Exotics and Retrospectives — Part 47

Though not representing, nor even suggesting, the whole range of sotoba-literature, the foregoing texts will sufficiently indicate the quality of its philosophical interest. The inscriptions of the _haka_, or tombs, have another kind of interest; but before treating of these, a few words should be said about the tombs themselves. I cannot attempt detail, because any description of the various styles of such monuments would require a large and profusely illustrated volume; while the study of their sculptures belongs to the enormous subject of Buddhist iconography,--foreign to the purpose of this essay.

There are hundreds,--probably thousands,--of different forms of Buddhist funeral monuments,--ranging from the unhewn boulder, with a few ideographs scratched on it, of the poorest village-graveyard, to the complicated turret (_kagé-kio_) enclosing a shrine with images, and surmounted with a spire of umbrella-shaped disks or parasols (Sanscrit: _tchâtras_),--possibly representing the old Chinese stûpa. The most common class of _haka_ are plain. A large number of the better class have lotos-designs chiselled upon some part of them:--either the pedestal is sculptured so as to represent lotos-petals; or a single blossom is cut in relief or intaglio on the face of the tablet; or--(but this is rare)--a whole lotos-plant, leaves and flowers, is designed in relief upon one or two sides of the monument. In the costly class of tombs symbolizing the Five Buddhist Elements, the eight-petalled lotos-symbol may be found repeated, with decorative variations, upon three or four portions of their elaborate structure. Occasionally we find beautiful reliefs upon tombstones,--images of Buddhas or Bodhisattvas; and not unfrequently a statue of Jizō may be seen erected beside a grave. But the sculptures of this class are mostly old;--the finest pieces in the Kobudera cemetery, for example, were executed between two and three hundred years ago. Finally I may observe that the family crest or _mon_ of the dead is cut upon the front of the tomb, and sometimes also upon the little stone tank set before it.

The inscriptions very seldom include any texts from the holy books. On the front of the monument, below the chiselled crest, the kaimyō is graven, together, perhaps, with a single mystical character--Sanscrit or Chinese; on the left side is usually placed the record of the date of death; and on the right, the name of the person or family erecting the tomb. Such is now, at least, the ordinary arrangement; but there are numerous exceptions; and as the characters are most often disposed in vertical columns, it is quite easy to put all the inscriptions upon the face of a very narrow monument. Occasionally the real name is also cut upon some part of the stone,--together, perhaps, with some brief record of the memorable actions of the dead. Excepting the kaimyō, and the sect-invocation often accompanying it, the inscriptions upon the ordinary class of tombs are secular in character; and the real interest of such epigraphy is limited to the kaimyō. By _kai_-myō (_sîla_-name) is meant the Buddhist name given to the spirit of the dead, according to the custom of all sects except the Ikkō or Shinshū. In a special sense the term _kai_, or sîla, refers to precepts of conduct[63]; in a general sense it might be rendered as “salvation by works.” But the Shinshū allows no _kai_ to any mortal; it does not admit the doctrine of immediate salvation by works, but only by faith in Amida; and the posthumous appellations which it bestows are therefore called not _kai_-myō, but _hō-myō_, or “Law-names.”