Evidently the idea of the i-ro-ha, or Japanese ABC, was derived from the
Sanskrit alphabet, or, what some modern Anglo-Indian has called the
Deva-Nagari or the god-alphabet. There is no evidence, however, to show
that K[=o]b[=o] did more than arrange in order forty-seven of the
easiest Chinese signs then used, in such a manner that they conveyed in
a few lines of doggerel the sense of a passage from a sutra in which the
mortality of man and the emptiness of all things are taught, and the
doctrine of Nirvana is suggested.[14] Hokusai, the artist, in a sketch
which embodies the popular idea of this bonze's immense industry,
represents him copying the shastras and sutras. K[=o]b[=o] is on a seat
before a large upright sheet of paper. He holds a brush-pen in his
mouth, and one in each of his hands and feet, all moving at once.[15]
Favorite portions of the Buddhist scriptures were indeed so rapidly
multiplied in Japan in the ninth century, as to suggest the idea, that,
even in this early age, block printing had been imported from China,
whence also afterward, in all probability, it was exported into Europe
before the days of Gutenberg and Coster.[16] The popular imagination,
however, was more easily moved on seeing five brushes kept at work and
all at once by the muscles in the fingers, toes and mouth of one man.
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