Study On Japanese Siddham Books And Mid-ancient Chinese Sounds

Japanese Siddham books with broad range, which origin from ancient Indian and develop in ancient China during Han, Tang and Song dynasties, accumulated step by step to become system of knowledge after introduced into Japan. The art of Siddham consists of not only its letters itself, Chinese characters, kana, pronounce of letters and meaning of letters so on.; but also is involved to the many aspects of religion, music and literature etc. But it is pity these books were paid less importance by the scholars, so the value of all subjects including linguistics hadn't been discovered for ages.To revise and data-mine the books of Japanese Siddham books is the first step of this study, far and best goes. It begins with inputting and editing the electrical text of books, plus designing and making the database of letter and editing the letters and sentences. The major useful database and tables are established by the related phonetic materials. It would propel the efficiency of usage of books for the scholars and Buddhism due to the condition of our digitalization of archives.It is a new attempt to research mid-ancient Chinese phonology with Japanese Siddham books, which is under exploring process. The purpose is finding the ways and status of some language introducing and being planted into another culture, especially for the phonetic condition, so as to acquire the target information about ancient Indian language, mid-ancient Chinese language and ancient Japanese language. And it is the first time to have a research on phonetic phenomena using Siddham letters, kana and Chinese characters together and integrity.The detail jobs are consisting of book-keeping the translations of Buddhism and history of its spreading, researching the rules of Siddham letters pronunciations and spellings. Give new evidence about historical Japanese kana pronunciations. And then starting with Sanskrit Siddham treaties(悉昙章), approaching the materials of translation between Chinese and Sanskrit, Sanskrit and Japanese, Japanese and Chinese, the general aspect of acient Japanese goon and kanon and the general idea about mid-ancient Chinese dialect are portrayed. Further the change of mid-ancient Chinese pronunciations can be explained accordingly. In terms of this study, there are several key points about translation between Chinese and Sanskrit in the Siddham books. And the detail materials are the five kinds of lines which can't be translated in the books. The rules of translation have syllables'omitting or an adding consonant in yiyang(抑扬), shexqie(奢切)liansheng(连声) and erhe(二合)sanhe(三合). The rules of pronunciation consist of reading with the tone in accord with four marked tones, reading semi-sound in accord with its mark, link of syllables in accord with mark of"erhe"(二合), read the voiced in accord with the stress mark, read long in accord with the mark of"long"(长音), read as"fanqie"(反切) method in accord with the mark of itself, at last attention to the writting mistakes.Japanese syllabiary had been affected by Sanskrit Siddham treaties(悉昙章), the row ofハshould be pronounced: pa,pi,pu,pe,po,the row ofタshould be pronounced: ta,ti,tu,te,to.Ancient time, the goon and kanon pronunciation formed by Chinese are as follow:I. The acoustic of plosive and stop are unvoiced without airflow in the goon and kanon pronunciation.II. There is no difference between light and heavy lip acoustic in the goon and kanon pronunciation.III. There is no difference between the upper alveolar and lower one in goon pronunciation.IV. The groups jian(见) and xiao(晓) are read the according to the row ofカvoiced and unvoiced respectively.V. The groups jing(精) and zhuang(庄)are read the row ofサvoiced respectively.VI. The characters in Yun(云)and Xia(匣)hekou(合口) are the same in goon pronunciation read as without initial.VII. There is clear distinctive between the voiced and the unvoiced in goon pronunciation, whereas in the kanon pronunciation.VIII. Nasal sound is remaining in goon pronunciation, but they are differentiations in kanon pronunciation, one is nasal and the other is voiced stop sound. IX. There are several sounds in goon pronunciation but same sound in Guangyun(广韵)for some rhymes. But it didn't happen in the kanon pronunciation.X. It is clear for the concept of division(等) in goon pronunciation and kanon pronunciation. And it can show the third division in kanon pronunciation system according to the medial [i] basically.XI. There are differences between kaikou(开口) and hekou(合口) in goon and kanon pronunciation generally.XII. There are three clear rhymes and distinctive boundary of yin(阴),yang(阳)and ru(入)in the goon and kanon pronunciation.Generally the acoustic system of kanon pronunciation is simpler. And kanon pronunciation have more correlated relation with Guanyun (广韵) than goon pronunciation, less exceptions either.According to the research of mid-ancient Chinese, the acoustic of Chinese had experienced several changes during the period from Zhou(北周) and Sui(隋)dynasties to late Tang dynasties(晚唐). In details,there are upper alveolar sound because of the differential alveolar sound between Sui and Tang dynasty. Light lip sound came out in the early Tang dynasty. When middle Tang dynasty, the voiced consonant was being devoiced. And at the same time, nasal stop consonants were differential to the two kinds of sounds, one is nasal and the other is nasal stop. During Late Tang dynasty, along with devoicing process, two kinds of nasal sounds remained just one, either nasal or nasal stop.For the southern acoustic change, nasal sounds could be Ni(泥)Ri(日)Niang(娘)three kinds during Sui and Tang dynasties, but moving to early Tang dynasty, lip sound was differential and stopped its change when the devoicing process coming.Yun(云)and Xia(匣)hekou(合口) are the same in the southern consonant type in Northern and Southern Dynasties(南北朝). But for Changan consonant type in Tang dynasty, Xia(匣)and Xiao(晓) are the same, and Yun(云)had detached from Xia(匣)so as to combine into the Yi(以).As for rhyme, mid-ancient Chinese tone of Ru(入)ended with unvoiced consonants in northern and southern china. Dang(宕),Jiang(江),Zeng(曾),Geng(梗),Tong (通),belongs to the type of -? tail,Ru-tone rhyme belongs to the type of–k tail;Shan(山),Zhen(臻),Yansheng(阳声)rhyme belongs to -n,Ru-tone to -t respectivley;Xian(咸),Shen(深),Yansheng(阳声)rhyme to -m,Ru-tone to–p. The major difference is placed on the vowel, the former ones of sound generate part is far back and lower than the latter.In terms of the results above, the initials and rhymes system tables about southern China in Northern and Southern Dynasties and northern China in Tang dynasty was produced.In all, the general panorama of the Series of QieYun(切韵)Books-the most important rhyme books in mid-ancient china shows to us after researching the quotations of Siddham books.