In return, I hope that they and their friends in Japan, and in Corea and China too, will do all they can to discover, if possible, some more of the ancient Sanskrit texts, and send them over to us. A beginning, at all events, has been made, and if the members of this Society who have friends in China or in Japan will help, if H. E. the Japanese Minister, Mori Arinori, who has honored us by his presence today, will lend us his powerful assistance, I have little doubt that the dream which passed before the mind of your late President may still become a reality, and that some of the MSS. which, beginning with the beginning of our era, were carried from India to China, Corea, and Japan, may return to us, whether in the original or in copies, like the one sent to me by Mr. Shuntai Ishikawa.
With the help of such MSS. we shall be able all the better to show to those devoted students who from the extreme East have come to the extreme West in order to learn to read their sacred writings in the original Sanskrit or Pâli, what difference there is between the simple teaching of Buddha and the later developments and corruptions of Buddhism. Buddha himself, I feel convinced, never knew even the names of Amitâbha, Avalokitesvara, or Sukhavatî. Then, how can a nation call itself Buddhist whose religion consists chiefly in a belief in a divine Amitâbha and his son Avalokitesvara, and in a hope of eternal life in the paradise of Sukhavatî?
Postscript: Oxford, March 10, 1880.
The hope which I expressed in my paper on “Sanskrit Texts discovered in Japan,” viz. that other Sanskrit texts might still come to light in Japan or China, has been fulfilled sooner than I expected. Mr. A Wylie wrote to me on March 3 that he had brought a number of Sanskrit-Chinese books from Japan, and he afterwards kindly sent them to me to examine. They were of the same appearance and character as the dictionary which Dr. Edkins had lent me, and the Sukhavatî-vyûha which I had received from Japan. But with the exception of a collection of invocations, called the Vagra-sûtra, and the short Pragñâ-hridaya-sûtra, they contained no continuous texts. The books were intended to teach the Sanskrit alphabet, and every possible and impossible combination of the Devanâgarî letters, and that was all. Still, so large a number of books written to teach the Sanskrit alphabet augurs well for the existence of Sanskrit texts. There was among Mr. Wylie's books a second Chinese-Sanskrit-Japanese vocabulary, of which Mr. Kasawara has given me the following account: “This vocabulary is called ‘A Thousand Sanskrit and Chinese Words’ and it is said to have been arranged by I-tsing, who left China for India in 671, about twenty-seven years after Hiouen-thsang's return to China, and who is best known as the author of a book called Nanhae-ki-kwei-kou'en, on the manners and customs of the Indian Buddhists at that time.
“This vocabulary was brought from China to Japan by Zikaku, a Japanese priest, who went to China in 838 and returned in 847. It is stated at the end of the book, that in the year 884 a Japanese priest of [pg 239] the name of Rioyiu copied that vocabulary from a text belonging to another priest, Yûĭkai. The edition brought from Japan by Mr. Wylie was published there in the year 1727 by a priest called Jakumio.”
The following curious passage occurs in the preface of Jakumio's edition: “This vocabulary is generally called ‘One Thousand Sanskrit and Chinese Words.’ It is stated in Annen's work, that this was first brought (from China) by Zikaku. I have corrected several mistakes in this vocabulary, comparing many copies; yet the present edition is not free from blunders; I hope the readers will correct them, if they have better copies.
“In the temple Hôriuji, in Yamato, there are treasured Pragñâpâramitâhridayasûtram, and Son-shio-dhârani, written on two palm leaves, handed down from Central India; and, at the end of these, fourteen letters of the ‘siddha’ are written. In the present edition of the vocabulary the alphabet is in imitation of that of the palm leaves, except such forms of letters as cannot be distinguished from those prevalent among the scriveners at the present day.
“Hôriuji is one of eleven temples founded by the prince Umayado (who died A. D. 621). This temple is at a town named Tatsuta, in the province Yamato, near Kioto, the western capital.”
Here, then, we have clear evidence that in the year 1727 palm leaves containing the text of Sanskrit Sûtras were still preserved in the temple of Hôriuji. If that temple is still in existence, might not some Buddhist priest of Kioto, the western capital of Japan, be induced to go there to see whether the palm leaves are still there, and, if they are, to make a copy and send it to Oxford?
F. M. M.