Presentation on the Obaku Canon in Madrid, Spain

Glad to have a chance to present at a conference in Madrid, Spain about the Obaku Canon in Eurupe.

Conference: When the Himalaya Meets with Alps: International Forum on Buddhist Art & Buddhism's Transmission to Europe

Title: Finding the First Chinese Tripitaka in Europe: The 1872 Iwakura Mission in Britain and the Mystery of Ōbaku Canon in the India Office Library

Abstract: Although the creation of the Chinese Buddhist canon is a well-known event in East Asian cultural sphere, little is known about when and how Westerners became interested in this great textual tradition. As far as I know, the first Chinese Buddhist canon in Europe was a version of Northern Ming Canon which was reprinted in the main section of the Jiaxing canon and later in the Obaku canon in 1673 in Japan because of the promotion of the Jiaxing canon by the Chinese monk Yinyuan Longqi (1592-1673), the founder of the Japanese Obaku Zen tradition. In the late nineteenth century, Max Müller (1823-1900), the early pioneer in comparative religion, started a massive translation project of “Sacred Books of the East.” For this project, a request for Buddhist books was sent to Japan and the Japanese ambassador Iwakura Tomomi (1825-1883), the court noble who initiated the Meiji Restoration, responded with a delivery of an entire set of the Obaku edition to the Indian Office Library in London. (This set of the canon is still housed in London) Sinologist Samuel Beal (1825-1889) and Max Müller’s Japanese student Nanjō Bunyū (1849-1927) translated its entire catalogue into English in 1876 and 1883 respectively. In an attempt to rediscover the first Chinese canon in the West, my paper will investigate various historical events leading to the arrival of this canon in Europe and how Western interests in Eastern religions brought the canon to Britain through diplomatic maneuvers.

The Obaku Tetsugen Canon is the first Chinese Tripitaka in the West

I am writing a paper for the Third International Conference on the Chinese Buddhist canon.  The title of my paper is "Finding the First Chinese Tripitaka in Europe: The 1872 Iwakura Mission in Britain and the Mystery of the Obaku Tetsugen Canon in the Indian Office Library." The discovery I made is that the Obaku Tetsugen Canon 黄檗/鐵眼大藏經 is actually the first Chinese Tripitaka which was brought to the West and it was sent by Iwakura Tomomi 岩倉具視(1825-1883) in 1875.

The story is like this:　 The Obaku edition was carved by Tetsugen based on the main section of the Jiaxing canon 嘉興藏 which is a reprint of the Northern Ming Canon 明北藏. Tetsugen received this Jiaxing edition from the Chinese monk Yinyuan Longqi 隱元隆琦(1592-1673), the founder of the Japanese Obaku Zen tradition. It was the most popular edition during the Edo period.

In the mid-nineteenth century, because of the discovery of Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts, European scholarship on Buddhism was greatly advanced.  Therefore, there was a need to find the Chinese Tripitaka as well. In 1872, the Iwakura mission arrived in Britain. Samuel Beal (1825-1889), a professor of Chinese and a chaplain at University College, through his personal connection, made a request to Iwakura about sending a Chinese canon to England. Iwakura kept his word after he returned to Japan and the whole set of the canon arrived at the Indian Office Library in 1875.

Samuel Beal made a English catalog of the received books in 1876 and Max Müller's (1823-1900) Japanese student Nanjō Bunyū 南條文雄 (1849-1927) translated its entire catalog into English in 1883. However, Nanjō didn't mark in the title page that this canon is actually the Tetsugen canon carved in Japan. It still reads as the Chinese Tripitaka of the Great Ming Dynasty.