Title: Constructing the "Dharma King"
Description: This dissertation examines the construction of the bronze Sakyamuni triad at a Buddhist temple Hôryûji (Nara Prefecture, Japan). Presently enshrined in the temple's golden hall, this statue is datable to 623 through an accompanied inscription. Its elegance and painstaking detail make this work a masterpiece of Buddhist sculpture, and the best example of the early production of Buddhist images in Japan. This study examines the construction of this statue from four different angles, aiming to present a comprehensive picture of its social, religious, and political functions in the context of the early seventh century. It demonstrates the following. The golden hall Sakyamuni triad was patronized by the members of the Kashiwade clan not simply to privately pray for and commemorate the death of the three donees, but to serve the political function of strengthening its family ties to the most powerful members of their extended family, the Soga clan and the Imperial family. To serve this function, the statue was designed to appeal specifically to the Buddhist ideology shared and endorsed by Soga no Umako, Empress Suiko, and the newly deceased Prince Umayato.

This work is a case study of how a Buddhist statue functions within the social circle that created it. The golden hall Sakyamuni triad was not the largest, nor the most progressive, sculpture of its period, but it was constructed at the critical moment when Buddhism was penetrating into the most powerful and educated echelons of the society. Its patron was at the fringe of power--who understood exactly how the new religion was molding the worldview and the self-image of their more powerful kin--at a time embracing these new ideals rooted in Buddhism was becoming the strongest proclamation of allegiance and loyalty. The golden hall Sakyamuni triad shows a process of actively seeking to comprehend, and then choosing from among, sophisticated ideas in order to make Buddhism serve domestic goals. This discovery points us toward a radical re-visioning of early Japanese reception of Buddhism, which is often conceived of as an undiscerning adoption of half-understood concepts from a foreign power.