A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms: With Sanskrit and English Equivalents and a Sanskrit-Pali Index (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780700714551)

This invaluable interpretive tool, first published in 1937, is now available for the first time in a paperback edition specially aimed at students of Chinese Buddhism.
Those who have endeavoured to read Chinese texts apart from the apprehension of a Sanskrit background have generally made a fallacious interpretation, for the Buddhist canon is basically translation, or analogous to translation. In consequence, a large number of terms existing are employed approximately to connote imported ideas, as the various Chinese translators understood those ideas. Various translators invented different terms; and, even when the same term was finally adopted, its connotation varied, sometimes widely, from the Chinese term of phrase as normally used by the Chinese.
For instance, kl駸a undoubtedly has a meaning in Sanskrit similar to that of, i.e. affliction, distress, trouble. In Buddhism affliction (or, as it may be understood from Chinese, the afflicters, distressers, troublers) means passions and illusions; and consequently fan-nao in Buddhist phraseology has acquired this technical connotation of the passions and illusions. Many terms of a similar character are noted in the body of this work. Consequent partly on this use of ordinary terms, even a well-educated Chinese without a knowledge of the technical equivalents finds himself unable to understand their implications.

Author: Lewis Hodous, William E. Soothill
ISBN-10: 0700714553
ISBN-13: 9780700714551
Publisher: Routledge
Language: English
Published: 12/18/2003
Pages: 536
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.81lbs
Size: 9.14h x 6.32w x 1.57d