COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN ARTS FROM A VIEWPOINT OF RELIGEOUS PRACTICE

本年度（1998年4月~ 1999年3月），我们在高野山大学和名古屋大学文学院举行了两次会议。在这些场合，我们听取了每位研究成员的结果报告并进行了讨论，并讨论了未来的研究方向。本研究的初衷是通过对佛教艺术与基督教艺术的比较，综合艺术史、历史学、文学、文化人类学等不同学科领域的部分研究，来考察视觉图像及其在各种宗教实践和活动中的作用。然而，对于下一阶段的研究来说，重要的是宗教艺术这两个主要领域的学生有不断的机会从艺术与宗教实践之间关系的角度进行报告，并为比较研究奠定基础。通过这些会议，我们确信，在佛教和基督教中，艺术在崇拜（崇拜、奉献）、沉思（冥想）、仪式（仪式、礼拜仪式）、教导（教育、启蒙）等实践中占有突出的地位，这些实践不仅构成了佛教和基督教的基础，而且对所有社会阶层和每个社会和文化的组成部分产生了深远的影响。我们打印了一份报告，其中包含11篇文章（l4 Opp。1999年3月，

On this fiscal year of Heisci 11 (April 1998- March 1999), we had two meetings at University of Koya-san and at the School of Letters of Nagoya University. On these occasions, we had report of the results by each research member and discussions and talked about lines of future reserch. The original purpose of our resereh is to consider visual images and their functions in various religious practices and activities, by comparing Buddhist and Christian Arts and by synthesizing partial studies in each domain of diffrent disciplines : art history, history, literature, cultural anthropology, etc. But, restricted principally by time, we had not attained one of our main objets, comparison of Buddhist and Christian Arts. Nevertheless it would be important for the next stages of reseach that students of these two major fields of religous art had continual occasions to report from the viewpoint of the relation between art and religious pratice as well as to acquire footings for the camparative study. Through the meetings, we have arrived at the conviction that, in Buddhism and Christianity, art held a prominent place in practices such as worship (cult, devotion) , contemplation (meditation) , rite (ritual, liturgy) , instruction (education, enlightenment) , that not only form their basis, but also produce a profound- effect on all social strata and components of every society and culture. We printed a repport containing 11 articles (l4Opp. in sum) in March 1999.