The Sound of the Avatamsaka Sutra (Volumes 1 and 2)

Kegonkyō Ongi: A Glossary for Reading the Flower Garland Sutra

The eighty-fascicle Flower Garland Sutra (Kegon-kyō; Skt. Avatamsaka) is among the longest and most linguistically demanding scriptures in the East Asian Buddhist canon. Its Chinese text, completed by the Khotanese monk Śikṣānanda at the end of the seventh century, is thick with rare characters and with Sanskrit names spelled out phonetically, one Chinese syllable at a time. The two scrolls catalogued as the Kegonkyō Ongi were the instrument that made such a text legible.

An ongi (Chinese yinyi, literally "sound and meaning") is a specialised glossary. Rather than reproducing the sutra, it lists the difficult words in order, gives each a pronunciation, usually through the Chinese fanqie method that spells one sound using two other characters, and then explains the meaning, often quoting older dictionaries and classics. For a monk working through the Avatamsaka, this was the line between sounding out a passage and actually understanding it.

This particular set, held by the Japanese state and kept in Kyoto, is a manuscript copied during the Heian period (794–1185). It survives in two scrolls, an upper and a lower, and was designated a National Treasure on 29 March 1952.

Why It Was Designated a National Treasure

The glossary tradition behind these scrolls reaches back to Tang China. The scholar-monk Huiyuan, a disciple of the great Huayan systematiser Fazang, compiled a phonetic and semantic guide to the newly translated eighty-fascicle sutra. His learning passed into Japan from the Nara period onward, as the Kegon (Huayan) school took root at Tōdai-ji.

What gives a Heian manuscript like this one its weight is age together with rarity. Many Chinese glossary texts were lost in their homeland, and the copies that survive in Japan often preserve readings and citations no longer available anywhere else. A scroll written by hand more than eight centuries ago is also a primary source for the history of the Chinese script as it was used and taught in Japan, and for how readers here approached a foreign-language canon.

The listing came on 29 March 1952, one of the early rounds of National Treasure designations made under the 1950 Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. The Agency for Cultural Affairs holds the scrolls on behalf of the nation.

What to Look For

Because the object is two paper scrolls of ink-written text, its appeal is quieter than that of a gilded sutra or a painted screen, and it rewards a patient look. Watch the brushwork. The hand of a Heian scribe, formed by daily copying of scriptures, carries a discipline and rhythm that no printed page can show. Notice the layout, with headword characters set out and the explanatory notes following in smaller script: the logic of a working reference book a thousand years old becomes visible at a glance.

The text is also a window onto a scholarly world. Each entry was included because a real reader had stumbled on it, so the glossary amounts to a record of which words in the Avatamsaka were considered hard in early medieval East Asia. Seen beside a copy of the sutra it serves, the relationship between the two becomes immediately clear.

Seeing It, and What Lies Nearby

As a light-sensitive paper manuscript owned by the state, the Kegonkyō Ongi is not on permanent view. Works of this kind appear only in occasional special exhibitions, so anyone hoping to see the scrolls themselves should check current exhibition listings before planning a trip. The Kyoto National Museum, in the Higashiyama district, is the natural anchor for such a visit and regularly shows early manuscripts and Buddhist calligraphy of this calibre.

The museum stands beside Sanjūsangen-dō, the long hall lined with a thousand Kannon statues, and within easy reach of Kiyomizu-dera and the Gion quarter. To connect the scrolls with the living tradition they belong to, two temples reward a detour: Tōdai-ji in Nara, head temple of the Kegon school and home of the Great Buddha, and Kōzan-ji in the hills northwest of Kyoto, a centre of Kegon learning revived by the monk Myōe in the early thirteenth century.