Today, when we hear the name of Gonzō, we generally think that he was an important monk of the Sanronshū from the relevant information we came across when conducting research on Kūkai. This view can be found in the official history of Japan like"Shokunihonki" or the well-known It has received support from many documents such as "A praise memorial to a portrait wooden bust of the late Bishop Gonzō ". However, we affirm that Gonzō wasan important monk but cannot clearly understand the reasons why Gonzō wasvalued and we are unable to establish a clear understanding why he was important. The reason is not difficult to understand. The most important thing is that Gonzō had no personal writings. Gonzō's speeches and opinions during his lifetime were scattered and recorded in many different classics. Researchers cannot use works written by Gonzō as primary sources to understand what he was thinking, making it difficult to understand Gonzō's related thoughts and issues. However, even though Gonzō did not leave any personal writings, researchers were able to record his presence in the activities of the Buddhist Dharma Assemblies at that time. It can be seen that he once held different monk positions, and the inheritance of Gonzō is related to many well-known monks that are related to him, such as Douji and Kūkai. He is always being compared with many famous and active monks. Gonzō’s reputation and status of Buddhism at that time should be regarded as equivalent to both of the monks mentioned above. It can even encourage and lead scholars to make up for the inequality of the availability and scarcity of resources from different aspects. This article attempts to use relevant documents and materials not written by Gonzō himself to trace back the inheritance of Gonzō from Gonzō, to get a grasp on certain era, situations, and realistic conditions, to observe how Gonzō is recorded in documents written from the perspective of others, and to explain how Gonzō believes that the concept of Sanron sect as a standard or an indicator of the times that was established during the transition from the Nara period to the Heian period. With regard to the documents that recorded Gonzō, we can understand why Gonzō’s miscellaneous studies have highlighted such kind of phenomena in the history of Japanese Buddhist teaching, and to have more comprehensive understanding of Gonzō’s situation at that time and the works written by later generations, and also to have a discussion of the mythical description of the relationship between Gonzō and Kūkai.
