Bussokusekika poems were carved on a Buddha-footprint stone at Yakushi-ji in Nara.
The monument is known as the Bussokuseki-kahi, or Buddha Footprint Stele. It preserves 21 poems associated with the footprint stone at Yakushi-ji, one of Nara’s ancient imperial temples and a major center of Hossō Buddhism.
The stele dates from about 753, during the Nara period. Its poems were written in man'yōgana, an early writing practice that used Chinese characters for their Japanese sounds. Because the inscription preserves language in a physical monument rather than only in later manuscript copies, it is an important witness to Old Japanese.
Bussokusekika means roughly “poems on the stone imprint of the Buddha’s feet.” The form uses 5-7-5-7-7-7 moraic units: a tanka-like sequence with an extra seven-unit ending. The name of the form comes from this famous inscription, not from a separate temple or a general category of Buddhist verse.