森羅万象 shinra banshō All of Creation
This is a philological study of the Japanese word 森羅万象 (shinra banshō), all of creation. It spans the record from a Chan verse on the mirror of the mind, through Dōgen's 1231 use of the phrase and the Jesuits' 1603 sentence for God's creation, to a 2019 remark that made a prime minister's word choice a trending topic, and it examines why the English All of Creation is the phrase's own oldest English use rather than a modern gloss.
Abstract
森羅万象, shinra banshō, is a Chan Buddhist phrase for everything that exists, first Japanese in Dōgen's 1231 essays, that became an ordinary secular word for the whole universe. The Jesuits used it for God's creation in 1603, and Hepburn's dictionary of 1888 kept the same Christian sentence; the English All of Creation descends directly from that four-hundred-year line rather than from a modern gloss. Today the word is plain enough that a Japanese prime minister could claim, or disclaim, responsibility for it in the Diet.
Overview
The sense. A Zen term that became an ordinary literary word; the dictionaries tag it a four-character compound and give no special register. One: everything that exists in the universe, all things and all phenomena. The whole, in the national dictionary: all the things that exist without number in the universe [1]. Its neighbors, by the 大辞泉's list, are 自然, 天然, 造化 and 大自然, nature and creation [1].
The words. 森 is a mass of trees, and 羅 is a net or a row, ranged; 森羅 is ranged without number, as trees stand in a forest. 万象 is the ten thousand forms, every shape a thing can take. A four-character dictionary explains it in exactly those terms [1]. 羅 is also silk gauze and 象 also the elephant, but those are not the senses in this word; here 羅 is ranged and 象 is forms.
The text in English. One line, four centuries long: the Jesuits' Deus made (1603) [1], Hepburn's God created all things (1888) [2], the online dictionary's the whole creation [3], and this catalogue's All of Creation. A Buddhist word for the sum of things has been carried in English by the word creation since the first Europeans learned it, and the fit holds because creation in English long ago came to mean the world itself as much as the making of it.
The historical record
永嘉玄覺, d. 713, 証道歌. The word is Chinese and Chan. The Song of Enlightenment attributed to 永嘉玄覺, who died in 713, has it in the reverse order, in a line about the mirror of the mind: clear, unobstructed, its light fills the worlds like sand; the ten thousand forms, ranged, appear reflected in it; one round radiance, neither inside nor out [4].
1125, 碧巌録. The 碧巌録, the great koan collection of 1125, uses it four times and once quotes an older line, the forest of forms and the ten thousand things are all the seal of one dharma [5].
宏智正覺's verse, in a phrase-book of 1620. A verse by the master 宏智正覺 that begins the ranged ten thousand forms, so tall and sheer was still being copied into a Japanese Zen phrase-book printed in 1620 [6].
1231 to 1253, Dōgen. In Japanese the dictionaries' first is Dōgen, in the 法性 chapter of the 正法眼蔵, written between 1231 and 1253, reading it shinra manzō in the Buddhist pronunciation: this shinra manzō and the dharma-nature are far beyond any argument about same and different [7].
A century after Dōgen, 清拙正澄. A century later the Chinese master 清拙正澄, preaching in Kamakura, told his monks that sun, moon and stars are lamps, mountains and rivers are lamps, shinra banzō are lamps [8].
1603, the Jesuits. Then the word left the monastery. The Jesuits' Japanese-Portuguese dictionary of 1603 records the sentence Our Lord Deus made the shinra manzō, a Christian creation in a Buddhist word [1].
1778, and 1783. A 1778 comic novel uses it of a worldly man [1]; a 1783 treatise on haikai says the poet's mind turns with the ten thousand forms and yet is not two [9].
1888, Hepburn. Hepburn's dictionary of 1888 glossed it All things and gave one example, the Jesuits' sentence again: kami wa shinra banzō wo tsukuritamau, God created all things [2]. The reading itself has a history: manzō in Dōgen and the Jesuits, banzō in Hepburn, banshō in the 1778 novel, in the 言海 and in every mouth today.
1889, 言海. In the same decade the first modern Japanese dictionary, the 言海 of 1889, uses it in its own preface to describe its scope, the words for all things in heaven and earth [10].
Today. In modern Japanese the word is plain and secular. A novelist in 1951 used it of the Book of Changes explaining all things; another in 1970 of light making the whole of heaven and earth [1]; and four prime ministers have reached for it in the Diet, from Nakasone in 1985 to Abe on 6 February 2019, who said I am the prime minister, so I am in charge of shinra banshō, everything there is, and made the word a trending topic for a day [11]. It also stands inside another piece of calligraphy: the Japanese encyclopedia explains that the whisker strokes of the Nichiren daimoku show the title's light reaching 森羅万象 [12].
A reading
All of Creation is a better English for this word than it looks, because it is not a gloss at all but the oldest English use of the word: the sentence the Jesuits wrote down in 1603 and Hepburn printed in 1888.
References
- 「森羅万象」, 大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典・四字熟語を知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/森羅万象-18412
- James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, Z. P. Maruya, Tokyo, 1888, entry シンラバンゾウ. Internet Archive japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
- EDRDG, 「森羅万象」, at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/search/森羅万象
- 永嘉玄覺, 証道歌, at CBETA (T48n2014). https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2014&juan=1
- 碧巌録, 1125, at CBETA (T48n2003). https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2003&juan=2
- 宏智正覺, verse quoted in 禪林抜類聚, 1620, scan 39. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10303875/1/39
- 道元, 正法眼蔵, 法性, 1231–1253. http://hikari-k.ed.jp/zenchoji/sutra/soroku/genzo48.htm
- 清拙正澄, 語録, scan 50. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2537749/1/50
- 鼻中庵三力, 俳諧第一義集, 1783, scan 8. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2568263/1/8
- 言海, 1889, scan 313. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992954/1/313
- dragoner, "森羅万象", Yahoo ニュース エキスパート, 6 February 2019. https://news.yahoo.co.jp/expert/articles/1c6816fbe745d735367dc29399edea0d3ffc5f2a
- 「南無妙法蓮華経」, 日本大百科全書 (中尾尭), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/南無妙法蓮華経-108527