Introduction to Siddham Calligraphy

Buddhist Calligraphy is a spiritual practice that can be very rewarding in itself - it combines mindfulness, meaningful action, and aesthetic appreciation. The experience itself can be uplifting and transformative especially when combined with reflections on the "meaning" of the letter being written. It is also useful for those who visualise mantras as familiarity with the forms makes for more vivid images.

This class will provide an introduction to the Siddham script. Beginning with the seed-syllable 'a' we will explore the basic methods for creating beautiful calligraphy. A small class means plenty of individual attention and means that you can learn at your own pace.

Lead by Jayarava
All materials provided - no experience necessary
Limit 8 people - booking essential

Cambridge Buddhist Centre
5th April 2008
10am – 12 pm

cost: £15/10 - I will cover my costs and the rest goes to the Cambridge Buddhist Centre.

Bonji taikan

Today I discovered a most amazing reference book in the Cambridge University Library. Although the text is mostly in Japanese the rest is in Siddhaṃ and Romanised Sanskrit. It is nothing less than a complete calligraphy manual for Siddhaṃ including what looks like every possible combination of consonants (more than 100 pages of them!). It also includes many mantras which look to have come from the Mahāvairocana Sūtra, and other examples of Siddhaṃ, particularly grave markers. I'd say that John Stevens must have consulted this book in writing Sacred Calligraphy of the East because many of the letter charts look identical to what he gives. What a boon! I learned things just by leafing through it and I'm looking forward to giving it a more thorough going over.

Title:	Bonji taikan ( 梵字大鑑).
Published:	Tôkyô : Meicho Fukyûkai, 1983.5.
Description:	2satsu ; 27cm.
ISBN:	4895511154

Amazon Japan are clocking it at ¥ 69 660 which Google tells me is UK£ 336.57. Thank goodness for libraries is all I can say.

Siddham in Tricylce Magazine

The Spring 2008 issue of Tricycle Magazine has an article by David Schneider on the Siddhaṃ script. If you are an online subscriber you can also read it online. David Schneider has his own art website, with some attractive calligraphy and some designs that have clearly been photoshopped.

Gothic Siddham?

This chart for a Gothic Siddham character set popped onto the Visible Mantra radar recently. It's messy and doesn't entirely work, but it does raise an interesting possibility in terms of where Siddham calligraphy might go in the west.

Original at: naeddyr.deviantart.com

Naeddyr is a young Finnish "wannabe novelist".

Karanīya Metta Sutta

I've just added a page for the Karanīya Metta Sutta in the Siddham script. It's accompanied by the Pāli text in Roman script, and my translation.

Siddham in the Taisho

The Chinese Tripitaka is an important source for Siddhaṃ. Many mantras are preserved using the Siddham script in the Taisho edition of the Canon. With the help of my friend Maitiu I have copied a couple of examples of the way Siddhaṃ looks in the Taisho, and for the enthusiast you can see the Chinese commentaries on pronunciation alongside.

The example here is from Taisho No.913 and reads:

oṃ a mṛ ta hūṃ pha ṭ - ie oṃ amṛta hūṃ phaṭ.

Amṛta means "immortal" or "undying", and can also refer to a kind of elixir of life. This example is on the scripts page, while another can be seen on the Siddhaṃ page.

Essay on Calligraphy

The Flow of Ink by Jill Bell is about the experience of doing calligraphy, and worth a read. She includes this image of calligraphy by John Stevens but doesn't say what the bija is. Anyone know what it is?

Update 23 Sept:
Thanks to Dekishitai (see comments below) who has identified this bija as dhiḥmma, with some stylistic flourishes. Although the visarga is aligned with the top of the mma, it refers to the dhi - the stem of the first ma has been extended upwards to come between the dhi and the visarga. The curved bit at the bottom seems to just be decorative - especially when compared with the hammaṃ syllables in the links Dekishitai supplies. It does give the character some solidity and balance to write it this way.

John Stevens describes dhiḥmma as: dhiḥ, the syllable of perfect wisdom; combined with mma which stands for Mañjuśrī (although we would expect maṃ here).

I haven't commented on it anywhere else, but the Japanese seem to have adopted the short i for writing dhiḥ. I am fairly sure that it should be dhīḥ with a long ī. Perhaps it was an aesthetic decision as dhiḥ is, I think, more pleasing to the eye, with the body of the syllable balanced by the diacritic marks on either side.

Anyway it just goes to show that you can only learn so much from books and websites - I have been thinking for some time that I would like to go to Japan to study Siddhaṃ.

A further update:
I have received a reply, via Jill Bell, from the great man himself:

The siddham is the seed-syllable for the Heart Sutra (see p.62 in SACRED CALLIGRAPHY OF THE EAST). The kanji on the right are MA KA HAN NYA HA RA MI TA SHIN GYO, Maka Hannya-haramita Shingyo, the title of the sutra. My signature DO SEN HAI SHO, "Respectfully written by Dosen" [Dosen is my pen name] is on the left.

JS

So yes the bija is definitely dhiḥmma. The Maka Hannya-haramita Shingyo is the Mahā Prajñāpāramita Heart Sutra.

Profane Bonji

In modern Japan we see examples of Bonji in all sorts of odd settings. The screen shot on the left is from strapya-world which sells, amongst other things, cell-phone decorations. The 'strap line' says:

Attach Asian coolness. Bonji Cell Phone Strap.
SANSCRIT : Be cool with Asian hand-made phone strap.

They also have Sanskrit and Sanscrite...

Made of light wood "The deep scent stimulates your mind peacefully...."

Kukai Calligraphy

I was passing through London this week to give a talk on Kukai at the Southampton Buddhist Centre, and took the opportunity to call into the British Library. I have been keen for sometime to read: R.H. Van Gulik's Siddham : An Essay on the History of Sanskrit Studies in China and Japan and unable to obtain a copy via the interlibrary loan system. I did not have much time to read the text but was delighted at the examples of Siddham calligraphy, and especially to find some reproductions of Kukai's pen.

On the right is the Amitabha mantra: namo amitabaḥ (an idiosyncratic spelling). Alongside it on the left is Kukai's signature and his seal (larger version on the Kukai page).

I've also added an alphabet brushed by Kukai; and a Mantra of Light, on the Vairocana page.

Aum

Aum
Originally uploaded by parhessiastes

Om made to look like a Korean character. I have found some more of these in a book showing an 18th century Chinese manuscript. The characters are made to look a bit like Chinese Seal script. I will do some for Visible Mantra.

This is a nice example of the style and shows that it is a current practice. Good for scaring off ghosts apparently

17/2/2008 - I'm updating this entry to make it clear that the image shows a Korean Style character. My version is on the om page.

Mystery Syllable

The image on the left was sent in by Terence from Singapore who thought it was Siddhaṃ but was unsure what letter or word it was. It is being used in a Japanese Movie called "Aragami - raging god of battle" which seems a bit of an unfortunate association but such is life.

The character in red seems to quite clearly be khaṃ - based on kha (right). I'm not sure but I suspect that the white represents a styalized kanji or Chinese character (let me know if you recognise it). In my reply to Terence's email I explained the traditional associations with this syllable khaṃ:

Khaṃ is what is known as a seed syllable, it is a kind of mantra. There is a Sanskrit word kha which does just mean space. Sanskrit is an inflected language which means that the word ending changes depending on the case of the noun. The ending 'ṃ' is probably a nominative. So it just means space.

However you need to take into account that mantras are esoteric sounds and what the word means in a dictionary may have nothing to do with how it functions as a mantra. Many mantras do not make sense in the ordinary way we use that word. Mantras are sound symbols of something which transcends words. It is common to see khaṃ in the context of discussions of the elements (earth, water, fire, wind, space) - in the Upaniṣads, or the early Buddhist tantras for instance - where it is always associated with the element space. Khaṃ as a mantra, and space itself as a symbol, stand for, amongst other things, the emptiness and vastness of consciousness in it's primordial state. It is effectively equivalent to śunyata.

We could further note that the syllable kha occurs in the mantra of Mahavairocana