A good book recommendation ｜ A study of the characters in the seven-temple edition of Xuanying Yinyi

A Study on the Characters of "Xuanying Yinyi" in Seven Temple Manuscripts

By Wu Jigang

Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House

Brief introduction of the author

Wu Jigang, male, from Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, doctor of literature, associate professor of Guizhou Normal University, master tutor, member of China Exegetical Society. He has published more than 40 papers in academic books and periodicals such as Dictionary Research, Journal of Ancient Books Arrangement Research, China Social and Economic History Research, Ancient Chinese Research, Historical Literature Research, Tang History Series and Chinese History Research Collection, and has presided over five national social science fund projects and provincial and ministerial projects. Mainly engaged in Buddhist literature research, stone carving literature collation and language research.

brief Introduction of the content

The book Xuanying Yinyi, collected in the Seven Temples in Nagoya, Japan, is an ancient handwritten manuscript in the Tang Dynasty, which has important research value in the history of Chinese characters and Chinese language. This book combines handed down documents with unearthed documents, and reveals the development and use of Chinese characters by studying the phenomenon of using Chinese characters in Xuanying Yinyi, which is collected in seven temples in Japan, and provides information for the study of Chinese character history and Chinese history. At the same time, the actual use of ancient scriptures in Japanese hand-written banknotes is investigated, which provides information for the study of writing this document and Buddhist scriptures. The book is mainly discussed from five aspects: the classification and synchronic comparative study of the characters in Xuanying Yinyi, the diachronic comparative study of the characters in Xuanying Yinyi, the characteristics, causes and values of the characters in Xuanying Yinyi, and the textual research and interpretation of difficult words in Xuanying Yinyi.

preface

Buddhism spread eastward from India to China, experienced the development adapted to China’s national conditions, and then spread eastward to Korea, Japan and other countries, forming a Buddhist cultural circle with Chinese characters as the center. According to the postscript of "The Queen of Light Writes Scriptures" collected by Shanghai Library in the 12th year of Tianping in Japan (740), "I took an examination of Japanese Linggui for two years, and in the 4th year of Kaiyuan, I sent Kibi No Asomi Makibi, Abe Zhongmalu and monk Xuanyun to study in China in August; In the seventh year of Tianping, in the twenty-third year of Kaiyuan, he returned, offering music laws and Tibetan scriptures; In the 13th year, the orders of building towers were written by the states. Covered with Qingyun, and bronze to the balance, Shenhu, and Jing Yun between 70 and 80 years, the writing was the most prosperous. " There is also a postscript that "the wind of writing classics in Japan was unparalleled in Tang Kaiyuan and Tianbao". These Nara Pingan ancient scriptures handed down today provide precious clues for us to study the origin of the Tibetan scriptures written before Kaiyuan Record.

The sound and meaning of Buddhist scripture is an exegetical work to explain the sound and meaning of words in Buddhist scripture, and it is also a treasure house of knowledge worth exploring in Chinese traditional classical literature. The sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures trace back to the grave, and the customs are examined below. The words annotated in Shuowen, Erya, Qieyun and ancient books are collected in one book, which is rich in interpretation, including hundreds of ancient books in the subset of classics and history, and more than 1,400 words that need to be explained. To some extent, it can be said that. We can compare the similarities and differences between the Tang and Song versions and the current versions, and we can get a glimpse of all the Buddhist scriptures that were collected at that time. There are not only the corpus of the Buddhist scriptures that were interpreted, but also the connection clues between the points, which contains a lot of language materials that are not contained in other high-level literary classics. It is better than the records of the Buddhist scriptures themselves in reflecting the evolution of language, and in a sense can be said to be a more comprehensive summary of the words used in Han and Tang Dynasties. The appearance and prosperity of the sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures not only promoted the interpretation and research of Buddhist scriptures, but also provided rich supporting materials for the study of religion, philosophy, language, literature, art and the history of Sino-foreign exchanges.

"Xuanying Yinyi" is the earliest extant Buddhist scripture, which has the reputation of "a magnificent picture of words and a turtle mirror of words and sounds". There is "The Sound and Meaning of Xuanying" in the Pilu Collection in the Shuling Department of the Imperial Palace in Japan, and its content is slightly different from that in the Zhasha Collection and the Lisong Collection. Thanks to the contact and company of Japanese scholars Luo Hejun Dian and Mr. Jue Pujin, I had the honor to witness this Song version of Xuanying Yinyi when I visited the Shuling Department of the Palace Hall on February 23, 2006. According to the Records of Zhengcangyuan, the "Xuanying Yinyi" in Nara era has spread to Japan. There are seven volumes and a part of six volumes in the sacred language collection of Masakura Hospital in Nara, among which six volumes are the manuscripts of Tianping period (729-749). In the Tokyo Museum, there was a copy of the banknote that was released in the third year of Dazhi (1128, the second year of Jianyan in Song Gaozong), and it was transferred to the library of the Palace Museum in October of the fifth year of Showa (1930). I also compared these notes when I visited the library of the Palace Museum.

Horyuji, Shishan Temple, Qishi Temple, Xingsheng Temple, Western Temple, Shingong Temple and Kongoji also have some volumes of Xuanying Yinyi. The project of promoting academic research in private universities in the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, presided over by Professor Luohe Jundian of Japan International Buddhist Teaching College, aims to sort out and publish "Nara Pingan Ancient Scriptures". The first series of Japanese Ancient Scriptures Rare Books has been published, namely, 25 volumes of All Classics, Sounds and Meanings written by Xuan Ying in Kongoji, Qisi Temple, Western Temple, Institute of Historical Materials Compilation of Tokyo University and Literature Department of Kyoto University. There are volumes 1 to 4, 6 to 7, 9 to 21, and 24 to 25 in Kongoji, Tianye Mountain. Among them, the end of volume 21 is titled "The First Year of Baoyuan (1156)", the end of volumes 13, 19 and 20 is titled "The Second Year of Jiazhen (1236)", and the end of volumes 1, 4, 9, 10 and 21 are titled. Thanks to the invitation of Mr. Luo Hejun Dian, I gave a public speech on "The Academic Significance of the Study of Ancient Buddhist Scriptures —— Nara Pingan Scriptures and Dunhuang Scriptures" in Tokyo on February 25th, 2006. After the meeting, I had the honor to inspect Kongoji’s collected volumes with Mr. Luo Hejun Dian. The writing volume of Shishan Temple was written from the fourth year of Cheng ‘an to the first year of Anyuan (1174-1175), the second to fifth volumes were kept in Hiroshima University, the sixth and seventh volumes were kept in the Literature Department of Kyoto University, and the ninth and eighteenth volumes were kept in Tianli Library.The Nagoya Museum has the twelfth volume, the anti-machi Hong Wen Zhuang has the thirteenth volume, and the Dadong Memorial Library has the twenty-fifth volume. There are volumes 1 to 10, 12 to 14, 15 to 18, 21, 23 to 25 in the seven temples. Among them, the fifteenth volume was collected by Xiao Shan Wen Cun (1834-1910) and is now in the Institute of Historical Materials Compilation of the University of Tokyo. Accompanied by researchers Shangmei Jipu and Limei Chi, I compared this writing volume in the Historical Materials Compilation Institute on February 24th, 2006. Luo Hejun’s Canon "The Data Value of Writing All Classics" (World Religious Studies, No.2, 2000) points out that writing all classics is the original before deletion or alteration when compiling the block edition, and there are words that are not found in the block edition, which keep the ancient form. According to our investigation and comparison, there are similarities and differences between the written volumes of Xuanying Yinyi stored in temples such as Qisi and Kongoji and the Zhaisha collection, and they are roughly similar to the Li collection. These writing volumes and Dunhuang papers can complement each other to form a relatively complete ancient writing book "Xuanying Yinyi", and its academic value is self-evident.

The development and evolution of Chinese characters include font changes and font changes. The study of Chinese character history should not only discuss the evolution process of Chinese characters from Oracle inscriptions to regular script, but also textual research on the font changes of each specific Chinese character. In addition to the research on the evolution of fonts and glyphs, the historical situation of Chinese characters’ use is also an important part of the research on the history of Chinese characters. The Chinese translation of Buddhist scriptures coincided with the transition from official script to regular script, and the period from Han Wei to Tang and Five Dynasties, when vulgar characters appeared. For example, the Dictionary of Variant Characters of the Goryeo Tripitaka contains 31,913 variant characters in addition to 8,110 orthographic characters, so it can be said that the usage of Buddhist scriptures reflects the usage of Chinese characters from Han Wei to Tang and Five Dynasties, while the pronunciation and meaning of Buddhist scriptures mainly include words that are difficult to understand in the scriptures. These vulgar words and incorrect words in Buddhist scriptures will be more or less corrected when retranslated or later engraved, which will result in the distortion of Buddhist scriptures handed down from Han Dynasty to Tang Dynasty. When distinguishing these vulgar words and incorrect words, it is necessary to record and copy the original text accurately, and many of the words collected are not included in other dictionaries. Therefore, in reflecting the evolution of Chinese characters, the records of the sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures are better than the records of the modern Buddhist scriptures, and the different versions of these common words and incorrect words interpreted by the sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures in copying roughly reflect the use of common characters in different times. If the 9,353 words collected in Xu Shen’s Shuo Wen Jie Zi largely preserve the system of Xiao Zhuan,Then, we can say that the records of the sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures and the usage of characters in each book have generally preserved the system of official changes and the usage of characters in the Han, Wei and Tang Dynasties, from which people can truly understand the dynamic evolution process of official changes of Chinese characters. From the perspective of philology, the sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures are like a piece of rough jade, which objectively and truthfully preserves the natural form of Chinese characters, especially reflects the intermediate state of the evolution process of Chinese characters from official to official. It can not only provide more rich materials for the compilation of large dictionaries to interpret popular characters since the Eastern Han Dynasty, but also describe the evolution process of the word Lian according to the sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures and the usage of Chinese characters in previous dynasties recorded in relevant documents, clarify all its variants and identify the mistakes of some of them.

In recent ten years, Dr. Ji Gang has devoted himself to the study of inscriptions in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties and the sound and meaning of Xuanying, and his master’s degree thesis<玄应音义>Lexicography Research (West China Normal University, 2005) studies the collection and interpretation of words in Xuanying Yinyi from the perspective of lexicography. After that, he persevered, focusing on the point of view of philology, and wrote his doctoral thesis "Seven Temples"<玄应音义>A Study of Characters (Southwest University, 2012), which was further updated into this monograph.

Firstly, the book uses word correspondence theory and component theory to classify and study four kinds of writing phenomena in Xuanying Yinyi, such as variant characters, homographs, borrowed words and words that record transliterated loanwords. Among them, variant characters are the most diligent part, which shows the writing features of Xuanying Yinyi in the seven-temple edition comprehensively and objectively. Secondly, based on the relevant theories of lexicology research, this paper makes a synchronic and diachronic comparative study of Xuanying Yinyi with the written materials of the same era and different times, discusses the origin, evolution track and laws of the characters, and points out that there are many sources of the characters used in Xuanying Yinyi, the orthography of which is based on Shuowen, and its popular characters and popular characters mainly follow the variant characters inscribed on tablets in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties. It is considered that the standardization of Chinese characters is Among them, the chapter "Textual Research on Difficult Words" holds that most of the difficult words marked as "not seen" and "not detailed" are variant characters, and a few are borrowed words or homonyms, which are not issued by many people.

I have studied the sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures for many years, and naturally I also pay attention to the "Xuanying Sound and Meaning" collected in temples such as Qisi and Kongoji. In 2002, I went to Aichi Prefecture University to attend the 11th annual meeting of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics in China. At this time, Dr. Xiaohong has settled in Nagoya. During the chat, I mentioned that the twelfth volume of "Xuanying Yinyi" collected by Shishan Temple is now in Nagoya Museum. I read photocopies in China, and some words are not printed clearly. I really want to go to Nagoya Museum to see the original. At that time, I lamented that I couldn’t make full use of this unique condition to inspect the Japanese books as Dr. Xiaohong was in Japan. Fortunately, for more than 30 years, Professor Akihiro Koya, Kenji Yichuan, Masaji Hirata, Yasushi Shinichi, Jundian Luohe, Haretoshi Ishizuka, Masasuke Ikeda, Kei Nakasatomi, Haruhiko Sato, Keishi Uchida, Ryoko Setoguchi, Takashi Takehiko, Ding Feng, Xiaohong Liang and Professor Shen Guowei have helped to copy and send relevant materials, and also included some Japanese collections. In January of this year, he was also arranged by Dr. Li Naiqi of Hokkaido University to accompany him to inspect the Mubu and the remnants of All Classics, Sounds and Meanings, the Tang manuscripts collected by Xingyu Bookstore, and also visited the Shishan Temple in Kyoto and the Seventh Temple in Nagoya, where the volumes of All Classics, Sounds and Meanings were collected. The abbot of Chengqi Temple warmly entertained him and looked at the ancient scriptures collected in Qisi Temple. He truly felt that life was predestined and blessed the soul. The Seventh Temple was built in the seventh year of Tianping in Nara era (735).The official name is Fusi, Dean of Daoyuanshan Zhengjue. According to the article "All Classics of the Seven Temples and Ancient Yi Classics" (Study on Buddhist History, Volume 33, No.2, 1990), the scriptures stored in the Seven Temples originated from the ancient scriptures written in Nara. Among them, there are many ancient classics with high academic value, such as Three Views of Mahayana Entering the Tao with the signature of "Luo Shizao", Biography of South China Sea Returned to Inner France by Tang Yizhuan, Biography of A?vagho?a Bodhisattva and so on. Following Dr. Gang’s prosperous years, his scholarship is rigorous and practical, and his book "Seven Temples"<玄应音义>The study of characters can be described as the painstaking efforts of several years, and it is also a new achievement in the study of the seven-temple edition of Xuanying Yinyi, which not only lays a solid foundation for the study of characters in the seven-temple edition of Xuanying Yinyi, but will also promote the further study of the seven-temple edition of Xuanying Yinyi and the Japanese collection of Xuanying Yinyi.

In recent years, the study of the sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures and the words and expressions of Zen and Confucianism has become a new hot spot in international sinology research, but the academic circles are mixed. As we all know, all the true knowledge that has made achievements in ancient and modern times is based on solid corpus and practical evidence. The study of the sound and meaning of Buddhist scriptures and the words and expressions of Zen and Confucianism is the true knowledge that can only be done by those who are willing to sit on the bench. Only by being down-to-earth and not afraid of hard work will there be real gains. For many years, Dr. Jigang devoted himself to the study of "Xuanying Yinyi", especially in the study of characters, and he won the yif, which is really commendable. It’s disrespectful to ask for orders from me, but it’s in order not to be rude but to be humble. Here, we look forward to Dr. Ji Gang’s persistent efforts in the study of the sound and meaning of Xuanying, so that more explorations and more achievements will be made in all aspects of the study of the sound and meaning of Xuanying and Buddhist scriptures in the seven temples.

Xu Shiyi

Geng Zixia was born in Shanghai Normal University.

Data: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House.

Editor: Xu Nuo