Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra

The Daihannya-kyo of Jomyoji: Sutras Commissioned by a Doomed Prince in 712

On the fifteenth day of the eleventh month of 712, a set of Buddhist scriptures was completed at a palace in the Japanese capital of Nara. The patron was Prince Nagaya, a grandson of Emperor Tenmu and one of the most powerful figures of his age. Seventeen years later he would be dead, forced to take his own life in a political purge. The sutras survived him. Twenty-seven volumes of that original commission now belong to Jomyoji, a small Rinzai Zen temple in the former post town of Tsuchiyama in Koka City, Shiga Prefecture, where they hold the status of National Treasure.

The text is the Daihannya-kyo, formally the Daihannya-haramitta-kyo (Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra), a vast compilation translated into Chinese by the monk Xuanzang and completed in 663. The full set runs to 600 scrolls. Prince Nagaya ordered the entire set copied, and the dated dedication written at the end gives this project its scholarly name: the Wado 5 Nagaya-o Gankyo, or "Nagaya votive sutras of 712." No earlier dated copy of the Daihannya-kyo is known in Japan, and since barely fifty years separate it from Xuanzang's translation, scholars regard it as possibly the oldest surviving copy of the text anywhere.

Why These Volumes Are a National Treasure

The dedication explains the purpose. Nagaya commissioned the copying to mourn Emperor Monmu, his cousin, who had died in 707. The work was carried out at the Kita no Miya, the northern palace associated with his consort Princess Kibi, who was Monmu's sister. Recent readings of the dedication suggest the project may equally have expressed Kibi's grief for her brother, an interpretation strengthened by the excavation of the Nagaya residence site in Nara, which recovered thousands of inscribed wooden tablets documenting the household.

Open one of the volumes and the first thing a trained eye notices is what is missing: ruled guide lines. Nearly every sutra copied in eighth-century Japan was written over faint ruling that kept the columns straight. The two sutra sets commissioned by Prince Nagaya, this one of 712 and a second of 728, are the only Nara-period copies written without any ruling at all. The scribes, six or seven of them according to analysis of the hands, wrote on yellow-dyed hemp paper in small, taut characters modeled on the calligraphy of Sui and early Tang China. The dedication that follows was added by two different hands in a deliberately older style recalling the Six Dynasties period, a contrast that specialists find one of the set's most intriguing features.

The volumes were originally handscrolls and were refolded centuries later into the accordion-book format seen today. The Jomyoji set of 27 volumes was designated a National Treasure under the current Cultural Properties Protection Law on June 21, 1962, having first received national designation under the prewar system in 1904, according to the Shiga prefectural register.

One Commission, Three Temples

Of the original 600 scrolls, roughly 220 are thought to survive. The remarkable part is where most of them are: 212 volumes remain within the single former town of Tsuchiyama, divided among three temples. Taiheiji holds 142 volumes, also a National Treasure. Jomyoji holds these 27. Kenshoan, a small hermitage in the Ayukawa district, holds 43 volumes designated an Important Cultural Property. How sutras copied at a Nara palace came to rest in the hills along the Tokaido road is not fully documented, but their concentration here has made this quiet tea-growing district an unlikely stronghold of eighth-century calligraphy. Stray volumes that left the area over the centuries now sit in major collections, including the Tokyo National Museum.

A word of practical honesty: the sutras themselves are not on regular public display. Documents of this age and rank are shown only on rare occasions, typically at museum exhibitions in Shiga and beyond. Visiting Jomyoji means visiting the place that has guarded them, and that place rewards the trip on its own terms.

Visiting Jomyoji and the Tsuchiyama Post Town

Jomyoji stands in Minami-Tsuchiyama, a few minutes' walk from the old Tokaido, the Edo-period highway that linked Tokyo and Kyoto. Temple tradition holds that it was founded in the Wado era (708 to 715) by Empress Genmei in memory of Emperor Monmu, the same emperor mourned in the sutras, though the early history cannot be verified. The temple was revived in 1349 by a monk of Tofukuji in Kyoto, and it belongs today to the Tofukuji branch of the Rinzai Zen school. Local tradition adds that tea seeds brought from Kyoto in 1356 were planted here, making the temple the reputed birthplace of Tsuchiyama tea, still the area's signature crop.

Literary pilgrims come for another reason. Mori Hakusen, a physician of the Tsuwano domain and grandfather of the novelist Mori Ogai, died at Tsuchiyama post station in the last years of the Edo period and was buried at Jomyoji. A memorial stupa stands on the grounds, and Ogai's own account of seeking out his grandfather's grave has given the temple a modest place in Japanese literary history. A stone inscribed with a haiku attributed to Basho also stands nearby.

Pair the temple with a walk through Tsuchiyama-juku itself, the 49th station of the Tokaido, where latticed townhouses and the former honjin inn preserve the feel of the old highway. Tamura Shrine, a short distance away, is famous for its protective rites and its annual procession. The Tokaido Denmakan museum explains the workings of the post-station system. Access is straightforward by car, about five minutes from the Koka-Tsuchiyama interchange on the Shin-Meishin Expressway, or by bus from JR Kibukawa Station, roughly thirty minutes.