Nanjō Bunyū
NANJŌ BUNYŪ
NANJŌ BUNYŪ (1849–1927), also transliterated Nanjio Bunyiu; Japanese Buddhist scholar who first introduced Sanskrit into Japan from Europe and laid the foundation for Western-style Sanskrit and Buddhist studies in Japan. Nanjō was born in Gifu prefecture on May 12, 1849, and was educated in a school run by the Higashi-Honganji. In 1876 he was selected by the abbot Gennyo to study Sanskrit and Sanskrit Buddhist texts in England. F. Max Müller, whom he visited at Oxford in 1879, advised him to study Sanskrit there under A. A. Macdonell, one of Müller's students. Nanjō returned to Japan with an M.A. degree in 1884, and the following year he began to teach Sanskrit at the University of Tokyo.
During his stay in England Nanjō helped Müller to publish Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts that had been preserved in such Japanese temples as the Hōryūji and the Kōkiji. Their collaboration resulted in the publication of Buddhist Texts from Japan (Oxford, 1881), published under Müller's name, and the two other volumes published jointly by Müller and Nanjō: Sukhâvatï-vyûha, Description of Sukhâvatï, the Land of Bliss (Oxford, 1883) and The Ancient Palm-Leaves Containing the Pragñāpâramitâ-hridaya-sûtra and the Ushnïsha-vigaya-dhâranï (Oxford, 1884). These were the first contributions Japanese scholars had made to the international field of Sanskrit studies.
Nanjō's most significant contribution to Sanskrit and Buddhist studies was A Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka, the Sacred Canon of the Buddhists in China and Japan (Oxford, 1883), which has long served as the only guide to the Chinese version of the Buddhist Tripiṭaka for European and American scholars who do not read Asian languages. Nanjō also rendered valuable service to the study of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. His work here includes publication, with H. Kern, of the text of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra (Saint Petersburg, 1908–1912), the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (Kyoto, 1923), and the Suvarṇaprab-hāsa Sūtra (Kyoto, 1931), with Izumi Hokei.
In 1888 Nanjō received the D.Litt. degree from the University of Tokyo; he was appointed a member of the Imperial Academy of Japan in 1906. In 1914 he became president of Ōtani University and in 1923 professor emeritus at the same university. He devoted himself to research, education, and administrative duties and the propagation of Jōdo Shinshū until he passed away at the age of seventy-eight on November 9, 1927.
See Also
Bibliography
Miyamoto Shōson's Meihi Bukkyōno schichō —Inoue Enryōno jiseki (Tokyo, 1975), an interesting essay on the leading Buddhist thinkers of the Meiji era, contains a discussion of Nanjō and his work on pages 100–123. Nanjō's autobiography, written at the age of seventy-five, has been published as Nanjō Bunyū jijoden (Kyoto, 1924).
Mayeda Sengaku (1987)