PREFACEIn November of 1998, an exhibition was held in Tokyo of manuscripts and block printsof the Lotus Sutra and other Buddhist texts from the collection of the St. Petersburg
Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. Theexhibition was entitled “The Lotus Sutra and Its World: Buddhist Manuscripts of theGreat Silk Road,” and was sponsored jointly by the St. Petersburg Branch of theInstitute of Oriental Studies and the Institute of Oriental Philosophy of Tokyo, which I
founded some years ago.
These precious texts and materials, which included Sanskrit manuscripts of theLotus Sutra discovered in Central Asia such as the Petrovsky manuscript, were avidly
viewed not only by Japanese scholars of Buddhism and East Asian studies but byvisitors from abroad who attended the exhibition, and no doubt contributed significantly
to their researches and provided them with much food for thought.
The sacred texts of Buddhism, expounded in India by Shakyamuni Buddha, wereover the centuries transmitted to many different parts of the Asian continent, where they
were translated into the languages of the various regions and disseminated among thepopulation. Thus began the flowering of the so-called “Buddhist Culture,” a culture
symbolic of peace and prosperity.
But the Buddhism of Central Asia, that for a time had flourished so proudly, laterfel1 into sad decline as a result of the invasion of foreign peoples and climatic changes
in the area, and in the end the sacred texts of Buddhism were buried beneath the shifting
sands of the desert.
In the nineteenth century and the century that followed, however, explorers fromvarious European countries and other parts of the world set about surveying the region
and excavating the archaeological sites, and thus the Buddhist texts were once morebrought to life. Scholars and research organizations, applying the techniques of modernphilology, then began the task of putting the texts in order and deciphering theircontents.
The Seminar für Indologie und Buddhismuskunde of the University of Göttingen isworld renowned as a leader in traditional Buddhist studies. Hermann Oldenberg(1854-1920), who in 1881 published a work entitled Buddha: sein Leben, seine Lehre,
seine Gemeinde, provided the impetus for such studies. One of the first to apply
comparative techniques to the study of the Buddhist scriptures, he left behind a brilliant
name in the history of Buddhology.
Over the long years of the Seminar’s endeavours, its achievements have been trulyremarkable. Among these may be cited its researches in Indian fairy-tale literature, as
well as the project, begun in 1957 in cooperation with the Akademie derWissenschaften in Göttingen, to compile a catalogue of handwritten Asian texts inGermany, the “Katalogisierung der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland.” Oneof the products of this joint research project is the “Sanskrithandschriften aus den
Turfanfunden” (Sanskrit Manuscript Remains from the Turfan Discoveries), thecompilation of which was begun by Professor Ernst Waldschmidt (1897-1985) andwhich is being carried on by his successors.
It may be noted that Professor Ji Xianlin of Peking University in his younger years
studied at the University of Göttingen, devoting himself under the direction of Professor
Waldschmidt to the study of the Buddhist Sanskrit of the Lotus Sutra and similar texts.
And when Professor Ji Xianlin’s disciple, Mr. Jiang Zhongxin, Professorial Research
Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, edited the first work in the Soka
Gakkai’s Lotus Sutra Manuscript Series, that entitled Sanskrit Lotus Sutra Fragmentsfrom the Lüshun Museum Collection, Professor Ji kindly inscribed the title in Chineseand wrote a foreword for the work.
The German Existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), studying such
figures as Confucius, Shakyamuni and Socrates from whom so much of our present day
thought and philosophy derive, dubbed the period in which they lived, roughly around
500 BCE, a “pivotal age.”
Jaspers had from his youth been deeply interested in Buddhism, and in his work Die
großen Philosophen, published in 1957, which deals with the great thinkers of the pastand present, he included sections on the Buddha Shakyamuni and the Indian Buddhist
philosopher Nagarjuna. In his appraisal of Buddhism, he states: “For the first time inhistory a philosophy of all humankind appeared, a true world religion took shape.”
In similar fashion, Professor Heinz Bechert of the University of Göttingen, in a
lecture entitled “The Foundation of Mahayana Buddhism—From Early Buddhism to theLotus Sutra,” has pointed out that, in the Lotus Sutra, the teaching of the Buddha
represents a single substance and content. It sets forth a path toward the highest type ofenlightenment, one that leads not simply to the emancipation of the individua1, but tothe happiness of all humankind.
The people of the world today face numerous common problems related to nuclear
energy, environmental concerns, human rights, and similar matters. To borrow Jaspers’phrase, we are living in what might be described as a second “pivotal age.” As we entera new century, we must learn to transcend the egoism of race and nationality and toachieve a perspective that is global in scope. In this age that is of pivotal importance inhuman history, we must find a way that, as Professor Bechert has said of that set forth inthe Lotus Sutra, leads to the happiness of all humankind, a phi1osophy, a source of light,that will insure salvation to all the peoples of the world.
The book for which these brief remarks will serve as a preface brings together thetext of fragments of a Lotus Sutra manuscript, discovered in Central Asia, that arepreserved in four different collections in the three cities of Berlin (the former EastBerlin), Munich, and London, making these va1uable materials avai1able within asingle volume. As such, its publication thus serves as a symbol of our present age, onethat is moving “from division to unity.”
It is my sincere hope that this publication, the third in the Lotus Sutra Manuscript
Series, will open up new horizons in Lotus Sutra studies and help to further cultural andacademic exchange between Germany and Japan and deepen the friendship between ourtwo countries.
Daisaku Ikeda
President
Soka Gakkai International
November 18, 1999