Kobudaisi

Kobudaisi, a celebrated Buddhist pilgrim of Japan, was born in the year 774. In early youth he began studying the Chinese and Japanese writers, and. in order to have more time to indulge in his studies, he embraced religious life at the age of twenty. Having become high-priest, he accompanied a Japanese ambassador to China in 804, to study more thoroughly the doctrines of Chakia. A learned Indian named Azari gave him the information he desired, and presented him with the books he had himself collected in his pilgrimages. Another hermit of northern Hindustan gave him also a work he had translated from the Sanscrit, and several MSS. on religious subjects. With these Kobudaisi returned to Japan in 806, where, by his preaching and miracles, he succeeded in converting the religious emperor of Japan, who embraced Indian Buddhism, and was baptized according to the rite of Chakia. Encouraged by his success, Kobudaisi published a number of ascetic works, and a treatise in which he exposed the fundamental dogmas of Buddhism. According to Kobudaisi, the four scourges of humanity are hell, women, bad men, and war. There is no end to the number of miracles he is said to have wrought, or to the number of pagodas he caused to be built. He also caused the foundation of three chairs of theology for the interpretation of the sacred writings. He died in 835. See Tit-Sing, Bibliotheque Japonaise ; Abel Remusat, Nouveaux Melanges Asiatiques; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Gene. 27:935. (J. N. P.)