Original Texts and Versions of the Jōdoshū Zensho

Abstract

The Jōdoshū Zensho is a series of books on Pure Land Buddhism, which is widely used by researchers. Unfortunately, however, it includes no information about the relevant original texts or critical revisions. Nonetheless, it is now possible to generate a general description of the original texts, through investigation of the additional remarks attached to the first version of the series and page number symbols in the main text, combined with research conducted at the Library of Taishō University, which possesses many of the original texts of the series. As a result of this investigation and research, three versions of the series have been discovered, but there are many differences among them. In addition, the latest version, which is currently the most widely used, should have been printed by photo reproduction only of the reprinted version of the first version, but part of this latest version (i.e., 9 of the 20 total volumes) was printed by photo reproduction of the first version, a fact which users of this version should be aware of.