| German philosopher Martin Heidegger who is the founder and one of chiefrepresentative of the existentialism philosophy in the20th century said Language isthe Homeland of Being. Before that, German natural scientists Humboldt had saidLanguage is a world view. Language philosophy became the first philosophy afterphilosophy focusing on language and realizing the linguistic turn which was aremarkable feature of western philosophy in the20th century.Achievement of Western language philosophy had been introduced into china;however there are a few researchers who study philosophy of Chinese traditionallanguage by the method of western language philosophy. Buddhism classics, asimportant data of Chinese classics, are necessary to be restudied from the newphilosophy perspective.Comparing to the long history of Buddhism introduced from Han dynasty, it isrecently short time for domestic academic circle to analyze Chinese Buddhistlanguage. Since the early nineteen-eighties researchers have gradually focused on thevalue of Chinese Buddhist language and greatly developed the research on literaturesof it. Most of academic achievements concentrate on concrete problems, such aspronunciation, vocabulary, syntax and versions from the view of micro-linguistics. Asfor linguistic theory and religion and philosophy meaning of Buddhist sutras,researchers didn’t pay more attentions. In fact, during Buddhism spreading, thelogical structure and teaching approach deeply influenced on construction of itsideological system. Master Xianlin Ji(1957) said that in aspect of religion spreading,language policy is a comparatively important question.Even the relationship between language and existence is the topic discussed inmodern science and philosophy, we still can find the source of the problem, tracingback to ancient times. In ancient thoughts, the language and the world were often seenas one integrated mass. Different nationalities regarded language to be mysterious andperceived the origin of the world in exactly same way that the world is constructed bymyths and odes for gods. Later, Tao Te Ching, the Vedic and Aranyaka, the Biblesupported that the world is clarified because of language since the recognized worldwas decided by its respective language. When the attachments to material and egodeepened with the development of human society, the language which had been seen as one integrated mass with the world before was materialized now, and its meaningcompletely turned to refer to the outside world.The relationship between the language and the world which had been puzzlingmodern science and philosophy is a focused question of Buddhism. It is due to thedifferent attitude towards the relationship that forms the different sects of Buddhism.The process of debate on the relationship from original Buddhism to Madhyamika andYogacara, then to Huayan and zen in China, shows a return of original unity.Madhyamika advocates the world is verbal and fallacious. Yogacara also believes theworld is verbal and affirms its ontological meaning in the secular law while the wayto liberating needs to turn knowledge into wisdom which is unspeakable. HuayanSchool on the basis of the Avatamsaka Sutra advocates the thought of one in all andall in one, unifying the secular world and the liberation world. Huayan School regardsthe world to be verbal but not be fallacious because either life or death is a liberationwhich is called nirvana in Buddhism.This article attempts to re-interpret Avatamsaka Sutra from the perspective oflanguage philosophy. Avatamsaka Sutra is full of materials of language philosophy. Interms of micro language philosophy Avatamsaka Sutra has fully expounded theattribute, function, type of language and other specific linguistics. With the translationof the Avatamsaka Sutra, there is a text to explain the word meanings and mark theirpronunciations, which is called pronunciation and meaning of Avatamsaka Sutra thatbecomes an important data for the modern research on ancient Chinese. In terms ofmacro language philosophy, the thought of one in all and all in one in AvatamsakaSutra continues to discuss the relationship of name and material from ancientBuddhism. Avatamsaka Sutra contains both Madhyamika’s view which negates verbaland fallacious world, also contains Yogacara’s view which affirms the fallacious andrecognized world in the ontological sense. It is affirmative that the emptiness of theworld exists ontologically in real world. The world formed by language can showessence behind it while the harmony view of the world appears with one integratedmass when the verbal world and the essential world are unified.Huayan school original founder Fa-Tsang who thought the combination of trueand false formed the language philosophy on the theory of avatamsaka sutra attachedgreat importance to language from his thought of Buddhism sect classification.According to the different attitudes towards language of Buddhist sects the Buddhistdoctrines can be divided into five categories. The key point of Fa-Tsang’s theory is toexplain the correspondence of verbal world and essential world in stead of the verbalnature of the world. Basing on the theory of dependent origination of dharmatFa-Tsang accepted the notation of one-mind from Daeseung gisillon and applied theconcepts such as similarity and difference of three natures, the harmony of six phases,the causality of six reasons, ten dependent originations and ten profound integrationsetc. to his language philosophy theory. It turned out that Fa-Tsang’s language philosophy changed defilements into pureness for language through integrating thesecular world and the liberation world, the fallacious world and the eternal world tospread the doctrine of consciousness in Yogacara from secular law to liberation law.His purpose seemed to confirm the positive and active reaction to the reality bylinguistic turning in stead of to demonstrate the verbal nature of the world.Avatamsaka Sutra characterized by its Buddhist language as common as otherBuddhist scriptures. At the same time the unique language of Avatamsaka Sutraconveys its main thought completely. Avatamsaka Sutra greatly influences on Zen andNeo Confucianism of Song and Ming Dynasties in terms of macro view of language. |
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