Originally the poem was attributed to Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179).

The text of the poem in hiragana (with archaic ゐ and ゑ but without voiced consonant marks) is: Note that: An English translation by Professor Ryuichi Abe[3] reads as: Although its scent still lingers on the form of a flower has scattered away For whom will the glory of this world remain unchanged?

Arriving today at the yonder side of the deep mountains of evanescent existence We shall never allow ourselves to drift away intoxicated, in the world of shallow dreams.

[3] The Iroha contains every kana only once, with the exception of ん (-n), which was not distinguished from む mu in writing until the early 20th century (see Japanese script reform).

Around 1890, with the publication of the Wakun no Shiori (和訓栞) and Genkai (言海) dictionaries, the gojūon (五十音, literally "fifty sounds") ordering system, which is based on Sanskrit, became more common.

Even after widespread use of gojūon in education and dictionaries, the Iroha sequence was commonly used as a system of showing order, similarly to a, b, c... in English.

Other examples include subsection ordering in documents, seat numbering in theaters, and showing go moves in diagrams (kifu).

that the Iroha is a transformation of these verses in the Nirvana Sutra: 諸行無常 是生滅法 生滅滅已 寂滅為楽 which translates into All acts are impermanent That's the law of creation and destruction.