Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume III Part 33

It might seem to follow from this that the whole Pali Abhidharma and some important works such as the Thera-Thergth were unknown to the Hinayanists of Central Asia and Northern India in the early centuries of our era. But caution is necessary in drawing such inferences, for until recently it might have been said that the Sutta Nipta also was unknown, whereas fragments of it in a Sanskrit version have now been discovered in Eastern Turkestan[779]. The Chinese editors draw a clear distinction between Hinayanist and Mahayanist scriptures. They exclude from the latter works a.n.a.logous to the Pali Nikyas and Vinaya, and also the Abhidharma of the Sarvstivdins. But the labours of Hsan Chuang and I-Ching show that this does not imply the rejection of all these works by Mahayanists.

5

Buddhist literary activity has an interesting side aspect, namely the expedients used to transliterate Indian words, which almost provided the Chinese with an alphabet. To some extent Indian names, particularly proper names possessing an obvious meaning, are translated. Thus Asoka becomes Wu-yu, without sorrow: Asvaghosha, Ma-ming or horse-voice, and Udyna simply Yan or park[780]. But many proper names did not lend themselves to such renderings and it was a delicate business to translate theological terms like Nirvn?a and Samdhi. The Buddhists did not perhaps invent the idea of using the Chinese characters so as to spell with moderate precision[781], but they had greater need of this procedure than other writers and they used it extensively[782] and with such variety of detail that though they invented some fifteen different syllabaries, none of them obtained general acceptance and Julien[783] enumerates 3000 Chinese characters used to represent the sounds indicated by 47 Indian letters. Still, they gave currency[784] to the system known as _fan-ch'ieh_ which renders a syllable phonetically by two characters, the final of the first and the initial of the second not being p.r.o.nounced. Thus, in order to indicate the sound Chung, a Chinese dictionary will use the two characters _chu yung_, which are to be read together as _Ch ung_.

The transcriptions of Indian words vary in exact.i.tude and the later are naturally better. Hsan Chuang was a notable reformer and probably after his time Indian words were rendered in Chinese characters as accurately as Chinese words are now transcribed in Latin letters. It is true that modern p.r.o.nunciation makes such renderings as Fo seem a strange distortion of the original. But it is an abbreviation of Fo-t'o and these syllables were probably once p.r.o.nounced something like Vut-tha[785]. Similarly Wn-shu-shih-li[786] seems a parody of Manjusri. But the evidence of modern dialects shows that the first two syllables may have been p.r.o.nounced as Man-ju. The pupil was probably taught to eliminate the obscure vowel of _shih_, and _li_ was taken as the nearest equivalent of _ri_, just as European authors write _chih_ and _tzu_ without pretending that they are more than conventional signs for Chinese sounds unknown to our languages. It was certainly possible to transcribe not only names but Sanskrit prayers and formul in Chinese characters, and though many writers sneer at the gibberish chanted by Buddhist priests yet I doubt if this ecclesiastical p.r.o.nunciation, which has changed with that of the spoken language, is further removed from its original than the Latin of Oxford from the speech of Augustus.

Sanskrit learning flourished in China for a considerable period. In the time of the T'ang, the clergy numbered many serious students of Indian literature and the glossaries included in the Tripitaka show that they studied the original texts. Under the Sung dynasty (A.D.

1151) was compiled another dictionary of religious terms[787] and the study of Sanskrit was encouraged under the Yan. But the ecclesiastics of the Ming produced no new translations and apparently abandoned the study of the original texts which was no longer kept alive by the arrival of learned men from India. It has been stated that Sanskrit ma.n.u.scripts are still preserved in Chinese monasteries, but no details respecting such works are known to me. The statement is not improbable in itself[788] as is shown by the Library which Stein discovered at Tun-huang and by the j.a.panese palm-leaf ma.n.u.scripts which came originally from China. A few copies of Sanskrit stras printed in China in the Lanja variety of the Devangari alphabet have been brought to Europe[789]. Max Mller published a facsimile of part of the Vajracchedik obtained at Peking and printed in Sanskrit from wooden blocks. The place of production is unknown, but the characters are similar to those used for printing Sanskrit in Tibet, as may be seen from another facsimile (No. 3) in the same work. Placards and pamphlets containing short invocations in Sanskrit and Tibetan are common in Chinese monasteries, particularly where there is any Lamaistic influence, but they do not imply that the monks who use them have any literary acquaintance with those languages.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 708: [Chinese: ] For an account of some of the scriptures here mentioned see chap. XX.]

[Footnote 709: _A catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka_. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1893. An index to the Tokyo edition has been published by Fujii. Meiji x.x.xI (1898). See too Forke, _Katalog des Pekinger Tripitaka_, 1916.]

[Footnote 710: [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 711: Tan-i-ching [Chinese: ]. Some of the works cla.s.sed under Tan-i-ching appear to exist in more than one form, _e.g._ Nanjio, Nos. 674 and 804.]

[Footnote 712: These characters are commonly read Pojo by Chinese Buddhists but the j.a.panese reading Hann?ya shows that the p.r.o.nunciation of the first character was Pan.]

[Footnote 713: Vajracchedik or [Chinese: ] Chin Kang.]

[Footnote 714: Winternitz (_Gesch. Ind. Lit_. II. i. p. 242) states on the authority of Takakusu that this work is the same as the Gan?d?avyha. See also Pelliot in _J. A_. 1914, II. pp. 118-21. The Gan?d?avyha is probably an extract of the Avatamsaka.]

[Footnote 715: Nos. 113 and 114 [Chinese: ] and [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 716: _Catena of Buddhist Scriptures_, pp. 160 ff.]

[Footnote 717: The longer Sukhvatvyha is placed in the Ratnakta cla.s.s.]

[Footnote 718: The Stra of Kuan-yin with the thousand hands and eyes is very popular and used in most temples. Nanjio, No. 320.]

[Footnote 719: No. 399 [Chinese: ] and 530 [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 720: Said to have been revealed to Asanga by Maitreya. No.

1170.]

[Footnote 721: [Chinese: ] No. 1087. It has nothing to do with the Pali Stra of the same name. Digha, I.]

[Footnote 722: See below for an account of it.]

[Footnote 723: _Record of Buddhist Practices_, p. 20.]

[Footnote 724: See Oldenberg, _Vinaya_, vol. I. pp. xxiv-xlvi.]

[Footnote 725: See Watters, _Yan Chw.a.n.g_, I. p. 227. The five schools are given as Dharmagupta, Mahs'sika, Sarvstivdin, K'syapya and Mahsanghika. For the last Vatsiputra or Sthavira is sometimes subst.i.tuted.]

[Footnote 726: _Record of Buddhist Practices_, p. 8.]

[Footnote 727: The Chinese word lun occurs frequently in them, but though it is used to translate Abhidharma, it is of much wider application and means discussion of Sstra.]

[Footnote 728: See Watters, _Yan Chw.a.n.g_, I, pp. 355 ff.]

[Footnote 729: Nos. 1179, 1190, 1249.]

[Footnote 730: For a discussion of this literature see Takakusu on the Abhidharma Literature of the Sarvstivdins, _J. Pali Text Society_, 1905, pp. 67 ff.]

[Footnote 731: Nanjio, Cat. Nos. 1273, 1275, 1276, 1277, 1292, 1281, 1282, 1296, 1317. This last work was not translated till the eleventh century.]

[Footnote 732: Nanjio, Cat. Nos. 1263, 1267 and 1269.]

[Footnote 733: See Takakusu's study of these translations in _B.E.F.E.O._ 1904, pp. 1 ff. and pp. 978 ff.]

[Footnote 734: Nanjio, Cat. Nos. 1321, 1353, 1365, 1439.]

[Footnote 735: [Chinese: ] No. 1490.]

[Footnote 736: [Chinese: ] No. 1661. For more about the Patriarchs see the next chapter.]

[Footnote 737: [Chinese: ] No. 1524, written A.D. 1006.]

[Footnote 738: [Chinese: ] No. 1482.]

[Footnote 739: [Chinese: ] No. 1640.]

[Footnote 740: [Chinese: ] and [Chinese: ]. Nos. 1634 and 1594.]

[Footnote 741: See for some account of it Ma.s.son-Oursel's article in _J.A._ 1915, I. pp. 229-354.]

[Footnote 742: [Chinese: ] by [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 743: See chap. XX on the Mahayanist canon in India.]

[Footnote 744: It is described at the beginning as Ta Ming San Tsang, but strictly speaking it must be No. 12 of the list, as it contains a work said to have been written about 1622 A.D. (p. 468).]

[Footnote 745: Thus the Emperor Jn Tsung ordered the works of Ch'i Sung [Chinese: ] to be admitted to the Canton in 1062.]

[Footnote 746: Taken from Nanjio's Catalogue, p. xxvii.]

[Footnote 747: Ch'ien-Lung is said to have printed the Tripitaka in four languages, Chinese, Tibetan, Mongol and Manchu, the whole collection filling 1392 vols. See Mllendorf in China Branch, _J.A.S._ xxiv. 1890, p. 28.]

[Footnote 748: But according to another statement the southern recension was not the imperial collection begun in 1368 but a private edition now lost. See Nanjio, Cat. p. xxiii.]

[Footnote 749: See for the complete list Nanjio, Cat. p. xxvii. Those named above are (_a_) [Chinese: ], [Chinese: ], [Chinese: ], Nos. 1483, 1485, 1487, and (_b_) [Chinese: ], No. 1612. For the date of the first see Maspro in _B.E.F.E.O._ 1910, p. 114. There was a still earlier catalogue composed by Tao-an in 374 of which only fragments have been preserved. See Pelliot in _T'oung Pao_, XIX. 1920, p. 258.]

[Footnote 750: For the Korean copy now in j.a.pan, see Courant, _Bibliographie corenne_, vol. III. pp. 215-19.]