地水火風空 chi sui ka fū kū Five Elements
This is a philological study of the Japanese term 地水火風空 (chi sui ka fū kū), the five great elements of Indian and Buddhist physics. It spans the record from Kūkai's dedication of about 835, the first Japanese attestation of the doctrine, through two Edo handbooks that made the five a commonplace, to Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings of 1645, and it examines why the fifth element, 空, means space to the doctrine and something else again to a swordsman.
Abstract
地水火風空, chi sui ka fū kū, names the five great elements of Indian and Buddhist physics, earth, water, fire, wind and space, of which everything is made. The doctrine's first Japanese attestation is Kūkai's dedication of about 835, and by the early Edo period it was a commonplace of Tendai handbooks and divination manuals alike. Miyamoto Musashi named the five books of his 1645 Book of Five Rings for the same five characters, and in the last book gives 空 a swordsman's sense: not space, but the nothing that is known by knowing what is. Both senses are right about their own text, and the fifth element's two meanings, one doctrinal and one martial, are the history a reader of the five needs.
Overview
The sense. The five great elements of Indian and Buddhist physics, of which everything is made; the fifth is space, not sky and not emptiness.
The words. Chi sui ka fū kū. Five characters that name the 五大, the five great elements, Sanskrit mahābhūta: 地 earth, 水 water, 火 fire, 風 wind, 空 space. The first four are the 四大 of Indian thought; the fifth was added to them, and 世界大百科事典 says what it is: 空大は物質の存在する場所を要素として数えたものである, space counted as an element, the place in which matter exists [1]. That is the 空 of this set, Sanskrit ākāśa. It is not the sky, which is what the character means in ordinary Japanese, and it is not the Buddhist emptiness śūnyatā, which is written with the same character and is a different word. The readings of the set are the Sino-Japanese ones, ち・すい・か・ふう・くう; the kun readings, mizu, hi, kaze, sora, are the characters' everyday readings and not the doctrine's. Esoteric Buddhism adds a sixth, 識, consciousness, to make the 六大, and the five-ring stupa, the 五輪塔 that stands in every Japanese graveyard, is the five stacked from the earth up.
The text in English. The English names most readers know for the five are Harris's of 1974: Ground, Water, Fire, Wind and Void.
The historical record
About 835. Kūkai, a dedicatory text for mandalas painted on behalf of the four benefactors, in the 性靈集, in a printing of 1600. The first Japanese attestation 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives for 五大, in a text Kūkai signs as 弟子苾蒭空海. The dedication turns to everyone who helped, of every rank and every attitude, and then states the doctrine, in a run that crosses a leaf of the 1600 print: 合掌低頭護致見聞親疎恩 (the leaf before, which reads 護致 where the 1893 typeset and 日国 read 讚毀) ‖ 怨五大所遍心識所在悟阿字於本初覺三寶於三密, those who joined their palms and bowed their heads, those who praised and those who slandered, who saw and who heard, the close and the distant, the grateful and the hostile: wherever the five elements pervade, there consciousness is; may they awaken to the letter A at the origin of all, and to the Three Jewels in the three mysteries [2]. 五大所遍、心識所在: the five elements and consciousness are everywhere together, which is the esoteric six in one line. The 1600 printing breaks the sentence across a leaf, 親疎恩 at the end of one and 怨五大所遍 at the head of the next; the 1893 typeset carries it whole [3].
Early Edo, a Tendai handbook of terms, 『天台圓宗四教五時西谷名目』. The five with the sixth, mapped onto the body for a student: 六果者地水火風空識也。地ハ人ノ肉身、水ハ人ノ血、火ハ人ノ気、風ハ人ノ息、空ハ鼻ノ穴、識ハ心也。仍テ人身云物無シ此地水火風空識可無正体物ヲ, the six fruits are earth, water, fire, wind, space and consciousness: earth is a person's flesh, water the blood, fire the warmth, wind the breath, space the nostrils, consciousness the mind; so what we call a person's body is nothing, and these six have no substance of their own [4]. 空 as the nostrils is space in its plainest sense, the hollow through which the breath passes. The catalogue dates the print to the 寛永 era.
Early Edo, a divination manual, 『簠簋抄』. The five as the everyday frame of yin-yang lore: 五形ト者地水火風空也又五色也, the five forms are earth, water, fire, wind and space, and also the five colors; and in the second volume, 既ニ地水火風空ノ五大テ云時, when one speaks in terms of the five great elements, earth, water, fire, wind and space [5]. A commonplace, which is what the five had become: the NDL's full-text search returns the string in more than 150 books of the classical facet alone.
1645. Miyamoto Musashi, 『五輪書』, the Book of the Earth and the Book of Space, in the 1909 typeset of the 宮本武藏遺蹟顯彰會. In the first book he explains the plan: 一此兵法の書五卷に仕立る事 五ツの道を分ち、一まき一まきにして其利を知らしめんが爲に、地水火風空として、五卷に書顯す也、地の卷に於ては兵法の道の大體、我一流の見…, on making this book of strategy in five scrolls: to divide the way into five and let each scroll teach its own advantage, I write it out in five scrolls as earth, water, fire, wind and space; in the scroll of earth, the outline of the way of strategy and my school's view… [6]. The last book opens by saying what 空 is to a swordsman: 二刀一流の兵法の道、空の卷として書顯はす事、空と云心は物每のなき所、しれざる事を空と見たつる也、勿論空はなき也、有所を知りて無所を知る是則空也, writing the way of the two-sword school as the Book of Space: the meaning of 空 is the place where there is nothing; what cannot be known we take as 空; of course 空 is nothing; to know what is and thereby know what is not, that is 空 [6]. It closes 空有善無惡 智は有也 利は有也 道は有也 心は空也, space has good and no evil; wisdom is, advantage is, the way is, and the mind is space, and is dated 正保二年五月十二日 and addressed 新免武藏 to 寺尾孫之丞殿. Musashi's 空 is the Buddhist term worn as a swordsman's: not the sky, but the nothing that is known by knowing what is. The typeset also prints, at the head of the last book, the colophon of the copy it was set from, 寛文七年二月五日 寺尾夢世勝延 to 山本源介殿, a 1667 transmission; the book's editors say the original was in the hands of the 前田 family of 玉名 in Higo, and the dictionaries say no autograph survives, dating the work to the years 1643 to 1645. A second typeset, 『武術叢書』(国書刊行会 1915), has the same sentence in slightly different wording [7].
The dictionaries today. デジタル大辞泉, 五大: 仏語。万物をつくる五つの要素。地・水・火・風・空の五大種, a Buddhist word: the five elements of which everything is made. ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 gives the lineage from the Indian schools through the Sarvāstivāda to esoteric Buddhism's six and the five-ring stupa: 密教ではこれらの5元素を哲学的形而上学的にとらえ，識と合せて，この6つが宇宙を構成する要素であるとする。五輪の塔はこの思想に基づく [1].
What is not a source. The Chinese 五行, wood, fire, earth, metal and water, are a different five with a different logic of cycles and are not this set; the 簠簋抄 shows the two sets living side by side in one manual without merging [5]. The five-ring stupa is a use of the doctrine, not its source. Musashi's book is the reason a reader knows the five and not the reason they exist.
The word in English
1974. Victor Harris, A Book of Five Rings. The English names most readers know are Harris's. His contents run The Ground Book, The Water Book, The Fire Book, The Wind Book, The Book of the Void; his Musashi names the five as Ground, Water, Fire, Tradition (Wind), and Void, and his note on the last calls the void, or Nothingness, a Buddhist term; his Book of the Void opens What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man's knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void [8]. Void is Harris's word for Musashi's 空, and he reads it as the Buddhist nothing, not as the doctrine's space.
Today. The house title The Five Elements is fair; its explanation's also meaning void for 空 is Musashi's sense and not the set's. A rendering of the five as a doctrine must give space for 空; a rendering that sells them as Musashi's five books may add void and say whose word it is. One doctrine and two readings of its fifth word: from Kūkai to the dictionaries the five are the stuff of everything, and 空 among them is space, the place matter occupies, the hollow the breath goes through. Musashi takes the five as the names of his books and, in the last, reads 空 for a fighter, the nothing that is known by knowing what is. The house's void is Musashi's reading, and Harris's 1974 translation, which made the book famous in English, carried it [8]; the doctrine's 空 is space. Both are right about their own text, and a history should say which is which.
A reading
Five characters that need no argument and one that needs a sentence. The five are the doctrine in the order every source gives, the word for them is 五大, and the first Japanese to write them as a doctrine was Kūkai, in a dedication that says the elements and consciousness are everywhere together. The needed distinction is about 空: to the doctrine it is space, to Musashi it is the nothing known by knowing what is, and void belongs to the swordsman, not to the stupa.
References
- 「五大」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典・ブリタニカ国際大百科事典・世界大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/五大-65026
- 空海, 遍照發揮性靈集, 巻七, 奉爲四恩造二部大曼荼羅願文, 1600 print, vol. 4, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2543948/1/7
- 空海, 性霊集, 巻七, 1893 typeset, scan 22. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/819438/1/22
- 天台圓宗四教五時西谷名目, 寛永 era print, scan 13. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2532197/1/13
- 簠簋抄, 寛永 era print, scan 31 and scan 51. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2544460/1/31 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2544461/1/51
- 宮本武蔵, 五輪書, in 宮本武蔵 (宮本武藏遺蹟顯彰會編, 金港堂, 1909), ch. 9, scan 101 and scan 141. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/101 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/141
- 五輪書, in 武術叢書 (国書刊行会, 1915), scan 128. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/128
- Victor Harris (trans.), A Book of Five Rings, Overlook Press, 1974: the contents; the Ground Book, from p. 37; the Book of the Void, from p. 95.