www.manaraa.com
16
the purposes of
this thesis, it is most relevant to note that the Chinese perspective helped to shape
the role of Sanskrit in Japan, where the role of Sanskrit as a ritual and visual language was
developed further. In fact, the modern use of Siddham is centered in Japan, having mostly
disappeared
from countries such as China, where Sanskrit’s importance waned in contrast to its
increase in use and popularity in Japan.
Sanskrit and writing systems in Japan
Sanskrit was allegedly introduced to Japan as early as the year 609 in text on palm tree leaves
imported by Ono no Imoko (
小野妹子
)
and preserved at Hōryū-ji (figure 4).
32
Scholarship of the
last two decades is wary of such a claim and suggests that these palm leaves date to the early
eighth century, though scholars concede that the sutra could be from the seventh century.
33
In
754, the Chinese monk Ganjin (Ch.:
鉴真
,
Jianzhen) brought material written
in Indian characters
to Japan.
34
The Indian monk Bodhisena (Jp.: Bodaisenna,
菩提僊那
) taught a Sanskrit course at
the university in the Heijō capital (Nara) after his arrival in 736. The material he taught included
at least a few
dharani.
35
It therefore seems that written Sanskrit texts (e.g. the palm tree leaves’
sutra) existed at least in the form of
dharani and sutras before Kūkai’s introduction of Sanskrit
materials, though there are no known extant examples of Sanskrit in/on
non-textual objects in
Japan prior to Kūkai’s introduction of Mikkyō. With the introduction of more esoteric elements
via Kūkai’s Mikkyō and Saichō’s Tendai, the ritual use of Sanskrit
within Buddhism became
more prevalent.
In this section, I pose a tentative hypothesis of a link between the development
32
See Fabio Rambelli’s online lecture series
Introduction: Buddhist Ideas on Language and Signs. These palm
leaves are now housed within the collection of the Tokyo National Museum.
33
The Tokyo National Museum lists the period for this work as late Gupta, seventh to eighth century. More detail
(and an outline of further scholarship) on this sutra can be found in: Nattier, Jan. “The
Heart Sutra: A Chinese
Apocryphal Text?”
The journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 15
(2), 1992, p. 208.
34
See Fabio Rambelli’s online lecture series
Introduction: Buddhist Ideas on Language and Signs.
35
Ibid. See also van Gulik op cit.
www.manaraa.com
17
of the native hiragana and Kūkai’s emphasis on Sanskrit, a script that was eventually
disseminated relatively broadly throughout the culture.
36
I will address this idea through a brief discussion of the possible influence of Mikkyō
(Sanskrit) on Japanese language. During the ninth
century and prior, the normal form of writing
within government, academic, and religious texts was Chinese, but by Kūkai’s time,
the practice
of using simplified Chinese characters in a phonetic manner to express the Japanese language via
writing was already established—a type of writing called
manyōgana (
万葉仮名
).
37
The
development of the phonetic system of writing called kana (hiragana and katakana) is difficult to
trace and modern scholars have the additional obstacle of attempting to separate myth from fact.
In his book
The Weaving of the Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist
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