Figure Buddhist traditions
Ennin
圆仁 zh 円仁 ja
Japanese Buddhist monk (794–864)
- Dated 793 CE – 24 February 864 CE
- Also called Shi Yuanren, Huafang dashi, Cijiao dashi
A life on the record,
dated by its sources.
Roles, not beliefs
Overview
From Wikipedia, quoted unmodified under CC BY-SA 4.0; the article’s history is its list of authors.
Life
Roles and affiliation
Holding an office is not parentage and not discipleship.
What this means
As the records give them: every row is a third party’s statement, not a self-description, and a role or an affiliation is often held for one period of a life only. An affiliation is not a belief, and this site does not ask anyone about theirs. For an office: which one, for how long, and where the records give an ordinal or the holders either side. Recognition of a tenure is never universal: contested lines appear as overlapping tenures rather than as one corrected sequence.
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Offices held 1
- from 854 CE Tendai-zasu
Transmission
Teachers and students
Teaching passed from one person to another, in the direction of the arrows — not ancestry, and not succession.
What this means
In the direction the records give it. This is not biological ancestry and it is not institutional succession: a student who inherited no office still received the teaching, and an heir who received the office may have been taught by someone else entirely. It does not imply that teacher and student agreed.
Ennin Japanese Buddhist monk (794–864) Religious context
What the records tie them to
Founded, supported, associated with — as third parties recorded it.
What this means
A founding is an attribution, usually contested, and not a claim that the tradition began fully formed. Patronage is an act, not a belief: it says nothing about the religion of a population, and nothing about the patron’s own practice in every period of a life. Domains are as sources record them — for a saint, usually a patronage — rarely exclusive, and not the same in every account.
-
Named as founderMount Osore
mountain in Aomori Prefecture, Japan -
Named as founderZuigan-ji Temple
Buddhist temple in Miyagi Prefecture, JapanDisputed -
Named as founderYama-dera Temple
Buddhist temple in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan -
Named as founderKita-in Temple
Buddhist temple in Saitama Prefecture, Japan -
Named as founderNison-in Temple
building in Ukyo-ku, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan -
Named as founderRyūsen-ji Temple
building in Shimo-Meguro, Tokyo, Japan
Connections
How Ennin connects
Grouped by the kind of relationship, because a successor is not a son and a shared symbol is not an influence.
Family 1
What this means
A documented human family relationship. Not a succession mechanism, and not religious transmission.
Does not imply a religious affiliation held by the whole house · continuous rule
Imported from Wikidata unless a tile says otherwise. Nothing here has been read by an editor.
Affiliation 1
What this means
Association with a tradition or school. Traditions branch, overlap and re-merge; this is not a clean single-origin tree.
Does not imply a fixed roster · that every account of the tradition knows this figure
Imported from Wikidata unless a tile says otherwise. Nothing here has been read by an editor.
Sources
Sources and evidence
Where every statement on this page comes from, and how each one stands.
5 statements on this record
- 5 Imported Taken from Wikidata as it stands. Nobody here has read it. 1 of them cite only Wikipedia: one source, counted once.
Only this record’s own statements. What other records say about it is counted on theirs.
Three layers, three licences
- Text
- Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted, not merged
- Pictures
- Wikimedia Commons · each file’s own terms
Review
Not yet read by an editor here. Every relationship on this page is an import.
Disagreements are kept, not resolved, and a count of sources is not a confidence score.
Keep exploring
More from Buddhist traditions
Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna, their figures, sutras, lineages and monasteries.