Tahōtō

)[1] Its name alludes to Tahō Nyorai, who appears seated in a many-jewelled pagoda in the eleventh chapter of the Lotus Sutra.

[5] There are no examples in China, whether architectural or pictorial, of anything that resembles the tahōtō, although there is a Song dynasty textual reference to a 'tahōtō with an encircling chamber'.

[6] The hōtō (宝塔) or treasure pagoda is the ancestor of the tahōtō and dates to the introduction to Japan of Shingon and Tendai Buddhism in the ninth century.

Kūkai himself, founder of the Shingon school, built the celebrated daitō for Kongōbu-ji on Kōyasan; almost fifty metres high, chronicles relate that 'the mightiness of its single storey outdoes that of multi-storeyed pagodas'.

[6][11] Raised over the kamebara or 'tortoise mound' (亀腹), the ground floor has a square plan, 3x3 ken across, with a circular core.

[16] This comprises the base or 'dew basin'; an inverted bowl with attached lotus petals; nine rings; 'water flame'; and jewel.

[18][19] A number of mandala show the Iron Stupa in southern India, where the patriarch Nāgārjuna received the Esoteric scriptures, as a single-storey pagoda with a cylindrical body, a pyramidal roof, and a spire.