KOYASAN, THE JAPANESE VaLHALLA 



651 



southern quarter of 

 Kyoto, to be taught 

 the mystic doctrine. 



HOME OF MYSTICISM 

 AND MAGIC SPELLS 



While his powers 

 and vogue were 

 greatest he removed 

 to Koyasan, whose 

 seclusion was better 

 fitted for the teach- 

 ing and practice of 

 yogi doctrines, the 

 meditation and pro- 

 longed contempla- 

 tion of the abstract 

 that induces occult 

 power. There mys- 

 ticism abode. In- 

 cantations, magic spells, crystal gazing, 

 and hj'pnotic trances, engrossed the com- 

 pany of expectant bodhisattvas, who in 

 this coldly analytical day would be termed 

 a company of neurotic priests, worn by 

 fasting, exposure, and sleeplessness until 

 subject to extreme hallucinations. It was 

 a seminary for secular learning as well, 

 since Kobo Daishi had brought back with 

 him all the arts and culture of the Tang 

 dynasty, when Chinese civilization was at 

 the height of its greatness. Arts and let- 

 ters were intimately connected with the 

 new religion and the Buddhist priests 

 were the disseminators of all Chinese 

 culture. The monasteries were so many 

 academies of continental learning, and 

 the Emperor and his court were fervent 

 disciples of the Chinese-taught philoso- 

 phers. As painter and calligrapher, Kobo 

 Daishi was foremost in his time, and his 

 greatest service to his country was the 

 reform of the syllabary, the introduction 

 of the hiragana, by which forty-eight of 

 the commonest signs were arranged in a 

 fixed order — the whole syllabary giving 

 the sense of one of the sacred Sanskrit 

 sutras. For the benefit conferred by the 

 new alphabet, he is regarded as the patron 

 saint of calligraphy and the literary art, 

 the deity invoked by all poets, painters, 

 authors, and toiling schoolboys. 



Priest and Women Pilgrims to Koyasan 



100,000 PILGRIMS EACH YEAR 



After a strenuous life of sixty years, 

 he announced the day and hour of his 

 death. A great conclave of priests as- 

 sembled, and at the prearranged time the 

 great abbot passed from meditation to 

 trance, and was borne to the waiting 

 tomb, where he sits today, sleeping in 

 the peace of Nirvana, until Maitreya, 

 the future Buddha, shall come. For this 

 reason the Shingon Buddhists have be- 

 lieved that those who lie beside Kobo 

 Daishi at Koyasan shall waken with the 

 sleeping saint, the entranced yogi, and 

 with him pass to the Great Pure Land. 



After the lord abbot had fallen asleep 

 on Koyasan in 838, he was canonized, 

 given the posthumous title of Kobo 

 Daishi (Great Teacher Spreading about 

 the Law), and his tomb became a popular 

 place of pilgrimage. One hundred thou- 

 sand pilgrims visit his mountain-top tomb 

 each year, and ten thousand and more 

 climb the heights on the death anniver- 

 sary, April 26. Many wait for that day 

 to carry with them the tablets and ashes 

 of those whom they would have trans- 

 lated to the future heaven with the saint, 

 to Jodo, the Pure Land of Perfect Bliss. 

 Even very aged people will insist upon 

 the pilgrimage when they are unable to 



