Chinese transliterations and translations are useful as the early Chinese scholars had to understand the Indian Pali and Sanskrit terms before they could be rendered effectively into the Chinese language. Obviously, some of the early transliteration of Indian Buddhist terms are purely ‘phonetic’ in nature and in themselves do not convey much meaning as ideograms. This represents an initial process of a slow, careful and gradual building-up of knowledge in China about a thoroughly ‘foreign’ Indian philosophy that had to develop an ‘interface’ with existing Chinese culture.
Day: September 20, 2017
The Bravery of Mr Paul Aladdin Alarab (1958-2003) RIP
Update: I wrote this article sometime ago, but today I received this message as a ‘Comment’ to this post: ‘Can you please remove this photo