| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,800,000)
Fiscal Year 1996: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1995: ¥2,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,800,000)
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| Research Abstract |
In spite of the general aknoledgement of its importance as historical document, the 30 Notebooks of Kukai have not been studied as it should be expected, because of its secrecy which is generally explained by the fact it is so sacred a treasure for the Shingon sect that we have rarely opportunity of a direct examination of it. So to offer an easier acccess to this document, I have elaborated a computer image database in which each page of the 30 Notebools are wholly stored as a image file of PICT form. Based on this database, (1)I am preparing to present a critical edition of the 30 Notebooks and (2)I have made a general inquiry into the texts written in the Siddham letters.
As to (1), it should be noted that a letter by letter comparison of the 30 Notebooks' text with other manuscripts or editions has never been made since the publication of the Taisho Tripitaka. The text of this latter is however not entirely complete and reliable as, unbelievably, it does not collate the 30 Notebooks as far as it concerns, for example, the Avatamsaka-sutra in 40 volumes translated in Chinese by Prajna, while only the 30 Notebooks offer a fully complete text of it. In the other hand, we have found in some texst of the 30 Notebooks (Astamandala-sutra, for example) an uncomprehensible discontinuity or stop which may possibly suggest a way to inquire how the Notebooks were made up by Kukai. The planned critical edition will be published volume by volume as it will be prepared.
Concerning the study of the Siddham text (2), I have focused my attention, this differently from the scholors who so far have studied the subject and who all belong to the Shingon sect, in the form of letters as well as that of words (cases and conjugations) and in what Chinese letters are used to traslate the related snsckrit words. I have found many irreguralities which will bediscussed in details in my papers I am now preparing.
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