研究資料　京都国立博物館蔵「石山寺絵詞」

Ishiyama-dera Ekotoba (Text for the Picture Scroll of the History of the Ishiyama-dera), owned by Kyoto National Museum and so named by the author, is put into print here for the first time. This one roll of text, which actually lacks its pictures, is important material for the study of scroll paintings in general concerning the Ishiyama-dera. The content is the same as that of Ishiyamadera Engi Emaki (Picture Scroll of the History of the Ishiyama-dera), an “Important Cultural Property” preserved in the Ishiyama-dera, Shiga Prefecture. In the author's opinion, the handwriting of the Kyoto Museum text is by one hand and is the same hand as the writing of the first, second and third volumes of the Ishiyama-dera picture scroll, the writing attributed to Kōshu, an archbishop of the temple who was active in the late fourteenth century. The introduction at the beginning of the first volume of the Ishiyama-dera picture scroll states that the plan for the picture scroll was made in the Shōchū Era (1324–25). The text of the picture scroll is written by one person from the first to the third volumes; and the fifth volume certainly by another almost contemporary hand; and those of the fourth, sixth and seventh volumes are of a later period. The writer tried a comparison between these two materials by collating the texts. The comparison with the first, second and third volumes brought no conclusion about their historical relation, but comparison with the fifth volume indicates that the fifth part of the Kyoto Museum text is a less advanced form as are the parts corresponding to the first, second, and third volumes. The same thing is observed in the fourth, sixth and seventh parts. Further, the examination of the details clarifies the existence of an earlier manuscript or picture scroll of the same kind to which the copyist of the Ishiyama-dera Ekotoba was able to refer. In other words, this means that the Ishiyama-dera Engi Emaki owned by the Ishiyamadera is not an original of the Shōchū Era. This evidence would support the author's theory mentioned in vol. 6 of the Bijutsushi, that the writer of the text of the first, second, and third volumes of the Ishiyama-dera Engi Emaki is Kōshu and that the scroll painting does not date back to the Shōchū Era.