Re: Brush style document: Request for help!

Sean wrote:
Hi. I need some help reading a document in what I guess would be called "grass style." I asked a decently educated Japanese friend to help, and she could only get about half of it. I say that not to criticize her at all, but her trouble with it at least made me feel less ignorant (no doubt unjustifiably!).

The context is that it's an ordination certificate for a monk. I was asked to translate the "full text," but for much of it I can't even figure out what to look up, let alone "translate" it. Stroke count? Yikes. I've never learned anything about this style of brush writing.

If the language is arcane, but someone can at least tell what the mystery kanji are, that would be a big help. If folks also know the "words," well that would be an even bigger help!

It was written by a roshi who was probably well into his nineties at the time.

I would greatly appreciate any help. It's not for money, so you wouldn't be doing my homework for me. :—)

Thanks to all who would like to take up this challenge.

A scan is posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/seanrh9/Certificate#5316191380760149474
or http://tinyurl.com/dyr2de if that gets garbled.

Well, we know there's at least one person who occasions this group who can read it.

Until he comes along I get to play with it.

The first character *might* be 授. The second looks like 奈 or kana for "na." Since the thing is in Chinese the "na" isn't likely. Or could it be 授衣 (Ninth month in lunar calendar)?

三帰五... Hmm... There's lots of 三X五Y expressions, but I don't find one beginning 三帰. 三帰 itself means something like "accept the three treasures (the teachings of one of the Buddhas)." I think the next character is real easy; I wonder why I can't read it?

安名 are easy characters, I wonder what they mean? 恵秀 are kindly spelt out for us in romaji.

Then as you may have noticed it starts getting even harder.
？八十一代御弦沙門--Guess which four characters are not wild guesses.
美門羅府--the last one almost certainly wrong.
？？万伝？--I should have quit while I was ahe... err, not so far behind.
杏山周... I'm tempted to make a 春 out of the last one, but that's pretty wild.

Anyway, it's taken me so long to type this up, there are probably a bunch of correct readings posted by now.
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