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因果応報 inga ōhō Karma

因果応報 (inga ōhō) means receiving good or bad fortune as the recompense of good or bad causes. Chinese Buddhism wrote the phrase in the other order, and Japan wrote both until Meiji print settled on this one. This study follows how it darkened into a threat, and the readers who argued with the threat.

Japanese Scroll of Karma (inga ōhō) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Karma因果応報inga ōhō

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

因果応報, read inga ōhō, means receiving good or bad fortune as the recompense of good or bad causes, and the 日本国語大辞典 adds that today it is mostly used of the bad half, bad causes bearing bad fruit [1]. Chinese Buddhism wrote the phrase in the other order, 因果報應, from the seventh century: the emperor 太宗 asked the pilgrim 玄奘 about it in the last month of his life, and the canon, in the CBETA text searched for this history, carries the order 因果應報 once, in passing [2][3]. The Chinese tale collection that Japan's first book of such tales names as its model already set two shapes side by side: the recompense of the Confucian books, which may fall on a man's descendants, and the Buddhist recompense, which falls on the doer [4][5]. Japan wrote both orders through the Edo period, a book titled 因果應報 in 1728 was listed as 因果報應 the next year, and Meiji print settled on 因果應報 by the 1880s; through the same centuries the word 因果 alone came to mean misfortune, and the parents' karma visited on a child became a show barker's cry [6][7][8][9][10]. My reading, signed below, is that the four characters state a law of both halves, with no judge in it, and that the threat English and Japanese hear in it today is the history of its use, which its own scholars and teachers argued with from the sixteenth century on.

Overview

The sense. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 at kotobank defines 因果応報 as 仏語。善悪の因縁に応じて吉凶禍福の果報を受けること。善因には富楽などの善果を受け、悪因には貧苦などの悪果を受けること。現在では悪因悪果の意で用いることが多い, a Buddhist term: to receive good or ill fortune, weal or woe, as the fruit of good or evil causes; from good causes one receives good fruit such as wealth and ease, from evil causes evil fruit such as poverty and pain. Today it is mostly used in the sense of evil causes bearing evil fruit [1]. The デジタル大辞泉 gives both halves with no note on the narrowing: 前世あるいは過去の善悪の行為が因となり、その報いとして現在に善悪の結果がもたらされること, good or bad deeds in a former life or in the past become the cause, and as their recompense good or bad results are brought about now [1]. The 四字熟語を知る辞典, at the same page, says that the idea was once stretched to blame even a bodily disability on a past life, which does not fit modern feeling, and that today the phrase is mostly used of being repaid later for one's own conduct [1]. JMdict enters it as retribution; retributive justice; karma; just deserts; poetic justice; reward and punishment for one's past behavior [11].

The words. 因果 is cause and fruit, and its senses in the 日本国語大辞典 run from the Buddhist law to misfortune: ② the recompense of a former deed, 多く、前世における悪業の報い, mostly the recompense of evil deeds in a former life, with an example from the 太平記; and ③, as an adjective, 不幸。不運, unhappy, unlucky, with an example of 1660 [9]. 応報 is recompense; the 日本国語大辞典 cites the 漢書 for it, and the 字通 quotes the 漢書's 天、上に應報す, Heaven responds above, so the word is older in Chinese than Buddhism there [12]. 因果報応, the other order, is the same word in the 日本国語大辞典, which enters it as ＝いんがおうほう [13].

The reading. The dictionaries read いんがおうほう; the 日本国語大辞典 gives the historical reading イングヮ‥ at its headword, and its example of 1871 carries the ruby イングヮオウハウ [1]. In the 1696 book read below the ruby beside 因果 begins いんぐ, its last kana not legible at the leaf, and beside 應 it is おう [14].

What follows. The historical record follows the phrase from the Chinese canon and its tale collections to Japan, through two orders and their settlement, through the darkening of the word 因果 and the voices that argued with it, and into English. A reading is mine.

The historical record

Cause, fruit, recompense

The Chinese Buddhist phrase is 因果報應, cause, fruit and recompense. The Vinaya master 道宣 (596–667) wrote it in his 廣弘明集, which the dictionaries date to 664, answering a memorial against Buddhism [15][16]:

夫因果報應事同影響。若不信因前果後。則不謂形動影隨。

Cause, fruit and recompense are like a shadow and an echo. Not to believe that the cause comes first and the fruit after is not to say that when the body moves the shadow follows. The life of the pilgrim 玄奘 (602–664) that his disciples 慧立 and 彥悰 wrote, which the canon's catalogue dates to 688, uses it of the emperor 太宗 in the fourth month of 649 [2][17]:

二十三年夏四月，駕幸翠微宮，皇太子及法師並陪從。既至，處分之外，唯談玄論道，問因果報應，及西域先聖遺芳故迹

In the fourth month of the twenty-third year the emperor went to the 翠微宮 with the crown prince and the Master. There, apart from affairs of state, he talked only of the mysteries and the Way, and asked about cause, fruit and recompense, and about the traces of the sages of the West. The same page goes on: in the fifth month the emperor felt a headache, kept 玄奘 in the palace that night, and died the next day [2]. The dictionaries give 太宗's death at the 翠微宮 in 649 [18]. The 日本国語大辞典 cites this book under 因果報応, and the 世界大百科事典, under 因果応報, says that as words the phrase is seen there; what the book writes is the other order [13][1].

In the CBETA text of the Chinese canon searched for this history, the order 因果應報 stands once, in 義淨's (635–713) translation of a Vinaya text, which the canon's catalogue dates to 700 [3][19]. Kings and nāgas have brought parasols to honor the Buddha, and the four heavenly kings reason:

今諸人等，不見因果應報，猶自供養。況我等輩照果知因，豈不能供養？

Now even men, who do not see cause, fruit and recompense, still make offerings; how much more should we, who see the fruit and know the cause? It is a clause in passing, the three words in a row, not the name of a teaching.

By the Song the phrase named a teaching for the wayward. The Chan master 大慧 (1089–1163) said in a sermon that because the world has so many who are disloyal, unfilial and ungrateful to their parents, the earlier Buddhas taught them by heaven and hell and 因果報應 [20][21]; the chronicler 祖琇 wrote that what the teaching says of 因果報應 agrees with the Way of Heaven and 有以助天為勸沮也, helps Heaven to encourage and deter [22].

Two shapes in one preface

The tale collections made the idea into stories. 唐臨's 冥報記, which the 世界大百科事典 dates to the seventh century, opens with a preface that already holds the farmer's harvest [4][1]:

夫含氣有生。無不有識。有識而有行。隨行善惡而受其報。如農夫之播植。隨所植而收之。

Whatever breathes and lives has consciousness; having consciousness, it acts; and according to the good and evil of its acts it receives their recompense, as a farmer sows and reaps according to what he planted. The preface then sets two kinds of recompense apart. 儒書論善惡之報甚多。近者報於當時。中者報於累年之外。遠者。報於子孫之後, the Confucian books say much of the recompense of good and evil: the near is repaid at the time, the middle after some years, the far upon one's sons and grandsons [4]. The Buddhist teaching, it says, is all cause and fruit, 因即是作。果即是報, the cause is the deed, the fruit is the recompense, and its recompense is of three kinds, in this life, in the next and in later lives, each on the doer [4]. The shape that later fell hardest on children, the parents' deeds repaid on the descendants, is the one this preface gives to the Confucian books.

The deeds of a former life

A short sutra found among the 敦煌 manuscripts, the 佛說善惡因果經, has Ānanda ask why some are born handsome and some ugly, some live a hundred years and some die at thirty, and the Buddha answer 皆由先世用心不等, all from the unequal hearts of former lives, going through each kind of birth: 為人瘖瘂從謗法中來, one born mute comes from slandering the teaching, 為人耳聾從不喜聞法中來, one born deaf from not wishing to hear it [23]. A couplet cited as scripture puts the method in four lines. The compiler 道世, in his 諸經要集, which the canon's catalogue dates to 659, explains poverty with it [24]:

故經言。欲知過去因。當觀現在果。欲知未來果。當觀現在因。

So a sutra says: if you wish to know the causes of the past, look at the fruit of the present; if you wish to know the fruit of the future, look at the causes of the present. 道世 does not name the sutra, and the verse is not in the canon as a sutra's text in the instrument used for this history; Japanese writers later gave it to more than one [24][25].

Japan's book of present recompense

The 日本霊異記, Japan's first collection of Buddhist tales, written by the monk 景戒 and dated by the dictionaries to the 820s, carries the idea in its full title, 日本国現報善悪霊異記, strange tales of present recompense for good and evil in Japan [26][27]. In the 1929 edition of 狩谷棭斎's text its preface reads [5]:

善惡之報如影隨形。苦樂之響如應谷音。……匪呈善惡之狀。何以直於曲執而定是非。匪示因果之報。何由改於惡心而修善道乎。昔漢地造冥報記。大唐國作般若驗記。

The recompense of good and evil follows like a shadow its form; the echo of pain and pleasure answers like a valley's sound. … Unless the shapes of good and evil are shown, how can the crooked be straightened and right and wrong be settled? Unless the recompense of cause and fruit is shown, how can the evil heart be changed and the good way practiced? Of old, the land of Han made the 冥報記; the great Tang made the 般若驗記. 景戒 names 唐臨's book as his model and writes 因果之報, the recompense of cause and fruit; the four characters, in either order, are not in the preface. He closes a tale with the couplet, which he gives to the 善惡因果經 in the form 欲知過去因見其現在果。欲知未來報見其現在業 [25]. 白土わか's study of 1974 found that the 霊異記's tales almost all concern deeds in this life repaid in this life, and very few the recompense in this life of a former life's deeds [28]. The 世界大百科事典 says 景戒 was certain the law was real [27].

A scholar's correction

The 日本国語大辞典's earliest example of 因果報応 is from the 蒙求抄, a lecture on the Chinese primer 蒙求 that it dates to about 1529, printed in 1638 [13][29]. At the leaf of that print the commentator is warning his students. The 秦 general 白起, who defeated the army of 趙 at 長平 in 260 BC as the dictionaries give it, said at his own death that he too must now die [30]:

我レ趙ノ卒ヲ數十萬人坑ニシテ殺タ。我レモ今死スルト云タソ。是ヲ因果報應デアルトミテハ非也。此時ハ佛法ハナイホトニ、白起ハ因果報應ト云コトハ知マイソ。自然ノ道理デ死スルト云タト心得テ可也。

"I buried several hundred thousand men of 趙 and killed them; I too must die now," he said. It is wrong to see this as 因果報應. There was no Buddhism at that time, so 白起 cannot have known of 因果報應. Understand him as saying he dies by the natural way of things [31]. The oldest Japanese use the dictionary gives for either order is a scholar telling his students not to read a Chinese story as karmic recompense, on historical grounds.

Two orders in Edo

The order 因果應報 first stands in the full text of the National Diet Library's digitized books in a book of tales of 1696, the 玉箒子 of 林義端, a Kyoto bookseller and writer of strange tales (died 1711) [14][32]. A rice merchant whose wife has died hears the preachers describe the hells but has never met anyone who came back from one, and prays at the shrine of 小野篁 to see hell once himself:

みづからのうたがひをはらし人にもかたりきかせてます／＼生死流轉因果應報のたがはざることはりを信せしめんとて

so that he could clear his own doubt, tell others, and make them believe all the more in the law that birth-and-death and cause, fruit and recompense never fail. On the road he is drawn off by women, as the library's text of the following pages gives it, and he dies and is reborn a cat before he is brought back to confess [14]. The phrase enters Japanese prose as the thing the preachers' hell was supposed to prove, in the mouth of a doubter.

The first book titled in this order is 盤察's 因果應報要略, eight volumes, printed in Edo and Kyoto in 1728. Its first leaf, in the copy the 国文学研究資料館 serves, carries the title 因果應報要略 and begins 夫因果應報者 …… 出離生死要術也, now, 因果應報 is … the essential art of escaping birth and death [6]. The booksellers' catalogue of 1729 lists the same book as 因果報應要略 [7]. Within a year of its printing the trade gave the book's title in the other order.

The two orders ran side by side in every kind of writing. The scholar 富永仲基 (1715–1746) wrote in his 出定後語 of 1745 that 因果報應天堂地獄之説、本外道所立, the teaching of cause, fruit and recompense, of heaven and hell, was first set up by the non-Buddhists [33][34]. The antiquarian 藤貞幹 (1732–1797) wrote in 1795, of the scroll of hungry ghosts, that Buddhism had long flourished in Japan 因果報應ヲ以テ勸善懲惡ヲナスノミ, only to encourage good and punish evil by cause, fruit and recompense [35][36]. The poet 戸田茂睡 (1629–1706) wrote the same order in kana prose, in a manuscript copy of his 紫の一本: 因果報應のいたす所と見よ, see it as the work of cause, fruit and recompense [37][38]. Fiction prefaces of 1803, 1804 and 1826, one of them signed by 式亭三馬, write it too [39][40][41]. The 国学 scholar 平田篤胤 (1776–1843) wrote both orders on one leaf of a manuscript of his 出定笑語, 因果報應 in one column and 因果應報 a few columns on [42][43]. The Confucian 寺門静軒 (1796–1868) wrote 因果應報 in the kanbun of his 江戸繁昌記, beside Mencius's saying that what goes out from you comes back to you [44][45].

Counted by the year the National Diet Library's catalogue gives each book, the full-text search finds the Chinese order ahead before 1800, the two about level from 1800 to the Restoration, and 因果應報 ahead in the 1870s and far ahead in the 1880s, by about twelve to one in the 1890s; the counts are of books containing a form, and the old cursive prints are read poorly by the machine in both orders [8]. The 日本国語大辞典's earliest example of 因果応報 is from 仮名垣魯文's comic novel 安愚楽鍋 of 1871–72 [1][46].

宣長: made up to come out convenient

本居宣長 (1730–1801) took the phrase as one of two foreign excuses. In his 玉くしげ, which the dictionaries date to 1787, as an edition of 1911 prints it [47][48]:

人の禍福などの、道理にあたらぬ事あるをも、或はみな因果報應と說きなし、あるひはこれを天命天道といひてすますなり。しかれども因果報應の說は、上に申せるごとく、都合よきやうに作りたる物なれば、論ずるに及ばず。

When a man's fortune does not fit what is right, they explain it all away as cause, fruit and recompense, or settle it by calling it the Mandate of Heaven. But the teaching of cause, fruit and recompense, as I said above, is a thing made up to come out convenient, and is not worth arguing. For 宣長 the true cause of undeserved fortune was the evil gods [47].

The parents' karma on the child

The word 因果 darkened before the four characters settled. Its 日本国語大辞典 entry gives the sense misfortune from 1660, and the 古今集遠鏡 of 1793 has イングヮナ身, an ill-fated self [9]. The proverb 親の因果が子に報い, the parents' karma is repaid on the child, was already a show barker's call in 1807. In the 文字の知画 of 十返舎一九 (1765–1831), companions at a party shut a long-nosed man inside a folding screen and stand at its mouth crying like barkers [10][49]:

サア〳〵評判〳〵。是ハ丹波の氷上郡親の因果が子に報ひて。アレあのごとく。一生女に惚れられる気づかひのない男。

Roll up, roll up! This one is from 氷上 county in Tamba: the parents' karma repaid on the child, look at him there, a man no woman will ever fall for in all his life. The joke depends on the call being familiar. The 日本大百科全書, under 見世物, the show booths, names among their attractions the 因果物, glossed フリークス, freaks, and the 世界大百科事典, in its account of the Meiji shows, says that fakes and 因果物 came to be no longer accepted [50].

The proverb's dark reading had its critics inside the fiction too. In a Meiji printing of 柳亭種彦's 偐紫田舎源氏, the long novel of 1829–42, a character weeping and sighing says [51][52]:

親の因果が子に酬ふと云諺を惡き事に斗り思ふハ誤りにて善身と爲るも矢張因果

It is a mistake to think the saying "the parents' karma is repaid on the child" is only about bad things; to become good is karma too.

服部鑁海's Shingon primer for lay believers, catalogued in 1881, holds both faces of the teaching on one spread. It says that the law has no maker [53]:

但し此理誰か製作する所ぞと云に別に造物主及び主宰者ありて製造する者に非ず。唯衆生業增上力の所感にして更に佛天人修羅の造作に非ざるなり。

If you ask who made this law: there is no separate creator or lord who makes it. It is only what beings bring about by the power of their deeds, and not the making of buddhas, gods, men or titans. On the facing page, with the couplet 欲知過去因見其現在果 as its proof, it says that those born blind, deaf or mute have that fruit by the deeds of a former life [53].

Meiji: one order, and a word for justice

As the order 因果應報 settled, the phrase left the temple. 福沢諭吉's 文明論之概略 of 1875 uses it, in the library's text, for the plain order by which a society punishes the deeds it can see [54][55]; translators of Herbert Spencer in 1884 used it for retribution in society, and a translation of Eugène Véron's book on aesthetics the same year for the justice of Greek tragedy, in the library's text [56][57]. A teachers' manual for primary schools of 1884 told teachers to keep it out of the classroom [58]:

一因果應報ノ說ハ勤勉等ノ外ハ務メテ之ヲ避クベシ

The teaching of 因果應報 should be avoided as far as possible, except for such things as diligence. The manual's reason, on the same page, is that a child taught that the good are rewarded and the wicked punished will come to do good for the praise and refrain from evil for fear of the punishment [58].

In English

James Curtis Hepburn's Japanese-English dictionary already recorded the narrowing in 1867, in the word 因果. Its first edition enters [59]:

IN-G'WA, イングワ, 因果, n. A Bud. word, In, the deeds of one in a previous state, K'wa, his retribution in this life; also, his deeds in this life, and his retribution in the next world, commonly used for punishment in this life. — no mukui, retribution, or punishment for one's deeds in a previous state.

The example under it is Nan no — de konna kurō wo szru, what evil have I done that I should suffer such trouble? [59]. The edition of 1872 shortens the head of the entry to the deeds and their reward; cause, reason and keeps the mukui line and the example [60]. Brinkley's dictionary of 1896 gives the four characters both halves: Ingwa ōhō, 因果應報, reward and punishment [61].

Lafcadio Hearn wrote in 1896 that the term ingwa, or innen, meaning karma as inevitable retribution, comes naturally to every lip as an interpretation, as a consolation, or as a reproach, and that a peasant pulling his cart uphill murmurs patiently: "Since this is ingwa, it must be suffered" [62]. In his Japanese Buddhist Proverbs of 1899 he set down Ingwa na ko. A karma-child, with the note that it is a common saying among the lower classes in reference to an unfortunate or crippled child and that ingwa usually signifies evil karma, and Oya no ingwa ga ko ni mukuū. The karma of the parents is visited upon the child, with this note [63]:

Said of the parents of crippled or deformed children. But the popular idea here expressed is not altogether in accord with the teachings of the higher Buddhism.

Basil Hall Chamberlain gave the doctrine of ingwa an example in 1902: a man goes blind: this results from some crime committed by him in his last avatar [64]. A German collection of Japanese proverbs of 1897 has Ingwa ōhō. Ursache und Wirkung entsprechen sich und vergelten einander, cause and effect correspond and repay each other, as the Internet Archive's full-text highlights give it [65]. A study of the Confucian 中江藤樹 in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan of 1908 wrote that the penalty is inevitable, for Toju believes in 因果應報 Ingwa oho, the law of cause and effect, or of retribution, as the highlights give it [66].

The English-Japanese dictionaries went the other way and gave English phrases Japanese equivalents. Saito's dictionary of 1915 renders Karma as (佛教の)因果應報、業、宿緣, and, among its examples for on, To visit the sins of the father on the children as 親の因果を子に報ゆる, putting the English Bible's phrase beside the Japanese proverb [67]. Kenkyusha's Japanese-English dictionary, in its American edition of 1942, gives inga-ōhō as retribution; punitive justice; poetic justice; karma, marking inevitable before the first and evil before the last as words that may be added, renders 因果な子 as an unlucky child, and gives the parents' proverb, 親の因果が子に報いる, two Bible sentences: When fathers eat sour grapes, their children's teeth will be set on edge and The sins of the father are visited on the children [68]. Under 應報 it gives Retribution; nemesis, and for 因果應報百倍, sow the wind and reap the whirlwind [68]. Its edition of 1974 opens the entry with a reward in accordance with a deed before retribution; retributive justice [69]. In 1965 Buchanan's Japanese Proverbs and Sayings gave Inga oho: "Poetic justice." (Lit., "Karma retribution."), with the English parallel As a man sows, so will he reap, and the Daitō Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary of the same year Cause and effect are suitably balanced. A good cause has a good effect or result, and a bad cause, a bad one [70][71]. Hiroshi Kitagawa and Bruce T. Tsuchida, introducing their translation of the 平家物語 in 1975, wrote that added to this feeling of powerlessness to control destiny are the concepts of inga-oho (retribution) and mujokan, the sense of evanescence [72].

The sowing verse

The harvest is in the Pāli too. In the Samuddaka Sutta of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, seers on the shore of the ocean ask the titan king Sambara for safety, and when he answers that he will give them only fear, they reply [73]:

Yādisaṁ vapate bījaṁ, tādisaṁ harate phalaṁ; kalyāṇakārī kalyāṇaṁ, pāpakārī ca pāpakaṁ.

Whatever kind of seed you sow, that is the fruit you reap. A doer of good gets good, a doer of bad gets bad. The sutta says they spoke it as a curse, and that the titan king woke in alarm three times that night [73]. The verse states both halves, and it is spoken as a threat.

Today

The 日本国語大辞典's note that the phrase is now mostly used of bad causes bearing bad fruit is the dictionaries' account of the present, and ja.wikipedia's article on 因果 goes further: in everyday use, it says, the second half is stressed, with the sense that evil deeds are surely judged by the gods and buddhas [1][74]. The 四字熟語を知る辞典 quotes 檀一雄 in 1957, もとより、私は因果応報を信じない, of course, I do not believe in 因果応報 [1].

A reading

I read 因果応報 as its dictionaries define it and as its own words say: cause and fruit, and the recompense that answers them, good for good and bad for bad. It is a law with two halves and no judge in it. The Shingon primer of 1881 says so in so many words: no creator and no lord makes it, not even the buddhas. Brinkley's reward and punishment, Daitō's suitably balanced and the Pāli's a doer of good gets good say the same.

The threat is real, and the record shows where it came from. It came first from use. The teaching was offered from early on as a deterrent: 大慧's sermon says the Buddhas taught it to the unfilial, 祖琇 says it helps Heaven deter, and the 霊異記 shows recompense so that the evil heart will change. Then the word 因果 itself came to mean misfortune, and a child's body became the proof of a parent's deed. That shape, the deed repaid on the children, is the one the 冥報記's preface gave to the Confucian books and not to the Buddhist ones, and it is the one Hearn wrote was not altogether in accord with the teachings of the higher Buddhism. The same primer that says the law has no lord also says the blind are blind by their own past. Both faces are in the tradition, on one spread.

What makes this a history and not a warning label is that the phrase's own readers argued with it from the start. The 蒙求抄 told students not to read a general's death as karma. 宣長 called the teaching made up to come out convenient. A character in 種彦's novel said the parents' proverb was about good things too. A teachers' manual of 1884 kept the teaching out of the classroom because it taught children to be good for the reward. 檀一雄 simply did not believe it.

So I sign for the four characters as a statement of both halves, the good returning as surely as the bad, and I read the narrowing to you had it coming as a true account of how the phrase is mostly used today, as the 日本国語大辞典 says, but not as what it says.

Notes

Not the 慈恩伝's words in this order. The life of 玄奘 has 因果報應; in the CBETA text searched for this history the order 因果應報 stands in the Chinese canon once, as a clause in 義淨's Vinaya translation [2][3]. The 佛學大辭典 of 1922 enters 因果應報 as its headword and quotes the other under it [75].

Not the 霊異記's phrase. The 霊異記 carries the idea and the words 因果之報 and 善惡之報; the four characters, in either order, are not in its preface [5]. They are not in the 1901 typeset text of the 今昔物語集 either, as the library's machine-read text gives it [76].

応報 in law. 応報刑, retributive punishment, is a separate, legal use; a commentary on the draft penal code translated from Boissonade's French in 1886 already uses it, in the library's text [77][78].

The order. NDL's full-text search folds 応 and 應, so the counts above are of the order, not the form [8].

自業自得. The kin phrase 自業自得, one's own deeds, one's own fruit, has its own history; the English sowing proverb set beside it in Hepburn's first edition is told there.

Sources not seen

The critical editions of the 日本霊異記 (日本古典文学大系 70; 新編日本古典文学全集), for the preface and the couplet; the 1929 校本 quoted here is 狩谷棭斎's text.

中村元, ed., 『因果』 (仏教思想 3, 1978), and 今鷹真's study of 1958 on 司馬遷 and 因果応報.

The issue of the satirical weekly 團團珍聞 of 24 May 1902 that quotes a barker's call with this proverb, held by the National Diet Library and not served outside Japan.

The rest of 盤察's 因果應報要略 beyond its first leaf, and 田中則雄's study of 2006 on 因果応報 in the Edo long novel.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 「因果応報」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, デジタル大辞泉, 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, 四字熟語を知る辞典, ことわざを知る辞典 and others, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/因果応報-32783
  2. 慧立 and 彥悰, 『大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳』 卷七, T50n2053, p. 260a, at CBETA. https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/T50n2053_p0260a08
  3. 義淨, translator, 『根本說一切有部毘奈耶藥事』 卷五, T24n1448, p. 22c, at CBETA. https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/T24n1448_p0022c11
  4. 唐臨, 『冥報記』, the preface, T51n2082, p. 787b–788a, at CBETA. https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/T51n2082_p0787b28
  5. 景戒, 『日本國現報善惡靈異記』 上巻 序, in 『校本日本靈異記』, 1929, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1111789/1/7
  6. 盤察, 『因果應報要略』 8巻, 1728, volume 1, the title slip and the first leaf (canvases 6 and 8), in the copy of 名古屋大学附属図書館 神宮皇學館文庫 at the 国文学研究資料館 国書データベース. https://doi.org/10.20730/100181004
  7. 『新書籍目録』 4巻, 1729, scan 65. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2539881/1/65
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  11. JMdict (EDRDG), the release file of 1 October 2026, entries 1822250 因果応報, 1168680 因果 and 1180050 応報.
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  40. 南杣笑楚満人, 『仇報孝行車』, 1804 in the library's record, the preface, scan 3. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/9893034/1/3
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  69. Koh Masuda, editor in chief, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, Kenkyusha, Tokyo, 1974, s.v. inga-ōhō.
  70. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, s.v. Inga oho.
  71. Daitō Shuppansha, Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary, Tokyo, 1965, s.v. Inga-ōhō.
  72. Hiroshi Kitagawa and Bruce T. Tsuchida, translators, The Tale of the Heike, University of Tokyo Press, 1975, the introduction.
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  76. 『今昔物語集』, in 『国史大系』, 経済雑誌社, 1901, read in the library's text. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991106
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  78. 「応報刑」, 日本大百科全書, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/応報刑-1511896

Authors

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

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

Not yet reviewed.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 因果応報 (inga ōhō)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/inga-oho.