The Unique Phrases of Qú Tán, the "Gotama of the Āgamāḥ"

knotty36 · March 23, 2017, 4:46am

My apologies to all.
I am sorry, I don’t usually post out of embarassment because I foolishly promised Bhante Sujato a translation some time back which, quite frankly, was beyond me. But I read the list faithfully. Your post, Coemgenu, is interesting and informative: though I do think how well 無為法 captures asaṃskṛtadharma is a matter of personal taste (I believe something similar has been expressed by someone else further down in the thread). I also did not like it at first, but it has grown on me.
One thing, though, I think it is important to point out (I don’t think anyone else here has) that, in regards to[quote=“Coemgenu, post:1, topic:4572”]
In Early Chinese Buddhism it may well have been impossible to speak of things as “conditioned” or “unconditioned” because those words simply didn’t exist as opposites. There is no “為法/wèi fǎ”, or “action/doing-dharma” to be the opposite of a “無為法 /wú wèi fǎ”, and thus, the soteriological relationship between the path and the goal is subtly changed, and is not linguistically manifest as so obvious an opposite in terms. Buddhists with no access to Indic texts thus could have developed a subtly different notion of “what is conditioned” and “what is not conditioned” on account of the language used to express that notion. This linguistic barrier can obviously be overcome, especially in the present-day, but if knowledge of the Indic linguistic expression of the Dhamma is lost, I think it is fair to say that the Dhamma that is communicated is communicated in a different way than it would have, depending on the attainment of the translator and the education of the text-reader.
[/quote]

there is certainly an opposite to 無為法, used plentifully in East Asian Buddhism as a translation for saṃskṛtadharma: 有為法 (you3 wei2 fa3). I mention it because I think this should affect some of the conclusions drawn on “the Dhamma that is communicated” by the ancient Chinese, and perhaps stimulate new discussion.
Regards,
knotty36

Coemgenu · March 23, 2017, 9:27am

[quote=“knotty36, post:21, topic:4572”]
there is certainly an opposite to 無為法, used plentifully in East Asian Buddhism as a translation for saṃskṛtadharma: 有為法 (you3 wei2 fa3)
[/quote]“Bhāva-saṃskṛta-dharma”, interesting coinage. Thank you!

I am a learner of Classical Chinese who is too big for his britches and ought to be taken down a notch (he said half-jokingly).

In the interest of trying to see if the oddness of this āgama can be “toned down” to comply somewhat more closely with the nikāya-parallel, I have put forward some very sketchy readings of characters, my suggestions about the possible readings of 跡 being one of the things I am least sure-of-myself on:[quote=“Coemgenu, post:18, topic:4572”]
With this in mind, the reading of 為無為道跡 comes to mean something like “[what is the] acting/doing/fabricating [of] [the] uncreated principle (dharma?) [of the] pathway [to the “uncreated dharma” spoken of earlier]”. This presumes a great deal of flexibility in the possible usage of 跡 which I need to check, and it is possible that 無為 refers exclusively to 道 and 跡 might not be referred to as 無為 at all, which would bring the passage into closer consistency with the Nikāya-parallel, if it proves to be a convincing and plausible set of readings for these characters. If it does prove to be a convincing set of readings, 為無為道跡 could well mean something more like “doing of the uncreated dharma’s pathway-there”, but like I said I need to do more research on how 跡 is used.
[/quote]I am still in the process of learning how to use properly Chinese dictionaries (so many radicals!), so for the moment I am beholden to internet resources, do you happen to know if translating 跡 alone as path-way there, given that it specifically refers to a “signed path”, or that is to say “a path with clear signage”, but technically refers more to the insignifier than the “path” itself?

有為法 also only appears in DA literature, not in ZA (SA) (it actually does appear in SA but only once, in scroll 50, possibly once more in SA 1356, but SA 1356 could well be “in” scroll 50). Mainstream usage of 有為法 seems to be more-so a linguistic tendency of Mahāyānasūtrāṇi (where it appears literally all the time in frequency searches), as its use in āgamāḥ (from a few frequency searches in SuttaCentral & Nan Tien Institute Buddhist frequency dictionary, so don’t take this as definitive), seems much much less frequent.

Compare this with 無為法, which has 5 hits in SA alone from a similar quick search at SuttaCentral (this actually seems very low to me, which makes me really doubt these search engines I am using) . These internet-based searches through the literature, though, are highly problematic, and don’t actually offer the proof they may seem to offer on first glance, but they are all I have currently.

As I learn more there will definitely be many “wow, I was so wrong” moments.

AndyL · March 23, 2017, 9:47am

SN 43.11

A lot less potential proto-dhamma-theory in the Nikāya than the Āgama, as per the discussion above. It is certainly a fascinating artefact, this āgama, if anything I have brought up has merit.

This āgama also isn’t necessarily a translation of a text that resembles SN 34.11 100%.

The peculiarities of this āgama, IMO, can be explained as having two, among other no-doubt, potential causes: 1) possibly the oddness of it is a result of trying to “indegenize Dhamma” into Chinese society to convert the Chinese, or 2) this āgama’s oddness comes from the Prākrit or Sanskrit original, and as such, it has a rather divergent emergent dhamma-theory, possibly Sarvāstivādin, that exists in-parallel with emergent Theravāda dhamma-theory.

My own belief is that option 1 is more likely, but it is certainly possible that option 2 is the case.

Thank you! One of my little hobbies is looking through early texts and trying to spot where Zen came from, and since your example has a little Taoist/Zen flavor, it rang a chime for me. Very nicely done indeed, and thank you for your article and your work.

Coemgenu · March 23, 2017, 10:47am

[quote=“AndyL, post:23, topic:4572”]
Thank you! One of my little hobbies is looking through early texts and trying to spot where Zen came from, and since your example has a little Taoist/Zen flavor, it rang a chime for me. Very nicely done indeed, and thank you for your article and your work.
[/quote]Well don’t take my speculations as solid evidence for the definite assuredness of anything. If anything, it is just the pointing out of a possibility. I still have much reading and learning to do before I would feel qualified to make any definite conclusions on any of this.

Coemgenu · March 23, 2017, 3:41pm

There is one last point that I can’t believe I didn’t think of until now.

無為法 is not necessarily a “direct” adaption of the Indic asaṃskṛtadharma.

Why?

Because 99% of the time, when the Sarvāstivāda āgamāḥ speak of saṃskṛta, they use 行 (xíng). This is not “hard” evidence, but I think it pushes reason for the oddness of this āgama more towards cultural adaption than doctrinal difference. If the Chinese translators were trying to be very consistent, they would have employed the terminology, theoretically, of 無行法, as 行 is the second nidāna in every single āgama account of the twelve links that I have read so far. [quote]無明、行、識、名色、六入處、觸、受、愛、取、有、生、老、病、死、憂、悲、惱、苦，[/quote]
(an overlong list of “fated dharmāḥ” from SA 296, 行 appears as the third character)

Then again, no one is forcing these translators to use consistent terminology, and “consistent terminology” itself is a culturally relative term.

I have not yet read the Dharmaguptaka āgamāḥ (DA), but they already I have some reason to think they show a tendency to use slightly different language, such as 有為法 (“bhāva-saṃskṛta-dharma?”).

It would be interesting to see how DA frames these same concepts. I have some reading ahead of me.

If I ever become qualified enough. I want to publish an comparative analysis of contemporary Chinese (Mahāyāna) linguistics (i.e. what terms are used for what, etc), and compare this with the Chinese of the āgamāḥ, to see when certain terms arose, and if certain terms were abandoned after the writing of the āgamāḥ. If such a resource were to exist, it would greatly beneficial to Buddhist textual criticism.

knotty36 · March 25, 2017, 5:25pm

Greetings, Coemgenu.
Thank you for your reply. Some thoughts

I apologize if I made you feel like I was taking you down. I wasn’t thinking like that at all: I just love the study of Chinese. So, such as it is, I offer what knowledge I can to others. I am not an expert, I just lived in China for a really long time. And I have had a lot of “wow, I was so wrong” moments. (Still do, in fact; and I am grateful for every one of them.)

No. Even though 有 standing alone is elsewhere a translation for bhāva, it is not here. 有為 is a single unit: the opposite of 無為. I don’t know, maybe languages are all the same, but the meaning of any Chinese character is VERY contextual. Also, historically, the basic linguistic unit changed from one character(ancient times) to two (more modern times). (Actually, it is the influx of Buddhist texts and the influence upon Chinese of Indic language that drove much of this evolution.) So, when coming upon any ancient text, where to break words is a BIG issue about which the real Chinese experts argue all the time. I think you were a part of that thread about half a year ago where they were stumped by 空相應 and where to break it:空相應, or 空相應: because there is the word, 空, and also the word, 空相; there is the word, 相應; and there is also the word, 應. (I don’t know how to insert a link back to that thread.)

Though Buddhist Chinese is somewhat based on it, Buddhist Chinese isn’t Classical Chinese, per se–which is, for all intents and purposes, not at all an oral, but strictly a literary language; and, so, lacks the flow of a spoken Chinese language like, say, Mandarin or Cantonese. Buddhist Chinese is actually like Pāli, I guess, in that it is a vernacular, colloquialization based on a literary model. So, if I were to make a suggestion to anyone wanting to work with Buddhist Chinese (at, least, the Āgamas), it would be to simultaneously learn a modern, spoken Chinese language, too: probably Mandarin (though Cantonese would be fine, too). First, an estimated upwards of 80% of modern Mandarin vocabulary is Buddhist in origin (not to mention how much of the syntax, etc. is based in Indo-Aryan construction). Second, the rhythm of Chinese, which cannot be easily gotten from reading Āgamas, will be an invaluable guide in how to decipher the meanings of words: as in the 空相應 example above, where any speaker of Chinese, even with no Buddhist knowledge at all, would have instinctively known where to break it. (相應 is a common, contemporary word–again, of Indic origin.)

Radicals? Yeah. They just have to be memorized.[quote=“Coemgenu, post:25, topic:4572”]

無為法 is not necessarily a “direct” adaption of the Indic asaṃskṛtadharma.

Why?

Because 99% of the time, when the Sarvāstivāda āgamāḥ speak of saṃskṛta, they use 行 (xíng). This is not “hard” evidence, but I think it pushes reason for the oddness of this āgama more towards cultural adaption than doctrinal difference. If the Chinese translators were trying to be very consistent, they would have employed the terminology, theoretically, of 無行法, as 行 is the second nidāna in every single āgama account of the twelve links that I have read so far.
[/quote]
Yeah. But, actually, again, 為 might not be as bad as it looks at first glance. I know, in classical Daodejing translations, 無為 is often rendered, “non-action,” or, “non-doing,” or something of the sort; but 為 has little to do with either doing or action. 為 is more like the purpose or intent behind acting, or the intent to act: the modern 為甚麽, “why?” (literally, “for what?”) 行, on the other hand, “to go,” “to move,” “to progress or advance,” is a far more active word which can even compliment 為. Case in point: the contemporary compound, 行為 can be rendered “behavior,” or, “conduct,” or even, “deportment:” all of which point to or include both the outer activity (行) and the inner motivation informing it (為).

I have observed that translators, when trying to tackle the layered meanings of saṃskṛta/saṅkhata or saṃskāra/saṅkhāra, tend to use several different words to bring out these nuances, depending on the usage (especially, the notoriously difficult, saṃskāra/saṅkhāra). So, to me, between them, 行 and 為 divide nicely the internal and external, intention and action. Like I said, it grew on me. But, yeah, you’re probably right: “無為法 is not necessarily a ‘direct’ adaptation of the Indic.”

Don’t we all.

Peace.

Gabriel_L · March 26, 2017, 2:53am

I do really appreciate conversations like this here in SC’s D&D.

I am truly enthusiastic about this growing interest in the Agamas and am hopeful comparative studies and analyses will only help to polish further our understanding of what has been so gracefully preserved and passed down to us in both Pali and Chinese sides of EBTs.

Let us take time to reflect and appreciate how unique, fortunate and powerful this moment is: after many many centuries these two bodies of scriptures are now found in a same repository and people from different backgrounds are free to access, investigate, learn and develop their own understanding and practice of the path taking all this in consideration.

Back in the times of those who first made the humongous effort of standardising, recording and preserving all this only few had actually the merit of truly benefiting from the result of all their effort. It would probably have taken many years of scholarship and experience with the texts to do the same we are now able to do by simply pressing “search button”!

Please do keep up with these beautiful conversations!

Coemgenu · March 27, 2017, 7:27pm

[quote=knotty36][quote=Coemgenu]I am a learner of Classical Chinese who is too big for his britches and ought to be taken down a notch (he said half-jokingly[/quote]I apologize if I made you feel like I was talking you down.[/quote]Not at all! My self-effacement was an attempt at humour . It was also a self-aware statement, that my tendencies are to overestimate my skills (the Dunning-Kruger effect I suppose!), so I go in the opposite direction, and try to make sure that everything I say is caveated with advertisements of my amateur status

My original drafts are actually quite egotistical sounding when I reread them, that is why I always edit them several times to make what I say less “forcefully put”, if you will, because generally what I am presenting are possibilities produced by my lack of expertise. They are generally possibilities I truly believe are very plausible, but when writing it is easy to forget that it is necessarily to caveat (i.e. “I think”, “IMO”, “it seems to me”, etc), as other users/readers are not privy to my thoughts.

In this very post, in the original draft, near the ending, I had originally wrote “As I learn more I may come to disagree with it, like you do.” I changed this to “as you may” at the end. That is an example of what I mean.

It is always pleasant, on one level, to be disagreed with, particularly when it is in such a civil manner, because that is how learning occurs (for me at least), and how illusions of attainment are shattered, and real attainment thereby becomes more of a possibility.

Apologies for my departure from relevance. To address what you wrote:[quote=“knotty36, post:26, topic:4572, full:true”][quote=“Coemgenu, post:22, topic:4572”]
“Bhāva-saṃskṛta-dharma”, interesting coinage. Thank you!
[/quote]

No. Even though 有 standing alone is elsewhere a translation for bhāva, it is not here. 有為 is a single unit: the opposite of 無為. I don’t know, maybe languages are all the same, but the meaning of any Chinese character is VERY contextual. Also, historically, the basic linguistic unit changed from one character(ancient times) to two (more modern times). (Actually, it is the influx of Buddhist texts and the influence upon Chinese of Indic language that drove much of this evolution.)[/quote]I do not mean to be contrarian, but do you happen to have a source for this? This is very interesting to me.

[quote=knotty36][quote=“Coemgenu, post:22, topic:4572”]
I am a learner of Classical Chinese
[/quote]

Though Buddhist Chinese is somewhat based on it, Buddhist Chinese isn’t Classical Chinese, per se–which is, for all intents and purposes, not at all an oral, but strictly a literary language; and, so, lacks the flow of a spoken Chinese language like, say, Mandarin or Cantonese. Buddhist Chinese is actually like Pāli, I guess, in that it is a vernacular, colloquialization based on a literary model. So, if I were to make a suggestion to anyone wanting to work with Buddhist Chinese (at, least, the Āgamas), it would be to simultaneously learn a modern, spoken Chinese language, too: probably Mandarin (though Cantonese would be fine, too).[/quote]I have been using “Classical Chinese” when I should have been using the term “Literary Chinese” or even “Buddhist Hybrid Literary Chinese” because I figured it would cause less misunderstandings. It seems my attempt to subvert misunderstandings has bred them!

I have actually gotten the opposite advice from most people I have consulted while trying to seriously delve into Literary Chinese, most people have told me, in rather strong terms actually, absolutely not to base any of my study into Literary Chinese on how any modern Chinese dialects function, semantically or grammatically. I have long suspected that this might be slightly misleading, and might be a result of native speakers of modern Chinese dialects “hypercorrecting” and assuming the ancient literary language is actually further than it is from modern Chinese. Indeed, for instance, to a native speaker of English, old English seems “further” from English than, say, modern Dutch, despite actually being a closer language. A native speaker of English might inadvertently exaggerate and stress the difference, rather than the similarities, between ancient and modern English, and present a portrayal of Old English that frames it as “further” from modern English than it is. This might be the case with advice that exists out there trying to persuade learners of older Chinese not to learn modern Chinese.

On the other hand, the “do not base your understanding of Literary Chinese on any modern spoken dialect” approach is also the dominant pedagogical philosophy of the textbooks by Paul Rouzer that I am principally using to study, as he argues that Literary Chinese is a language all to itself, barely related to all to any spoken register of Chinese than has existed since the remote past.

[quote=knotty36]First, an estimated upwards of 80% of modern Mandarin vocabulary is Buddhist in origin (not to mention how much of the syntax, etc. is based in Indo-Aryan construction). Second, the rhythm of Chinese, which cannot be easily gotten from reading Āgamas, will be an invaluable guide in how to decipher the meanings of words: as in the 空相應 example above, where any speaker of Chinese, even with no Buddhist knowledge at all, would have instinctively known where to break it. (相應 is a common, contemporary word–again, of Indic origin.) [/quote]This relates to my earlier comments. Paul Rouzer argues that if Literary Chinese can be thought of as having a “flow”, it is a flow all of its own, unrelated to modern vernacular. That being said, Rouzer does not specialize in Literary Buddhist Chinese, and a lack of resources specializing in Buddhist Hybrid Chinese has left me beholden to his approach at the present. As I learn more I may come to disagree with it, as it seems you may.

Also, if I may voice one objection, it is to do with what you bring up here:[quote=knotty36](相應 is a common, contemporary word–again, of Indic origin.)[/quote]Based on my present understanding, it is indeed a common contemporary word, however, at the time of these translations (~4-500AD), this would have been a two-word construction consisting of native Chinese terms, entirely Chinese on their own, being put-together to represent, as a phrase, what is a single word in an Indic language.

Like the English words “therein”, or “earphones”, it is conceived of as one word, but is also two words.

Where have I gone wrong here? Do you know of any resources you would suggest for learning more about Literary Chinese usage specifically at the time of the translations of these texts that I could take advantage of?

I am married to a linguist, so I pick up on a few things here or there (although the danger of merely “overhearing” complicated linguistics, instead of knowing it yourself, is a very real and present danger), and I know that one of the most controversial and heated areas of the study of generative grammar is trying to pin down a workable metric for when one word definitely ends and another definitely begins. For instance, in our speech, as English speakers, we actually use way more “compound words” than we write (i.e. we write them as seperate words, but they are actually structurally bound). Analysis of Literary and/or Classical Chinese, Buddhist or not, it seems, is not exempt from this.

Also, do you have any sources for the theory that modern Chinese is highly influenced by Indo-Aryan syntax? This is also very interesting to me.

Also, lastly, concerning 有 (yǒu), I chiefly use two online dictionaries as well as a digitized dictionary I downloaded (so I can navigate using Command+F). Consulting these, this range of readings is available:[quote]
This is from the Nan Tien Institute’s Dictionary of Buddhist Chinese:

yǒu verb is / are / to exist (Notes: For example, 有人敲门 ‘There was someone knocking at the door.’ (Lao She, 2003, p. 174) 有 is always negated by 没, never by 不. For example, 他们没有见过太阳 ‘they had not seen the sun.’ (Lao She, 2003, p. 221) 有 is the tenth most frequently used word in the Beijing Language Institute’s 1985 frequency wordlist (Ho, 2002, ‘有’ 2; NCCED ‘有’ 1))
yǒu verb to have / to possess (Notes: In this sense 有 often takes the pattern [subject] 有 [object], where the subject might be left out (Ho, 2002, ‘有’ 1; NCCED ‘有’ 2) For example, 自己有钱 ‘he had money.’ (Lao She, 2003, p. 218))
yǒu noun becoming / bhāva (Notes: From Sanskrit: bhāva, Pāli: bhāva (BL ‘bhāva’; FGDB ‘有’))
yǒu verb indicates an estimate
yǒu verb indicates a large quantity of long time
yǒu verb indicates an affirmative response
yǒu verb used before a person, time, or place (Notes: In the pattern 有的…有的 (Ho, 2002, ‘有’ 5; NCCED ‘有’ 8)).
yǒu verb used to compare two things

This dictionary is a general-usage dictionary:

to have; to possess (when a subject is present)
there is; to exist (when a subject is absent)
(euphemistic) to be pregnant with a child
abundant; affluent
many; much; (of time) long; (of age) old
some (indefinite pronoun)
A surname.[/quote]So the meaning of 有, irrespective of its usage in Buddhist Hybrid Chinese, is actually decently close to the Indic bhava, in many of its most frequent usages in Literary Chinese. Even if 有為法 is a semantic compound on its own, unified and not triple in meaning, each of the constituent parts of the compound still needs a reading. If 有 is not being read as bhava here, what do you think the reading is? “Possessing/having-fabrication-dharma” is a likely candidate, but bhava works just as well.

I will put some definitions of bhāva here for context in case anyone else is interested. From buddha-vacana.org:[quote]bhava: [m.] the state of existence. || bhāva (m.) condition; nature; becoming.[/quote]

The Pali Text Society’s Pali-English dictionary doesn’t have an entry for bhāva or bhava it seems, or at least I can’t find it using the functionality of the site.

Monier-Williams’s 1899 Sanskrit-English Dictionary:[quote]1. (√ भू) coming into existence, birth, production, origin (= भाव Vop. ; ifc., with f( आ). = arising or produced from, being in, relating to) Yājñ. MBh. Kāv. &c.
2. becoming, turning into (comp.) Kāṭh.
3. being, state of being, existence, life (= सत्-ता L.) ṠārṅgP. (cf. भवान्तर)
4. worldly existence, the world (= संसार L.) Kāv. Pur.
5. (with Buddhists) continuity of becoming (a link in the twelvefold chain of causation) Dharmas. 42 (MWB. 102)
6. well-being, prosperity, welfare, excellence (= श्रेयस् L.) MBh. Kāv. &c.
7. obtaining, acquisition (= आप्ति, प्राप्ति) L.
8. a god, deity. W.[/quote]

Lastly, speaking of:[quote=knotty36][quote=Coemgenu]As I learn more there will definitely be many "wow, I was so wrong"moments.[/quote]And I’ve had a lot of “wow, I was so wrong” moments[/quote]I just found out I have been using bhāva and bhava as essentially interchangeable, based on the notion that the version with the macron was Sanskrit and the version without-macron was Pāli.

Apparently they are two different words altogether in both languages!

sujato · March 29, 2017, 1:59am

Just to confirm what was already suggested above, these two uses of saṅkhāra are quite different, and would almost invariably be translated differently in English.

In dependent origination, saṅkhāra means “choice, volition, intention”, especially choices that have an ethical dimension. This is, incidentally, by far the most common use of the word in the EBTs. I use “choices”.
The term asaṅkhata applies not just to intentions, but more broadly to any conditioned phenomena. Here, I use “conditions”, or “the unconditioned”, etc.

knotty36 · March 29, 2017, 2:12pm

Greetings to all:

Before I say anything, please, allow me to repeat that I am not an expert, not professionally trained, nor a linguist: simply an enthusiast who likes to help or encourage the enthusiasm of others, when possible. Like an average, native English speaker, I just know what in Chinese “feels right,” or seems like it should be a certain way; and, experience has taught, that my instincts are not bad for a foreign amateur: in fact, in some areas, they are at least as good as an (unlettered) Chinese person. Still, my comments are rife with imprecisions, generalizations, etc. Also, probably the main reason I am not a professional Chinese scholar–that is, in addition to the shortcomings mentioned in the previous sentence–is that I almost never remember my sources: it is just a skill in which I have never had much interest. (“Cross the river, dump the raft.”) That being said, I will try to address your questions as best I can–though, again, I will probably fall short for specificity.

Many of the things for which you asked sources I do not have for you. I own some books, but they are not with me (we just moved), so I cannot give you the titles. But, a lot of these things are just the common “you know, they say,” general type of trivia which you hear professors in China discussing. The 80 per cent figure is probably the high end of a ballpark figure that they throw around (i.e. argue about); so I will say 60-80, to be fair. But, that it is quite high is pretty much beyond dispute.

I do not know, but I may have used the word, “syntax” imprecisely: I meant that, in addition to simply the introduction of new vocabulary, the way in which compound words are constructed (i.e., the way the words in compounds relate to each other), and quite a few now standard phrase patterns are based in Indic languages.

Classical Chinese, broadly speaking, is the language of the Confucian classics: a literary language from the central Chinese plains region from about 300 B.C. and earlier: it is Ancient Chinese–and I cannot tell you how vernacular it may have been. While Buddhist Chinese, on the other hand, especially the language of the Āgamas, is at least 500-700 years later (Medieval Chinese), and very much rooted in the vernacular Chinese of the day. (Though it was, of a necessity, built on the basic structure of the clasical, written standard. I may be wrong, but I think Classical-Buddhist Chinese parallels Sanskrit-Pāli in this regard. Please correct me if I am wrong.) These dates, coupled with the vernacular style, bring us much closer to the structure of Modern Chinese. So, to refer to what you said about English, I think it would be very prudent for a foreign student of Middle English to learn a bit of Contemporary English at the same time; this might not help so much, though, for studying Old English.

Ancient Chinese, probably because it comes from Ancient (i.e., a more primitive) China, is based more on single characters covering a very broad, non-specific range of meaning. It was both the evolution of the society along with the introduction of Indic concepts into the Chinese cultural landscape which spawned the move to compund words. More complex societies need more specificity from their languages, so Chinese was already going that way; but the large infusion of Indian words REALLY sped things along. (The introduction of Indian philosophy, art, technology, etc., generally, was a boon for China which cannot be overstated: China owes a huge debt to Indian culture that often goes unacknowledged.) [quote=“Coemgenu, post:28, topic:4572”]
Based on my present understanding, it is indeed a common contemporary word, however, at the time of these translations (~4-500AD), this would have been a two-word construction consisting of native Chinese terms, entirely Chinese on their own, being put-together to represent, as a phrase, what is a single word in an Indic language.
[/quote]
Exactly. You said it better than I could. So, please, let me be more precise regarding相應being “of Indic origin:” if indeed I ever knew, I do not now remember, specifically, what Indian word that compound was created for, I just know it fits the pattern.

Sorry, but, again, no: each of the constituent parts need not have a separate reading in order for the entire compound to have a coherent reading. Also, 有為法 is not really a translation of any Indic word: 法 is; and, as you have demonstrated, on its own, 有 may be: but 有為 most certainly is not. 有為 is a Chinese/Indian joint invention to stand as a linguistic opposite to 無為: also not a translation of anything, but a native Chinese borrowing to represent to concept behind the word asaṅkhata. Speaking of which,…

This is why I like 無為 (and why, I suspect, the ancient Chinese liked it, too) for asaṅkhata: the personal as well as metaphysical state of quiescence implied by the Daoist concept parallels the Buddhist asaṅkhata quite nicely. Perhaps someone may differ; but, then, this term has been hotly debated for the last 2,000 years, so…

I am sorry, I have enjoyed this discussion, and have learned quite a bit; but I may not be able to keep up with it too much longer: I am a slow typer, and I have already taken out quite a bit of time which should be spent on other things in order to participate in it.

Thank you, Coemgenu, I learned a lot from your replies. I hope mine helped you or anyone.

Peace.

Coemgenu · March 29, 2017, 7:04pm

[quote=“knotty36, post:30, topic:4572”]
Sorry, but, again, no: each of the constituent parts need not have a separate reading in order for the entire compound to have a coherent reading. Also, 有為法 is not really a translation of any Indic word: 法 is; and, as you have demonstrated, on its own, 有 may be: but 有為 most certainly is not. 有為 is a Chinese/Indian joint invention to stand as a linguistic opposite to 無為: also not a translation of anything, but a native Chinese borrowing to represent to concept behind the word asaṅkhata.
[/quote]Sorry, I did not explain what I meant in my earlier post well enough.

Even if the word is a two-part compound in Middle Chinese, I think it is fair enough to say that 有 does still actually require a reading of its own even when paired with 有為 to express one idea in two characters. If it were not the case, it would be syntactically equivalent to coining an English compound like “jatphones” in place of “earphones”. “Jat”, lacks semantic value in the English language, and as such, in Chinese, would lack independent reading when used in a compound to produce a nuanced meaning of another character. However when compounds are formed they still utilize the semantic meanings of all of their constituent characters at this point in Middle Chinese. This is equivalent to the English coining of “telephone” as a compound or “internet” or “earphone”. Even compounds formed just with a morphological prefix, like “uncreated”, still assign semantic value to the preix component of the compound. It is possible that 有 is a purely phonetic borrowing from an Indic grammatical prefix of sorts (its reconstructed pronunciation in Middle Chinese is “ɦɨu”) but I do not think that theory has much grounding.

“Possessing/having” seems like a reasonable reading, if 為 is “fabrication/fabricated”.

That was what I meant to say.

Coemgenu · April 1, 2017, 7:36pm

[quote=“knotty36, post:30, topic:4572”]
Classical Chinese, broadly speaking, is the language of the Confucian classics: a literary language from the central Chinese plains region from about 300 B.C. and earlier: it is Ancient Chinese–and I cannot tell you how vernacular it may have been. While Buddhist Chinese, on the other hand, especially the language of the Āgamas, is at least 500-700 years later (Medieval Chinese), and very much rooted in the vernacular Chinese of the day.
[/quote]I’ve done some research regarding what you have said here, and I thank you for your contributions, because, at the very least, they inspired me to do some research (as I hope they inspire others to do), and although I do still disagree with a few things you brought up, what you brought up, on a whole, was quite enlightening, if you will forgive my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, pun.

Buddhist Hybrid Chinese, to a newcomer, like myself, to “Literary Chineses” (plural intended), actually presents no problems, since all Literary Chineses are mutually foreign to the newcomer, and the extreme flexibility of Literary Chinese, as a whole, allows for multiple grammars basically (a Korean grammar, a Japanese grammar, a Vietnamese grammar, one can become familiar with all of these via exposure to them, just as one can become familiar to the (Early) Buddhist grammar/register of the language).

The problem is which BHC, or which BCC, because the language of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra is Buddhist Hybrid Chinese, and the language of the āgamāḥ is BHC, and those “two” BHCs are not the same BHC (so we need to be even more precise!).

We can think of BHC as a “dialect” of “Middle” (or Medieval) Literary Chinese, but further, we can think of āgama-Chinese as its own dialect of BHC. Very confusing. This is also my own take on the matter, others may disagree (and please do, it leads to learning).

With a basic grasp of Literary Chinese in general (and I really recommend Paul Rouzer’s A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese for the simple reason that it is cheaper than 90% of the textbooks you will find online, in my experience), one is ready to tentatively explore the language of the āgamāḥ using sutta-parallels as guides (as I do). This is, IMO, an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the Buddhist register of Literary Chinese (various academics name this register “Buddhist Hybrid Chinese” (BHC) or “Buddhist Colloquial Chinese” (BCC)).

My own personal opinion is that “Buddhist Chinese” is still a sub-dialect of general Literary Chinese (as opposed to properly “Classical” Chinese), and as such, can be referred to as “Literary Chinese” in general, however, scholarship is definitely on your side, namely, that the language of the Chinese āgamāḥ is not identical to either Classical or Literary Chinese if we stick to a very “nationalistic” definition of “Chinese” (which is the norm in almost all scholarship).

I think Paul Rouzer’s perspective (and the methodology he pursues in his pedagogy) is particularly handy for dealing with “Buddhist Chinese”, because Rouzer treats Literary Chinese as what it really was, not a monolithic continuation of nationalistically “Chinese” literary High Culture, but rather, a highly flexible, and highly varied, lingua franca of East Asia, with multiple operative grammars and many ways of expressing itself tailored to localities as well as international communication, and, in addition, tailored to various forms and functions, socially speaking.

In fact, IMO and by my own phrasing (not his), by Rouzer’s metric, we can speak of a different “dialect” of Literary Chinese for every purpose anyone had to write anything: there is a “Literary Chinese” for math, one for business, one for philosophy, one for the State, one for agricultural tallies, one for Christianity even (!), and, of course, one for Chinese Buddhism (or, actually many, given that each historical layer of Buddhism has its own specific “Literary Chinese”).

Coemgenu · April 25, 2017, 4:29pm

Adding to the list of ongoing corrections, this here what I wrote: [quote=“Coemgenu, post:18, topic:4572”]
As said before, it is tempting to read 跡 as a semantic doubling of 道 in 道跡, which would render it simply meaning “path [to there]”, however, this creates the issue of the text speaking about an “uncreated path” (無為道跡).
[/quote]and here [quote=“Coemgenu, post:18, topic:4572”]
With this in mind, the reading of 為無為道跡 comes to mean something like “[what is the] acting/doing/fabricating [of] [the] uncreated principle (dharma?) [of the] pathway [to the “uncreated dharma” spoken of earlier]”. This presumes a great deal of flexibility in the possible usage of 跡 which I need to check, and it is possible that 無為 refers exclusively to 道 and 跡 might not be referred to as 無為 at all, which would bring the passage into closer consistency with the Nikāya-parallel, if it proves to be a convincing and plausible set of readings for these characters. If it does prove to be a convincing set of readings, 為無為道跡 could well mean something more like “doing of the uncreated dharma’s pathway-there”, but like I said I need to do more research on how 跡 is used.
[/quote]Has a functional mistake in it, namely, a mistaking of the function of 跡, which is apparently supposed to be read as “example”. How it is read as “example” I have no clue, but it makes the āgama make a bit more outright sense and makes it a bit “more direct”: [quote]及無為道跡
and [the] uncreated/inaction path[,] examples [of this:][/quote]

Also, this here:[quote=“Coemgenu, post:1, topic:4572”]
「當為汝說無為法，及無為道跡。
"Apposite doing you I-speak [i.e. “I speak to you appositely”] [of] wú wèi fǎ [asaṃskṛtadharma], and [the] wú wèi dào pathway [to that].
[/quote]當 means “[I] shall”, not “apposite”.