The is a Japanese annotation of the '' Avatamsaka Sūtra''. Dated to 794,Takeuchi (1962:133-134) it is the oldest Japanese '' ongi'', or collection of difficult to interpret words showing their pronunciation and meaning,Kindaichi (1988:74) and is a

National Treasure of Japan Some of the National Treasures of Japan A is the most precious of Japan's Tangible Cultural Properties, as determined and designated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs (a special body of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science ...

.Yoshida (2001: 128)

Background

The text is two fascicles in length.Omodaka (1967: 880-881)Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten (1985: 512-513) The compiler is unknown but is presumed to have related to

Tōdai-ji is a Buddhist temple complex that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples, located in the city of Nara, Japan. Though it was originally founded in the year 738 CE, Tōdai-ji was not opened until the year 752 CE. The temple has undergo ...

. It is an annotation of the 80-volume ''Avatamsaka Sūtra''. As the original was written in Chinese, the annotation contains a list of words and expressions from the original and glosses them with Japanese readings and meanings. The orthography of the Japanese suggests that it is a late

Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the c ...

text. However, the manuscript contains a number of errors and is judged to be a copy of an earlier original. There is only one known existing manuscript.

Linguistics

The text is viewed as a valuable reference for

Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Jap ...

linguistics. The Japanese annotations are written in

Man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of thi ...

and, with the exception of /to1, to2/, distinguishes between

Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai is an archaic kana orthography system used to write Japanese during the Nara period. Its primary feature is to distinguish between two groups of syllables that later merged. The existence and meaning of this system is a critical point of schol ...

. It contains a total of 162 Japanese words, many of which are the oldest extant citations. In addition, it also contains the oldest example of a long vowel as well as a number of Japanese-specific '' Kan'yō-on'' readings of

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...

Notes

References

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Shinyaku Kegonkyo Ongi Shiki Old Japanese texts Mahayana sutras Mahayana texts National Treasures of Japan