Shin'yaku Kegonkyō Ongi Shiki

The is a Japanese annotation of the Avatamsaka Sūtra. It is the oldest Japanese ongi, or collection of difficult to interpret words showing their pronunciation and meaningKindaichi (1988:74), and is a National Treasure of JapanYoshida (2001: 128).
==Background==
The text is two fascicles in lengthOmodaka (1967: 880-881)Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten (1985: 512-513). The compiler is unknown but is presumed to have related to Tōdai-ji. It is an annotation of the 80-volume Avatamsaka Sūtra. As the original was written in Chinese, the annotation contains a list of words and expressions from the original and glosses them with Japanese readings and meanings. The orthography of the Japanese suggests that it is a late Nara period text. However, the manuscript contains a number of errors and is judged to be a copy of an earlier original. There is only one known existing manuscript.
==Linguistics==
The text is viewed as a valuable reference for Old Japanese linguistics. The Japanese annotations are written in Man'yōgana and, with the exception of /to1, to2/, distinguishes between Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai. It contains a total of 162 Japanese words, many of which are the oldest extant citations. In addition, it also contains the oldest example of a long vowel as well as a number of Japanese-specific readings (慣用音) to kanji.
==Notes==
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Category:Old Japanese texts
Category:Mahayana sutras
Category:Mahayana texts
Category:National Treasures of Japan