The Doctrinal Origins of Embryology in the Shingon School

Abstract

In this article, I discuss the significance of embryological knowledge, such as the red and white drops and the five developmental stages of the embryo, in medieval Shingon esoteric Buddhism. Specifically, I examine the writings of Kakuban, an eminent Shingon Buddhist monk in early medieval Japan, and point out that, according to Kakuban, embryological knowledge was connected with the six elements, which were fundamental to Shingon conceptions of ontology. In other words, by constructing embryological theories, medieval Shingon monks such as Kakuban attempted to make a correlation between abstract and distant cosmologies and the life and death realities of their daily lives.