| The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka is a great work in linguistics and criticalinterpretation of ancient text in Tang Dynasty, solely in terms of its own characters, this bookincludes a lot of ancient Chinese characters, and Variant Chinese characters, which can embodythe characters development completely and objectively from remote ages to mediaeval times, andto modern times, and can’t replaceable; moreover, The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitakarecords the Characters in popular form as many as the author could see at that time, which arevery valuable in academic research, that’s why it’s worthy to disposal and study its charactersbasing on the materials in this dictionary.This paper makes a monographic study on The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka basingon collating and disposalof a good many block-printed editions form the view point of thecombining of Chinese linguistics and Chinese classical documents, and systematically analyze asfollows:(1)the forms, original and its stuff of cited ancient Chinese characters in the dictionary;(2) the forms, original and its stuff of cited variant Chinese characters in the dictionary;(3)theforms of recorded ‘characters of Buddhist texts’, and compares the similarities and differencesbetween ancient characters of Buddhist texts and modern time’s;(4)the relations of Yupian(ancientChinese dictionary) in original edition and The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka;(5)thesuccession of characters in Long Kan Shou Jing and other related dictionaries which come downfrom he Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka;(6)the conditions of ‘not-so’ Chinesecharacters(Feiti Characters).And then, researches the views on characters of Xuanying and Huilin,and analyzes the relations between the movement of standard writing forms fixed by state in TangDynasty and The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka.This dissertation is divided into two parts and an appendix.First of all, is general introduction, which contains eight chapters, as follows:Introduction and Chapter one, introduce the statues of linguistics researches on The Soundand Meaning of the Tripitaka, and point out the research methods, and make out the meaning andvaluable of The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka in dictionary writing and arrangements ofclassical documents nowadays.Chapter two, collects and analysts the stuff, original and traits of ancient Chinese characters,characters of A Style of calligraphy, variant Chinese characters and characters of Buddhist textsrecorded in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka.The viewpoint of this chapter is: the so-called ancient Chinese characters in this dictionaryare not really so, but belong to derivative characters group which have the same root, and most ofwhich are the products of the derivational process and have the same root, or are loan Chinesecharacters existed since ancient times. The so-called ancient Chinese characters in The Sound andMeaning of the Tripitaka maybe just use the name of ancient Chinese characters in Han Dynasty,and it’s different from the real ancient Chinese characters. But most of characters of A Style ofcalligraphy recorded in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka are the same with the presentedition’s.And the ingredients of its variant Chinese characters are complex, containing loan Chinesecharacters and characters in popular form etc., recording every kinds of variant Chinese charactersat that time and later ages, and provide a lot of materials for the study on character’s form inmediaeval times. And about its ‘characters of Buddhist texts’, most of which can find the original basing onthe comparing of original text in Zhonghua Da Zang Jing (means Tripitaka of China) of Koreanversion and The Dazheng Buddhist Scripture. We can see that the characters in Buddhist texts aremarked feature in popular using, most of which and find relationship of forms in related materialssuch as stone inscription at that time, and they mostly are popular using characters from theEastern Han Dynasty to Sui and Tang Dynasty.Chapter three is mainly in analyzing the relationships of characters between The Sound andMeaning of the Tripitaka and Yu Pian of original version and Long Kan Shou Jing. And I think therelationships between the Tripitaka and Yu Pian of original version are very close, especially TheSound and Meaning of Xuanying and Yu Pian of original version, both are in same mostly and thetrait of inheritance is obvious, and this chapter compares all the characters in The Sound andMeaning of the Tripitaka and Long Kan Shou Jing completely, and gets its relations into shape.although we can’t find the directed relations in character forms between these two dictionaries, butonly few of them have clear inheritance. But I also intend to point out that Long Kan Shou Jingcites the words in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka directly and takes it as reference book.Form the viewpoint of character forms, we can see that Long Kan Shou Jing is not only uses thecharacter forms in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka, but also takes characters belong toancient codes and records outside Buddhism in the explaining words in the The Sound andMeaning of the Tripitaka. There are three kinds of relationships from the viewpoint of comparingof characters: first, Long Kan Shou Jing is mostly base on The Sound and Meaning of theTripitaka，so that they have something in common, which means they are not only collect somecharacters which are the same, but their orders also similar, the orders of lots of explainingcharacters in Long Kan Shou Jing are the same with The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka.second, the characters in Long Kan Shou Jing are more selective, but The Sound and Meaning ofthe Tripitaka seems all-embracing, it explains characters and words in a wide variety of books,which different from the selectiveness and delicateness of Long Kan Shou Jing, which not collectall characters forms of Buddhist texts in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka, and not collectcharacter forms in other verditions, but collect some characters from non-buddhist texts, and theoriginal of these characters from non-buddhist texts are probably explaining text of The Sound andMeaning of the Tripitaka. Third, the characters in Long Kan Shou Jing seem more normative thanThe Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka, which maintains the original popular forms of charactersveritably in its first version at that time, so that it has traits of original and variety. To comparewith the character forms of The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka, characters in Long Kan ShouJing is less savagely, maybe because of the selection by authors.Chapter four, disposing Xuanying and Huilin’s revisal of The Sound and Meaning of theTripitaka, namely arranging and analyzing ‘standard writing forms’,‘popular form’,‘similarwords’,‘universal characters’,‘sometime-used characters’,‘not-so Chinese characters’,‘characterswhich can’t find provenance’,‘characters which not know provenance’,‘the present works’and‘suitable works’etc. in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka and finding out its limitations.The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka takes characters in Shuo Wen Jie Zi as standard, andhold a negative attitude to popular forms, which were named as ‘vulgar’, and their position issimilar with‘not-so’ characters, when so and so character was judged as popular form one, it’ll bejudged as ‘not-so’ character at the same time, or against classical standard, or is wrong, even sayno to all this like characters because of ‘not-so’. On the one hand, it shows the tendency of characters popularization, on the other hand, the author of The Sound and Meaning of theTripitaka was worrying for this tendency, and defended the standard character forms such as inShuo Wen Jie Zi. In fact, most of the similar characters in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitakaare popular ones. The meaning of ‘tong’in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka is a littledifferent, approximately means universal or common use, which means one kind of character usedcommonly at that time which different from standard character and popular character, and it seemsthe same as ones in Long Kan Shou Jing, in which, follow the standard words was explainingwords such as‘popular’or ‘universal’, maybe coming from The Sound and Meaning of theTripitaka, and in which, a lot of common-used characters come from traditional classical, andthat’s why they have the same source and a succession relation with Wu Jing Yin Yi. Both of themcan show the conditions of original common-used characters in classical. But the common-usedcharacters in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka are very different from the ones in Gan LuZi Shu, the common-used characters in Gan Lu Zi Shu are called popular characters in The Soundand Meaning of the Tripitaka, which means the common-used characters in Gan Lu Zi Shu are notadopted from classical, but from the ‘normative’ words in later time. As to the ‘not-so’ charactersin The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka, in generally, the author from the viewpoint ofstandard words and classical, and took them as normal, to measured these so-called ‘not-so’ wordsby strict which nearly harsh terms, they are productions by the thought of ancient classical is theonly correctness, and are criticism of popular characters in Buddhist works, and a generalization tothe using of characters in Buddhist scriptures at that time. As to the suitable words in The Soundand Meaning of the Tripitaka, there are about eighty, apart from difficult and complicated words,they also have pronunciation explaining and bi-syllable, in generally, the ‘suitable characters’ is aterminology comparing with ‘not-so’ characters. Although they just take a little part comparingwith large number of ‘not-so’ characters, but they are very important in the whole‘standardization’ system in The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka, which shows the author notonly standardization the popular forms, but also distinguish ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and he indicatedhis attitude to characters through his positive criticism to so-called standard characters.The standard of arranging and analyzing characters of The Sound and Meaning of theTripitaka is adopted by ancient dictionaries, such as Shuo Wen Jie Zi, Gu Jin Zi Gu(whice meansthe explaining of characters at all times), Zi Lin(which means the forest of characters), Zi Tong,Gu Jin Wen Zi(which means characters at all times), Zi Shu(which means book of characters), andtook the ancient classical characters as normal. And its way to analyze characters is to regulatepresent characters by ancient ones, to say no to popular characters by the standard of ancient ones.That’s why the author often hold a negative attitude to variety popular-used words. But he didn’tused this standard abusively, he still maintain some difficulties when judging and analyzing, andput it as ‘characters which can’t find provenance’, or ‘its meaning is uncertain, so both are writinghere’, or ‘not know which is right’, or ‘can’t judge which is right’, or ‘its meaning can’t beunderstand in details’, or ‘not know this author’, or ‘whisper, not know its provenance’, or ‘thereis no such words in dictionaries’ etc. and this show the author’s attitude of object andmatter-of-fact when he compiling The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka.Chapter five analyzing and assessing view of character in The Sound and Meaning of theTripitaka mainly from the six categories of Chinese characters, the practice of characters’ using,and style arraging, and we can find that the author didn’t always follow the theory of sixcategories of Chinese characters when he analyzing characters’structure, sometime he began from the actual words, and accorded to his own realization, combining other theories, to analyze thestructure of characters directly, and this method had trait of ‘popular-used’. Maybe it wasinfluenced by so and so common practice of analyzing characters at that time, and it contained theauthor’s subjective opinions, that’s why he made a far-fetched comparison and violated thesociality established by usage and historical succession of characters.The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka arranged large number of characters in Buddhistworks and analyzed its yes or no, and at the same time, it arranged the characters in general socialusage, which has great value, but on the other hand, because his starting point is correctingcharacters in Buddhist works and spreading Buddhist thought, the author used rested ‘classicalworks’ to measure ever-changing social-used characters, which leading to shortness of flexibility,although The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka doesn’t analyzed characters by right or wrongas Wu Jing Wen Zi, but it used yes or no to critics characters’ usage. This standard of negatingpresent characters by ancient usage way is not applicable.Chapter six puts emphases on the value of The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka in themovement of standard writing forms fixed by state in Tang Dynasty. Comparing with thismovement, it standardized writing forms of Buddhist works in large scale in different level, it wasa voluntary movement of ‘ancient characters standardizing’, and it also different fromstandardizing characters all over the society, but a movement of standardizing characters inBuddhist scriptures, an supplementary and development of state’ standardizing movement.The concluding part tries to find out the ups and downs of The Sound and Meaning of theTripitaka from the history of Chinese present and ancient character school, and gets its compilingcourse and developing locus into shape, and I think the compiling way of this dictionary belongsto ancient characters school.The last part is the characters table of The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka.Attachment one: mainly discusses the relationship between Xuan Ying Yin Yi and Yu Pian onthe base of the characters.Attachment two: the comparison table of characters between Long Kan Shou Jing and TheSound and Meaning of the Tripitaka. |
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