Eastern Transmission Lamp Catalog (東域傳燈目錄)

About 東域傳燈目錄

Japan · by 永超集

19,262 · about 64 min

The Eastern Region Transmission of the Lamp Catalog was compiled by the Japanese Heian-period scholar-monk Eichō in the eighth year of the Kanji era (1094). It is Japan's oldest extant specialized catalog of Buddhist scriptures. The work collects the catalogs of Buddhist classics held in various temples across Japan at that time, encompassing over a thousand texts including sūtras, vinaya, śāstras, commentaries, and subcommentaries, with detailed records of titles, numbers of scrolls, authors, and translators. This catalog not only reflects the circulation and preservation of Buddhist texts during the Heian period but also provides extremely valuable foundational material for the study of Japanese Buddhist history and philology. Regarded as the pioneering work of Japanese Buddhist bibliography, it possesses immense historical and academic significance.