Wei Buddhist Literature Conjunctions Study

The sutras of WeiJinNanBei Dynasty are of great importance for the study of Chinese language's history. There are lots of new words in these sutras and they can really reflect the language of the time. Conjunctions are a group of basilic words, which play an important role in Chinese. A panorama of the WeiJinNanBei Dynasty's conjunctions can be obtained if those in the sutras are studied thoroughly. And the evolution rules of Chinese can be deduced through the study of general situation, characteristic, origin and development of conjunctions. Accordingly, conjunctions in six Buddhist translated-scriptures and four writings of WeiJinNanBei Dynasty were investigated thoroughly.It was found that there are 224 conjunctions in these sutras, 150 of which are new words, besides 74 former ones. A lot of words with the same meaning were eliminated, meanwhile, groups of new words came into being. Most of the new words at that time are two-syllabic. There are 116 two-syllabic words, 31 single-syllabic words, 2 three-syllabic words and 1 fixed form. In these two-syllabic words, there are 78 synonymous-paratactic multiple words, 25 additive multiple words and 13 other words. There are 5 ways and means of the forming these words: developing from the former conjunctions, fixation of the former phrases, changing from substantives, changing from some other conjunctions and fixation of some adjacent part of the sentences.Development characteristics of the conjunctions in the sutras were obtained through investigation. It was found that at that time, the new words took the place of the older ones rapidly; the meaning of the words became rigid; two-syllabic words developed quickly so that the word-building became convenient and perfect; there are more new words and new meanings in the translated sutras than those in sutras composed by Chinese, therefore the translated sutras could reflect the real language; besides the developing of the former words, grammaticalized from other kind of words into conjunctions became an important way to produce new conjunctions.