A Primer in Chinese Buddhist Writings

Close to two thousand years of Buddhism in China have produced a wealth of writings on Buddhist subjects. These include Indian texts (many no longer extant in their original language) translated into Chinese in medieval times; works on various aspects of Buddhist doctrine written originally in Chinese; biographies of monks and chronologies of Buddhist history; liturgical writings with musical notation, epigraphy commemorating devotional societies, monasteries, stupas and icons; poetry and letters on Buddhist themes; autobiography; and official court documents relating to Buddhism. Each of these genres follows its own conventions and employs distinctive vocabulary. Most require not just knowledge of Buddhist texts, but familiarity with other genres of Chinese writing as well. In short, “Buddhist texts” encompasses a vast literature—more than any one scholar could hope to master in a lifetime. This course can at most introduce some of the vocabulary and grammatical conventions of a few of these genres.

In most Chinese programs at Western universities, the student begins by studying modern Chinese for a year or two before studying classical Chinese. After a year of classical Chinese (reading philosophical works like the Analects of Confucius, historical works like the Shǐjì or Zuǒzhuàn, and literary works like the Book of Poetry and Tang poems),¹ the student is exposed to Buddhist writings. But some students—particularly those interested in Chinese chiefly as a means of accessing texts originally written in India—are understandably reluctant to invest three years of intensive study of works unrelated to Buddhism before beginning to read Buddhist texts in Chinese. It is in fact possible for Indologists to learn to read medieval Chinese translations of Indian Buddhist texts directly, without previous knowledge of Chinese.

In this course, I attempt to satisfy both types of students. We begin with a series of lessons that introduce basic vocabulary and grammar, drawing on one authentic text and then read through the prose sections of this text in their entirety. Readers already familiar with the basics of modern or classical Chinese can cover the first ten “lessons” in one or two sittings, while those with no previous knowledge of Chinese will require more time (memorizing characters becomes easier with time—the hardest characters to memorize are the first 100).

Notes

1. Two good introductions to literary Chinese are Michael A. Fuller, An Introduction to Literary Chinese (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), and Paul Rouzer, A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Mark Lewis provides an excellent reader in philosophical Chinese texts, including English translations for self-study, for free at: http://chinesetexts.stanford.edu/