is an early ninth century Buddhist text

Buddhist texts

Buddhist texts can be categorized in a number of ways. The Western terms "scripture" and "canonical" are applied to Buddhism in inconsistent ways by Western scholars: for example, one authority refers to "scriptures and other canonical texts", while another says that scriptures can be categorized...

. It is best known as a valuable resource for Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 historical linguistics

Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...

 as well as Buddhist history

History of Buddhism

The History of Buddhism spans the 6th century BCE to the present, starting with the birth of Buddha Siddhartha Gautama on the Indian subcontinent, in what is now Lumbini, Nepal. This makes it one of the oldest religions practiced today. The religion evolved as it spread from the northeastern region...

.

Manuscript

Tōdaiji Fujumonkō was composed sometime between 796-830. It is one volume in length. The compiler is unknown, but speculated to have been a priest belonging to the Dharma character school

Dharma character school

East Asian Yogācāra refers to the traditions in East Asia which represent the Indian Yogācāra system of thought. It is a school of Buddhism originating in China. In China, it is known as Wéishí-zōng , or Fǎxiàng-zōng...

. The original manuscript did not contain a title, but one was later added.

The manuscript was designated as a National Treasures of Japan

National treasures of Japan

National Treasures are the most precious of Japan's Tangible Cultural Properties, as determined and designated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs...

 in 1938, but removed due to its destruction in 1945 in the fires resulting from the war

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Only reproductions remain.

Contents

The text is 396 lines in length. It is primarily a collection of prayers recorded at Buddhist memorial services.

Linguistics

Tōdaiji Fujumonkō is primarily important as a resource for early Early Middle Japanese. It is the oldest example of text written in kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

 with katakana

Katakana

is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...

 annotations. In addition, it exhibits many elements of Old Japanese

Old Japanese

is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language.This stage in the development of Japanese is still actively studied and debated, and key Old Japanese texts, such as the Man'yōshū, remain obscure in places.-Dating:...

 grammar and vocabulary, as well as maintaining the phonetic distinction

Jodai Tokushu Kanazukai

is an archaic kanazukai used to write Japanese during the Nara period. Its primary feature is to distinguish between two groups of syllables as discussed below that later merged together.-Syllables:Following are the syllabic distinctions made in Old Japanese....

 between /ko₁/ and /ko₂/. It also contains accounts in several dialects

Japanese dialects

The comprise many regional variants. The lingua franca of Japan is called hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo , and while it was based initially on the Tokyo dialect, the language of Japan's capital has since gone in its own direction to become one of Japan's many dialects...

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