Engyō-ji Temple

Overview

Engyō-ji (圓教寺) is a Buddhist temple in the city of Himeji, in Hyōgo Prefecture, western Japan. It belongs to the Tendai school of Japanese Buddhism, and its principal image — the honzon (本尊, ほんぞん, the main object of worship enshrined in a temple's central hall) — is a Shaka Sanzon trinity, a grouping of Shakyamuni Buddha flanked by two attendant figures. The temple's full name is Shosha-san Engyō-ji (書写山 圓教寺), taking its mountain name from the peak on which it sits.

Engyō-ji is the 27th stop on the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, a circuit of thirty-three temples dedicated to Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion. It is the largest of those thirty-three temples. Its standing within the Tendai school was high enough that it was counted as one of the three great Tendai training centres, alongside Mount Hiei and Mount Daisen, and it acquired the nickname "the Mount Hiei of the West". The temple precincts were designated a National Historic Site in 1934.

History

Engyō-ji was founded in 966, during the Heian period (794–1185). The year falls in Kōhō 康保, the third year of that era name. The Heian period was the age in which the imperial court sat at Heian-kyō, the city now called Kyoto, and in which Buddhism in Japan was dominated by the great established schools based in and around that capital.

Mount Shosha, the temple's site, lies well to the west of Heian-kyō, in what is now Hyōgo Prefecture. Distance did not keep the temple out of aristocratic and imperial life. Emperors, retired emperors and members of the aristocracy made the journey to Mount Shosha to visit it, and the temple's reputation as a training centre drew it into the same orbit as the great Tendai complexes of the era.

The temple's later prominence is reflected in its place within the pilgrimage networks of western Japan. Engyō-ji is enrolled in the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, the 33 Temple Pilgrimage of Harima and Saigoku, the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi, and the Banshū Yakushi Reijō. The Saigoku circuit is the oldest and most famous of Japan's Kannon pilgrimages; the Banshū Yakushi Reijō is a local circuit of Yakushi, the Buddha of healing, in Harima, the old province that corresponds roughly to modern Hyōgo Prefecture.

What Stands There Today

The temple occupies Mount Shosha above Himeji. Its precincts hold the halls and structures of a working Tendai foundation, and the whole of that precinct was registered as a National Historic Site in 1934, a designation that recognises the site's historical value as a whole rather than singling out a single building.

The temple remains the 27th of the thirty-three Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage temples, and it remains the largest of them. Pilgrims on the Saigoku circuit arrive at Engyō-ji between the temples that precede and follow it on the route, and the temple also serves the smaller Harima circuits named in its affiliations. Its honzon, the Shaka Sanzon trinity, remains the central object of worship.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 圓教寺. Its kana reading is えんぎょうじ, and its romaji is Engyōji — often written Engyō-ji, with the hyphen marking the boundary between the temple's name and the suffix ji. The name breaks down into three characters.

圓 — read en in this word. This is the old, traditional form of the character now written 円 in everyday Japanese. Its meaning is "round" or "circle", and by extension "complete" or "perfect". In Buddhist usage it carries the sense of wholeness or perfection, and it appears in the names of schools and texts to signal a teaching that is complete rather than partial.

教 — read gyō in this word, by the sound change that turns kyō into gyō after a preceding nasal sound. Its meaning is "teaching", "doctrine" or "religion". It is the same character used in 仏教 (bukkyō, Buddhism) and キリスト教 (kirisutokyō, Christianity).

寺 — read ji in this word. Its meaning is "temple". It is the standard suffix attached to the names of Buddhist temples in Japan, and it appears in the names of temples across every school.

Together, 圓教寺 means something like "Temple of the Perfect Teaching". The name is not unique to this temple: it is the same name borne by the great Tendai complex on Mount Hiei above Kyoto, which is why the temple on Mount Shosha, founded later and far to the west, came to be called "the Mount Hiei of the West". The full name, Shosha-san Engyō-ji, prefixes the mountain name 書写山 (Shosha-zan), the convention by which Japanese temples are formally identified by the mountain on which they stand.

Visiting and Context

Engyō-ji sits on Mount Shosha in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture, at coordinates roughly 34.89° north, 134.66° east. Himeji is best known for its castle, and the temple is one of the city's other major historic sites, reached by climbing the mountain rather than by walking in from a town street.

For readers of Japanese, the temple's name is a useful case study in how Buddhist vocabulary works. The character 圓 is the traditional form of a character that modern Japanese writes 円, so the temple's name preserves a spelling that everyday text no longer uses. The sound change from kyō to gyō in 教 shows how Japanese compounds shift consonants when sounds collide, a pattern that recurs constantly in temple and place names. And 寺, the temple suffix, is one of the first characters a learner of Japanese encounters in place names, appearing in temple names throughout the country.

Engyō-ji's position in the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage places it within a network that stretches across western Japan, and its membership in the Harima circuits ties it to the local religious geography of Hyōgo Prefecture. The temple's 1934 designation as a National Historic Site, together with its long association with the Tendai school and its imperial and aristocratic visitors during the Heian period, makes it one of the principal historic temples of the region.