인도와 중국 불교 경론을 통해 본 ‘Buddha-vacana’ 개념의 의미 변천

Abstract

The Transformation of the Meaning of the Word ‘Buddha-vacana’ in ​the ​Chinese Translat​ions of the Abhidharma Texts and Its Implication​s​ Cho, Eun-su Seoul National Univ. After the translation of some Abhidharma texts into Chinese, Chinese Buddhists found interesting arguments in the texts about the nature of the Buddha’s word: whether it was “speech,” “sound,” or “name.” These Indian texts based their argument primarily on the assumption that the Buddha’s word should be speech or speaking. The​ ​matter​ ​of​ ​concern​ ​was: is the “sound” enough to carry the meaning or do we need another category of “name” in order to communicate? The puzzle began in the different positions in Indian Abhidharma schools. The Sautrāntikas asserted that the nature of the Buddha’s word should be “sound” only. Taking a nominalist position, they refuse to accept the category of “name,” which is abstract and hypothetical to them. However, the ambivalent attitude of the opposing Sarvāstivādins, attested in the orthodox Sarvāstivādin literature, Mahāvibhāṣā, who should have advocated “name” because this is one of the entities approved in their ontological structure, indicates to us that they were hesitant about this delicate issue. Later in the acclaimed Abhidharma compendium, Abhidharmakośa, both positions were introduced and no claim was made by the author as to which was valid. All these debates across several centuries in India reflect the agony of the situation buddhists had to face once their Buddha had gone. While the Buddha lived, his words were of the nature of speech in a direct, primary sense, as well as of the nature of name, in the sense of a conveyed meaning or second-hand knowledge. Now the teachings transmitted orally from generation to generation had to be set down in writing for preservation; meanwhile the challenges to the authenticity of the teaching they claimed to have heard or to have heard from one who had heard it aggravated the intensity of the questions, which the Indian Abhidharma Buddhist had to answer one way or another. To the Chinese Buddhists, whose contact with the Buddha’s teaching was solely through written words in a foreign language, the question as put to them would not have had the same implications. Accordingly their answers were different. The role Xuanzang played in the “language issue” as it developed in Chinese Buddhism should be pointed out here. The Chinese word for the “essence of the Buddha’s word,” jiao-ti, is an abbreviation of fo-jiao-ti and was used by for the first time Xuanzang, who did massive translations of the Indian Abhidharma texts into Chinese. Jiao-ti which literally means “the essence of the [Buddha’s] teaching” was chosen as the translation of buddha-vacana, i.e. the word of the Buddha, in Sanskrit. The implication of “the essence” was not there in the first place. Xuanzang, however, by the addition of the component “ti” in translating svabhvāva to make the question as “what is the ‘essence’ of the Buddha’s word,” must be said to have paved the way for the change in the Chinese Buddhists’ concerns over this issue. This effort to define the Buddha’s word based on their doctrinal position, integrated with the pursuit of the classification, should be the outcome of the Chinese Buddhist conclusions on the essence of the Buddha’s teaching. The issue of language, which was mainly a linguistic concern in India, became transformed into a self-contained system in China to be altered into a religious and metaphysical concern.