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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the acquisition of knowledge linked to late Heian and early medieval Buddhist kanbun, through two texts that frame the Buddha’s biography for young students: Kyōjiden (教児伝, before 1383) and a recently discovered untitled fragment of a Buddha biography (late 12th-early 13th c).

Paper long abstract

In the development of Japanese literary culture, various imported texts played key roles as sources of knowledge for words and ideas used in crafting literary writing – not only classical Chinese texts concerning China’s history and cultural arts, but also Buddhist scripture in Chinese translation and Buddhist topical encyclopedias. The exact texts and processes involved in studying classical Chinese and Buddhist sources had long been discussed within the field of educational history, but recent research in literary studies has also shown that knowledge drawn from primers used by young aristocrats and monks helped to shape the language and style of medieval works like anecdotal literature or warrior tales. The specific examples uncovered in such research underscore the fact that in literary studies, too, the concrete reality of introductory education for young writers is a crucial topic that cannot be ignored.

Through investigations of individual primers, the pathways for transmission of knowledge from China are gradually becoming clearer – but there are a limited number of sources that can tell us how young students studied Buddhist kanbun derived from Buddhist scripture in classical Chinese translation, and much about this process is still unclear. However, a biography of the Buddha (仏伝) called Kyōniden (教児伝, composed before 1383) can be considered a Buddhist primer aimed at helping young students acquire vocabulary and expressions through studying the life of Sakyamuni as the ancestor of Buddhism, making it valuable evidence about the process of acquiring Buddhist learning. In this paper, I will first introduce the distinctive features of Kyōniden’s compilation, as well as its connections with Chinese-translated Buddhist scripture and Buddhist topical encyclopedias. I will then consider an untitled fragment of a Buddha biography surviving from the late twelfth/early thirteenth century, which gives us a vivid glimpse of a mode of study similar to that in Kyōniden being practiced in an actual temple setting, in order to think concretely about the relationship between literary creativity and the use of classics to acquire knowledge found in late Heian and early medieval Buddhist kanbun.