. sanskrit studies in early modern japan 995
immediately able to read it, it is said that he reviewed it repeatedly
until he began to sense its grammar.^37 From his early forties through
his mid-fifties, Jiun lived in seclusion, working on his momentous
thousand-page study of Sanskrit, the Bongaku Shinryō.^38
Although his compiled works (Jiun Sonja Zenshū )
do not include this lengthy study of Sanskrit,^39 it does provide an index
of its contents, which notes an entire chapter dedicated to Jōgon’s Shit-
tan Sanmitsushō. Jiun’s lectures for his disciples on Sanskrit grammar,
found under the titles Shichikyū ryakushō , Shichikyū mata
ryaku , and the Shichikyū kokujishō in the Bon-
gaku Shinryō, attest to his achievement in this area (Sakuma 2007, 70).
Sakuma Kazuharu’s 2007 study of Jiun’s study of Sanskrit describes
these lectures as the product of his extensive research, which reveal
an understanding of declension, conjugation, and the rules of sandhi^40
based on a comparison of Sanskrit texts at his disposal and fragmen-
tary information on Sanskrit grammar found in sūtras.
Modern scholars have portrayed Jiun as a lone and idealized fig-
ure against a backdrop of degenerate Buddhism. This scholarship
on Jiun categorizes him as a “revitalizer” of Buddhism but offers no
in-depth explanation of how his emphasis on the historical Buddha
meshed with his understanding of esoteric Buddhism. There has been
little attempt to show how Jiun’s studies and refiguring of Buddhism
were part of a broader movement in the intellectual sphere. Clearly
his study of Sanskrit diverged from Jōgon’s emphasis on the ritual
potency of the sounds of Sanskrit, but how did Jiun’s overall under-
standing of esoteric Buddhism change with this interest in the literal
meaning of Sanskrit?
This overview began from the premise that the focus on Confucian-
ism and Kokugaku in the study of early modern intellectual history
(^37) For more on Jiun’s study of Sanskrit, see Sakuma 2007; Kodama 2000; Takakusu
1984, vol. 4. 38
The Bongaku Shinryō brought together all literary data on Siddham and the San-
skrit language found in Chinese and Japanese sources. Jiun patiently classified this
vast mass of material, copying out each text himself and adding comments and critical
remarks. For more information, see van Gulik 1980. 39
In the section covering Jiun’s Sanskrit studies in the Jiun Sonja Zenshū, Hase
printed about a dozen of Jiun’s treatises on Siddham but left out the Bongaku Shinryō,
which was too bulky for inclusion.
(^40) Sandhi is a term that covers a number of phonological processes at word bound-
aries, such as the fusion of sounds across these boundaries or the alteration of sounds
caused by sounds in adjacent words.