The Yiqiejing yinyi () is the oldest surviving Chinese dictionary of technical Buddhist terminology, and the archetype for later Chinese bilingual dictionaries. This specialized glossary was compiled by the Tang dynasty lexicographer and monk Xuanying (), who was a translator for the famous pilgrim and Sanskritist monk Xuanzang. When Xuanying died he had only finished 25 chapters of the dictionary, but in 807 another Tang monk named Huilin () compiled an enlarged 100-chapter version bearing the same title.
Title Xuanying's dictionary title combines three Chinese words: yīqiè 一切 "all; whole; every; everything" for Sanskrit sárva सर्व "whole; entire; all; every" jīng 經 "sutra; scripture; canon; classic" for sūtra सूत्र " string; thread; rule (that holds teachings together)" yīn-yì 音義 "pronunciation and meaning of a text", with yīn 音 "sound; tone; pronunciation" and yì 義 "meaning; significance", for śabdârtha "sound and meaning (of words)" The term yīqièjīng "all the sutras; complete Buddhist canon; Tripiṭaka" first came into use in the Sui dynasty (581-618), also known as the Dàzàngjīng , referring to all the classic scriptures or the entire Buddhist canon. The term yīnyì "pronunciation and meaning", which refers to explaining the phonology and semantics of words, originated in the exegesis of Chinese classics. The Three Kingdoms (220-280) scholar Sun Yan used it in his commentary title Erya yinyi "Pronunciation and Meaning in the Erya".
There is no regular English translation of Yiqiejing yinyi, compare these renderings: Sounds and Meanings of all the Buddhist Sacred Books or Sounds and Meanings of the Whole Canon The Sound and Meaning of the Tripitaka Pronunciation and Meaning of all Classics Sounds and Meanings of all the Buddhist Scriptures Glosses of the Buddhist Texts Sound and Meaning of All Sutras A Lexicon of Sounds and Meanings in the Tripitaka The Sound and the Meaning of All Scriptures Pronunciation and Meaning of All the Scriptures Sounds and meanings for all [the words in the] scriptures
Alternate Yiqiejing yinyi titles include the [Da Tang] Zhongjing yinyi "[Great Tang] Pronunciation and Meaning in Every Sutra", and to distinguish it from Hulin's version, the Xuanying yinyi "Xuanying's Pronunciation and Meaning".
A Daoist text adapted the Yiqiejing yinyi title. In 712, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang ordered a team of scholars to compile the catalog Yiqie Daojing yinyi "Titles and Meanings of all the Daoist Canon".
Author The lexicographer monk Xuanying (a Dharma name meaning "Profound Resonance", fl. c. 645–656), who compiled the Yiqiejing yinyi, was one of the ten Buddhist monks on Xuanzang's translation committee. A postscript to Daoxuan's Xù gāosēng zhuàn "Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks"Tr. . describes Xuanying as "a monk in a temple in the capital. He has won wide respect for his accomplishments in philological studies. He is a master of the study of the phonetic system of Buddhist scriptures". Both Xuanzang and Xuanying were monks at the Da Ci'en Monastery (see Giant Wild Goose Pagoda) in Chang'an.
The (664) Dà Táng nèidiǎn lù "Records of Internal Classics in the Tang Dynasty" describes his interaction with Emperor Taizong of Tang, Xuan Ying, a Master in the Temple of Da Ci'en Temple, was summoned several times by the Emperor to collect and sort Buddhist scriptures and phonetically notate and semantically interpret characters from them. He cited quotations from various classic works to support his interpretations. The book can help its users to readily understand the scriptures. It is a pity that his works stopped at that, without going further.Tr. .
History
Buddhism was first transmitted to China via the Silk Road during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE). Buddhist missionary monks from Central Asia, such as Kumārajīva (344-413), produced early Chinese translations of Buddhist sutras and texts.
Translators had difficulties rendering Buddhist terminology from Sanskrit, Pali, and Middle Indo-Aryan languages into written Chinese. Because of the polysemous and sacred character of such Buddhist doctrinal concepts as bodhi and prajñā, many Chinese translators preferred to transliterate rather than translate such crucial terms, so as not to limit their semantic range to a single Chinese meaning. Furthermore, the spiritual efficacy thought to be inherent in the pronunciations of Buddhist mantra spells and dhāraṇī codes compelled translators to preserve as closely as possible the original foreign-language pronunciation.
The wide variety of methods, source texts, and exegetical strategies used by different Chinese translators of Buddhist texts in the Southern and Northern dynasties period (420-589) gave rise to a large number of neologisms and repurposed Chinese terms. For instance, the Standard Chinese translation of nirvana is nièpán ← Middle Chinese ngetban , but earlier transcriptions include nièpánnà ← ngetbannop , and níwán ← nejhwan ("muddy pellet", a term from Daoist internal alchemy). The Chinese language adopted many new words from Buddhism, such as yīnguǒ "cause and effect; karma" and Fútú "Buddha", and these were entered into both special dictionaries of Buddhism and general dictionaries.
With more and more Indian and Central Asian texts being translated into Chinese, the use of Sanskrit and Middle Indo-Aryan transcriptions and technical vocabulary increased, and became progressively more difficult to comprehend. Meanwhile, errors occurred in the copying and circulation of the scriptures, which the scholar of Buddhism Liu Yu 柳豫 describes: The Buddhist scriptures are voluminous and the argumentations in them are profound. They are afflicted with errors and misspellings, and their phonetic notations and semantic interpretations are often rough and neglectful. Days and months are spent in studying and sorting them. There is some progress, but concerns are inevitable. Reflections on them often come to nothing. All the scholars of good will would be troubled by them.Tr. .
By the 6th century, the glut of different Chinese character transcriptions used for the same Buddhist terms led to attempts to standardize the Chinese transcriptions of them, and to clarify the obscure characters and compounds used to translatie Buddhist texts. This material was compiled in so-called yinyi "pronunciation and meaning" lexicons, specialized dictionaries that give phonetic and semantic information.
A predecessor to yinyi lexicons was the Northern Qi (550-577) Buddhist monk Daohui's Yiqiejing yin "Pronunciation in the Complete Buddhist Canon", which did not gloss meanings. While a few yinyi glossaries are for one specific scripture, such as the Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng yīnyì "Pronunciation and Meaning in the Lotus Sutra by Kuiji (632-682), more glossaries like the Yiqiejing yinyi are for the entire Buddhist canon. One was the (c. 940) Xinji zangjing yinyi suihanlu "Newly Compiled Record of Pronunciation and Meaning in the Buddhist Canon and Accompanying Materials" compiled by the Later Jin dynasty monk Ke Hong . Another example was the (987) Xu yiqiejing yinyi "Extended Pronunciation and Meaning in the Complete Buddhist Canon" by the Liao dynasty monk Xilin . This 10-chapter work, which followed Xuanying's dictionary format and style, had entries taken from 226 volumes of Buddhist scriptures. Each entry gave the phonetic notation, definition, and citations from dictionaries, rime dictionaries, histories, and other classic literature. In addition to their value in establishing the Chinese interpretation of Buddhist technical terms, these "pronunciation and meaning" glossaries also serve as important sources for studying the Chinese phonology of their times.
Besides the yinyi phonological and semantic glossaries of Chinese Buddhist terms, there were also collections of translated terms in the sutras, such as the Fānyì míngyì jí "Collection of Translated Buddhist Terms" by Fayun and Fān fànyǔ "Translating Sanskrit" by Bao Chang . In a strict sense, neither the glossaries nor the collections can be considered Sanskrit-Chinese bilingual dictionaries.
A significant breakthrough in the quality of translations occurred during the Tang dynasty (618-907) after Chinese Buddhist monks such as Xuanzang (596-664) and Yijing (635-713) made pilgrimages to India to study Buddhism and the Buddhist languages. Yijing allegedly compiled what might be the first Sanskrit-Chinese glossary, the Fanyu qianzi wen "Sanskrit 1000-Character Text". The body of this work is a 1000-character text composed of rhymed 4-character verses, and the glossary has 995 entries, each of which gives a transliterated Sanskrit headword, its Chinese phonetic equivalent, and then a single Chinese explanatory word. The characters used in the text form are limited to the defining vocabulary of the glossary, similar to the modern lexicographical method of the (1978) Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.
The most renowned of all translator monks was Xuanzang, who started on a pilgrimage to India in 629 and returned to the Tang capital Chang'an in 645 with foreign missionaries and sacred Buddhist texts. Under Emperor Taizong's patronage, Xuanzang organized many learned monks, including Xuanying, and oversaw a translation bureau that resulted in 75 important Buddhist texts being made available to Chinese Buddhists.
Xuanying compiled his 25-chapter dictionary during the late Zhenguan era (626-649). According to Daoxuan (596-667), Xuanying was dissatisfied with Daohui's Yiqiejing yin so he compiled his own. He assembled 454 sutras from Mahayana, Śrāvakayāna, Vinaya, and Shastra traditions, collected and explained their difficult Chinese characters, probably as a primer for members of Xuanzang's translation team. Xuanying arranged the texts in a series starting with the Avatamsaka Sutra (Chinese Huáyánjīng ) and ending with the Abhidharma Nyayanusara Sutra (Shùnzhèng lǐlùn ).
Xuanying's scholarship utilized the unprecedented advances in philological studies that resulted from the Chinese interest in reading and translating Sanskrit. Two notable examples are the compilation of rime dictionaries arranged on the basis of syllabic rime, and the fanqie (lit. "cut and turn") method of indicating a character's pronunciation by using two other characters, the first having the same consonant as the given character and the second having the same vowel and rime.
Huilin expanded Xuanying's 25-chapter lexicon and incorporated material from other authors, compiling it into his 100-chapter Huilin yinyi dictionary.
The Yiqiejing yinyi was transmitted in several different versions, and two are included in the standard Buddhist Canon Taishō Tripiṭaka (T 54, no. 2128 A and B). Although the Yiqiejing yinyi was primarily compiled for the purpose of reading and studying Buddhist scriptures, it is also valuable for Chinese linguistic and other historical academic studies.
Content The Yiqiejing yinyi text comprises 25 chapters/volumes (juǎn ) in 450 sections/parts (bù ). Xuanying's purpose in compiling it was to explain the "hard words" found in Chinese translations of 454 Buddhist sutras. He glossed the pronunciations of both Sanskrit-derived technical terms and ordinary Chinese characters, and explained their meanings. The glosses on ordinary characters occupy about half of the book.
The British diplomat and scholar Thomas Watters (1840-1901) was first to describe Xuanying's dictionary in English. The work is a glossary to the foreign, technical, and difficult words and phrases in the Buddhist canon. It gives the sounds and meanings of the Sanskrit proper names and terms of religion, and the different transcriptions which had been used. Important Chinese phrases are also explained and the pronunciation of characters given and illustrated.