Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms

<p>This invaluable interpretive tool first published in 1937 is now available for the first time in a paperback edition specially aimed at students of Chinese Buddhism.<br>Those who have endeavoured to read Chinese texts apart from the apprehension of a Sanskrit background have generally made a fallacious interpretation for the Buddhist canon is basically translation or analogous to translation. In consequence a large number of terms existing are employed approximately to connote imported ideas as the various Chinese translators understood those ideas. Various translators invented different terms; and even when the same term was finally adopted its connotation varied sometimes widely from the Chinese term of phrase as normally used by the Chinese. <br>For instance <em>klésa</em> undoubtedly has a meaning in Sanskrit similar to that of i.e. affliction distress trouble. In Buddhism affliction (or as it may be understood from Chinese the afflicters distressers troublers) means passions and illusions; and consequently <em>fan-nao</em> in Buddhist phraseology has acquired this technical connotation of the passions and illusions. Many terms of a similar character are noted in the body of this work. Consequent partly on this use of ordinary terms even a well-educated Chinese without a knowledge of the technical equivalents finds himself unable to understand their implications.</p>