Heather Blair: "How to Bury a Sutra: 11th-century Japanese Pilgrims' Practices"

From circa 1000 into the early modern period, sutra burial was popular among both clerics and lay people in Japan. Despite widespread archaeological and epigraphical evidence for this practice, however, we know extremely little about the rituals involved, especially during the early history of sutra burial. This talk introduces a previously unstudied 11th-century source on this topic, and explores the ritual process and textual habits that formed and were informed by sutra burial.