Studies On The Language Of Chinese Buddhist Scriptures

During the Han dynasty, Buddhist was brought into China, leading to the translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. The work of translating lasted for about 1,000 years, creating numerous Chinese Buddhist scriptures. On the meantime, people made a lot of writings about Buddhist, thus brought us many documents of ourselves. The translated Chinese Buddhist scriptures and the writings are both valuable for language studies, while the Chinese Buddhist scriptures contains more special value. By studying these documents, we can make ourselves more informed on the history of our Chinese language. The best way is to use both kinds of materials on each of our study, because they can not be taken apart by nature.This dissertation aims to investigate some of the features of the language of the Chinese Buddhist scriptures and writings. It consists of four parts, each parts deals a certain kind of materials.The first part compares the notes in CHUSANGZANGJIJI by SENGYOU and the words and phrases actually used in the existing early Chinese Buddhist scriptures. Twenty-five groups of words and phrases are recorded in CHUSANGZANGJIJI ,but it doesn't match with those actually used in the Chinese Buddhist scriptures. According to the Chinese Buddhist scriptures, the so-called "old ones "seem to be new whereas the "new ones "seem to be old. A thorough investigation was made to show why should this come into being. The conclusion is that some of the words and phrases are no more their own at all, because they had been replaced by others during the long history of their existing.