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SGI News: Global activities for peace, education and culture

The Lotus Sutra: Xixia Version

[©Seikyo Shimbun]

In collaboration with the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (IOS-RAS) and the Institute of Oriental Philosophy (IOP), the Soka Gakkai recently published the eighth work in its Lotus Sutra Manuscript Series, the Xixia version of the Lotus Sutra from the Collection of the IOS-RAS. Dr. Tatsuo Nishida, professor emeritus of Kyoto University, a member of the Japan Academy and a world-renowned authority on the Xixia language, edited the work. The volume contains color facsimiles of the manuscripts and xylographs of a rare Xixia version of the Lotus Sutra. The original manuscript was among the possessions of the IOS-RAS St. Petersburg Branch which were hidden by staff for safekeeping during a 900-day siege of the city by the Nazis during World War II. 

Xixia flourished as a Buddhist state in the eastern part of the Silk Road, in northwestern China, from the beginning of the 11th to the 13th century. The state was an active thoroughfare for East-West trade and had jurisdiction over urban, international centers like Dunhuang that were inhabited by various ethnic groups. With a rich culture, Xixia developed its own writing system, resulting in many Buddhist texts being translated into Xixia. 

Publication of the Lotus Sutra Manuscript Series originated from the inspiration and heartfelt desire of scholars such as Dr. Evgenij I. Kychanov, former director of the IOS-RAS St. Petersburg Branch, and IOP founder Daisaku Ikeda, to leave to posterity the teachings of the Lotus Sutra that elucidate the sanctity and equality of life. See "Buddhist Manuscripts of the Great Silk Road," http://www.lotossutra.at/.

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