A Magnificent project that reaches far beyond expectations

The late Rev. Dr. Yehan Numata originally started the English Translation of the Buddhist canon and Publication Project in January 1982. Although BDK had already translated “The Teaching of Buddha” into various languages and distributed them to hotels throughout the world at the time, he made up his mind to translate all the Buddhist scriptures from which “The Teaching of Buddha” had been drawn, and that was the beginning of the English translation project of the “Taisho Canon.” The project surprised most people in Buddhist Studies. Japanese scholar monks were skilled in the Chinese language, and they traditionally used the Chinese translations as they were. Therefore, no one ever thought of translating the Chinese canon intor English since it had not even been translated into Japanese. Everyone could not believe that it would happen, however, Yehan Numata established the Editorial Committee of the English Buddhist Canon only six months after he first came up with the idea, and he then established the Numata Center for Translation and Research in Berkeley, California in the United States two years later. The editorial committee selected 139 works for the first stage of its project and decided that they would publish those translations in 100 volumes, which amounted to one-tenth of the entire canon. Realizing the extreme difficulty of translating the voluminous Taisho Buddhist Canon in a short period of time and of completing everything by the end of the twentieth century, the Editorial Committee established the Publication Committee in the Numata Center in 1991, and published the “Mahāyānasaṃgraha” as the very first volume in 1993. As of today, 81 works have been translated and published in 48 volumes to make up the “English Buddhist Canon.” The remaining works are being translated by Buddhist scholars in over ten countries throughout the world. We are making every effort to complete the first stage of the project at the earliest possible time.