Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c8.s2.t1.6

v1.c8.s2.t1.6

which says that the term 'sheng-ming' was derived from the Sanskrit word *shabdavidya*, in which the meaning of the term *shabda* was sound and that of *Vidya* was science. It was one of the five sciences. In the second volume of the *Travelling Notes of the Western Regions of the Great Tang Dynasty* (da-tang xi-you-ji), Xuanzang remarked that the term *Shabdavidya* meant 'explaining the meaning of words and their differences'. According to some Indian myth, the earliest *Shabdavidya* work was created by heavenly god. As per the information available in Volume 21 of the *Records of the Yogacharya by Monk* Dun Lun's titled *Accounts of the Western Countries*, the *Shabdavidya Shastra* with one million *slokas* was prepared by Brahman in the beginning of *kalpa* (a period of time) and Sakra (Indra) reduced its size to 1,00,000 *slokas*. Thereafter, Fairy Gunabhadra again simplified it to 12,000 *slokas*. Fairy Panini created Panini Sutra with 8,000 *slokas* afterwards. Master Dharmapāla created 3,000 *slokas*, and named them as Miscellaneous Treasure of *Shabdavidya*, which was popular in the world. All the major linguistics works on Sanskrit such as those of the one million *slokas* made by Brahman, one lakh made by Sakra, 8,000 *slokas* of Fairy Panini (*Panini Sutra*) and 2,500 *slokas* written by the Brahmins of South India have been listed in the third volume of *A Biography of the Tripitaka Master of the Great Ci'en Monastery of the Great Tang* authored by two monks named Hui Li and Yan Cong. These were reported to be the basic works dealing with the 'sounds of the language of the Western Regions' and were popular in India and its surrounding areas and 'people desirous to attain scholarship in classical studies had to go through them'. Later, all these works motivated other scholars to produce works like *Brief Shabdavidya Shastra* with 1,000 *slokas*, *Munduk* scripts of 300 *slokas*, and *Anudhatu* with 800 *slokas* and they dealt with the *dhatu* of the Sanskrit word, the basis of the combination of the words and their ultimate meaning etc. The valuable work titled *A Biography of the Tripitaka Master of the Great Ci' En Monastery of the Great Tang* used the noun *Purusha* as an example listed different forms of 18 rhymes and 24 rhymes which were related to eight case endings, ie, 'explaining actors' (nominative case), 'explaining actions' (accusative case), 'explaining instruments' (instrumental case), 'explaining objectives' (dative case) 'explaining reasons' (ablative case), 'explaining genitive affairs' (genitive case), 'explaining location' (locative case) and 'explaining vocative affairs' (vocative case) as well as three different forms including the male sound (masculine), the female sound (feminine) and the non-male and non-female sound (neutral).