Myōkaku 明覺 (1056–after 1106) — Late-Heian Japanese Shingon scholar-monk and Siddham 悉曇 specialist, the foremost early-Japanese authority on Sanskrit phonetics and Esoteric dhāraṇī philology. He identifies himself in his own colophons as “the recluse of Kaga” 賀州隱者, the term placing him as a yamabushi-type mountain-dwelling scholar in Kaga Province (modern-day Ishikawa). His birth in 1056 is established from later Japanese-Shingon biographical sources; his death-date is unrecorded, but his last datable work is from 1106.
His extant works in the Buddhist canon include:
- Dà-fó-dǐng rú-lái fàng-guāng xī-dá-tā bō-dá-luō tuó-luó-ní kān-zhù 大佛頂如來放光悉怛他鉢怛囉陀羅尼勘註 (KR6j0183, T61n2235) — philological annotations to the Buddhoṣṇīṣa-Sitātapatra dhāraṇī, composed and dated by colophon to Kahō 3 (1096 CE).
- Dà suí-qiú tuó-luó-ní kān-zhù 大隨求陀羅尼勘註 (KR6j0372, T61n2242) — philological annotations to the Mahāpratisarā dhāraṇī, composed and dated by colophon to Kanji 6 (1092 CE).
Outside the Kanripo Tripitaka, he is also the author of the influential Siddham primers Shittan-yōketsu 悉曇要訣 and Shittan dai-chōki 悉曇大底記 (the two foundational early-Japanese works on Sanskrit phonological theory), as well as the Hannya shingyō Shittan dōji 般若心經悉曇童子. His scholarly method combines Tang Esoteric translation conventions (especially Amoghavajra’s 不空 Sanskrit-Chinese transliteration practice) with Chinese Shōmyō 唐院 musical and phonological theory to produce a fully systematic Japanese reading of the Sanskrit Esoteric dhāraṇī corpus. His annotations are characterized by careful collation of multiple manuscript witnesses (he distinguishes “Tang text” 唐本, “thought-version” 思惟本, and “book-text” 書本 in his notes), and by his readiness to admit graphic uncertainty rather than impose a uniform reading.
Source: DILA Buddhist Person Authority A000674; the autograph colophons of T61n2235 and T61n2242; standard Japanese-Shingon Siddham-school biographical sources.