80. SANSKRIT STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN JAPAN
Regan MurphyThe study of Sanskrit in Japan prior to the Meiji period (1868–1912),
when Japan opened to the West, focused on Siddham^1 script and was
tied to a ritual science of sound found in esoteric Buddhism. Siddham
script had been introduced to Japan in the early eighth century, but
it was only with Kūkai’s (774–835)^2 consolidation of Shingon
esoteric Buddhism that the study of Sanskrit developed into a disci-
pline of its own. In contrast to exoteric Buddhism, esoteric Buddhism
envisioned a means for realizing buddhahood in the present through
rituals for the body, speech, and mind. The link between Sanskrit and
the ritual science of mantra^3 ensured that its study would continue
within esoteric Buddhist spheres in Japan for the next millennium, but
it also gave Sanskrit study a distinct character, as a science of sounds
and writing rather than of grammar. Beginning in the Nara period
(710–784) and reaching its peak in the Heian period (794–1185), the
study of Sanskrit (specifically Siddham) then declined significantly
in the following centuries only to be revitalized in the early modern
renaissance of the Edo period (1600–1868).
During the renaissance of the early modern period, there was a
feverish interest in ancient Japanese language and culture. New meth-
ods of study, based on evidential and rational textual analysis, allowed
an emerging class of provincial scholars to surpass traditional elite lin-
eages that had transmitted knowledge from master to disciple. Modern
(^1) Many esoteric Buddhist texts that were brought to China and transmitted to
Japan were written in Siddham, a North Indian script used for writing Sanskrit from
approximately 600–1200 C.E. 2
The scholar-monk Kūkai is an intellectual giant of early Japanese history, famous
for his systematic philosophy that introduced the Japanese to esoteric Buddhist ideas
he had learned in China. When Kūkai went to China in 804, he became a disciple of
Hui-kuo , the seventh patriarch of Chen-yen (or Zhenyan; Shingon), and studied
Siddham with the Indian monk Prajña. Kūkai is generally thought of as the founder
of Shingon esoteric Buddhism but is also recognized for his accomplishments and
innovations in lexicography, literature and poetry, literary theory, calligraphy, art,
painting, woodcarving, sculpture, music, architecture, and so on. 3
For more on mantra and dhāraṇī in the Shingon esoteric Buddhist tradition, see
Abé 1999.