The *Daśapadārthaśāstra translated by Xuanzang in 648, is the only Vaiśeṣika work that has been preserved in classical Chinese. So far, no Sanskrit manuscript nor Tibetan translation has been found. This text mainly explains the ten-category theory which is different from the six-category doctrine of the Vaiśeṣikasūtra. Although the idea discussed in the *Daśapadārthaśāstra is not the mainstream in India, it is the basis for East Asian to understand this kind of Indian realism before modern times.
There was no commentary on the *Daśapadārthaśāstra in ancient China, but in the eighteenth and ninth centuries in Japan, some Buddhist monks dedicated to the study of Vaiśeṣika and Sāṃkhya etc. non-Buddhist thoughts. Many of their writings even have preserved till now. Those commentaries on the *Daśapadārthaśāstra and the *Suvarṇasaptatiśāstra of Sāṃkhya, together with the study of the siddham and the sixfold analyses of compounds etc. Sanskrit grammars flourishing from the Edo period, constitute the trend of Japanese Indology until modern times.
Among the various commentaries on the *Daśapadārthaśāstra, Kiben (1718-1791)’s commentary is the most important one. It has two volumes and a total of about 43,000 words that includes the original text of the *Daśapadārthaśāstra. This work was compiled by Nakano Tatsue (1871-1934) into the Japanese Tripitaka. Fortunately, the original copy used by Nakano for editing, namely the one published in 1779, was donated to Kyoto University Library along with other 797 precious books in 1993. It is now opened on-line at the “Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive”.
Basing on the high-quality images of the 1779 edition of Kiben’s Commentary on the *Daśapadārthaśāstra, this paper tries to find the way how Kiben interprets non-Buddhist thoughts, i.e. how an Edo Buddhist monk understands the Vaiśeṣika philosophy. In addition, this paper discusses the reasons why Buddhist scholars in the Edo period were keen to learn non-Buddhist Indian thoughts.
