The Manuscript of Man’yōshū 萬葉集 and the Thought of Tathāgata-garbha

Japan’s earliest literary anthology Man’yōshū 萬葉集 (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) has nearly twenty different extant manuscripts preserved by various libraries. The most distinctive feature of the Man’yōshū lies in the combined use of Chinese characters in both purely phonographic (man’yōgana) and logographic functions. The variety of orthography in the anthology and among the different manuscripts causes great difficulties in the literary interpretation of the Man’yōshū. Buddhism is the most important religious source of the Man’yōshū, and this paper intends to use the example of a manuscript from chapter six of Man’yōshū to discuss the possibility that the ideas of the Tathāgatagarbha sūtra had been introduced to Japan at that time and how it impacted Japanese monks. At the same time, I also hope to put forward my own opinions on the interpretation and application of the manuscript in Sino-Japanese cultural contexts.