S. Fowler

Sherry Fowler

Hell's Bells and Kannon's Help

Description of Research:

 Most Japanese temples have a large bronze bell (J. bonshō 梵鐘) hanging outdoors, inside a bell tower, that is rung to announce time, enhance certain rituals, or by pilgrims who wish to invoke the aid of Buddhist deities. Although today bells are common fixtures at temples, they have rarely been the subject of art historical inquiry or the focus of studies on ritual or history. Such large bronze bells, often measuring more than 100 centimeters high, were developed in China and Koreaand have been used by temples since the inception of Buddhism in Japan. The earliest extant Chinese example, dated to 575 is kept by the Nara National Museum, and the earliest extant Japanese example, with an inscription dating to 698 belongs to the temple Myōshinji in Kyoto.

Old Buddhist bells have a fairly standard form and usually lack depictions of deities, but by the seventeenth century new design variations appeared in Japan, among which were depictions of the six forms of Kannon (Skt. Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion), known as Roku Kannon 六観音 in Japanese, found cast on to the surface of some bells. As a group, the Six Kannon became the focus of a cult that began in Japan in the tenth century and continued into the eighteenth. One attraction of this cult is that the Six Kannon can alleviate the suffering of beings in the six paths of transmigration: hell, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, asuras, and heavenly beings. In a similar role, the sound of the bell is said to ease the pain of the dead, especially for those in hell. Since the very name “Kannon” 観音 (literally, “perceiving sounds”) designates that this is a deity who can hear the sounds of suffering beings, the bell’s relationship with Kannon extends into an auditory as well as visual dimension.

My research on bells, which is part of a larger study on Six Kannon in Japan, began one day when I was browsing the shelves in the KU Art & Architecture Library and opened a book that I had never noticed before. In it I found a picture of the Honsenji bell adorned with Six Kannon. From there I used made use of numerous other library resources, such as books, articles, interlibrary loans, and database searches, before going to see the actual bells in Japan. My essay “Saved by the Bell: Six Kannon and Bonshō,” in Cultural Crossings: China and Beyond in the Early Medieval Period. Dorothy Wong, ed. Singapore: Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, forthcoming, examines the interrelationships between temple bells, the Six Kannon cult, and the pilgrimage process.