Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit ( BHS ) is a modern linguistic category applied to the language used in a class of Indian Buddhist texts, such as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras . BHS is classified as a Middle Indo-Aryan language . It is sometimes called "Buddhist Sanskrit" or "Mixed Sanskrit".
116-538: The Chinese Buddhist canon refers to a specific collection of Chinese Buddhist literature which contains the main canonical scriptures of East Asian Buddhism . The traditional term for the canon is Great Storage of Scriptures ( traditional Chinese : 大藏經 ; simplified Chinese : 大藏经 ; pinyin : Dàzàngjīng ; Japanese : 大蔵経 ; rōmaji : Daizōkyō ; Korean : 대장경 ; romaja : Daejanggyeong ; Vietnamese : Đại tạng kinh ). The Chinese canon
232-547: A family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
348-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
464-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
580-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
696-460: A Mahāyāna Tripiṭaka and a Hīnayāna Tripiṭaka, each one having the three classic sub-divisions of Sūtra, Vinaya, and Abhidharma. There are also supplementary sections with texts of East Asian provenance. The contents of the Korean Canon (which follows the organization of Zhisheng 's Kaiyuan Catalogue ) are as follows: The Yongle Northern Tripiṭaka ( yongle beizang 永樂北藏), named after
812-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
928-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
1044-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
1160-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1276-506: A form of "mixed Sanskrit" in which the original Prakrit has been incompletely Sanskritised, with the phonetic forms being changed to the Sanskrit versions, but the grammar of Prakrit being retained. For instance, Prakrit bhikkhussa , the possessive singular of bhikkhu (monk, cognate with Sanskrit bhikṣu ) is converted not to bhikṣoḥ as in Sanskrit but mechanically changed to bhikṣusya . The term owes its usage and definition largely to
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#17327719719131392-610: A form of pali. However, Franklin Edgerton states that Pāli is in essence a Prakrit . In many places where BHS differs from Sanskrit it is closer to, or identical with, Pāli . Most extant BHS works were originally written in BHS, rather than being reworkings or translations of already existing works in Pāli or other languages. However, earlier works, mostly from the Mahāsāṃghika school, use
1508-518: A large number of different genres, and were produced over a period of nearly two thousand years. This vast corpus includes texts in a kind of ‘translationese’, influenced by the vocabulary and grammar of the original languages from which they were translated, texts written throughout in an elegant Wenyan style, and texts containing a lot of colloquial language, some of which is recognizably MSC [Modern Standard Chinese]. So any generalizations made about BC will not hold for every text. The various editions of
1624-471: A large proportion of these words; in Edgerton's view, this seems to prove that most of them belong to the special vocabulary of the protocanonical Buddhist Prakrit. Not all Buddhist use of Sanskrit is in a hybrid form. Some translated works, such as by the Sarvāstivādin school, were completed in classical Sanskrit. There were also later works composed directly in Sanskrit and written in a simpler style than
1740-799: A late period, belong to a continuous and broadly unitary linguistic tradition. The language of these works is separate from the tradition of Brahmanical Sanskrit, and goes back ultimately to a semi-Sanskritized form of the protocanonical Prakrit. The peculiar Buddhist vocabulary of BHS is evidence that BHS is subordinate to a separate linguistic tradition quite separate from standard Sanskrit (Edgerton finds other indications as well). The Buddhist Brahmanical writers who used standard Brahmanical Sanskrit were small in number. This group seems to have been made up of converts who received Brahmanical training in their youth before converting to Buddhism, such as Asvaghosa . Many Sanskrit words, or particular uses of Sanskrit words, are recorded only from Buddhist works. Pāli shares
1856-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
1972-614: A revolving wheel storage cabinet. In the following one thousand years of Chinese Buddhist history, fifteen further editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon were constructed. Half of these were royal editions, supported by the Imperial Court , while other canons were made through the efforts of laypersons and monastics. Throughout its history, the Chinese Buddhist canon was also an object of worship and devotion for whole Buddhist communities. This practice has its roots in
2088-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
2204-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
2320-453: A supplementary section on schools and lineages, a supplementary section for liturgical texts in Siddham script, a section for Dunhuang texts , a section for lost ancient texts, suspected texts and twelve volumes of iconographical content. The Taishō Tripiṭaka became the basis for electronic editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon. The two main projects currently available online for free are
2436-532: A term which referred to the scriptural canons of the various Indian Buddhist schools . However, Chinese Buddhists historically did not have access to a single Tripitaka from one school or collection. Instead, the canon was complied piecemeal over centuries as various Indian texts were translated and new texts composed in China. These were all later collected into a distinct Chinese canon. The Chinese Buddhist Canon also contains many texts which were composed outside of
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#17327719719132552-534: A text which claims to be Indian was actually Indian or not). Dictionaries were also important supplements to the various canons, explaining difficult terms and names found in the various texts of the canon. One influential example was Huilin's Sounds and Meanings of the Canon (c. 810) , which explains the meanings of 6,000 characters. While the Kaibao Canon is the earliest printed canon (completed c. 983), it
2668-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
2784-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
2900-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
3016-687: Is a full Buddhist canon translated into the Tangut language from Chinese sources. This canon was the main source for the Buddhism of the Tangut people of the Western Xia dynasty (1038–1227). Today, this canon is studied by a small group of scholars who work in the field of Tangutology . Eric Grinstead published a collection of Tangut Buddhist texts under the title The Tangut Tripitaka in 1971 in New Delhi. The Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799) had
3132-538: Is a major source of scriptural and spiritual authority for East Asian Buddhism. It is also an object of worship and devotion for Asian Buddhists and its reproduction is seen as an act of merit making . The development of the Great Storage of Scriptures was influenced by the Indian Buddhist concept of a Tripitaka , literally meaning "three baskets" (of Sutra , Vinaya , and Abhidharma ),
3248-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
3364-647: Is included in the Taishō is the Kaiyuan Shijiao Lu 開元釋教錄 (Taisho no. 2154). Other catalogs are included in Volume 55. The Xuzangjing (卍續藏) version, which is a supplement of another version of the canon, is often used as a supplement for Buddhist texts not collected in the Taishō Tripiṭaka . The Jiaxing Tripitaka is another supplement for Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty Buddhist texts, and as well as
3480-576: Is not distinct enough from Sanskrit to comprise a separate linguistic category. Edgerton writes that a reader of a Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit text "will rarely encounter forms or expressions which are definitely ungrammatical, or at least more ungrammatical than, say, the Sanskrit of the epics, which also violates the strict rules of Pāṇini. Yet every paragraph will contain words and turns of expression which, while formally unobjectionable ... would never be used by any non-Buddhist writer." Edgerton holds that nearly all Buddhist works in Sanskrit, at least until
3596-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
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3712-537: Is one of the first editions of the canon with modern punctuation and also scholarly notes. The main section of the Taishō (the section that contains the traditional contents of the Chinese Buddhist Canon) has fifty-five volumes and 2,184 texts. The main section of the Taishō mostly consists of reprints of the second edition of the Korean ( Koryŏ ) canon. However, some texts which were missing from
3828-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
3944-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
4060-682: Is the Zhaocheng Jin Tripitaka , which dates to the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) , that is the earliest Tripitaka collection that survives intact. The Goryeo Tripitaka and the Qianlong Tripitaka are the only collections which have survived as complete woodblock printing sets. The first printed version of the Chinese Buddhist canon was Song dynasty Kaibao Canon (開寶藏) also known as the Shu-pen (蜀本) or Sichuan edition (since it
4176-436: Is the fact that Buddhist Chinese makes greater of disyllabic and polysyllabic words. Much of this is due to Buddhist terminology not found in other literary Chinese works. One example of a Chinese term that was coined to translate an India term is 如來 (rúlái, "thus come") which refers to the term Tathagata . Buddhist Chinese also contains many transliterations from Indian languages such as Sanskrit, for example 波羅蜜 bōluómì for
4292-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
4408-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
4524-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
4640-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
4756-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
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4872-618: The Betula schmidtii regal tree (known as Paktal in Korean), gathered on the islands off the coast, was used." These woodblocks were kept in good condition until the modern era, and are seen as accurate sources for the classic Chinese Buddhist Canon. Today, the woodblocks are stored at the Haeinsa temple, in South Korea . The main texts in this canon are divided into main sections:
4988-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
5104-626: The Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in
5220-605: The Dazangjing Bu Bian (大藏經補編) published in 1986. The manuscript finds at Dunhuang contain numerous Buddhist texts in Chinese and in other languages like Tibetan and Old Uyghur which are either not in the main Chinese canon or are significantly different versions. Most these texts are no later than the 11th century, the date of the closing of the largest trove of texts found in the so-called Library Cave (Cave 17). These finds have been influential on modern East Asian Buddhist scholarship and are an important supplement to
5336-636: The Eastern Jin and the Sui Dynasties , the earliest canons were compiled using manuscripts . None of these early manuscript canons have survived. One early collection of Chinese Buddhist canonical material is the Fangshan Stone Sutras (房山石經) which a set of around 15,000 stone tablets containing Buddhist sutras carved at Yúnjū Temple (雲居寺). This project was begun in the 7th century by a devout monk named Jìngwǎn . His followers at
5452-466: The Indian Buddhist schools had their own canon, which could differ significantly from that of other schools and be in different languages ( prakrits like Gandhari and Pali , as well as classic Sanskrit and Hybrid Sanskrit ). Some schools had extra pitakas or divisions, including a Dharani Pitaka, or Bodhisattva Pitakas. The first Chinese translations of Buddhist texts appeared during
5568-493: The Indian subcontinent , including numerous texts composed in China, such as Chinese Buddhist treatises and commentaries, histories, biographies and other reference works. As such, the Great Storage of Scriptures , the foundation of East Asian Buddhist teachings, reflects the evolution of Chinese Buddhism over time, and the religious and scholarly efforts of generations of translators, scholars and monastics. This process began with
5684-480: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
5800-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
5916-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
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#17327719719136032-605: The Pali language . Pali language was common at the time of the Buddha . His teachings were apparently first found in Pali language written by Theravada buddhist. Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit became the pre-eminent language for literature and philosophy in India. Buddhist monks developed this language they used to it while remaining under the influence of a linguistic tradition stemming from
6148-701: The Tang dynasty by the monk Zhisheng (699-740). This catalogue provided the main blueprint for the restoration and organization of future canons after the Great Buddhist Persecution in 845 . These early textual developments influenced the compilation of the first printed canon (the Kaibao ) during the Song dynasty, which was completed in 983 and comprised 130,000 woodblocks. This shift from manuscript culture to xylography introduced several changes to
6264-540: The Yongle Emperor , was the most important canon carved in the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644). It was carved in the new capital of Beijing from 1419 to 1440. The Yongle was one of the first canons to merge all the texts into a single set of pitakas . Previous canons like the Korean canon had followed the older schema of having two main divisions of " Hīnayāna " and Mahāyāna sections (each with separate sub-divisions for
6380-499: The early Buddhist teachings were collected into canons called tripiṭaka (‘three baskets’; Chin. 三藏 sānzàng ‘three stores’ or ‘three repositories’). Most canons contained sūtras (discourses of the Buddha, 經 jīng), monastic rule texts (vinaya; 律 lǜ); and scholastic treatises (abhidharma; 阿毘曇 āpítán or 阿毗達磨 āpídámó). Initially these sources were transmitted orally but later they were written down into various manuscript collections. Each of
6496-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
6612-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
6728-648: The Ōbaku school . The Qianlong Dazangjing (乾隆大藏經) also known as the Longzang (龍藏 “Dragon Store”) or the "Qing Tripitaka" was produced in Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) between the 13th year of Yongzheng (1735 CE) and the third year of the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1738 CE). The edition comes in 7,173 volumes and survives in complete woodblocks. It is the last canon printed in the traditional style (without any punctuation or modern typography ) and
6844-711: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Prior to Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit teachings used to be generally recorded in
6960-794: The Chinese Buddhist canon all include translations of Indian Āgama , Vinaya and Abhidharma texts from the Early Buddhist schools , as well as translations of the Mahāyāna sūtras , śāstras (treatises) and scriptures from Indian Esoteric Buddhism . The various canons also contain texts composed in China, Korea and Japan, including apocryphal sutras and Chinese Buddhist treatises. These additional non-Indic works include philosophical treatises, commentaries, philological works, catalogues, sectarian writings, geographic works, travelogues, biographies , genealogies and hagiographies , encyclopedias and dictionaries . Furthermore, each edition of
7076-661: The Chinese Buddhist canon translated into the Manchu language during his reign. This Qing dynasty translation of the canon is known as the Manchu Canon (ch. Qingwen fanyi dazangjing 清文繙譯大藏經, mnc . Manju gisun i ubiliyambuga amba kanjur nomun). The project involved more than 90 scholars working for 20 years. The sutras were translated from the Qianlong edition of the Chinese canon but the Vinaya texts were actually translated from
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#17327719719137192-407: The Chinese Buddhist sphere of influence. In the modern era, the contents of the Chinese canon were also translated into modern languages like Korean, Japanese and English. From the 11th to the 14th centuries, Uyghur Buddhism thrived especially in Qocho, Beshbaliq and Ganzhou regions. Uyghur Buddhists made many translations into Old Uyghur . Many of these texts have survived. The Mi Tripitaka (蕃大藏經)
7308-408: The Indian worship of Mahayana sutras . Some scholars even speak of a "cult of the canon" when referring to the various devotional activities which revolved around the creation, distribution, and preservation of the Chinese Buddhist canon. These activities included sponsoring the printing of a canon, working on the project, ceremonial rituals consecrating the texts, reading and manual ritual copying of
7424-411: The Koryŏ canon were added from other sources such as Japanese collections or other Chinese canons. The Taishō also provides scholarly annotations that contain alternate readings from other sources, though it was not a true critical edition of the Chinese canon. It also contained punctuation marks not found in the earlier canons, though they are often mistaken. The Taisho canon was also revolutionary in
7540-490: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
7656-514: The Promotion of Buddhism , BDK) was founded by Dr Yehan Numata with the express goal of translating the entire canon into English. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of
7772-472: The Qianlong Canon (1735-1738). One of the most widespread edition used by modern scholars today is the Taishō Tripiṭaka , produced in Japan in the 20th century. The language of these scriptures is termed "Buddhist Chinese" ( Fojiao Hanyu 佛教漢語), and is a variety of literary Chinese with several unique elements such as a distinctly Buddhist terminology that includes transliterations from Indian languages and newly coined Chinese Buddhist words. In India,
7888-417: The SAT Daizōkyō Text Database and the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA). The digitization of these canons became possible with the expansion of Unicode Character encoding standard to include many ancient Chinese characters . These digital editions also contain the ability to conduct a search of the entire database. The digital editions of the canon have also seen further improvements of
8004-476: The Sanskrit term pāramitā . Another feature of Buddhist Chinese is that it tends to rely on more vernacular elements than non-Buddhist literary Chinese. However, these generalizations should be understood to be very broad since, as Lock and Linebarger write: it should be borne in mind that the term in fact covers the language of thousands of texts, both those translated from Sanskrit and other languages, and those written originally in Chinese. The texts are also in
8120-438: The Shu-pen canon (along with later editions like the Liao dynasty edition) was the main source for the Tripitaka Koreana , which in turn was the basis for the modern Taisho edition. The earliest edition of the Korean canon or Tripiṭaka Koreana ( Koryŏ Taejanggyōng 高麗大藏經), also known as the Palman Daejanggyeong (80,000 Tripitaka), was first carved in the 11th century during the Goryeo period (918–1392). The first edition
8236-413: The Sūtra, Vinaya, and Abhidharma texts of each yana ). The Yongle canons however merged all these texts into a single collection of Sūtra, Vinaya, and Abhidharma (which sub-divisions for Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna). As such, its structure was as follows: This canon was also influential outside of China, as it was re-printed in Japan under the auspices of Tetsugen Doko (1630–1682), a renowned master of
8352-491: The Tibetan canon. The Goryeo canon has been translated in full into modern Korean . The Taisho canon was also translated in full into modern Japanese during the 20th century under the auspices of Takakusu Junjiro and other Japanese Buddhist scholars. Many sutras and treatises have been translated into English by various scholars, but many works remain untranslated into English. In 1965, Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai (Society for
8468-587: The best preserved of the classic Chinese Tripitakas in China. The Taishō Tripiṭaka ( taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經) is one of the most influential modern editions, being widely used by modern scholars. It was published by Japanese scholars who worked in Japan from 1924 to 1929. Named after the Taishō era of Japanese history, a modern standardized edition was published in Tokyo between 1924 and 1934 in 100 volumes. It
8584-476: The canon has its own organizational schema, with different divisions for the various types of texts. The development of the Buddhist canons also saw the development of other supplemental texts, including textual catalogues and lexicographical works. Catalogues contained much information about the texts in the canon, including how it was translated, its content and its textual history and authenticity (whether
8700-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
8816-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
8932-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
9048-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
9164-511: The first translations in the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) after which a period of intense translation work followed in the succeeding dynasties . The first complete canonical collection, known as the Kaibao Canon or Shu-pen (蜀本) edition was printed during the Song dynasty between 971 to 983. Later eras saw further editions of the canon published in China, Korea and Japan like the Tripitaka Koreana (11th & 13th centuries) and
9280-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
9396-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
9512-649: The history of the Chinese Buddhist Canon can be divided into four main periods: the handwriting era (from the Han up to the 10th century), the era of woodblock printing (beginning in the Song era with the Kaibao edition of the 10th century), the era of modern printing , and the digital era . From the Han to the Song dynasty era, many translations were made and made new texts were also composed in China. During
9628-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
9744-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
9860-779: The later Han Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Ming (r. 58–75 ce). The first sutra to be translated is said to be the Sutra of Forty-two Sections (四十二章經 sìshíèr zhāng jīng). Many of the early translators were monks from Central Asia, like the Parthian Ān Shìgāo (安世高), and the Kuchan translator Kumārajīva (鳩摩羅什; 343– 413). Later figures were native Chinese who traveled to India and studied Sanskrit texts there, like Fǎxiǎn (法顯, c. 337–422 ce) and Xuánzàng (玄奘, 602–664 ce). Most translators who produced significant translations did not work alone, making use of teams of translators and scribes. Thus,
9976-411: The main collections of the canon. These Chinese works include sutras like High King Avalokiteshvara Sutra and other texts, some of which are important to Chinese folk religions . Some of these works can be found in supplementary volumes to the different editions of the canon. In the medieval period, several translations of Chinese Buddhist texts were made into other languages by various groups within
10092-543: The main traditional canonical editions have been published by modern scholars as part of modern collections of the canon or as supplemental volumes. Perhaps the most well known are the supplemental volumes to the Taishō Canon which include Japanese Buddhist works, Dunhuang texts , illustrations and so forth. The use of old catalogues is an important supplement to the study of the Chinese Buddhist canon, its history and lost editions. The most famous and influential catalog that
10208-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
10324-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
10440-513: The names of printers and binders. Some editions also included illustrations of various scenes, such as Buddha assemblies from specific sutras and landscapes. Various types of paper were used for the canons, many of them being made from mulberry and hemp , while woodblocks were made from pear wood or jujube wood. After printing, a canon would be stored in special cabinets produced for storing canonical texts. These huge cabinets were called "tripitaka cabinets" and were of different designs, including
10556-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
10672-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
10788-851: The physical layout and other material aspects of the new printed canons. One of these changes was the use of the Thousand Character Classic for a library classification system. Each text was assigned a character from this classic work which was widely memorized by school children and thus known by all educated persons. Regarding physical aspects, while the Kaibao canon came in scrolls made from several sheets of paper pasted together, later editions were packaged in different styles such as accordion folding books and string bound books (called "Indian style" since it imitated Indian manuscripts). Texts were also preceded or closed by prefaces and colophons that contained information such as titles, text origin, printing date, sponsors, and even
10904-585: The proto-canonical Prakrit of the early oral tradition. While there are widely differing theories regarding the relationship of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit to Pali , but it is certain that Pāli is much closer to Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit than any other languages in india . Norman K. is a scholar known for his work on Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit and Pali. His works mainly focus on understanding early Buddhist texts and their development comparing Pali, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Prakrit languages. According to K. R. Norman , Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit could also be considered
11020-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
11136-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
11252-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
11368-433: The scholarship of Franklin Edgerton. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is primarily studied in the modern world in order to study the Buddhist teachings that it records, and to study the development of Indo-Aryan languages. Compared to Pāli and Classical Sanskrit, comparatively little study has been made of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, in part because of the fewer available writings, and in part because of the view of some scholars that BHS
11484-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
11600-511: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
11716-687: The study of East Asian Buddhist texts found in the main canonical collections. The Dunhuang texts have been published by different modern scholarly projects. The Chinese Manuscripts in the Tripitaka Sinica (中華大藏經–漢文部份 Zhonghua Dazangjing: Hanwen bufen ), a new collection of canonical texts, was published by Zhonghua Book Company in Beijing in 1983–97, with 107 volumes of literature, are photocopies of early manuscripts, and include many newly unearthed scriptures from Dunhuang . There are also newer Tripitaka Sinica projects. A number of apocryphal sutras and texts composed in China are excluded from
11832-490: The temple continue to carve sutras on stone tablets for generations after (even well into the Ming dynasty ). The earliest dated Heart Sutra from 661 comes from this collection of stone carved sutras. Another important milestone in the development of the canon was the compilation of the Kaiyuan Catalogue (Kāiyuán Shìjiàolù, 開元釋教錄, Kaiyuan Era Record of Buddhist Teachings , Taishō Tripitaka No. 2154) during
11948-425: The texts (a practice which remained important even as printing dominated the production of sutras). One of the various textual ceremonies was called "sunning the scriptures" (shaijing), which developed out of the need to regularly take out texts to prevent dampness. This utilitarian practice developed into a ritual in which the texts would be displayed to the public who would come to venerate them. Another popular ritual
12064-756: The texts from previous printed editions. For example, when the Taisho Canon was first printed, many old characters found in the Tripitaka Koreana (the main source of the Taisho) were not available to the original Taisho Canon typesetters , who thus had to choose alternative Chinese characters. The new electronic editions of the Taisho have allowed for easier restoration of the original characters as Unicode expanded its base of Chinese characters. Numerous collections of supplemental texts which are not found in
12180-455: The texts of the Chinese canon were translated by various figures from different source texts (in different forms of Sanskrit and prakrit). This process happened over several centuries and thus the various texts of the Chinese canon reflect different translation styles and philosophies. According to a Yuan dynasty catalogue, there were about 194 known translators who worked on about 1,440 texts in 5,580 fascicles (juans). According to Darui Long,
12296-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
12412-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
12528-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
12644-512: The way it organized the canonical texts. It abandoned the traditional canonical schemas of organization which date back to the Kaiyuan catalogue. Instead, the Taisho was organized into the following categories: The Supplementary section of the canon contains further texts including: Furthermore there are more sections for supplementary content by Japanese authors (30 volumes), supplementary sections of extra sutra, vinaya and sastra commentaries,
12760-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
12876-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
12992-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
13108-628: Was completely destroyed by the Mongols in 1232 and thus a second set was carved from 1236 to 1251 during the reign of Gojong (1192–1259). This second Korean canon was carved into 81,258 woodblocks . According to Lewis R. Lancaster "each was carved on both sides with twenty-three lines of fourteen characters each. The calligraphy was excellent and the layout such that all the characters appeared in large size. The blocks measured two feet three inches in length and nearly ten inches in width and more than an inch in thickness. A very hard and durable wood from
13224-433: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
13340-641: Was printed in Sichuan province ). It was printed on the order of Emperor Taizu of Song (r. 960–976) and the work of printing the whole canon lasted from 971 to 983. The blocks used to print the Kaibao Canon were lost in the fall of the Northern Song capital Kaifeng in 1127 and there are only about twelve fascicles worth of surviving material. However, the Kaibao formed the basis for future printed versions that do survive intact. Most importantly,
13456-443: Was the ceremonial reading of the entire canon, a rite called "turning the scriptures" (zhuanjing). This was also sometimes done by a person as a solitary spiritual practice. The texts of the Chinese Buddhist canon are written in a unique variant of literary Chinese (Wényán 文言) which is termed Buddhist Chinese by scholars. This "Buddhist Chinese" contains several features that distinguish it from standard literary Chinese. One of these
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