This article focuses on ritualized scribal practices in eighth-century Japan. It uses colophons, scriptorium documents, and narrative tales to explore how sutra copyists upheld vegetarian diets, performed ablutions, wore ritual garments, and avoided contact with pollutants stemming from death and illness. Such practices, often described in terms of purity, spread widely on Asian continent in seventh century and reached Japan by eighth century. This article argues that upholding purity was deeply connected to notions of ritual efficacy but also enabled pious lay scribes to train for monastic careers. The evidence is used to reassess historiographical debates on Nara with particular attention to well-known theory of state Buddhism (kokka Bukkyo ron).KEYWORDS: purity-sutra copying-scribes-Nara Buddhism-state Buddhism- Shosoin(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Transcribing Buddhist texts in early Japan required more than a fine hand and a careful eye. Before even picking up a brush, scribes upheld vegetarian diets, performed ablutions, donned ritual garments, and avoided contact with pollutants stemming from death and illness. Various sources from early Japan and continent describe these practices in terms of purity. But why would sutra copyists bother to copy texts in highly ritualized ways? What meaning did these practices hold for scribes and patrons?In this article, I will use an interpretive framework that views scribal practices as disciplinary regimes. The word regime, which now commonly implies an unjust system of government, originally referred to dietary and meditative practices that were intended to improve a person's welfare-a meaning that is preserved in modern English regimen. The term similarly has a passive and active sense. First, discipline can be imposed from above, as in being disciplined by one's teacher. In second sense, which may arise as a result of first, one becomes self-disciplined and is able to do what is required independent of external force.1 More concretely, patrons and scriptoria administrators demanded that scribes uphold ritual protocol tied to diet and dress to ensure that manuscript would become empowered to efficaciously answer patron's prayers. These same practices prepared religiously motivated scribes for ordination. In this way, I hope to insert a sense of agency into our under-This dual notion of discipline allows us to ask new questions about religious practice in eighth-century Japan. Most scholarship over last half century fits within framework of theory of state Buddhism (kokka Bukkyo ron ...), a model most clearly and influentially articulated by Inoue Mitsusada.3 In this model, state functions as a regulatory body that controlled (tosei ...) through administrative and legal reform (Inoue 1971, 31-52). A new generation of scholars, led by Yoshida Kazuhiko, has challenged Inoue's conclusions. Yoshida's research suggests that legal measures instituted by state were for most part dysfunctional, and he highlights importance of figures operating independently of state-a phenomenon he refers to as the of masses (minshu Bukkyo ...; Yoshida 1995, 30-97; 2006a, 25-28 and 36; and 2006b, 148-49 and 153-54).Although both state model and more recent revisions by Yoshida have shed much-needed light on early Japanese Buddhism, each approach presents its own set of problems. On one hand, models that focus on regulation tend to see social structures as determinative and consciously instituted by elites as a means of exerting control. On other hand, scholars who emphasize resistance against norms and religious freedom frequently impose Western, liberal values of autonomy and self-expression on an eighthcentury culture, where such values may in fact be nonsensical. Furthermore, an overemphasis on the of masses simply moves attention away from state without ever assessing its purpose and limits. …