弘明集 8.43

8.43

The Treatise Destroying Delusions states: In the time of Emperor Ming of the Han, Buddhist scriptures were first transmitted, so the pronunciations and characters in the Han translations were not yet correct. The pronunciation of fu resembles fo; the pronunciation of sang resembles sha—these were phonetic errors. Taking tu ('butcher') for tu ('diagram') was an error in characters. Kumārajīva was fluent in the languages of both China and the barbarians, and his understanding encompassed both sound and meaning; correcting the 'three pigs' error was certainly fitting! In the worldly canons of the Five Classics, scholarship does not rely on translation, yet the commentaries of Ma [Rong] and Zheng [Xuan] alter pronunciations and characters back and forth. Thus, in the 'Eulogies of Zhou,' [the gloss of] 'solemn and profound' (yumu) as 'not recording' misled teachers and pupils; in the 'Canon of Yao,' [changing] 'sincere and substantial' (yunsei) to 'peaceful and tranquil' (an'an) ran counter to sagely virtue. Does the depth of the ultimate teaching really reside in two characters? Catching the meaning and forgetting the words was grasped by Zhuang Zhou; letting words harm the intention was criticized by Meng Ke. Without tracing back to the great principle, one seeks solely among characters—how could the ropes of the man of Song surpass this?