This paper analyzes shūkyō 宗教 as a translational equivalent to “religion” and the Zongjing lu 宗鏡録 （T. 2016; Records as the mirror of the truth） to make the following three points:
（1） After the word shūkyō became an accepted translational equivalent to “religion,” the Zongjing lu was recollected to be the source of this word. This translational equivalence became widely established in the second decade of the Meiji era （1877–1886）, and originally the lexical item shūkyō as the semantic loan of “religion” was not linked to the Zongjing lu. However, in the third edition of the Tetsugaku jii 哲学辞彙 （Glossary of philosophy） published in 1912, the Zongjing lu is cited in the translation of “religion” as shūkyō.
（2） The two characters “shūkyō” appear together in the Zongjing lu, but rather than forming a compound with a unified meaning they are only the assemblage of the characters shū 宗 and kyō 教. Here shū is either a verb meaning “to follow” （as in to esteem and accept the authority of） or a noun meaning “truth” （as in a particular spiritual reality which is the underlying essence of a teaching; and by extension the position of holding such a truth and the school which holds it）, and kyō is a noun meaning “teachings.”
（3） The third edition of the Tetsugaku jii mentions the Zongjing lu because it is referring to the Yuanjian leihan 淵鑑類函 （An encyclopedia of categorized writings from the [Kangxi emperor’s] Library of Profound Discernment）. The Zongjing lu has been widely read since the Edo period and was an appropriate source for this translation. Today, some scholars say that the Zongjing lu had been forgotten in Japan from after the fourteenth or sixteenth century, and this perception needs to be corrected.
