Xītán yàojué 悉曇要訣
Essential Decisions on Siddham by 明覺 Myōkaku (撰)
About the work
A four-fascicle Siddham scholarly treatise by Myōkaku 明覺 明覺 (1056–c. 1122), the most important Japanese Siddham scholar of the late Heian period. The work is the principal mid-Heian renewal of the Siddham tradition descending from Kūkai and Annen, with substantial additions from Myōkaku’s own original philological work — including comparative analysis of the Tang Chinese pronunciation tradition (the kanon 漢音 reading-tradition) and the older go-on 吳音 reading-tradition for Siddham letters as transcribed in Chinese.
Abstract
The four fascicles cover: (1) phonological analysis of the Siddham letters with attention to the multiple Chinese pronunciation traditions through which Sanskrit had been transmitted; (2) graphic-orthographic analysis of Siddham conjunct-consonants and complex forms; (3) the mantric / bīja corpus with detailed treatment of the principal seed-syllables; (4) applications to dhāraṇī reading and ritual.
The work is innovative in its comparative philology: Myōkaku is the first Japanese Siddham scholar to recognize systematically that the same Sanskrit letter is given different Chinese transcriptions in different translator-traditions (Xuánzàng-line vs. Yijing-line vs. Pure Land-line vs. Tang esoteric-line), and to attempt to reconstruct the underlying Sanskrit phonology by triangulating between the transcription traditions. This is a genuinely scientific philological method, and the Shittan yō-ketsu is one of the most rigorous works of pre-modern East Asian comparative phonology.
The work also addresses the Japanese-internal phonological problem: by the late Heian period, the Japanese kana had taken on phonological values somewhat different from what they had originally represented when used to transcribe Sanskrit. Myōkaku attempts to recalibrate the kana transcriptions of Siddham letters in light of contemporary Japanese phonology, producing what is in effect a reform of the Siddham transcription system.
Date. Composition in Myōkaku’s mature career, c. 1101–1122.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div25.xml, T84N2706) records the work as a 4-fascicle treatise by Myōkaku with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
Critical edition: Taishō vol. 84. No English translation. Major studies: R. H. van Gulik, Siddham (1956), substantial discussion of Myōkaku; Yamanaka Yukio, Nihon shittan-gaku no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1981); Komatsu Shigemi 小松茂美, Myōkaku Ajari no kenkyū 明覺阿闍梨の研究 (Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1968). Myōkaku is also of significance to the history of Japanese phonology — his Siddham work is one of the principal sources for the reconstruction of late-Heian Japanese pronunciation: see Mabuchi Kazuo 馬淵和夫, Nihon ongaku-shi kenkyū 日本音韻史研究 (Iwanami, 1971).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 明覺 (Myōkaku)
- Predecessors: KR6t0412 (Kūkai), KR6t0413 (Annen), KR6t0416 (Junnyū)