Relics and Myth-Making on Mount Murō

This article focuses on relic worship on Mount Murō, in Nara Prefecture, from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. It argues that relics allowed for a unique relationship between the Buddha’s relics and devotees’ bodies, mediated by the mountain’s geography. Such exchanges also involved female monastics, reflecting Murō’s lack of restrictions for women and demonstrating how nuns could receive Dharma transmissions on the mountain. Finally, this paper argues that pilgrimage to Murō culminated in encountering the Buddha—manifested through his relics—in the mountain landscape. These movements and thefts of relics, specifically on this sacred mountain, collapsed the physical and spiritual divide between the devotee and the Buddha. Even in the case of theft, the value of the relic and its story was often elevated, only serving to increase the power of said relic, its keeper, and the mountain’s charisma around relic worship.