Semantic And Cultural Studies Of Buddhist Time Words

Buddhism has had a tremendous influence on Chinese words and traditional Chinese culture since it came into China. In this paper, I’ll start with the Buddhist temporal words, and use the theory of semantic field and cultural linguistics to analysis the semantic meaning of the Buddhist temporal words and the Buddhist concept of time which is based on the semantic meaning, so as to analysis the influence of Buddhist concept of time on Chinese traditional concept of time.In this paper, I’ll use the semantic field theory to discuss the Buddhist nominal temporal words in several levels of semantic field of the temporal words and divide them into two categories, which are the Buddhist temporal words representing time point and the Buddhist temporal words representing time period, and each category of Buddhist temporal words can be divided into several smaller categories. On this basis, I’ll combine the cultural method with the linguistic method to analysis the semantic meaning and structure of the Buddhist temporal words, so as to reveal the connotation of the diverse Buddhist time culture within these words.In this paper, I’ll choose some representative Buddhist temporal words which are common in the ancient and modern Chinese language, and these words are ’past’,’ present’,’future’ and ’kalpa’. And I’ll use the method of diachronic research, in order to analysis the evolution of the semantic meaning from the original Buddhist temporal meaning of the Buddhist temporal words and the influence on the ancient and modern Chinese language brought by these words after they become part of the Chinese temporal words.In the paper, I’ll also use the theory of cultural linguistics to analysis the Buddhist concept of time based on the Buddhist temporal words. The Buddhist concept of time is mainly reflected on the concept of cyclical time, infinite time and illusory time. And Buddhism pays attention to time which has the characteristics of cyclicality, infinity, and illusion so that people can achieve enlightenment from belief in Buddhism. On this basis, I’ll discuss the influence of Buddhist concept of time on Chinese traditional concept of time in two angles, which are adaptation and transformation. It indicates that the Buddhist concept of time has already become an important part of traditional Chinese culture during the spread of Buddhism.