area.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 仏隆寺. It is read ぶつりゅうじ in kana, and written in romaji as Butsuryū-ji. The long ū in the middle is a genuine long vowel, not an accident of romanisation: the name has four mora — bu, tsu, ryū, ji — and the accent falls on the long syllable.

Taken character by character:

• 仏 — read butsu here. This is the character for "Buddha," and by extension for Buddhism and Buddhist things generally. It is the same character used in 仏教 (ぶっきょう, bukkyō), "Buddhism," and in 大仏 (だいぶつ, daibutsu), the term for a great Buddha image. In this name it is pronounced butsu rather than the alternative reading hotoke.
• 隆 — read ryū here. It means "prosper," "rise high," or "flourish," and it appears in names and compounds connected with growth and eminence. The long vowel comes from the character's Chinese-derived reading, which ends in a sound that Japanese renders as a long yū.
• 寺 — read ji here. This is the standard character for a Buddhist temple, and it ends an enormous number of Japanese temple names. The same character is read tera when it stands alone as a common noun.

So the whole name means something like "Buddha-Prosperity Temple" — a temple where the Buddha's teaching flourishes. The name is also written with the variant 佛隆寺, using an older form of the first character. 佛 and 仏 are the same character in different orthographic traditions; 佛 is the older, fuller form, and 仏 is the simplified form now standard in Japanese. Both are read butsu, and both point to the same temple.

For learners, the useful pattern here is the ending. Once 寺 is recognised as ji in temple names, a large family of names becomes readable: Murō-ji (室生寺), the temple four kilometres away, is built on exactly the same ending.

Visiting and Context

Butsuryū-ji is in Uda, in the Murō region of Nara Prefecture. Its coordinates are 34.5152778, 136.0097222, placing it in the hills east of the Nara basin and south of the road that runs up toward Murō.

The practical context for a visit is its relationship with Murō-ji. The two temples sit four kilometres apart across Mount Murō, and the mountain between them is the point: this is walking country, and the temples were built to be reached through it. Murō-ji is the larger and better known of the pair, sometimes called the "women's Kōyasan" for the tradition that it admitted women at a time when Mount Kōya did not. Butsuryū-ji, smaller and quieter, shares the same forested setting and the same Shingon affiliation.

For readers of Japanese, the name is worth carrying away as a piece of vocabulary rather than only as a place name. 仏 (butsu) for the Buddha, 隆 (ryū) for flourishing, 寺 (ji) for temple: three characters that recur constantly across Japanese religious geography, assembled here into the name of a mountain temple founded in 850.