monks knew Sanskrit better, and had access to enlarged means of information about it, they wrote books on its grammar and compiled dictionaries and vocabularies in Sanskrit and Chinese for the use of their fellow countrymen. We may here notice the names of one or two of these works as specimens. In a previous chapter we have met with the I-ch‘ie-ching-yin-i (一切經音義), Sounds and Meanings of the Whole Canon, by Yuan-ying (元 or 玄應). The celebrated monk and pilgrim I-ching (義淨) compiled a Sanskrit-Chinese vocabulary to which he gave the name Fan-yü-ch‘ien-tzŭ-wên (梵語千字文) that is, a Sanskrit Thousand Character Text. This book is of some value to the student though the editions now current abound in misprints or errors of transcription and other faults, and though the work is without a good arrangement. I-ching, who was also a scholar, taught his brethren much about the Sanskrit alphabet and grammar, and his writings on these subjects are often quoted by later authors in China and Japan. Then we have also a small book on the Sanskrit language by the monk I-hsing (一行), a great astronomer and scholar of the T'ang period. In the same period lived also Yen-ts‘ung (彥琮) a monk who was an unwearied student of Sanskrit grammar and of all the Indian literature to which he had access. Under the Sung dynasty we find the monk Fa-yun (法雲) who compiled about A. D. 1151 the well-known Fan-i-ming-i-chi (翻譯名義集). The meaning of this title is, in Mr. Bunyin Nanjio's translation—"A collection of the meanings of the (Sanskrit) names translated (into Chinese)." The book is rather a classified collection of terms, mostly Sanskrit, transcribed and translated. As Mr. Bunyin says—"This is a very useful dictionary of the technical names both in the Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist literature, though much correction is required." Moreover, the student who uses the work will find in it words which are apparently neither Sanskrit nor Chinese.[1]
- ↑ Catalogue of the Ch. Translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka, par. No. 1640. For the transcriptions of the Sanskrit Alphabet in Chinese characters see the "Li-shih-yin-chieu," chap. v.; "Chin-ting-T'ung-wên-yuu-t'ung" (欽定同文韻統), chs. v. and vi.
