Xīnyì Huáyán jīng yīnyì 新譯華嚴經音義
Sound-and-meaning Glossary on the Newly Translated [Avataṃsaka / Huāyán] Sūtra by 喜海 Kikai (撰)
About the work
A one-juan phonetic-and-semantic glossary (yīnyì 音義) to the 80-juan Śikṣānanda recension of the Dàfāngguǎng-fó-huāyán jīng 大方廣佛華嚴經 (KR6e0010, T279) — i.e., the “newly translated” (xīnyì) Huayan, as opposed to Buddhabhadra’s older 60-juan version. The work was compiled by the Japanese Kegon monk Kikai 喜海 (1178–1250) of Kōzan-ji 高山寺 (Toganoo, northwest of Kyōto), the great Huayan-revival monastery of his master 明惠 Myōe Kōben 明惠高弁. It is preserved as Taishō No. 2206A in T57 and is the longer half of the conjoint glossary pair T2206 A/B, the second half being KR6e0042 on the 40-juan Prajñā translation. As a yīnyì, the work proceeds juan-by-juan through the parent sūtra and, for each difficult graph or compound, gives a fǎnqiè 反切 spelling and (where needed) a brief gloss — the standard apparatus of medieval Chinese and Sino-Japanese lexicography.
Abstract
The text covers all 80 juan of the Śikṣānanda Huāyán jīng, opening with vocabulary from the Empress Wǔ Zétiān 武則天 preface (則天序) and then proceeding chapter by chapter (“入經第一卷”, “第二卷”, etc.) to the final 第八十卷. Entries are dense, e.g. 阿蘭若 汝者反, 鷲巖 上音就 五緘反, with very compact fǎnqiè notation typical of the Yìqièjīng yīnyì 一切經音義 tradition of Xuányīng 玄應 and Huìlín 慧琳 from which Kikai’s method derives. The compiler explicitly identifies himself in the colophon as a Kegon-school monk: 「華嚴宗沙門喜海」.
The dating is fixed by the appended colophon, which records four successive stages of the manuscript’s production at Kōzan-ji’s Toganoo cell:
- 嘉祿三年丁亥六月二日 (1227-06-02, hour of the cock) — original compilation “at the zen-bō of Saiyama Umegao [Toganoo], gathering two-or-three exemplars of yīnyì and copying them” (集兩三本之音義抄寫之), undertaken purely for the compiler’s own ritual recitation of the Huāyán jīng (偏爲自行轉讀, 敢不可及外見矣 — “for personal use only, not at all for outside circulation”).
- 安貞二年四月二十四日 (1228-04-24) — fair copy completed in the thatched cell at Kōzan-ji (於高山寺草室筆寫了).
- 寛喜元年八月十八日 (1229-08-18) — collated against five or six exemplars and revised (與五六輩交合再治了).
- 寛喜元年八月二十七日子刻 (1229-08-27, hour of the rat) — addition of voicing dots and kana annotations, multiply checked (點并假名數度檢交畢).
The colophon is invaluable: it locates a major Sino-Japanese Buddhist philological work concretely within the Toganoo community in the final five years of Myōe’s life (Myōe d. 1232), establishes the work as initially private and devotional rather than scholastic, and documents the medieval Japanese practice of post-textual addition of kana glosses (假名) and shōten 聲點 voicing marks to Chinese Buddhist canonical text. Since Kikai notes only “two-or-three earlier yīnyì exemplars” as his base, the work is in part a digest of the prior Chinese tradition (Xuányīng, Huìlín, the Xīnyì Huáyán jīng yīnyì 新譯華嚴經音義 of Huìyuàn 慧苑 already extant as a separate Tang work, cf. T54n2128 and the Huayan-specific Huáyán jīng yīnyì of Huìyuàn) reorganized and supplemented for the Japanese reader of the canonical Empress Wǔ-preface recension; but the Japanese phonological annotations added in 1229 give it independent value as a witness to thirteenth-century Sino-Japanese phonology.
Catalog-vs-source note: the KR catalog meta for this entry omits dynasty, editions, and source-volume information; these have been supplied here from the actual Taishō header (T57 No. 2206A, p. 0367 ff.) and from the CANWWW bibliographic record (T57N2206A, dated 日本).
Translations and research
No full Western-language translation of this technical glossary exists, nor would one be normally undertaken — yīnyì are reference apparatus, not narrative texts. Substantial Japanese-language secondary scholarship treats the work primarily as (a) a witness to medieval Sino-Japanese reading-tradition (kanbun-kundoku) of the Huāyán jīng, and (b) a source for reconstructing thirteenth-century Sino-Japanese phonology via its fǎnqiè and added kana/voicing-mark layer. Relevant studies include Ikeda Shōju 池田証寿’s series of papers on Buddhist onkun and onmi manuscripts at Kōzan-ji and elsewhere, and the broader Japanese-language issaikyō ongi (一切經音義) scholarship surveyed in Mizutani Shinjō 水谷真成 and Numoto Katsuaki 沼本克明 on Sino-Japanese phonological history. Kikai’s biographical context is well covered by the extensive Myōe-Kōzan-ji literature in Japanese (e.g. Kubota Jun 久保田淳, Okuda Isao 奥田勲) and English (George J. Tanabe, Myōe the Dreamkeeper, Harvard, 1992).
Other points of interest
The colophon’s disclaimer 「偏爲自行轉讀, 敢不可及外見矣」 (“solely for my personal recitation, not at all to be shown outside”) is an instructive index of medieval Japanese-Buddhist textual culture: a major reference work, eventually canonized in the Taishō, began life explicitly as a personal devotional aid for the compiler’s own tendoku 轉讀 (rapid ritual reading) of the sūtra. The conjoint compilation with KR6e0042 on the 40-juan recension reflects a coherent personal project of total Huayan-philological coverage on Kikai’s part.
Links
- Kikai (喜海) DILA
- Wikidata Q11419213 — Kikai
- CBETA T57n2206A
- Kanseki DB
- Parent text: KR6e0010 Dàfāngguǎng-fó-huāyán jīng (80-juan Śikṣānanda translation, T10n0279)
- Companion glossary: KR6e0042 Zhēnyuán Huáyán jīng yīnyì