[Y-Indology] Romanized names of the Chinese Pilgrims

[Guest guest]

Is the book 'Bharat chiin Maitri la itihas' originally in chinese or

Sanskrit or English.

 

The translation by the Sanskrit professor of the 'Tao te ching' was it a

major literary achievement? Have you or anybody on this list had the good

fortune of reading it?

 

Chetan

 

--- "ymalaiya <ymalaiya" <ymalaiya wrote:

> For those who may want to use these names in Indian languages, I have

> a direct source.

>

> I have a book "Bharat Chiin maitri ka samkshipt itihas" written by

> Qin Kemo, a professor (now retired) of Sanskrit at Beijing

> University, translated directly into Hindi.

>

> Let me indicate the use in this book using itrans

> (http://www.aczone.com/itrans/tblall/node3.html):

>

>

> (1) Fa Xian (317-420): faa shyen

> (2) Yuan Chuang (602-664): shven chvaa~N

> (3) "I Tsing" (635-713): ii chi~N

>

> Yuan Chuang was the first Chinese author to call India (and

> Indians) "intuu", i.e. Hindu. He had done a translation of "Tao Te

> Ching" in Sanskrit, which is lost.

>

> Yashwant

>

>

 

 

 

 

Send Flowers for Valentine's Day

 

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, "ymalaiya <ymalaiya>" <ymalaiya>

wrote:

\> I was referring to the Sanskrit translation by Yuan Chuang in the 7th

> century. It has been lost.

 

Are there any other books or fragments that were authored by

Chinese in Sanskrit in ,say, 7th or 10th century? Where do we find the

reference? It will be interesting.

 

I remember Prof. Stephen Hodge's old mail, It's something like this. Chinese

translated

many Buddhist sutras from Sanskrit. Once done, the original sanskrit

texts, presumably on palm leaves, would be chopped up, and used

in charms worn to ward off evil, or to bring good luck.

 

 

>Many books are available that were

> translated from Sanskrit to Chinese, but none that were translated in

> the other direction.

[Guest guest]

"ymalaiya " wrote:

>

> The (classical) Greek script did not have a symbol for "h" sound,

> thus the "h" sound is implied where needed. I think "india" was to

> be pronounced as "hindia".

It was not. It was borrowed by Ionian Greeks and the Ionian dialect

ignores h where other Greeks pronounced it. Actually the name was not

India, but Indike (khora) in Greek, India (without h) in Latin.

>

> The Russian script (Cyrillic) derived from Greek has the same

> problem, they use "x" for "h".

In classical Greek this letter was aspirate guttural kh, but in modern

(already Byzantine) Greek and Russian it is pronounced as h. In the

Byzantine orthography commonly used for classical Greek there is also a

way to write h in the beginning (the so-called spiritus asper), but it

is never used for India and Russians, too, have the name without any h.

The Iranian h is preserved in Arabic and Persian hindu.

Regards,

Klaus

 

 

--

Klaus Karttunen, Ph.D.

Docent of Indology and Classical Ethnography

Institute of Asian and African Studies

PL 59 (Unioninkatu 38 B), 00014 University of Helsinki, FINLAND

phone 358-0-19122188, fax 358-0-19122094

[Guest guest]

-

<naga_ganesan

<INDOLOGY>

Monday, February 17, 2003 10:08 AM

[Y-Indology] Re: Romanized names of the Chinese Pilgrims

 

 

> INDOLOGY, "ymalaiya <ymalaiya>"

> <ymalaiya> wrote:

 

>

> Not likely. Otherwise, we would have heard about "hindia"

> from a European source much earlier.

 

The h sound is represented in the Greek script by the rough breathing sign

(which is admittedly not a full-fledged letter). So there is no ambiguity

in the pronunciation of Herakles and Hellas, for example, in ancient Greek,

although I think that the rough breathing has universally disappeared in

modern Greek. As for the etymology of the word India, others onlist can

surely resolve the issue in a single sentence if they want to. I believe it

came into Greek through Persian, in which language it lost its initial h.

 

Phillip

[Guest guest]

Yashwant Malaiya wrote:

 

>Yuan Chuang was the first Chinese author to call India (and

>Indians) "intuu", i.e. Hindu.

 

Well, not quite true actually. I believe that the oldest relevent recorded

name for India derived from non-Chinese sources is found in the Shiji of

Sima Qian (145-86 BCE), equivalent to Sindhu. A later form, but much

earlier than Xuanzang, can be reconstructed as "[h]indhu" where the "h" is a

voiced gutteral breathing, transitional between the "s" of Sindhu and the

"In-duo" of Xuanzang. Also, Xuanzang and his successors understood "In-duo"

to be derived from a Skt "indu" meaning 'moon'.

 

Best wishes,

Stephen Hodge

[Guest guest]

Dear Dr Stephen Hodge and other members,

 

The following reference gives the names in Chinese characters (with

the transliteration in the Wade Romanization system) of all the three great

Chinese pilgrims who visited India:

 

"A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms", compiled by William Edward

Soothill & Lewis Hodous; Pub: MLBD, New Delhi;

First edition 1937; Reprint 1977, 1987; xix+510 pp.

 

For the benifit of users in general, the names are given below in

pinyin transliteration followed by the transliteration within brackets in

the Wade Romanization system, the tones, and then no. of strokes.

 

1. Fa-xian (Fa Hsien) --- 3rd tone in both the characters; 8 & 23

 

2. Xuan-zang (Hsuean Tsang) --- 1st tone in both the characters

(here "ue" means "u_umlaut"); 9 & 14

3. Yi-jing (I Ching) --- 4th tone in both the characters; 13 & 11

 

The meanings of the six Chinese characters are given below, with the

character no. from the following reference:

[ Ref: "A New Practical Chinese-English Dictionary"; Editor-in-Chief ---

Liang Shi-Chiu; Editors: Chu Liang-Chen, David Shao, Jeffrey C Tung,

Lu-Sheng Chong; Pub: The Far East Book Co., Ltd, Taipei, Taiwan; 63+1355 pp]

 

The character no. from Mathew's Chinese-English Dictionary is given within

brackets.

 

1. fa 2832 [M. 1762 ]

(1) an institution

(2) law; regulations; rules statutes; legal

(3) method; ways of doing things

(4) to pattern or model after; to emulate

(5) (in Buddhism) the "way" -- doctrines, etc.

(6) expert or standard (calligraphy, painting, etc.)

(7) a Chinese family name

 

2. xian 6831 [M. 2692 ]

(1) evident; manifest; clear

(2) high-positioned; eminent; prominent

(3) well-known; renowned; famed; reputed

(4) to expose; to make known

(5) a prefix referring to one's forebears

 

3. xuan 1118 [M. 2890 ]

(1) to announce; to declare; to propagate; to circulate

(2) a Chinese family name

 

4. zang 4762 [M. 6704 ]

(1) good; right; generous

(2) a slave; a servant

(3) stolen goods or loots

(4) a Chinese family name

 

5. yi 4528 [M. 3002 ]

(1) justice; righteousness

(2) generosity; charity; philanthropy; chivalry

(3) meaning; connotation

(4) unreal; artificial; foster; false

 

6. jing 2937 [M. 1153 ]

(1) clean; pure; to cleanse; to purify

(2) empty; vain

(3) a role in Chinese opera with heavily painted face

(4) completely; totally; net -- as opposed to gross

(5) only

(6) net (income, profit, etc.)

 

 

Regards.

 

Narayan Prasad

 

-

"Stephen Hodge" <s.hodge

<INDOLOGY>

Wednesday, February 12, 2003 7:13 AM

Re: [Y-Indology] Re: Romanized names of the Chinese Pilgrims

 

 

> Dear Narayan,

>

> As requested, here are the meanings of the characters making up the names

of

> the great Chinese pilgrims who visited India:

>

> 1) Faxian: fa = law, Dharma; xian = appear, manifest

> 2) Xuanzang: xuan = dark, mysterious; zang = large, thick, owerful

(this

> character is rare and not found in smaller dics)

> and for good measure

> 3) Yijing: yi = meaning, justice, righteousness etc; jing = pure

>

> > In India, students know at the school levels the name of the two

> > pilgrims generally as "fA hiyAn" and "hwen sAMg" (the Roman

transcription

> is

> > phonetic here).

> Based no doubt on the old early C19th transcriptions used before

Wade-Giles.

> If writing in devanagari or similar I would suggest the following are

> closer:

> 1) fa-"syen

> 2) "suen-saa"n -- the "dz" sound is not represented in basic devanagari

> etc

> 3) i-ji"n

>

> > But the only character which is assigned to a surname ...

> The names of Chinese monks, including these pilgrims, are their

Dharma-names

> and not surnames -- many of them are, not surprisingly, based on or

inspired

> by Indian Buddhist monastic names.

>

> Hope this clarifies the situation for you and encourages others to start

> using the now standard pinyin transcriptions (or at least Wade-Giles) for

> these names. To me, what one often sees in books of Indian origin

> mentioning these Chinese monks creates the same impression as if a

> Sinologist mentioning classical Indian names were to use a jumble of the

> non-standard C18th century transcriptions of Sanskrit -- it's just not

very

> scholarly or professional. It's really not that difficult.

>

> Best wishes,

> Stephen Hodge

>

>

>

> indology

>

>

>

> Your use of is subject to

>

 

 

 

 

 

 

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