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Abstract

This paper aims to introduce the contents of Sino-Nom scriptural materials, known as the Canh Phuoc Temple collection, and new research perspectives for Southeast Asian studies by using those religious materials. The Canh Phuoc Temple collection consists of 98 pieces of religious material written in Sino-Nom scripts from the late nineteenth to the twentieth century. The collection was found at a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Bangkok and brought to Japan in 1979 by the late Yumio Sakurai, a Vietnamese history scholar. Scholars of paleography, Asian history, linguistics, and other disciplines conducted a joint interdisciplinary study after forty years, in which they surveyed the materials in terms of both textual and physical characteristics using the latest documentary research methods. The characteristics of the Canh Phuoc Temple collection are as follows. First, the collection is a mass of original materials held at one temple, Canh Phuoc Temple. Therefore, the collection gives us rich information about the activities at a Buddhist temple as well as the monks and laypeople associated with it. Second, it contains rich information about the process of generation of the documents, and helps us to investigate the spread and acceptance of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism from East Asia to Southeast Asia. Third, the collection includes several sutras established in China. Thus, it provides a clue to the transformation and spread of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism since the Ming Dynasty, which combined the Jodo and Zen sects and incorporated Confucianism, Taoism, and folk religions. In the joint interdisciplinary research, both textual and physical characteristics were examined with regard to the original documents. The research results are reflected in the two articles and the bibliography in this special issue. The first article is an analysis of all the documents of the Canh Phuoc Temple collection, while the second is an analysis of the Sino-Nom scripts in the sutra and the bibliography. The survey results of the Canh Phuoc Temple collection are expected to contribute to the following research issues for Southeast Asian studies in the future: research on Chinese Mahayana Buddhism and Vietnamese Buddhism, a local sect of the Mahayana tradition; the spread of Chinese Mahayana and Vietnamese Buddhism to Theravada Buddhist societies by overseas Vietnamese in Southeast Asia; research on the physical characteristics of documents in Southeast Asia.