At the end of my paper on “Sanskrit Texts in Japan” I mentioned in a
postscript (March 10) that I had received from Mr. Wylie a copy of a
vocabulary called “A Thousand Sanskrit and Chinese Words,” compiled by
I-tsing, about 700 A. D., and brought to Japan by Zikaku, a Japanese
priest, in 847 A. D. The edition of this vocabulary which Mr. Wylie bought
in Japan was published by Jakumio in 1727, and in the preface the editor
says: “In the temple Hôriuji, in Yamato, there are treasured
Pra_gñ_âpâramitâh_ri_daya-sûtram and Sonshio-dhâra_n_î, written on two
palm leaves, handed down, from Central India.”
Hôriuji is one of eleven temples founded by Prince Umayado, who died in A.
D. 621. This temple is in a town named Tatsuta, in the province Yamato,
near Kioto, the western capital. I ended my article with the following
sentence: “Here, then, we have clear evidence that in the year 1727 palm
leaves containing the text of Sanskrit Sûtras were still preserved in the
temple of Hôriuji. If that temple is still in existence, might not some
Buddhist priest of Kioto, the western capital of Japan, be induced to go
there to see whether the palm leaves are still there, and, if they are, to
make a copy and send it to Oxford?”
Sooner than expected this wish of mine has been fulfilled. On April 28 Mr.
Shigefuyu Kurihara, of Kioto, a friend of one of my Sanskrit pupils, Mr.
Bunyiu Nanjio, who for some years had himself taken an interest in
Sanskrit, went to the temple or monastery of Hôriuji to inquire whether
any old Sanskrit MSS. were still preserved there. He was told that the
priests of the monastery had recently surrendered their valuables to the
Imperial Government, and that the ancient palm leaves had been presented
to the emperor.
In a chronicle kept at the monastery of Hôriuji it is stated that these
palm leaves and other valuables were brought by Ono Imoko, a retainer of
the Mikado (the Empress Suiko), from China (during the Sui dynasty,
589-618) to Japan, in the thirty-seventh year of the age of Prince
Umayado—_i. e._, A. D. 609. The other valuable articles were: