Fànxué jīnliáng zǒngmùlù 梵學津梁總目録
General Catalogue of the Ferry-Bridge to Sanskrit Studies by 慈雲飲光 Jiun Onkō (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle bibliographic catalogue by Jiun Onkō 慈雲飲光 慈雲飲光 (1718–1804), the pre-eminent Japanese Sanskrit scholar of the late Edo period and the principal founder of modern Japanese Sanskrit philology. The catalogue is the table of contents for Jiun’s monumental Bongaku shinryō 梵學津梁 — “The Ferry-Bridge to Sanskrit Studies” — a vast Sanskrit philological encyclopedia in approximately 1000 fascicles assembled over Jiun’s mature career (the largest of its kind ever produced outside South Asia). The sōmoku-roku — “General Catalogue” — is the principal guide to navigating the enormous encyclopedia.
Abstract
The Bongaku shinryō is the great work of Jiun’s life. It is a comprehensive Sanskrit philological reference: Sanskrit grammar, lexicography, the complete corpus of mantras and dhāraṇī preserved in the Sino-Japanese Buddhist canon (with their phonological-grammatical analysis), the Siddham script tradition, and the systematic comparative philology of Sanskrit-Chinese-Japanese.
The work has approximately 1000 fascicles in its complete form (the number is sometimes given as 1009; the exact count depends on which recension is counted). The sōmoku-roku — only one fascicle long — provides the table of contents allowing the user to navigate this enormous corpus. The catalogue divides the Bongaku shinryō into major sections: (1) Sanskrit grammar; (2) Sanskrit lexicography; (3) the complete dhāraṇī corpus; (4) the Siddham script tradition; (5) comparative philology; (6) bibliographic apparatus.
Jiun’s methodology is comparative-philological in the strict modern sense. He had access to and made systematic use of: (1) the Tang-Chinese transcription traditions (kanon, go-on); (2) the medieval Chinese phonological scholarship; (3) the classical Japanese Siddham tradition (Kūkai → Annen → … → Jōgon); (4) Sanskrit manuscript materials transmitted through Korea and China; (5) what little he could obtain of contemporary Indian and European Sanskrit scholarship. The work is the immediate precursor of modern Japanese Sanskrit studies — Nanjō Bun’yū’s late-19th-c. work at Oxford built directly on Jiun’s foundation.
Date. Composition of the Bongaku shinryō itself was Jiun’s lifelong project, c. 1758–1804; the sōmoku-roku was assembled in the last decades of that period, conservatively c. 1771–1804.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div25.xml, T84N2711) records the work as a single-fascicle text by Jiun Onkō 慈雲飲光 (clerical name) with no internal toc sub-list (the catalogue is the toc of the parent work) and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
Critical edition: Taishō vol. 84. No English translation. Standard study: Paul B. Watt, “Jiun Sonja (1718–1804): A Response to Confucianism within the Context of Buddhist Reform,” in Peter Nosco (ed.), Confucianism and Tokugawa Culture (Princeton UP, 1984), pp. 188–214. Japanese: Hayashi Ryōshō 林良勝, Jiun Sonja no kenkyū 慈雲尊者の研究 (Daizō shuppan, 1962); Watanabe Shōkō, Jiun Sonja no Bongaku 慈雲尊者の梵學 (Iwanami, 1978). On Jiun more broadly: Paul B. Watt, Demystifying Pure Land Buddhism: Yasuda Rijin and the Shin Buddhist Tradition (Wisdom, 2016), index; Yamanaka Yukio, Nihon shittan-gaku no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1981).
Links
- CBETA online
- Wikipedia
- Author: 慈雲飲光 (Jiun Onkō)
- Predecessor: KR6t0421 (Jōgon, Shittan Sanmitsu-shō)