Return to Buddhism CatalogueEvolution of the Garbhadhatu Mandala/Ulrich Hans Richard Mammitzsch. 1991, 369 p., figs., $40.
"This book is the first in English to detail the splendid images of the imago mundi of Shingon/Mantrayana in all its profundity. This profundity is difficult to capture in words. The teachings are so profound that they are best expressed in painting.
"It is a systematic study of the evolution of the Garbhadhatu mandala in China and Japan. It develops in the various chapters of the root tantra the Dainichikyo/Mahavairocana-sutra, in its two main commentaries, in its four ritual handbooks, in its iconographic sketches of Subhakara-simha and finally its culmination in the Genzu version. The Genzu is the best known version and is considered in Japan to be the Garbhadhatu mandala. The author begins with a general description of a mandala, a definition of the term mandala, its component yards and deities/son, and its various versions.
"The second chapter is a succinct summary of the Dainichikyo/Mahavairocana-sutra. The contents of all the 31 chapters and the five supplementary chapters 32-36 are given. The third chapter summarises the four ritual handbooks translated by Subhakara-simha and by Fa-ch'uan. They were used in the monasteries of these masters in the eighth century. Seven versions of the mandala (A-G) in the basic Tantra, the acarya-transmitted mandala H in the commentaries, mandalas I-L of the ritual handbooks, and mandalas M,N in the iconographic sketches: are detailed at length in the long fourth chapter as the fourteen pre-Genzu versions.
"The fifth chapter is a detailed study of the iconology and symbolism of the yards and of their individual deities in the Genzu version. Major Japanese works that describe the Genzu at length are listed at the end. The book concludes with a general symbolism of the mandala: a manifestation of Mahavai-rocana whose compassionate descent into the world of form and with the process of kaji/adhisthana make the acolyte rise above this world of distinctions."
[Ulrich H.R. Mammitzsch taught at the Universities of Hawaii, Western Washington, California/Berkeley and Meiji University, Tokyo.]