Each of the texts in the Taisho Tripitaka Cannon is numbered, and they are collected into "volumes."

The texts I would like to examine are numbers 2142, 2143, and 2144. They are found in Volume 54, which caught my eye because of its enigmatic title: Gai Kyo Bu, which literally means "outside-teachings-section," or more contextually translated, "Non-Buddhist texts."


Bundles of volumes are further classified into what one might call "Groups:" There is a "Zen Group" of Zen Texts, the "Agama Group" of the earliest teachings, the "Esoteric Group" of what were originally generally secret texts kept from the eyes of all but advanced Vajrayana initiates, and so on.

Volume 54 is part of a rather small group that caught my eye because it is dubbed the "Miscellaneous Group." It contains sub-categories with names that include "Catalogs," "Encylopedias and Dictionaries," "Japanese Sectarian Writings," "Apocrypha", "Lost Writings" (How can they be "lost" if they are collected here? Will have to investigate) and something mysterious called the "Dark Cloud Group"... Curiously the source with which I am currently working totally blanks out even the titles of this Group. Very strange.

This whole wing of the Cannon seems to be viewed as a sleepy backwater of jumbled (and perhaps in some cases dubious) material that doesn't really fit anywhere else,

Anyway, zooming in to concentrate on Volume 54,the Gai Kyo Bu, I wondered (and still wonder) why "Non-Buddhist texts" are even included here to begin with. It would be as if the Bible had a book called "Heathen Writings."

The texts in Volume 54 are as follows:
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Texts 2137 and 2138 : The "Counting Treatise" and the "Victory Treatise", respectively. My prelininary investigations show they may belong to two now-defunct ancient Indian faiths, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Texts 2140 and T2141: "Manichean Teachings." Maniheanism is a now-dead religion that once had enormous reach. You can read about it here if interested:
[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]

And finally the three that caught my eye: 2142, 2143, and 2144: Titled "The Luminous Religion" or Keikyo in Japanese.

"Luminous Religion"? What the heck was that all about?


Turns out I'm not the first to have wondered this. In the early 1900s a number of Japanese scholars concluded they were "Buddified" versions of teachings that could originally be attributed to the Nestorian Branch of Christianity.

Nestorian Christianity: The Plot Thickens...

To be contiued...