The gotokaku leaf horn in iconography of japanese mandalas of Muromachi and Edo periods

The subject of this article is the imagery of gotokaku leaf horn, a rare musical instrument found on Japanese mandalas depicting Pure Land of Muromachi (1336-1573) and Edo (1603-1868) periods. It looks like a green tree leaf, folded in half and intertwined with a silk ribbon. Specialized studies on him in domestic and foreign literature have not been found. Artistic images of gotokaku are quite rare; associated with the “celestial music” motif, they usually placed in peripheral space of mandala. Bearing in mind that each composition element of Buddhist mandala is related to various aspects of practice, it seems very interesting to explore symbolic significance of this musical instrument within the context of some provisions of Amidism. The origin of the Pure Land school in China dates back to the Vth century. The imagery of paradise, the Pure Land of Buddha Amitabha, is crucial in Pure Land doctrine. It can be assumed that the symbolism of the musical instrument was associated with ideas about the melodious sound of “jewel-trees”, which, according to canonical texts, are grow in Amitabha's land. Ideas of Amidism were known in Japan in the Nara period (710-794), and during the Kamakura period (1185-1333) they became widespread. Traditional and the most complete form of the artistic representation of Amitabha's Pure Land in Japan has become Taima-mandala. The composition of Taima-mandala has a clear chain, and a large part of it is given to the sky motif. Over there, among the other instruments of the “celestial orchestra”, we can find an image of unusual musical instrument made from a leaf. Referring to Japanese compendiums on Buddhist iconography from the XVII-XVIII centuries, it was identified as gotokaku (梧桐角, Ch. wutong jiao) leaf horn. All the founded images were accompanied with a brief description in Chinese. The earliest Chinese text that mentions wutong jiao (梧桐角, Jap. gotokaku) is Wang Zhen's Nong Shu (Book of Agriculture, 1303); a schematic drawing of the instrument is given there, but it’s only remotely resembling gotokaku images on Japanese mandalas. Thus, it is not yet completely clear when and where the image of gotokaku appeared for the first time in the form which we find it on mandalas and in Japanese iconographic guidelines of the XVIIth-XVIIIth centuries. It is clear that the instrument had Chinese origin; Chinese literature sources refers to it as “ancient”. During the medieval times it was known as wutong jiao. There is a chance that different instruments with different methods of production and sound extraction were known under the same name in both countries.

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