Tiantai Zhiyi (天台 智顗, 538~597) wrote Weimojingxuanshu (維摩經玄疏, or Xuanshu) as an offering to a king. It is one of his oldest works, and has received critical acclaim and academic interest for its ideological value, as well as its exceptional literary quality.
However, it was only after the modern period in Japan that Xuanshu was included in the Manji Zokuzōkyō (卍續藏) and Taishō shinshū daizōkyō (大正藏) as an original Tripiṭaka (a complete collection of Buddhist Sutras).
Despite its inclusion, the original book (OR original text) is criticized for containing numerous misprints and mispaginations that degrade its completeness as a form of critical literature. Further complications in translation, annotation and research of the literature, will be difficult to avoid without first making fundamental corrections.
Therefore, in order to properly understand the ideologies of Xuanshu, this study will first attempt to correct misspellings and miswritten words, and then review the existing manuscripts of the first and second book of Xuanshu.
The next step will involve an examination of the two manuscripts, discovered by the writer, from the collection of the Minobusan library, in Japan. Although Xuanshu comprises of six volumes, only two were recovered by the writer. Lack of information in the original book (OR original text), including the transcription date, and the unknown whereabouts of the missing volumes, make it hard to validate. Despite this, the fact that these are the only known manuscripts of their kind in existence makes them important to study.
The original book (OR original text) will be compared to other existing versions and commentaries to prove that it originated at an earlier time in history than the ones of Manji Zokuzōkyō (卍續藏) and Taishō shinshū daizōkyō (大正藏), which are from the Edo period (1603~1868).