The is an early

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japan ...

setsuwa Setsuwa (, ja, 説話, setsu wa) is an East Asian literary genre. It consists of myths, legends, folktales, and anecdotes. ''Setsuwa'' means "spoken story". As one of the vaguest forms of literature, setsuwa is believed to have been passed dow ...

collection. Written by Kyōkai between 787 and 824, it is

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

's oldest collection of Buddhist

. It is three volumes in length.

Title

Commonly abbreviated as ''Nihon Ryōiki'', which means "Record of Miraculous Events in Japan," the full title is . It may also be read as ''Nihon Reiiki''. The book has been

translated Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

into English under the title ''Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition'', but this does not represent a literal translation of the Japanese title.

The work is composed of three parts contained within three volumes. Each volume begins with a preface, and the final volume contains an

epilogue An epilogue or epilog (from Greek ἐπίλογος ''epílogos'', "conclusion" from ἐπί ''epi'', "in addition" and λόγος ''logos'', "word") is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature, usually used to bring closure to the ...

. There are a total of 116 tales all dealing with Buddhist elements. There are also a total of nine poems.

Manuscripts

There are five existing manuscripts, two of which are designated National Treasures: *

Kōfuku-ji is a Buddhist temple that was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples in the city of Nara, Japan. The temple is the national headquarters of the Hossō school. History Kōfuku-ji has its origin as a temple that was established in 669 b ...

, 904 ( National Treasure) * Raigō-in, late

( National Treasure) * Shinpuku-ji,

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle b ...

* Sanmai-in, 1214 * Maeda estate, 1236 All manuscripts are incomplete. The full text must be reconstructed from the multiple sources, and this was only possible after the Raigō-in manuscript was discovered in 1973.

Linguistics

The text contains a number of words in

man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of thi ...

, an archaic orthography that may be used to express

Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai is an archaic kana orthography system used to write Japanese during the Nara period. Its primary feature is to distinguish between two groups of syllables that later merged. The existence and meaning of this system is a critical point of schol ...

. While it is an

Early Middle Japanese is a stage of the Japanese language between 794 and 1185, which is known as the Heian Period(). The successor to Old Japanese(), it is also known as Late Old Japanese. However, the term "Early Middle Japanese" is preferred, as it is closer to ...

text, it is early enough to still preserve the distinction between ko₁, ko₂Yoshida (2001: 147) and he₁, he₂ prior to their mergers.

Notes

References

* * * * * *

External links