3 - Computing in the Humanities and Social Sciences

of mantras. 17 K¥kai also authored an important theoretical text on shittan, entitled Bonji
shittan jimo narabini shakugi, and of manuals on the writing and pronunciation of the
Indian characters.
After K¥kai, all the most important Japanese monks who went to China to study
went back to their country with several texts written in shittan characters. All the
material concerning shittan existing in Japan at the end of the ninth century was
collected and systematized in 884 by the Tendai monk Annen (ca. 841-915) in the
shittangaku encyclopedia entitled Shittanzø (T. 84). Subsequently, the increasing
importance of esoteric Buddhism determined the rapid diffusion of shittan, as an
indispensable component of Tendai and Shingon teachings and practices. (See van
Gulik 1980 and Iyanaga 1983). The diffusion of these characters is also testified by their
increasing presence in texts. Even K¥kai wrote only a few shittan characters in his
works; but since the end of the Heian period there was the tendency to write most (if
not all) mantras and dhåra√∆ in shittan script, often without transcription. Shittan were
commonly used in esoteric Buddhist texts and ritual manuals until the end of the Edo
period (mid-nineteenth century). In fact, it is at that time that the most complete
collection ever of shittan-related documents was compiled: the monumental Bongaku
shiryø (“Documents on Sanskrit Learning”) in one thousand scrolls compiled by the
Shingon monk Onkø Jiun (1718-1804) at the end of the eighteenth century. (On Jiun see
Watt 1984).
Knowledge and practices concerning the shittan spread also outside the religious
milieu and influenced the philosophical and cultural world of premodern Japan. Even
though a cultural history of Shittan studies in Japan is still to be written, the phonetic
structure of Sanskrit (var√apå†ha) influenced the development of Japanese kana phonetic
scripts. Shittan studies were also directly connected with the philological and
philosophical discussions of the Edo period and the birth of the Nativist movement
with Keich¥ (1640-1701). A general cultural trend considered shittan characters as
microcosms, condensations of the esoteric universe. A good example of this intellectual
attitude is the Kamakura texts entitled Shittanrin ryakuzu shø by Ryøson (T 84).
Furthermore, since the Heian period shittan characters began to be written on funerary
monuments, pagodas, and amulets; in this way, they also spread outside of monastic
and intellectual circles into the general populace. Even today, funerary tablets (ihai) and
17 K¥kai, Shørai mokuroku, in DNBZ 2: 16-28. A portion of the text is translated in Yoshito S. Hakeda,
K¥kai: Major Works. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972, pp. 144.
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