Records of the Grand Historian, Volumes 96 and 97

A Chinese History Copied in Nara Japan, Then Turned Over for a Buddhist Ritual

At Ishiyama-dera, a temple set on a crag above the Seta River where it leaves the southern end of Lake Biwa, one of the oldest surviving copies of China's first great history was written, set aside, and then quietly given a second life. The scroll holds part of volumes 96 and 97 of the Shiji, the Records of the Grand Historian, transcribed by hand in Japan during the Nara period in the 8th century. Long afterward a monk turned the paper over and used the blank reverse to record a Buddhist ritual. Both sides survive on the same sheets, and the manuscript is now a National Treasure.

The Text on the Front

The Shiji, completed by the Han historian Sima Qian around 100 BCE, was China's first comprehensive history. Rather than running as a single chronicle, it is built around the lives of rulers, ministers, and notable individuals across some 130 chapters, 70 of which are biographical accounts. The Ishiyama-dera scroll preserves part of two of those biographies.

Volume 96 gathers the early Han chancellors, opening with Zhang Cang. Volume 97 records two celebrated orators of the dynasty's founding years: the persuader Li Yiji and the envoy Lu Jia, who argued the southern ruler Zhao Tuo into accepting the authority of the Han court. The copy breaks off in places, which is why its formal name marks it as a fragment, zankan.

The writing on the front was done in Japan in the 8th century and is counted among the oldest surviving manuscript copies of the Shiji anywhere. Printed editions still lay centuries in the future. A text like this travelled and endured only because scribes copied it by hand, character by character, and Japanese temple libraries proved to be unusually careful keepers.

Why It Became a National Treasure

The scroll was designated a National Treasure on 21 June 1962. Its value rests on more than age. Very early copies of the Chinese classics rarely survive in China itself, where centuries of war and repeated reprinting wore the old manuscripts away. Transcriptions preserved in Japanese temple collections can therefore carry readings closer to an early state of the text than later Chinese printed editions do.

For scholars of the Shiji, an 8th-century Japanese hand is a witness to how the work stood before the great Song-dynasty printings standardised it. That makes the scroll a primary document not only for Japanese cultural history but for the study of the Chinese original.

The Other Side of the Paper

What sets this scroll apart is what runs along the back. At some point the paper, by then old and no longer wanted as a history text, was reversed and reused. On that reverse a monk wrote out a Kongokai shidai, a step-by-step procedure for the esoteric ritual of the Diamond Realm mandala, one of the central practices of Shingon Buddhism. The procedure is a redaction based on a ritual manual by the Tang master Amoghavajra, known in Japan as Fuku, and it is associated with Shunnyu, the third head of Ishiyama-dera and the figure credited with reviving the temple.

Shunnyu, who lived from 890 to 953, was a grandson of Sugawara no Michizane, the courtier later venerated as the deity of learning. Temple tradition holds that in 921 he travelled to Kukai's mausoleum on Mount Koya and touched the great teacher's robe, after which a fragrance clung to his hands and passed into everything he wrote. The scriptures in his hand are still called the fragrant scriptures.

So a discarded Chinese history was saved as scrap paper for a Shingon ritual, and the discarded side is now the reason the whole object carries the highest level of protection. It is one of the quiet ironies of the Ishiyama-dera collection.

Seeing the Scroll, and the Temple Around It

Ishiyama-dera shows its manuscripts only now and then. When it does, they appear in the Hojoden, the treasure hall at the top of the precinct, during the spring and autumn special exhibitions. A handscroll is usually opened to reveal a short stretch of text, so a visit gives you a metre or so of the original rather than the whole length. Standing in front of an actual 8th-century hand is the reward.

The temple itself repays the climb. Founded in the Nara period by the monk Roben, it rises from an outcrop of wollastonite, a pale crystalline rock that gave the temple its name, since ishiyama means stone mountain, and is itself a designated Natural Monument. The Main Hall and the two-storey pagoda are both National Treasures. The temple has long been tied to Murasaki Shikibu, who is said to have begun the Tale of Genji here during a retreat, and it serves as the thirteenth station of the Saigoku Kannon pilgrimage.

Getting There and Nearby

Ishiyama-dera stands in Otsu, the capital of Shiga, where the Seta River drains the lower end of Lake Biwa. The Keihan line's Ishiyama-dera Station is about a ten-minute walk from the gate, and from JR Ishiyama Station a short bus ride reaches the same approach. The grounds open daily from 8:00 to 16:30, while the Hojoden follows its own seasonal calendar, so anyone visiting for the scroll should confirm the exhibition dates first. Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan, lies close by, and Kyoto is only a short train ride to the west.