Discovering Jayamuni

In 1837, couriers delivered a large bundle of fifty-nine Buddhist texts to the Paris office of the scholar Eugène Burnouf (1801–1852). Upon opening the packages, Burnouf quickly realized that they contained rare Sanskrit manuscripts, written on sturdy handmade paper and bound between hand-painted and carved wooden covers. Later that same year, an additional eighty-eight Buddhist manuscripts arrived at the Société Asiatique, a group of French scholars dedicated to the study of Asia. Until then, European scholarship on Buddhism had relied primarily on Chinese and Tibetan translations. This collection offered a more direct window into South Asian Buddhism.

Together, these manuscripts informed the first major European-language study of Indian Buddhism based on Sanskrit sources: Burnouf’s magisterial Introduction to Indian Buddhism (1844). This book provided an important foundation for Buddhist studies in the West, but somewhat ironically—given its title—the manuscripts that informed it had not come from India. A young British naturalist had sent them from the small Kingdom of Nepal. Indeed, this collection had never existed in India at all; it instead reflected the preferences and sensibilities of an otherwise unknown 17th-century Nepalese scribe and scholar named Jayamuni. 

Jayamuni’s Collection    

Even after the printing press became widespread in Asia, Buddhist scribes in Nepal continued to copy manuscripts by hand. In part, this was because the act of copying was considered meritorious. Indeed, all Sanskrit texts in Nepal circulated as handwritten manuscripts until Western scholars began editing them in the 19th century. An industrious scribe, therefore, could have a significant impact on the tradition—simply by the volume of his scribal work and the texts he chose to copy. 

Jayamuni was just such a scribe. He copied texts that spanned the whole of Indian Buddhist tradition. Canonical sutras, abhidharma texts, and possibly extracts from vinaya codes were in his library. His collection contained Mahayana treatises, such as The Perfection of Wisdom in 100,000 Lines, tantric scriptures, and a work on death rites. Ashvaghosha’s Life of the Buddha (Buddhacarita) was likely part of Jayamuni’s library, as was Shantideva’s famous Guide to the Practice of Awakening (Bodhicharyavatara). Jayamuni compiled popular narratives, including karmic biographies of South Asian Buddhists (Skt.: avadana) and jataka tales of Shakyamuni’s past lives. These stories are still wildly popular in Nepal. 

However, Jayamuni did more than copy texts. He arranged texts into new collections and gathered together stories under new titles. Burnouf and his contemporaries considered these compilations to be as ancient as the texts themselves. The choices and selections of a 17th-century Newar scribe thus shaped European scholarship on Indian Buddhism. The works were ancient, but the editor and compiler behind them was none other than Jayamuni. 

The Residents and the Gurus 

The story of how an extensive collection of Sanskrit manuscripts found its way onto Burnouf’s desk in Paris is inextricably linked to European colonial ambitions. In the early 1800s, the British East India Company advanced into the hinterlands of the Indian subcontinent, encroaching on the Kingdom of Nepal. The Company waged the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814–1816) and won. Nepal ceded territory, and among other concessions, hosted a permanent British “Resident” (essentially a one-man embassy) in its capital, Kathmandu.

The naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800–1894), a young employee of the East India Company, was the first longstanding British Resident. Residents were officially diplomatic agents, but Hodgson devoted considerable time to ornithological and botanical research. He also became fascinated with Newar Buddhism. Shortly after his 1833 appointment, Hodgson began intensive study with the local pandit Amritananda, a member of the Sakya priestly caste, whose lineage was specifically associated with the famous Mahabauddha Temple in Patan. 

Learned and creative, Amritananda composed several works for Hodgson’s benefit, including a reader and grammar of the Newar language, an encyclopedic treatise on Nepalese Mahayana Buddhism, and a text on metrics. He even penned additional verses to Ashvaghosha’s famous poem, Life of the Buddha (Buddhacarita). Amritananda also copied numerous Sanskrit texts, which he sold to Hodgson. Later, Gunananda—Amritananda’s son or grandson—served as guru to the Resident Daniel Wright (1833–1903). Instead of commissioning copies, Gunananda sold the original palm-leaf manuscripts to Wright. 

Scholars have long known that Amritananda and Gunananda provided Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts for British Residents. Several European libraries hold manuscripts in Amritananda’s hand, and because of this, he has usually been considered the source of Burnouf’s canon. However, this influential collection had already been compiled a century and a half earlier by Amritananda’s great-grandfather, Jayamuni.

The Mahabauddha Temple Lineage 

The History of the Kings of Nepal discusses the life of Jayamuni (c. 1600–1690), his lineage, and the founding of the Mahabauddha Temple. The text was first translated into English by Gunananda for Resident Wright and, more recently, by Manik Bajracharya and Axel Michaels.  

The History of the Kings of Nepal indicates that Jayamuni’s great-grandfather was a Nepalese Buddhist named Abhayaraja. He traveled to Bodhgaya with his wife in the early 1500s, and their son Bauddhaju was born at this auspicious site. Abhayaraja acquired a statue of the Buddha on this pilgrimage, and when he returned home, he built a small temple to house it. Bauddhaju’s son, Jivaraja, also traveled to the site of the Buddha’s awakening, and upon seeing the temple there, he decided to “transform the shrine established by his grandfather into a similar temple.” Jivaraja thus sponsored the construction of the Mahabauddha Temple. In the early 17th century, in the presence of the King of Patan, Jivaraja consecrated the temple alongside his young son Jayamuni. 

Jivaraja and Jayamuni went on to become patrons of Buddhism in Nepal. Twice a year, a famed image of Avalokiteshvara travels between this bodhisattva’s homes in Patan and Bungamati on the Bungadya Chariot. The festival that celebrates this journey and the upkeep of the magnificent chariot requires substantial financial investment. Nineteenth-century ledgers record that wealthy Tibetans from Sikkim donated funds to Jayamuni and his father for refurbishments to the chariot and the organization that supported it. 

Jayamuni’s devotion to the dharma did not end with material support. Recognizing the deterioration of Newar Buddhism, he disguised himself as a Hindu yogi and traveled to Varanasi. While in India, he studied Sanskrit grammar and intellectual traditions and collected many Buddhist texts. The History of the Kings of Nepal describes this journey, and a note at the end of a manuscript copied by Jayamuni specifies that he completed it in Varanasi in 1640. 

Jayamuni’s expedition transformed him from a pious devotee to a productive scribe, author, and maker of religious tradition. 

Jayamuni’s Manuscripts 

Biographical details and scattered historical references offer some glimpses of Jayamuni, but he emerges from obscurity only through a close examination of the manuscripts he copied. His handwriting is distinctive, and his compilations and compositions therefore share recognizable features. Jayamuni thus reveals much about his career from his own hand—from the documents he annotated, edited, copied, and composed. Together, this evidence identifies him as the figure who secured the library sent to Burnouf and other European scholars. 

Jayamuni’s collection spanned the Indian tradition and, in some cases, provided European scholars with their first access to a given text. The Great Tale (Mahavastu), for example, recounts several of Shakyamuni’s previous lives as well as his final life as the Buddha. Composed near the beginning of the Common Era and lost in Sanskrit for over a thousand years, The Great Tale survived most fully in the copy made by Jayamuni and transmitted to Burnouf, who recognized its immense value for the study of ancient Indian Buddhism. Although fragments from the first millennium have since been discovered in Gilgit, Pakistan, Jayamuni’s revised version remains extremely influential.

The Divine Stories (Divyavadana), which does not appear to have been a distinct collection in India, includes narratives that illustrate the workings of karma, merit, and rebirth. The stories are ancient, but Jayamuni arranged them under this title. The Great Garland of Previous Lives (Mahajatakamala) is another influential compilation of the Buddha’s previous lives in which Jayamuni sometimes inserted verses from other sources, rearranged verse placement in the stories, and even added his own verses. Access to these pious biographies told by the Buddha to his followers is due to the work of this 17th-century Nepalese scribe and scholar. 

European scholars encountered additional Buddhist texts due to Amritananda’s copying of Jayamuni’s manuscripts. Ashvaghosha’s epic poem Life of the Buddha, for example, is partially preserved in a Sanskrit manuscript that Amritananda copied in Patan in the early 19th century. The Cambridge scholar Edward Byles Cowell used this copy for the first published edition of this text in 1893, and forty years later, E. H. Johnston used it, along with the original medieval palm-leaf manuscript. By the 1920s, the Nepalese government took possession of the original manuscript, but because Amritananda had access to it a century earlier it may have been among the manuscripts collected by Jayamuni. But in this case, we cannot be certain. 

The initial Western understanding of Buddhism was thus shaped by the preferences of this 17th-century Newar scholar.

Jayamuni’s corpus shaped Buddhism in Nepal and early trends in the academic study of Buddhism in the West. European scholars, of course, brought their own preferences to his collection—favoring, for instance, narrative literature over tantric material—to build a newly imagined canon. Later, scholars also used Jayamuni’s collection to assess whether additional works fit within what they imagined as the Sanskrit Buddhist canon. Much of Buddhism’s early reception in European languages traces back to Eugène Burnouf, and through him to Jayamuni. The initial Western understanding of Buddhism was thus shaped by the preferences of this 17th-century Newar scholar. 

Today, only the most intrepid tourists visit the Mahabauddha Temple established by Jayamuni’s ancestors. Although it lies close to Patan’s Royal Square, it cannot be seen from this popular plaza, as the marvelous temple is surrounded by cement buildings that form a claustrophobic courtyard, accessible only through narrow corridors on two sides. The community of Newar Vajrayana priests who still care for this site remember Abhayaraja, the 16th-century builder of the temple, and the 19th-century scholar Amritananda. However, Jayamuni is recalled only as a name. The fame of others in his lineage has obscured the legacy of this influential scribe, even in his own home—which is now equally hidden yet still accessible to those who venture to find it.