History of the Siddham — from India to Japan

The Siddham script (Bonji in Japanese) came into being in India well over a thousand years ago and travelled with Buddhism through Central Asia and China all the way to Japan. On the way it changed, and in Japan it is still used today in a way you hardly find anywhere else. During my research at Kyoto University I found the original form of one of the Reiki symbols in this script, and that became the basis of my master's thesis and my doctoral dissertation. In this article I'd like to tell you a little about the history of the Siddham.

The beginnings in India 梵字

The Siddham script, in Japanese 梵字 bonji, belongs to the Brahmi family of scripts, from which almost all writing systems of South and Southeast Asia descend. In the early days of Buddhism the teachings were passed on orally, because only a few monks could write. When the sutras were gradually written down, learning to write became essential for monks.

Interestingly, the script at first had no name of its own. Its name came from practice. At the beginning of their studies, students had to practice the characters for the word siddham, and the primer and lists of characters were headed with siddhir astu, "may it be perfect". The root sidh means something like "accomplished" or "perfect" in a sacred sense. So the word siddham became a name for the characters and for the primer itself. Manuscripts were mostly written with a wooden brush and red ink on palm leaves (Skr.: tāla), sometimes also on birch bark, and then pierced and tied together with a cord.

In the great monasteries of India such as Nālandā, the Siddham characters were not only written but also recited and meditated on. Each syllable had a meaning beyond its sound. The syllable a, for example, stands for the unborn origin from which everything arises. Between the 6th and 8th centuries esoteric Buddhism flourished in India, and the Siddham script became the preferred medium for mantras and dhāraṇīs.

The way to China 唐

The Buddhist sutras that came to China were largely written in Siddham and translated into Chinese. In the 8th century, Indian masters such as Śubhakarasiṃha (jap.: Zenmui 善無畏), Vajrabodhi (jap.: Kongōchi 金剛智) and Amoghavajra (jap.: Fukū 不空) brought texts, rituals and lineages of esoteric Buddhism to Chang'an, the capital of the Tang dynasty.

What I find interesting is that there was hardly any interest in China in the correct pronunciation or in Sanskrit grammar. Because of the many dialects in China, the written form mattered more than the spoken language for communication anyway. As a result, people focused on the form of the Siddham and on the effect of mantras, dhāraṇīs and seed syllables. In China, and later in Korea and Japan, the Siddham were therefore seen and used purely as a sacred script.

By the way, the Siddham also inspired other writing systems. The people who created Hangul in Korea and the syllabaries hiragana and katakana in Japan were influenced by the system of the Siddham. You can still see this today in the order of the Japanese syllables, which follows the Indian sound system.

The Siddham come to Japan 空海

For a long time it was assumed that the Siddham came to Japan at the beginning of the 9th century with the monks Kūkai and Saichō. It's true that with them a big wave of texts and teachings began. However, the esoteric teachings had arrived at least a hundred years earlier, and the Siddham themselves came as early as the 6th century, at the same time that Buddhism officially reached Japan. In 538 or 552, depending on the source, the Japanese emperor received sculptures, sutras with Siddham and ritual objects from Korea.

In 607 the envoy Ono no Imoko brought sutras in Siddham written on palm leaves to Japan, and they are still kept at the temple Hōryūji today. In 736 the Indian monk Bodhisena arrived in Japan. In 752 he played a leading role as ritual master in the eye-opening ceremony of the Great Buddha of Tōdaiji in Nara, and afterwards he taught Siddham at the temple Daianji for about fifteen years.

Kūkai 空海 (774–835) sailed to China in 804, at about thirty. In Chang'an he met his master Huiguo 恵果 (jap.: Keika), who within a few months transmitted to him the teachings of both mandalas, the rituals, the mantras and the Siddham. In 806 Kūkai returned to Japan with a great deal of material and founded the Shingon school 真言宗, the school of the "true word". He laid the foundation for the Siddham as an organized field of study and wrote several treatises on them. In them he explains that the Siddham have meanings for their sound as well as for their form, and that as symbols they have special functions and effects. When teaching the Siddham, Kūkai placed great value on writing them correctly.

Kūkai is counted among the "eight masters" (jap.: Nittō hakke 入唐八家), the eight great monks who traveled to Tang China in the 9th century and brought back new material again and again, including many texts in Siddham. So by then the Siddham had long since been introduced to Japan, but it was these monks who really spread them. After contact with China broke off abruptly in 894, a phase of research began in Japan, and in various temples the Siddham were studied and explained in new texts.

Sacred signs in Japan 聖

Since hardly anyone in Japan spoke Sanskrit, the Siddham never became an everyday script there. Each sign stood less for a sound in a sentence than for a Buddha, a bodhisattva or a principle. The syllable a is at the center of ajikan, the contemplation of the syllable A, and the syllable vaṃ stands for Dainichi Nyorai in the Diamond Realm Mandala.

Right up to the 20th century there was hardly any interest in Japan in Sanskrit grammar. The enthusiasm was for the expressive calligraphies in Siddham and for the rituals and meditations. Only in recent decades have people in Japan slowly begun to study Sanskrit as a language.

To this day you find Siddham on graves all over Japan, on wooden grave tablets, on talismans and in the mandalas of Shingon temples. So the signs are everywhere, but most people walk past them without knowing what they are looking at.

My research on the Siddham 研

I spent about three years doing research at Kyoto University, thanks to two scholarships, and much of that time I was in temples. My doctoral dissertation at Heidelberg University, Die Siddham in der japanischen Kunst – Rituale der Heilung (Siddham in Japanese Art – Rituals of Healing), looks at how the Siddham were used in Japanese art and ritual, for example on mandalas, talismans and in calligraphy. What interested me most was the ritual side, that is, the fact that these signs were not only depicted but also used in practice.

The connection with the Reiki symbols 靈氣

Of the four classical Reiki symbols, one goes back directly to a Siddham seed syllable, namely Sei He Ki, which was originally the syllable hrīḥ. In my book on the Reiki symbols I wrote that Usui came across the Siddham in the course of his research. I think it's possible, even likely, that he would have included more Siddham in Reiki if he had had more time to pass it on.

The roots of the Reiki symbols reach into esoteric Buddhism, Shintō, Shugendō and shamanic Daoism, and the Siddham practice of the Shingon school is one important strand among them. In Shingon Reiki, initiations into the Siddham characters of great Buddhas and bodhisattvas are added further along the path. You'll find an overview in the article on the Siddham script.

Have you ever noticed Siddham characters on a temple visit without knowing what they were?