A Study On Yinshi Of The Mahāpraj(?)āpāramitā-(?)āstra In Yongle Beizang

After bringing in Buddhism in the early period of the Eastern Han Dynasty,the monks began to render the sutras of Buddhism into Chinese.In order to the converge the differences of language families and historical-cultural backgrounds that Sanskrit and Chinese belong to,the Buddhists followed the footsteps of the Confucius scholars by expounding the Buddhist doctrine as well as the item meaning with the traditional Chinese philology(Xiaoxue).The notes,at the very beginning, were inserted into lines and then gradually attached to the sutra texts and along this line,some monks even compiled the notes into separately the philological books,for instance,the Philological Book of Tripitaka by Xuanying and Huilin.Irrelevant to the present study,it is of no significance for the author to discuss here the value of these works.But from the historical perspective of Chinese linguistics,these books are valuable for us to explore Chinese language since they preserved a large amount of the diacritical materials of the forms,sounds and meanings of Chinese,especially of spoken language.The pioneer Chinese linguists have made noticeable contributions using these materials,such as Zhou Fa-gao,Huang Cui-bo,Wang Li,Xu Shi-yi,Yao Yong-ming and so on. What should to be noticed here is that most of their researches are confined within merely the several philological books compiled by Xuanying and Huilin and others.And the expositions appended to the preserved sutras of later dynasties have seldom been referred to,which are far more in quantity than the former.The present study,based on previous research,conducts a micro study of Yinshi of the selected material of the Mahaprajnaparamita-satra in Yongle Beizang.In so doing,the author endeavors to made meaningful attempts to the study of sound and meaning appendix to the sutra.The analysis shows that there are no big differences of yinqie between Yinshi and Guangyun(a famous Chinese phonemic book).Since the present materials are inadequate,it is inconclusive whether the former turns out to be a preserved phonemic system or as it should be.But some peculiar characteristics should be paid attention to:1.Initial consonant.(1) labial dental and bilabial has been diverged and the initial consonants of Chinese characters fei(非)and fu(敷) has been converged;(2) the initial consonants of ni(泥) and niang(娘) has been converged but different from that of ri(日);and(3) the initial consonants of duan(端) and zhi(知) were diverged and although the initial consonants of zhi(知),zhuang(莊) and zhang(章) has fundamentally been diverged but there exists a tendency of convergence. 2.Final vowel.A complete final vowel system has not been worked out since the lack of materials.The underdone work shows that(1) there is a strong tendency of the convergence of the kaikou(開口) final vowels of zhi(止) group;(2) other divisions of chongyun(重韻) manifest obvious convergent tendency and(3)some entering tones have converged.3.Tone.Some voiced shang tones have changed into qu tones.