论佛教对古代汉语词汇发展演变的影响z上{.doc

(1 The Impact of Buddhism on the Deve-lopment of Chinese Vovabulary (I The Impact of Buddhism on the Development of Chinese Vocabulary ( I Zh[ Q*ngzh% Professor, Dept. of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University, Beijing, China Introduction This paper focuses on the influence of Buddhism on the historical development of the Chinese vocabulary. It is well known that Buddhism was officially introduced into China from India and Central Asia in medi-eval period starting around the beginning of the Christian era. It is argued that, since the Eastern H3n Dynasty 25220 CE ,Buddhism and its culture have had a tremen-dous impact not only on Chinese culture but also on Chinese. Language is the basic and the most important means for cultural dissemination. However, when they began to have contact with Buddhism, Chinese people learned Buddhism not through the original Indian language, but primarily from the translation of Buddhist sutras introduced by foreign monks who were probably the only interpreters at the time. Thus, the trans-lation of Buddhist sutras was the sole ve-hicle for dissemination of Indian Buddhism in China. It is without doubt that, for the Chinese people, the translated sutras were 25-22 xX10 15g / 2003^t 5g ??e? / ??O[eY\S?N?o???^_Yv|\Uo ??v…_q—?(N _N-??\qg ISSN?1609-476X 84049Sepc??–?~#Yj9‘O[QI\qfn?€[xX1y –??q?07-6561921?I129101292 P3w ?07-6565774 E-mail ?ugbj@fgs org tw (2 Universal Gate Buddhist Journal, Issue 15 the only source available to learn about In-dian Buddhism, and the only medium to spread Buddhist culture. It is further argued that the translation of Indian Buddhist sutras resulted in what is called ‘Buddhist Hybrid Chinese BHC ’ a new written, or book language of Chinese which is based on old written language but mixed with ele-ments from different languages, such as the original Buddhist textual languages, the mother tongues of foreign translators, and spoken Chinese from different dialects and vernacular. When BHC Buddhism