The Research Of The Documents Mentioned In Travel Notes In Tang Dynasty For Learning Buddhism By Japanese Monk Ennin

Travel Notes in Tang Dynasty for Learning Buddhism (hereafter referred to asTravel Notes) is a classical Chinese literary work in diary form written by a Japanesemonk Ennin during his journey in Tang Dynasty for learning Chinese cultures aboutBuddhism. As a precious literature to represent the social landscape and customculture of Tang Dynasty in the beginning of9thcentury, this work is hailed as one ofthe world’s three greatest travel notes. The contents in Travel Notes cover manyaspects about Tang Dynasty, such as politics, economics, religion, traffic andgeography and Sino-Japanese relations; therefore, this work has attracted muchattention in the academic field. In this work, the author has recorded the cities andBuddhist temples he passed by and the political and economic conditions of TangDynasty in detail. These materials are not only precious literatures for studying Ennin,but also important supplementary literatures for studying social cultures, manners andcustoms in Tang Dynasty.The academic field focuses more on these aspects about Tang Dynasty in TravelNotes, such as Buddhism, social history, politics, economics, traffics, geography andSino-Japanese relations, while the Chinese and Japanese documents mentioned in thiswork are scarcely paid attention. Therefore, it is necessary to make reorganization andclassification about the documents mentioned in Travel Notes, which are regarded asimportant texts in comparative literature, to make in-depth analysis and survey of thestyle, wording, vocabulary, and to make comparison with Entin documents andDunhuang documents. These researches have important academic value and practicalsignificance in helping people get insight into the social and historical cultures inTang Dynasty and returning to the original state about the communications betweenChina and Japan at that time.The thesis is divided into four parts:The first part introduces52documents mentioned in Travel Notes throughclassification. Among these, there are27documents in the form of certificates, including11for statements,2for asking for charity,2for offering,9for greetings tosuperiors,5for showing thanks;3documents for charity;6documents issued fromsuperiors to juniors;15documents for intergovernmental contacts;1for imperialedict. Besides, among the52documents,13were administration agency documentsor made by people in Tang Dynasty; the rest39were intergovernmental documentsthat were written by Ennin and statements that showed greetings and thanks to someofficers and eminent monks. What is more, in documents written by Ennin, most areprivate documents, which reflects Ennin’s interpersonal situation in Tang and theimportance of the maintenance of good interpersonal relationship to his learning forBuddhism to some degree.The second part makes analysis of the address terms and signatures indocuments, making research on the reasons why different address terms andsignatures in different documents. About address terms, Ennin used different terms toaddress different people, which only appeared in personal documents between Enninand officials and other monks, not in official documents. About signatures, as the timehe stayed in Tang increased, he know more about Tang culture and the interpersonalrelationship was widely developed, the signatures in documents became more simpleand more casual. Especially the document, in which “Ennin, the monk learning forBuddhism” was printed but without signature, has great significance in identifyingauthenticity of recent discovery of Ennin’s stone inscription in Fawang Temple inDengfeng City, Henan Province.The third part makes researches and explains the difficult words and letter wordswhich appear in documents in Travel Notes based on previous studies, makesupplementary for some inaccuracies in previous studies and find out some historicaldata to prove these opinions. Some examples about expressions used by Ennin, suchas “dynamic and static are blessings”,“greatly thankful”, could mostly be found inDunhuang documents, which is a reflection of Ennin’s acquisition level andacceptance level of Tang culture. Besides, because of his identity as a monk, Enninused many Buddhist terms such as Tzu Chi, plain rice, about which the thesis makesdeep interpretation. This cannot only help us better understandings about thesedocuments, but also deepen our understanding of ancient Chinese. The fourth part makes comparative studies among Ennin documents, Entindocuments and Dunhuang documents from the perspectives of form, contents andwording. Because Ennin and Entin are both Japanese monks, their documents ofsome kind are similar; but there are also some subtle differences; especially inwording, compared with Entin, the words in Ennin’s documents are more humble anddeferential, which is closely connected with the two monks’ identities andsurrondings in Tang. Meanwhile, there are also some similarities between Ennindocuments and Dunhuang documents, and slight differences that can be reflected insome private documents such as the documents showing thanks. In the end of thesedocuments, Ennin usually added the name of the receiver, but in Dunhuangdocuments and Entin documents, the receiver’s name was not found, which is relatedto Ennin’s identity as an illegal overstayer and his own definition about nature ofdocuments. There is no doubt that Ennin documents and Dunhuang documents arelargely identical; it proves from one side the prosperity of Sino-Japanesecommunications and centripetal force of Tang culture in the ancient East Asia.Based on the documents mentioned in Travel Notes, this thesis makes somereorganize and classifies and interprets the related difficult words. Through themethod of influence research in comparative literature study, combined with thechecking and classification of the related documents, this thsis makes comparativestudies between Ennin documents and Entin and Dunhuang documents, defines thatdocuments in Tang Dynasty has great importance to documents in Japan even thewhole Southeastern Asia and confirms the importance of Tang documents in theinternational contacts of ancient East Asia. Furthermore, it recreates the prosperity ofcultural exchanges between Japan and other countries in the East Asia at that time,and demonstrates the leading role and cultural centripetal force of China in the wholeEast Asia.