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菩薩 bosatsu Bodhisattva

Japanese Scroll of Bodhisattva (bosatsu) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
菩薩 Original Scroll by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Abstract

菩薩 (bosatsu) is the Japanese form of the Sanskrit bodhisattva, and its two characters carry a sound, not a meaning: they abbreviate 菩提薩埵, the Chinese transliteration that the Buddhist canon glossed as a being of the way of the buddhas and of great mind. In Japanese the word has led several lives beside the doctrinal one: an honorific for a monk, first by the acclaim of the people and only later by the court's grant; an honorific for a kami once the gods were read as manifestations of buddhas; and, in the speech of the Edo period, a name for rice. The history below finds that the sentence most modern reference works repeat, that Emperor Shōmu granted Gyōki the title in 749, is not what the eighth-century record says: the Shoku Nihongi says the people of his day called him that, and the earliest known telling of the grant is a chronicle compiled after 1094, three and a half centuries later, which a history of 1322 told again. The English word bodhisattva came from Sanskrit scholarship and not from Japanese; the romaji was in English print by 1727, in Kaempfer's History of Japan, as a general name for all the other foreign idols brought into Japan and inside the names of its bodhisattvas, entered a dictionary in 1830, in Walter Henry Medhurst's vocabulary, as a demi god, and has stayed a specialist's word, carried mostly as the suffix of a name.

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Overview

The sense. A Buddhist term, 仏語 in the general dictionaries, and a word the dictionaries illustrate with the names of the great bodhisattvas, 文殊, 観音, 弥勒, 勢至, 普賢. デジタル大辞泉 gives three senses: 《〈梵〉bodhisattvaの音写「菩提薩埵」の略。悟りを求める人の意》仏語。１ 仏の位の次にあり、悟りを求め、衆生を救うために多くの修行を重ねる者。文殊・観音・弥勒・勢至・普賢など。元来は釈迦の前生時代の称で、大乗仏教がおこると、将来仏になる者の意で用いられるようになった。２ 昔、朝廷から高徳の僧に賜った称号。「行基菩薩」３ 本地垂迹説により、日本の神につけた尊号。「八幡大菩薩」, one who stands next below the rank of a buddha, seeks awakening and undergoes many practices to save living beings; originally the name of Śākyamuni in his former lives, and with the rise of the Mahāyāna the name of one who will become a buddha; a title the court once granted to monks of high virtue; a title given to Japanese kami under the theory that they are manifestations of buddhas [1]. 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives the same three and three more, each with its earliest example: the doctrinal sense, first in the 勝鬘経義疏 of 611; the monk's honorific, first in the 日本往生極楽記 of about 985; the kami's honorific, first in the 文徳実録 under the year 857; a gagaku dancer costumed as a bodhisattva; 米の異称, another name for rice, first in the 慶長見聞集 of 1614; and, from that, a kitchen maid [1]. The English bodhisattva covers the first sense and none of the others; English has no word for a monk or a god honored with the title, and saint, the word the bilingual dictionaries reached for, is a paraphrase with a different theology under it. The English word also carries a slant of its own. Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr. note that Western literature often describes the bodhisattva as someone who postpones his enlightenment in order to save all beings from suffering, and that this description is primarily relevant to the mainstream schools, while in the Mahāyāna … the bodhisattva postpones nothing, instead striving to achieve buddhahood as quickly as possible [2]. The Japanese definitions do not say postpone: 大辞泉 has 悟りを求め、衆生を救うために多くの修行を重ねる者, and the 日国 悟りを求め修行するとともに、他の者も悟りに到達させようと努める者, one who seeks awakening and practices, and strives to bring others to awakening too [1]. The postponement does have a Japanese scholarly voice: Sadakata Akira 定方晟, in the 世界大百科事典, writes that the Mahāyāna bodhisattva 自分の悟りを一時延期しても衆生のそばにとどまって, stays beside living beings even at the cost of deferring his own awakening, and adds his own suspicion that the idea carries 成仏しえぬ自己への反省と、成仏以前の段階にとどまることの正当化, a reflection on the self that cannot become a buddha, and a justification for remaining at the stage before buddhahood [1]. Katō Junshō 加藤純章, in the ニッポニカ, gives the word's doctrinal history in a sentence: in the early schools the bodhisattva was singular, the Buddha before his awakening; with the Mahāyāna it became plural, every practitioner on the path; and 菩薩は大乗仏教を理解するうえで、もっとも重要なキーワードである, the bodhisattva is the most important keyword for understanding Mahāyāna Buddhism [1].

The words. The two characters are a transliteration and contribute nothing of their own: 菩 and 薩 are the first and third syllables of 菩提薩埵 bodai satta, the Chinese rendering of bodhisattva, and the abbreviation was made in Chinese before it reached Japan: the 大智度論 below, a Chinese text of the early fifth century, already writes 菩薩 [1][3][4]. The canon glossed the word part by part. The 大智度論, in Kumārajīva's Chinese, asks what bodhi and sattva name and answers 菩提名諸佛道，薩埵名或眾生，或大心, bodhi names the way of the buddhas; sattva names either a living being or a great mind; a second gloss then takes the two characters of sattva one at a time, 稱讚好法名為「薩」，好法體相名為「埵」, praising the good dharma is called 薩; the substance and marks of the good dharma are called 埵; and the passage closes 是名菩提薩埵, such a one is called bodhisattva [4]. The Japanese dictionaries carry the tradition's paraphrases of that gloss, 覚有情, 大心衆生, 開士, 大士 [3]. The reading is bosatsu, the only reading any modern witness gives. An older reading bosachi, with the go-on さち for 薩, survives in Heian prose: the 日国 cites the 鈴虫 chapter of the 源氏物語, 阿彌陀仏けうしのほさち, Amida and the attendant bodhisattvas, which the modern critical text prints as 阿弥陀仏、脇士の菩薩 [1][5], and the 大日本國語辭典 of 1919 adds a line of the 枕草子 [6]. Neither character has an older glyph form, and every witness below prints 菩薩 but two: the 1897 typeset of the 扶桑略記 sets the copyists' abbreviation 𦬇, the two grass radicals stacked, for the two characters, and Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 prints 薩轢 at its headword (see the Notes). In romaji the word has homographs that the kanji settle: Brinkley's dictionary of 1896 sets 菩薩 beside 簿冊 bosatsu, account books [7], and Inouye's of 1909 sets it beside 謀殺 bōsatsu, murder, and 忙殺 bōsatsu, being worked to death [8]. The design carries the kanji.

The text in English. The English word did not come through Japanese: bodhisattva is a borrowing from Sanskrit, and its English history belongs to the Indologists [9]. The romaji was in English print by 1727, in the English translation of Engelbert Kaempfer's History of Japan, as bosatz: a general name for all the other foreign idols brought into Japan, and the suffix of a bodhisattva's name [10][11]. The bilingual dictionaries made it a headword: first Walter Henry Medhurst's vocabulary, lithographed at Batavia in 1830 by a compiler who had never been to Japan, which gives Bo sats', 菩薩, A demi god [12]; then Hepburn's and those after it, which tried, edition after edition, to say what it meant. James Curtis Hepburn's first edition of 1867 has BOSATSZ, ボサツ, 菩薩, Name of Buddhist divinities inferior to Hotoke [13]; his second of 1872 replaces that with a definition in the language of the Sanskritists, The Sanscrit word Bodhisattva, meaning he whose essence has become intelligence; a being that has only once more to pass through human existence before it attains to Buddhaship; a class of Buddhas who are not yet perfected by entrance into Nirvâna [14], which is the wording of Ernest John Eitel's Hand-book of Chinese Buddhism of 1870 [15], and the fourth of 1888 keeps it word for word [16]. Frank Brinkley's dictionary of 1896 has A being worshipped by the Buddhists as next to none but a Buddha [7]; Inouye's of 1909 has one word, A Buddhisattva, misspelled [8]; E. Papinot's dictionary of 1910 has Buddhist saints who have to pass only once more through a human existence before attaining the state of hotoke (Buddha) [17]; Kenkyūsha's of 1942 has Bodhi-sattva; Buddha elect [18], and its fourth edition of 1974 a bodhisattva; a Buddhist saint; a Buddha elect [19]. The Buddhist dictionaries of the later twentieth century give the concept, not the word: Daitō Shuppansha's of 1965 has A being destined for enlightenment and a separate entry for 菩薩號, Bodhisattva used as a title [20]; Inagaki's, first published in 1984 and read here in its third edition of 1988, tells the story of the title [21]; Kodansha's encyclopedia of 1993 cross-refers bosatsu to bodhisattva and there gives the postponement, has vowed not to become a Buddha until all other beings have been helped to attain this state [22]; the Princeton dictionary of 2014 lists J. bosatsu under the Sanskrit headword [2]. Today JMdict gives bodhisattva; one who has reached enlightenment but vows to save all beings before becoming a buddha [23], and the current Kenkyūsha (a) Bodhisattva; a Buddhist saint [24].

The historical record

Early fifth century, the 大智度論, the great commentary on the Perfection of Wisdom, in Kumārajīva's Chinese. The fourth fascicle glosses the word part by part: 問曰：何等名菩提？何等名薩埵？答曰：菩提名諸佛道，薩埵名或眾生，或大心。是人諸佛道功德盡欲得，其心不可斷不可破，如金剛山，是名大心, Question: what is called bodhi, and what is called sattva? Answer: bodhi names the way of the buddhas; sattva names a living being, or a great mind. This person wishes to obtain every merit of the way of the buddhas, and his mind cannot be cut or broken, like a mountain of diamond: that is called a great mind; after a verse, a second gloss takes 薩 and 埵 one at a time, 復次，稱讚好法名為「薩」，好法體相名為「埵」, again: praising the good dharma is called 薩; the substance and marks of the good dharma are called 埵; and then 菩薩心自利利他故，度一切眾生故，知一切法實性故，行阿耨多羅三藐三菩提道故，為一切賢聖之所稱讚故，是名菩提薩埵, because the bodhisattva's mind benefits self and other, because he ferries all beings across, because he knows the true nature of all dharmas, because he walks the way of unsurpassed perfect awakening, and because he is praised by all the sages, he is called bodhisattva [4]. Two later fascicles gloss the word again. The forty-fourth: 菩提，秦言無上智慧。薩埵，或名眾生，或是大心。為無上智慧故，出大心，名為菩提薩埵, bodhi is, in our language, unsurpassed wisdom; sattva is called a living being, or a great mind; one who brings forth a great mind for the sake of unsurpassed wisdom is called bodhisattva [25]. The fifty-third says where the name stops: 佛已得是菩提，不名為菩提薩埵，大心滿足故, a buddha has already attained this bodhi and is not called bodhisattva, because his great mind is fulfilled [26]. This is the sense the word carried into Japan, and the one the design sells.

611, the 勝鬘経義疏, the commentary on the Śrīmālā sūtra attributed to Prince Shōtoku. The 日国 places its first Japanese example of the doctrinal sense here [1]. The commentary opens with its own claim of origin, 此是大倭國上宮王私集非海彼本, this is the private compilation of the Prince of the Upper Palace of Great Wa, not a text from across the sea, and the word stands in it in that sense; on the sūtra's figure of the four treasures it writes 一大海比菩薩。言廣抱衆生卽如大海抱納無窮, first, the great ocean is likened to the bodhisattva: it means that he embraces living beings widely, as the great ocean takes in without end [27].

725 to 727, the 大日経疏, Yixing's 一行 commentary on the Mahāvairocana sūtra. The 日国 gives it for the full form 菩提薩埵 [3]. Its first fascicle explains the sūtra's 諸大菩薩, the great bodhisattvas, by the Sanskrit, 具出梵文，應云摩訶菩提薩埵, given in full from the Sanskrit, it should be mahā-bodhisattva, and then quotes the 大智度論's gloss above under the name 釋論, the commentary: 菩提名諸佛道，薩埵名眾生、或名勇心, bodhi names the way of the buddhas; sattva names a living being, or is called a brave mind. It reads 勇心, brave mind, where the 大智度論 as served reads 大心, great mind [28].

749, the 続日本紀, the second of the six national histories, under the second month of 天平勝宝元年, in the typeset of 1883. The obituary of Gyōki 行基 (668–749), the monk who built bridges, ports and almshouses across the Kinai and led the laity in the work, ends with the honors he received: 豐櫻彦天皇甚敬重焉。詔授大僧正之位。并施四百人出家。和尚靈異神驗觸類而多。時人号曰行基菩薩。留止之處皆建道場, Emperor Shōmu revered him greatly; by edict he conferred the rank of Great Archbishop and granted the ordination of four hundred persons. The master's wonders and divine signs were many of every kind. The people of the time called him Gyōki Bosatsu. Wherever he stayed, a place of practice was built [29]. What the emperor conferred was the rank 大僧正; what the people gave was the name. The kotobank biographies keep the distinction: 生前から菩薩と仰がれ, revered as a bosatsu in his own lifetime, and 行基菩薩と称された, was called Gyōki Bosatsu [30].

857, the 日本文徳天皇実録, the fifth national history, under 天安元年. The 日国's earliest example of the kami's honorific: the two shrines of Ōarai and Sakatsura in Hitachi were given the title 薬師菩薩名神 [1]. The theory that made a kami a bodhisattva, 本地垂迹, held the Japanese gods to be traces left by buddhas and bodhisattvas as their original ground, and the title followed. Its most familiar instance is 八幡大菩薩, Hachiman as Great Bodhisattva, which the ブリタニカ says began, 始るとされる, when the Usa god was styled 護国霊験威力神通大菩薩 in 781, and which the 日国 attests in the 延喜式 of 927 [31].

About 985, the 日本往生極楽記, a Japanese collection of rebirth biographies. The 日国's first example of the monk's honorific as a Japanese word is its entry on 行基菩薩, written two centuries and more after the man [1]. The entry's own narration calls him 菩薩 throughout, though the monk Chikō 智光 and Gyōki himself say 行基 in it, and the one honor it has the emperor confer is the rank (the lecturer's seat at the dedication of the Tōdaiji, which the emperor also offers, Gyōki declines): 聖武天皇甚敬重。詔授大僧正, Emperor Shōmu revered him greatly and by edict conferred the rank of Great Archbishop [32].

1001 to 1014, the 源氏物語, the 鈴虫 chapter. Murasaki's word for the attendant bodhisattvas of an Amida triad is the older reading: 阿彌陀仏けうしのほさちおのおの白たんしてつくり奉りたる in the 日国's citation, Amida and the attendant bosachi, each made of white sandalwood; the critical text reads 阿弥陀仏、脇士の菩薩、おのおの白檀して作りたてまつりたる [1][5].

After 1094, the 扶桑略記, the chronicle of Japan, weighted toward Buddhism, compiled by the Tendai monk Kōen 皇円, in the typeset of 1897. The court's grant is told here, the earliest known telling of it, three and a half centuries after the man, in a passage the chronicle marks as taken from a biography (已上傳文也): 同月十四日。於平城中島宮。請大僧正行基。爲其戒師。太上天皇受菩薩戒。名勝滿。中宮受戒。名德太。皇后受戒。名萬福。即日改大僧正。名曰大菩薩, on the fourteenth day of the same month, at the Nakajima palace in Nara, the Great Archbishop Gyōki was invited to be preceptor; the retired emperor received the bodhisattva precepts and the name Shōman, the empress dowager the precepts and the name Tokuta, the empress the precepts and the name Manpuku; on the same day his style was changed from Great Archbishop and he was named Great Bodhisattva [33]. The chronicle is dated by its last entry, of 1094, and the dictionaries place it in the late Heian period; they also warn that its borrowed stories want criticism [34]. The same page carries, directly after the passage, a note marked 私云 that doubts it: 私云。太上天皇者。誰人哉。元正天皇廿年崩。若是□書違歟。可勘之, a note: who is this retired emperor? Empress Genshō died in the twentieth year. Perhaps the text is in error; this wants examining [33]. The 元亨釈書 tells the story again below.

1300, a grant entered in the 拾芥抄, the medieval encyclopedia of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in its list of monks' titles. 大法師叡尊〈思円房、号興正菩薩、正安二年閏七月三日被下勅書〉, the great dharma-master Eison, called Kōshō Bosatsu; the imperial letter was handed down on the third day of the intercalary seventh month of Shōan 2 [1]. It is the earliest of the three grants that Nara's study of the title judges certainly made [35]: Eison 叡尊 (1201–1290), who revived the precepts and refounded Saidaiji, received it ten years after his death.

1322, the 元亨釈書, the first comprehensive history of Buddhism in Japan, by Kokan Shiren 虎関師錬 (1278–1346), in the typeset of 1901. Here the grant to Gyōki is told again: 二十一年正月。皇帝受菩薩戒。及皇太后皇后。乃賜號大菩薩。二月二日。於菅原寺東南院右脇而寂。年八十二, In the first month of the twenty-first year the emperor received the bodhisattva precepts, as did the empress dowager and the empress, and thereupon granted him the title Great Bodhisattva. On the second day of the second month he died, lying on his right side, in the southeast hall of Sugawaradera, aged eighty-two [36]. The sentence is five hundred and seventy-three years after the event, the same story in fewer words, and the eighth-century record does not carry it. Nara Hiromoto 奈良弘元, in his study of the title's history, the one read here, sets the two texts side by side, adds the 諸門跡譜 and the 僧官補任, which tell the same grant in the same year, and, without citing the 扶桑略記, rules: 行基の歿後五十日ほどして書かれた『大僧正舎利瓶記』には、菩薩号に関して、なんの言及もないし、『続日本紀』もしかりである。したがって、行基に対して菩薩号が下賜されたか否かは、今のところ不明である, the reliquary inscription written some fifty days after Gyōki's death makes no mention of a bodhisattva title, and neither does the Shoku Nihongi; therefore whether the title was granted to Gyōki is at present unknown; the grants he judges certainly made are those to Eison, Ninshō and Kakujō, 鎌倉時代の末期の頃, at the end of the Kamakura period [35]. The story that Shōmu granted the title in 749 is a later telling, whose earliest known written form is a chronicle compiled after 1094, of a name the people had given.

1614, the 慶長見聞集, Miura Jōshin's 三浦浄心 miscellany of Edo life, in the typeset of 1906. The book's colophon is dated 1614, but it holds matter of the Kan'ei years (1624–1644), and the ニッポニカ calls the date unconfirmed [37]. The rice sense, with its own explanation: 米を菩薩と云ふ事、種の時は文珠菩薩、苗の時は地藏菩薩、稻の時は虛空藏菩薩、穗の時は普賢菩薩、飯の時は觀世音菩薩、一體分身、皆毘沙門天にてまします, on rice being called bosatsu: as seed it is Monju Bosatsu, as seedling Jizō Bosatsu, as the standing plant Kokūzō Bosatsu, as the ear Fugen Bosatsu, as cooked rice Kanzeon Bosatsu, one body in many forms, and all of them Bishamonten [37]. The 日国 quotes the same chapter for its earliest example of the sense, かるがゆへに人間は米をぼさつと云, and that is why people call rice bosatsu [1].

1899 and 1901, the 俚言集覧 and the 皇国俚諺叢, two dictionaries of common speech in Meiji printings. Both carry the rice sense as usage. The 俚言集覧 is Ōta Zensai's 太田全斎 Edo dictionary, compiled between 1797 and 1829, read here in the enlarged edition of Inoue Yorikuni and Kondō Heijō, whose middle volume is dated 1899 [38]. Under こめ, a passage headed 增 quotes the 物類稱呼, Koshigaya Gozan's 越谷吾山 dictionary of dialects of 1775 [38]: 米ハ遠江國天龍の川上にてボサツと稱す（此所にてハ米といはずしてぼさつとのみとなふ）, rice, on the upper Tenryū in Tōtōmi, is called bosatsu (there they do not say kome, they say only bosatsu). It adds that pilgrims to Ōmine and Haguro call rice bosatsu during their seven days of abstinence, and then explains a second word by the copyists' hand: a paste of bran and salt is called ささぢん, because 佛經を書寫する早書の法に菩薩の二字の艸冠のみをとりて, in the rapid hand used for copying sutras the two characters were written with their grass radicals alone, so that sasa means bosatsu, 是も又米をぼさつといふ事によれる也, and this too rests on rice being called bosatsu [39]. The shorthand explains sasa; the rice sense it takes as given. The 皇国俚諺叢, which quotes the eighteenth-century 和訓栞: 俗に菜穀を菩薩といふ、遠江天龍川の上にては、專ら稱す、○信濃にては米をぼさつといふ, in common speech grain is called bosatsu; on the upper Tenryū in Tōtōmi it is the usual word; in Shinano rice is called bosatsu [40].

1919, the 大日本國語辭典, the great Taishō dictionary of Japanese, fourth volume. The entry orders the senses as the 日国 does a century later, with most of the same witnesses: ぼ-さつ 菩薩 (梵 Bodhi-sattva) 〔ぼだいさった（菩提薩埵）の略、大覺有情と譯す〕, then 一 佛語。佛に亞ぐ位置, the rank next below a buddha; 二 昔、朝廷より碩德の高僧に賜はりたる號, a title the court once granted to monks of great virtue, citing the 拾芥抄; 三 昔時、佛家に擬して用ひたる神の尊號, a title of kami modeled on the Buddhist one, citing the 文徳実録; 四 the gagaku piece; 五 こめ（米）, citing not the 慶長見聞集 but the 清良記 for the same account of the stages, 米を菩薩と申し候事、種子の時は文珠菩薩, and the 毛吹草's proverb 菩薩實が入ればうつむく、人間實が入れば仰く, rice bows its head when it fills; a person lifts his; and 六, from the rice, a kitchen maid, 米を菩薩といふより、めしたき下女の稱 [6]. The lexicography of this word has been stable since the Taishō period.

What is not a source. 菩提薩埵, the full transliteration, is the word's own longer form and has its own dictionary entry [3]; 大菩薩 is the honorific's fuller shape, in 行基大菩薩 and 八幡大菩薩 [31]; 菩薩号 names the title as an institution [35]. None is an origin for the design's word, which is the canon's, and none is a pairing in the proverb's sense: they are the same word at different lengths.

The word in English

1727, Engelbert Kaempfer, The History of Japan, in the English of Johann Caspar Scheuchzer, read in the Glasgow edition of 1906. The romaji, a century before the first dictionary, as a common noun and as the tail of a name. In the third book, on religion: All other foreign Idols, the worship of whom was brought into Japan from beyond Sea, are comprehended under one general name of Bosatz, or Budz, and the Buddhists are the adherents of the Bosatz, or Budsdo-Religion [11]. In the second book's chapters on the ecclesiastical emperors: The Soul of Quosobosatz is believ'd to have by transmigration dwelt in him, and a mother's dream, I the holy Gusobosatz must be born again to teach the world, and therefore I descend to enter into thy Womb [10]; and in the fourth book, among the gods named in the general form of a Japanese oath, Fatzman Daibosatz between Missima Dai Mioosin and Tenman Dai Sisai Tensin [11]. Kaempfer's spellings are his own, and bosatz is what he heard.

1830, Walter Henry Medhurst, An English and Japanese, and Japanese and English Vocabulary, Batavia, pages 49 and 180. In the English and Japanese half, in the section on religion, between Topical gods and Dragon king: Demi-gods, Bo sats', 菩薩; in the Japanese and English half, 菩薩, Bo sats', A demi god [12]. The earliest known dictionary entry for the word in English. The title page says the book was compiled from native works, and the introduction says how: the author has never been in Japan, and from native books shown him by several gentlemen from Japan, particularly in the Japanese and Chinese character combined, compiled it from his knowledge of the latter language; the whole has been written by a Chinese, who understands neither English nor Japanese.

1867, James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, page 32. BOSATSZ, ボサツ, 菩薩, n. Name of Buddhist divinities inferior to Hotoke [13]. Hepburn's first spelling, before he settled on tsu. His preface names the small vocabulary of Dr. Medhurst published in Batavia in 1830 as one of the only two works of the kind within his reach, the other the Jesuits' Japanese and Portuguese dictionary of 1603, and says his principal dependence was upon the living teacher [13]. His divinities inferior to Hotoke places the word where Medhurst's demi god does, below the buddhas; whether he had it from the book or from the teacher, the page does not say.

1871, The Far East, Yokohama, volume 2, number 7, September 1, 1871. A photographic magazine's notice of a Hachiman shrine: After death he was deified under the title of Hatchiman dai Bosatsz, and regarded as the god of War, on page 78; and a year later, in the same paper's report of the O'Kaicho at Shiba (volume 3, number 7, September 2, 1872, page 75), the images of Monjo Bosatsz' and Fungen Bosatsz' in a temple hall [41]. Hepburn's sz spelling, in the English press of the treaty port, five years before Griffis.

1872, Hepburn, second edition, page 38. BOSATSU, ボサツ, n. The Sanscrit word Bodhisattva, meaning he whose essence has become intelligence; a being that has only once more to pass through human existence before it attains to Buddhaship; a class of Buddhas who are not yet perfected by entrance into Nirvâna [14]. The definition is Eitel's, from the Hand-book of Chinese Buddhism of 1870, whose entry reads he whose essence (sattva) has become intelligence (bodhi) and the third class of saints who have to pass only once more through human life before becoming Buddhas, including also those Buddhas who are not yet perfected by entering Nirvâna [15]; Hepburn took it over nearly word for word. Its second clause, only once more, describes the bodhisattva of one more birth, not the bodhisattva of the Mahāyāna path; the third clause, a class of Buddhas, is wrong on the tradition's own terms, since a bodhisattva is by definition not yet a buddha. The page prints 薩埵 at the headword, on which see the Notes.

1875, the Japan Weekly Mail. Seen only in a search window over its text layer, the page not seen: Kanzeon bosatz … Nikko bosatz … Guakko bosatz [42]. The word as a suffix in English, already, and in a spelling of its own.

1876, William Elliot Griffis, The Mikado's Empire. The warrior's prayer, Namu Hachiman Dai-bosatsu, glossed Glory to Hachiman, the incarnation of Great Buddha (page 228), and later in the book, of the god's shrine, The Buddhists had already canonized him as Hachiman Dai Bosatsŭ, or the Incarnation of Buddha of the Eight Banners (page 411) [43]. The kami's honorific again, as Kaempfer printed it in 1727 and The Far East in 1871; the gloss makes Hachiman a Buddha, which the title does not say.

1888, Hepburn, fourth edition, page 44. BOSATSU ボサツ 菩薩, the 1872 definition word for word [16].

1896, Frank Brinkley, Nanjō Bun'yū and Iwasaki Yukichika, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, page 86. Bosatsu, ぼさつ, 菩薩, n., then the book's own bracketed Sans., then A being worshipped by the Buddhists as next to none but a Buddha, on the same page as Bosatsu, 簿冊, account books, and Bosatsu-ibara, a plant [7]. A definition of rank, which is what the Japanese dictionaries' 仏の位の次にあり also gives [1], and no theology.

1909, Inouye Jukichi 井上十吉, Inouye's Japanese-English Dictionary, page 111. Bosatsu (菩薩), n. A Buddhisattva, followed by 謀殺 murder and 忙殺 [8]. The book's own misspelling; the entry gives the word and nothing more.

1910, E. Papinot, Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan, volume 1, page 48, read in the reprint of 1964. Bosatsu … Buddhist saints who have to pass only once more through a human existence before attaining the state of hotoke (Buddha), and at page 134, under Gyōgi-Bosatsu, that the emperor bestowed on him the title of Bosatsu [17]. The definition descends from Hepburn's; the sentence on Gyōki repeats the chronicles' story as fact, the first English book on this page to do so.

1942, Takenobu Yoshitarō, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, American edition, page 110. Bosatsu (菩薩) n. 《梵》Bodhi-sattva; Buddha elect. ¶外面如菩薩内心如夜叉 An angel without, a devil within [18]. Buddha elect is Kenkyūsha's own English and stays through the fourth edition; the proverb, a bodhisattva's face and a demon's heart, is the idiom of the word this dictionary gives.

1965, Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary, Daitō Shuppansha, pages 20 and 21. Bosatsu 菩薩 bodhisattva. A being destined for enlightenment; as its second sense A designation of an eminent Buddhist monk that was given by the Emperor, beginning with Gyōki-bosatsu, a name given by the Emperor Shōmu, and as its third A title given to an eminent Buddhist monk by people, e.g., Nichiren is called Nichiren-daibosatsu by his followers; and an entry of its own, Bosatsu-gō 菩薩號 Bodhisattva used as a title [20]. The first English dictionary on this page to enter the title as its own sense. It repeats the grant to Gyōki as fact, as Papinot had, and alone among these books sets a title the people give beside the one the emperor gives.

1974, Masuda Kō, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, page 103. bo⌝satsu 菩薩 n. 《梵》a bodhisattva; a Buddhist saint; a Buddha elect [19]. The head carries the book's accent mark after bo, the sign its bracketed pronunciations also use, and no macron; the entries after it, 謀殺 and 忙殺, are bōsatsu.

1988, John Stevens, Sacred Calligraphy of the East, revised edition. The word as the suffix of a name in the plates of seed syllables: Monju Bosatsu (Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva), Fugen Bosatsu, Jizō Bosatsu [44]. This is how the romaji lives in twentieth-century English: attached to a proper name, in art history and Japanese studies, while the common noun for the concept stays bodhisattva.

1989, Inagaki Hisao, A Dictionary of Japanese Buddhist Terms, first American edition. Under the title: The first such instance in Japan was in 749 when Gyōgi 行基 (668–749) was given the title of daibosatsu by Emperor Shōmu [21]. The sentence is the chronicles', the 扶桑略記's and the 元亨釈書's, not the 続日本紀's; the eighth-century record says the people gave the name, and the study of the title calls the grant unknown [29][35][33]. The same claim stands in the ブリタニカ's Japanese entry, 日本では聖武天皇が行基に菩薩の号を賜わったのを初めとする [1].

1993, Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, Kodansha. bosatsu → bodhisattva, and under the English headword a bodhisattva has vowed not to become a Buddha until all other beings have been helped to attain this state [22]. The postponement, as English reference works give it.

2014, Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Under bodhisattva, with J. bosatsu among the forms: the etymology of sattva left uncertain, the gloss a “being (sattva) intent on achieving enlightenment (bodhi)”, and the caution quoted in the Overview, that the postpones his enlightenment description belongs to the mainstream schools and that in the Mahāyāna the bodhisattva postpones nothing [2].

Today. JMdict gives bodhisattva; one who has reached enlightenment but vows to save all beings before becoming a buddha [23]; Kenkyūsha's current (a) Bodhisattva; a Buddhist saint [24]. The design is sold as Bodhisattva, with the line A bodhisattva, one who seeks awakening for the sake of all beings, which is Timothy L. Jackowski's for Takase Studios; the title is the English word the Japanese one transliterates, and the line renders the Japanese dictionaries' definition rather than the English reference works' postponement. A rendering must keep the two things the word holds: the seeking of awakening, and that it is done for others.

A reading

The word for sale is a sound. Two characters that mean nothing on their own carry the whole of a Sanskrit idea into Japanese, and the buyer who asks what 菩 means or what 薩 means is asking the wrong question, as the catalogue's own explanation says. The 大智度論 does give 薩 a sense, praising the good dharma, but as one of the two characters of sattva and inside its gloss of that word: it reads meaning into the sound, and it does not make 薩 a word. The right question is what the sound has meant, and the answer is that it has meant several things in Japan that it never meant in India. The canon's bodhisattva is a being whose mind is set on the way of the buddhas and who walks toward it for the sake of others; that is the sense on the scroll, and I would put the English of it exactly as the page does, one who seeks awakening for the sake of all beings, and not as the English reference works put it, one who postpones his own enlightenment. The postponement is a Western description that Buswell and Lopez assign to the wrong schools, and the definitions of the 大辞泉 and the 日国, which had the tradition's own gloss to work from, do not use it. Sadakata's aside that the idea may be a rationalization for not attaining is the honest footnote to it.

What the word did next in Japan is the part a philologist should tell plainly, because the reference books do not. A people who saw a monk build bridges called him a bodhisattva while he lived; that is what the 続日本紀 says, in four characters, 時人号曰. Three and a half centuries later a chronicle wrote that the emperor, on the day he took the precepts from him, renamed him Great Bodhisattva, and a note on the chronicle's own page asks who that retired emperor could have been; a monastic history told the story again in 1322, and the sentence has been copied since by the dictionaries that needed a first instance of the title, in Japanese and in English, so that a reader of Inagaki or the ブリタニカ learns as fact what Nara's study of the title calls unknown. The court's grants that can be dated begin with Eison in 1300, and the title Japan gave its gods, 八幡大菩薩, is the same act of honor turned toward the shrines. The rice is the sense I like best and would never put on a scroll: grain named for the bodhisattvas, a different one at each stage of the plant, as the 慶長見聞集 and the 清良記 tell it, and kept in the mountains of Tōtōmi and Shinano, where the dictionaries of common speech, quoting earlier ones, report it.

In English the word never settled into a word. Kaempfer's translator printed it in 1727 as a general name for the imported gods and inside the names of gods and saints; the general name did not last, and the suffix has stayed. Medhurst entered it in a vocabulary in 1830 as a demi god; Hepburn, who had Medhurst's book, made it a headword in 1867, changed his definition once in three editions, and the dictionaries after him settled on saint or Buddha elect and let bodhisattva, which English already had from Sanskrit, do the work. Bosatsu survives in English as a suffix, Monju Bosatsu and Jizō Bosatsu, which is a fair picture of how it survives in Japanese too: a word met in names. On a scroll it stands alone, and stands for the idea whole.

Notes

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Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Japanese Scroll of Bodhisattva (bosatsu) in a block font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
菩薩VB2CBlock
Japanese Scroll of Bodhisattva (bosatsu) in a cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
菩薩VC3BCursive
Japanese Scroll of Bodhisattva (bosatsu) in Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's own style (Eri's Choice)
菩薩VD3BEri's Choice
Japanese Scroll of Bodhisattva (bosatsu) in a semi-cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
菩薩VS2CSemi-Cursive

References

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  41. The Far East, Yokohama, vol. 2, no. 7, September 1, 1871, p. 78; and vol. 3, no. 7, September 2, 1872, "The O'Kaicho, Shiba", p. 75; both issues bound in one Internet Archive item, fareast2738unse, read at the page images (leaves n6 and n7; n294 and n296). https://archive.org/details/fareast2738unse/page/n7
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  44. John Stevens, Sacred Calligraphy of the East, revised edition, Shambhala, Boston and Shaftesbury, 1988, p. 48, The Thirteen Buddhas.

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Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · two fresh-context readers (Claude), 2026-11-01, every claim in the page's summary block traced to its source, claim by claim: round 1 one PASS and one FAIL on two wrong facts, both corrected at the source; round 2 PASS, both; wordings recorded and fixed · citation sweep (Claude), 2026-11-01, 52 citations checked against the page text layers and the books held here: eight differences, each judged at the page image and corrected where the history was wrong; the web addresses and the books not held outside its reach

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Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 菩薩 (bosatsu)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/bosatsu.