script making the
announcement is extant. It sets out by declaring that "through the
influence and authority of Buddha the country enjoys tranquillity,"
and while warning the provincial and district governors against in
any way constraining the people to take part in the project, it
promises that every contributor shall be welcome, even though he
bring no more than a twig to feed the furnace or a handful of clay
for the mould. The actual work of casting began in 747 and was
completed in three years, after seven failures. The image was not
cast in its entirety; it was built up with bronze plates soldered
together. A sitting presentment of the Buddha, it had a height of
fifty-three and a half feet and the face was sixteen feet long, while
on either side was an attendant bosatsu standing thirty feet high.
For the image, 986,030,000 lbs. of copper were needed, and on the
gilding of its surface 870 lbs. of refined gold were used.

These figures represented a vast fortune in the eighth century.
Indeed it seemed likely that a sufficiency of gold would not be
procurable, but fortunately in the year 749 the yellow metal was
found in the province of Mutsu, and people regarded the timely
discovery as a special dispensation of Buddha. The great hall in
which the image stood had a height of 120 feet and a width of 290
feet from east to west, and beside it two pagodas rose to a height of
230 feet each. Throughout the ten years occupied in the task of
collecting materials and casting this Daibutsu, the Emperor solemnly
worshipped Rushana Buddha three times daily, and on its completion he
took the tonsure. It was not until the year 752, however, that the
final ceremony of unveiling took place technically called "opening
the eyes" (kaigan). On that occasion the Empress Koken, attended by
all the great civil and military dignitaries, held a magnificent
fete, and in the following year the temple--Todai-ji--was endowed
with the taxes of five thousand households and the revenue from
twenty-five thousand acres of rice-fields.

PROVINCIAL TEMPLES

While all this religious fervour was finding costly expression among
the aristocrats in Nara, the propagandists and patrons of Buddhism
did not neglect the masses. In the year 741, provincial temples were
officially declared essential to the State's well-being. These
edifices had their origin at an earlier date. During the reign of
Temmu (673-686) an Imperial rescript ordered that throughout the