Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary

Japanese-English Buddhist DictionaryReview by: Leon HurvitzJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1967), pp. 83-94Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/596610 .

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Reviews of Books 83

portant items as H. G. Creel, "What Is Taoism ? ", JAOS, LXXVI [1956], 139-152, and A. C. Graham, The Booke of Lieh-tzu [London, 1961]).

Any comprehensive treatment of such a complex and confusing subject as Taoism is bound to be difficult, but the difficulty is considerably enhanced when the task is attempted within a book of such brief compass. This brevity is probably primarily responsible for certain manifest weaknesses, such as the almost complete omission of historical background, thus compelling the uninitiated reader to approach Taoism in a sociological vacuum, or the ignoring of the vitally important political aspects of philosophical Taoism, aside from brief passing remarks unexpectedly juxtaposed in the final chapter to the unrelated narration of the political fortunes of Taoism in imperial times. No doubt such omissions and mish-mashes, as well as occa- sional superficialities of treatment, are almost in- evitable when one tries to crowd too much into too little space. On the whole, this reviewer feels the

treatment of religious Taoism to be more success- ful than that of early Taoist philosophy, in which, for example, no attempt is made to differentiate between the ideas in the Lao-tzu and the Chuang- tzu. A final criticism is the book's failure to give an overall critique of the total impact of Taoism upon Chinese civilization: the age-old tension between the Confucian and Taoist views of life, the influence of Taoism upon art and literature, Taoism's relationship to scientific thinking and technological development, etc.

Despite these weaknesses, this book contains so much of value that some American publisher, anxious to publish on China, might well give thought to bringing out an English edition rather than, as so often happens these days, either re- printing an old book once scholarly but now obsolete, or publishing a new book which is up-to- date but unscholarly.

DERK BODDE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary. Pp. 383.

T5ky6: DAIT6 SHUPPANSHA, 1965. Y 6,000.

One wonders what purpose this handsome and costly (the U. S. sales price is $30.00 !) dictionary is expected to serve. One wonders, rather, whom it is intended to serve with a text in English alone and its prefaces and instructions for use in both languages. (The English and Japanese versions of these latter, incidentally, are not quite identical, a circumstance on which there will be comment later.) There are, in fact, quite a few seemingly paradoxical features.

First, the text is in English. A work of this sort printed in English could be, presumably, for one of two types of readers, viz., technical specialists or utterly non-specialized laymen. The former, it seems, are out of the question, since there is nowhere furnished the minute information which alone is useful to the specialist. Nowhere, for example, are there specific textual references supporting the assertions made in the dictionary. Nowhere, for that matter, is one even told where to find a particular text to which an entry is devoted. If the presumed specialist is a person who can read the languages of East Asia, he will certainly be disappointed by what he finds here.

For the only Chinese characters in any entry are at the very beginning, following the romanized spelling of the Japanese reading of the entry's title. The same Hepburn romanization, unac- companied by Chinese characters, will be found everywhere else in the entry. Wade-Giles roman- izations follow Hepburn only in the case of book titles or of specifically Chinese proper names, but here again one will find Chinese characters only in the entry's title. If the Chinese word or name is a translation or transcription of something Indian, except for book titles, there will be no Wade-Giles romanization at all. There will be Japanese and Sanskrit, and not always the latter. One example will have to suffice: J[Miroku-josh-&5ky6 Mi-le-shanqig-sheng-ching. A one-fascicle

siitraa on Miroku's ascent to the Tosotsu-ten, translated into Chinese by Chki-ch'ii-ching-sheng (Shokyo- kyosho) of the Liu-Sunsg (Rya-s6) Dynasty. In this s-iFtra the Buddha predicts that Miroku will enter the Tosotmw-ten twelve years later, and praises the glories of the Tosotsu-ten.

What is the specialist expected to do with this? He will begin knowing all these things anyway, in which case he has no need of the entry. Or he will begin without this knowledge, and be obliged to run down the rest of the information, beginning



84 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 87.1 (1967)

with the Chinese characters with which every single name is written. He can save himself all this trouble by going directly to the Bussho kaisetsu dai-jiten, thus by-passing the present dictionary completely.

An alternate possibility is that the dictionary is meant for the layman totally unequipped with specialized knowledge. What is he expected to make of the entry just quoted? For him it is a display of unpronounceable, meaningless, foreign hocus-pocus.

In sum, then, the specialist does not need it, and the non-specialist cannot use it. For whom (or for what) is it meant, then?

In the Japanese-language version of the instructions for the use of the dictionary, near the bottom of the left-hand column on page x, is a sentence that does not appear in the English-language version at all. In translation it reads:

At the beginning of each entry is given the key word in romanized Japanese. The reason for ar- ranging the dictionary on the basis of romanized Japanese lies in this dictionary's character as a Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary.

In other words, the format is adequately explained by only one thing, left-handed Japanese patriotism. (Is it any wonder that this sentence did not appear in English?') Purely Japanese considera- tions explained a good deal more than mere format.

Now the vast majority of Japanese are notori- ously unable to handle any language save their own. The present dictionary is demonstrably un- suited to readers whose mother tongue is Japanese, for the majority of them cannot read it. Yet, as has been stated above, both the preface and the instructions for the use of the dictionary are written in both languages. Why should this be? The said material is presented in Japanese for persons who will presumably purchase the book in spite of their own inability to use it. What sort of persons can they be ? At least one answer to this question is conceivable. The foreign visitor to Japan, who in most cases speaks English, finds himself being squired about a large number of Buddhist institu- tions. Inevitably, questions arise in his mind. He puts these questions to his guide, who frequently cannot answer theni, or who, even if he knows the answers, cannot express them in English. Guide consults dictionary, painfully reads entry aloud to tourist. Or, guide hands dictionary to tourist, says, " Here. It's all explained here." The tourist

cannot, of course, understand the entry, and presumably writes it off to the "mysterious Orient." Or, his plane leaves tomorrow for Paris, and he puts the question out of his mind.

Quite apart from factual errors, the dictionary has glaring shortcomings. In the first place, the dictionary is at fault in its very conception. It is a yet further summation of what was from the outset a summary work, viz., the late IJi Hakuju's Concise Buddhist Dictionary. The said work, however, having been produced by a Japanese writer for Japanese readers, proceeds from certain assumptions concerning the readers' background knowledge, assumptions which are thoroughly justified by the author's experience and knowledge of his own people. It is no exaggeration to say that such a work, in bare English translation, is useless. For the assumptions that a Japanese writer may make with perfect justice about Japa- nese readers cannot be made where Occidental readers are concerned. The Japanese writer, in fact, simply does not know how to cope with Occi- dental readers, and in his ignorance is guilty of two faults: (a) He writes, en gros, as if for Japa- nese readers, but (b) assumes that the Occidental readers, not being Japanese, are congenitally stupid, hence must have everything explained. "Everything," however, does not quite mean "everything." Frequently what needs to be clari- fied remains, for the Occidental, opaque, while self-evident things are minutely commented on. (A hypothetical example would be as follows: " kyamuni achieved anuttarasamyaksambodhi in India, a country in the south-central portion of Asia, one of the five continents of which the planet Earth consists.") No service to scholarship is rendered by the mere translation into English of a Japanese scholarly work, even one of superior quality. This is not to say, by any means, that the findings of Japanese scholarship are useless to the West. The Occidental who reads Japanese can, of course, use them in the original. If he wishes to render these works of service to his fellows, he must not translate, but rather rework them, having knowledge of his fellow-Westerners such as a typical Japanese cannot possibly have.

Secondly, and in line with what has just been said, the Japanese entries were translated into English by twenty persons, of whom nineteen are Japanese. In other words, the unsuitability of the translation as such is compounded by the fact that



Reviews of Books 85

it was made from the mother tongue of the translator into a foreign language, which must surely be one of the most difficult undertakings on earth. The one non-Japanese just mentioned was also one of three non-Japanese proof-readers out of a total of seven. Thus the dictionary is almost totally free of glaring misuses of the English language. On the other hand, when the translation has been made under these conditions, understandably the translator does not have the versatility, not to mention subtlety, of expression that he would have in his native language. He therefore says less than he would like to say. The proof-reader, for whom English is a mother tongue, catches misuses of grammar and idiom on sight, but has no way of knowing what the translator wished to say, and would have said, had not the language barrier stood in his way.

Thirdly, it must never be forgotten that Bud- dhism is the religion of Japan but not of the West. For the Japanese, consequently, the logical approach is from the aspects of Buddhism known to them to those that are not known to them. It makes perfect sense, in a Japanese context, to list the entries in kana transcription of the conven- tional Japanese reading, arranged in the order of the Fifty Sounds, followed by Chinese characters, then by Sanskrit, Pdli, and/or Tibetan, as the case may be. It makes equally good sense, in that context, to give textual citations in Chinese, or in Japanese translated from the Chinese. For this set of practices relates, for the Japanese reader, the Buddhist traditions with which he is familiar to the background of which he may be ignorant. For the Occidental reader, on the other hand, all of this makes no sense whatever. He has no knowledge of Buddhism, nor are there in his experience any Buddhist traditions to relate to anything. He must begin 'from scratch.' Bud- (dhism is in origin Indian, not Japanese, and the key word, in the case of Indian Buddhism, should be Sanskrit or Pali; in the case of Chinese Bud- dhism, Chinese, transcribed in Wade-Giles or any other conventionally accepted transcription of Chi- nese as Chinese; and Japanese only in the case of Japanese Buddhism. Similarly, if a text is quoted in English, that translation should be based on the original, where that survives, or on a reconstruc- tion of the original meaning, where it does not. Most important of all, the whole presentation must be made in full awareness of what prior knowledge the Occidental reader may be presumed to have,

and in a conscious attempt to relate the new knowledge to the reader's own experience. In short, for a Japanese the order of sequence is Japan-China-India, while for an Occidental it is the exact opposite. One can already hear the editors saying, " But that would rob our dictionary of its special character as a JAPANESE-ENG- LISH dictionary ! ". What is this, if not left- handed patriotism? Besides, the only person likely to make his first acquaintance with a Bud- dhist term in its Japanese form is a person who already reads Japanese, and for whom, as a conse- quence, the present dictionary is superfluous.

There follows now a series of comments on individual points. While sizeable, the list is not exhaustive. In the first place, it is consciously selective, in spite of the size. In the second place, these comments are confined to those entries that fall within this reviewer's competence. The Arabic numeral to the left of the comment represents the number of the page to which it corresponds.

A. Mistranslations of Indian words.

In general, these fall into two types, (a) faulty restorations of Sanskrit by translating literally from Chinese and (b) quoting the Indian word, then translating not it but the traditional Chinese equivalent even when the latter does not quite accurately represent the former or, much worse, when the latter is unequivocally mistaken. Almost nowhere in the present work is it ever said that the tradition is at variance with the findings of objec- tive scholarship.

2. Abidatsuma-daibibasha-ron Abhidharma-ma- hrvibhasa-sdStra. There is no evidence that the majority of Buddhist writings of the s'stra type ever had the word s'"stra in their titles. It is the Chinese who dub every Buddhist canonical writing

-ching, - -lii, or -lun, as the case may be, in order to identify on sight the work in question as belonging to one of the three pitakas. The Japanese specialists in Buddhism, whose Sanskrit is in most cases inadequate, restore the Chinese verbatim into Sanskrit, with occasionally comic results.

3. " Agon-gy5 . . . In the Chinese tripitalca there are four Agama-sfitras . . ." There are four &gamas, containing many Mitras, but, since the Chinese has ching, the Japanese feel obliged to restore a sitra that never existed in the title.




77. "Gobun-hosshin asamasama-paiica-skandha. The five kinds of dharmakdya (hosshin). The fivefold merit of those who have attained enlightenment: precept-body (kai-shin), meditation-body (j5-shin), wisdom-body (e-shin), emancipation-body (gedatsu-shin), and knowledge-of-emancipation- body (gedatsu-chiken-shin,)." As the lead word indicates, hosshin in this case renders not dharma- kaya but slcandha. The source of the confusion may be surmised, but this is not the place to go into it. The present work, however, reproduces the confusion by a wrong Sanskrit restoration. In addition, while the originals for these five skan- dhas are perfectly well known, they are not given here: s'ilaskandha, samidhis., prajids., vimuiktis., vimuktijia nadars'anas.

142. "Jodo-sambu-ky5 . . . The three sfitras of the Pure Land. . . II. The Amitayur-dhydna- sudtra (Kuan-wu-liang-shou-ching, Kammuryoju- kyo) in one fascicle, translated by Chiang-liang- ya-she (Kyoryoyasha) of the Liu-sung (Ryft-sd) Dynasty." The Kuan, wu lang shou ching is, in the first place, almost certainly a Chinese forgery and the name Chiang-liang-yeh-she (yeh, not ya, at least in Wade-Giles) is highly suspect. Even if the compilers of the present work regard the Kuan. as genuine, however, they are, it seems, obliged to tell their readers that the Sanskrit of the 'restored' title is pure guesswork.

148. "Jfihachi-1c a,~stadsasuinyatJh. Eighteen aspects of suinyata (non-substantiality) ." This entry has several tragicomic errors. 1) ".

sarmskrta (conditional), asamskrta (unconditional) . . ." Here, obviously, the English translation was submitted in longhand, and the words "condi- tioned" and "unconditioned" were misread. Where, however, were the proofreaders? 2) ".

anavakdra (analytical) " Here, alas, is a typical example of how a Japanese will reproduce the Sanskrit word, then interpret not the Sanskrit but its Chinese translation. In his translation of the Paiicavimsatisdhasrikei projftiu p7ramita and in the Ta chih tu lumn Kumdrajlva renders the said word san l'ung, while in the Shih pa k'lung lun Para- mdrtha renders it pu she 1i l'ung, an accurate rendition of the original. Clearly, in Kumarajiva's case we are dealing with an old copyist's error, one from which an original pu must have fallen out at an early date. San may conceivably mean "analytical," but anavakdra cannot, and that is

that. 3) ". . . svalaksana (phenomenal) " Not misunderstood, but the English is certainly unfor- tunate. 4) "abhdva (existent), svabhdva (non- existent), . . . " The English equivalents were switched. Again, where were the proofreaders?

164. "Karitei Hariti. Literally blue, yellow, and blue clothing." Htriti, the name of a yaksini, hence of a malignant semi-divine female entity, is presumably the feminine of hlrita, " rogue." The Indo-Iranian informants of the Chinese must themselves have confused it with hariti, the feminine of harit, which signifies a sort of greenish yellow color. The Chinese, when they heard that it means "greenish yellow woman," automatically assumed, with their well-known attitude toward nudity, that it meant "clad in greenish yellow." They rendered it, accordingly, with huang i, " yellow clad" or with ch'ing i, "' green clad." (GREEN, gentleman, not BLUE! Granted the double meaning of Ch. ch'ing a hundred times over, a bit of research would have obviated this particular silly error.) Lastly, what on earth is "blue, yellow, and blue clothing "?

203. "' Muryogi-ky5 Amitirtha-sautra. Wu-liang- i-ching. A one-fascicle sittra translated by Dharma- jatayasas of the Ch'i (Sei) Dynasty (479-502). There was an earlier translation, but it was lost already by 730." The work in question is almost certainly a Chinese forgery. The one surviving " translation " is ascribed to " T'an-mo-ch'ia-t'o- yeh-she," which, on the face of it, can be restored to "Dharmagdthayasas," but not to "' Dharmajata- yasas." Either way, the name is a Chinese inven- tion, and the alleged earlier translation, ascribed to Gunavarman, an attested translator, was con- veniently "lost." The unwary reader would never suspect this from reading the present entry.

248. " Samb& ratna-traya. The three treasures: . " Ratna means "jewel," not " treasure."

Again, the translation is being made from Chinese, in spite of the presence of the Sanskrit.

248f. "Sambu-kyly A set of three ws. . . III. The triple sfttras for the protection of the country are the Saddharma-pundarika-sutra, Pra- j'h~paramiMt-s?2tra (Jen-wang-ching, Ninn5-gy&), and Suvarnaprabhlsa-sutra (Chin-kuang-ming- ching, Konkomy5-ky6) ." Now the presentation of the second of these three in this guise is positively dishonest. On its Chinese origin there is virtual



Reviews of Books 87

unanimity. In this case, the compilers of the dictionary did not even attempt to " restore " the San- skrit of jen wang. Instead, they blandly omitted the word from the " restoration," while saying nothing about the spuriousness of the text itself.

251. "Sandoku The three poisons, viz., covet- ousness, anger, and delusion. Also the three de- filements of adultery, anger, and ignorance. Also passion, hatred, and foolishness." This is ex- tremely misleading, for it would induce the unwary reader to imagine that there are three separate sets of evil, any of which can go under the name of sandoku. The fact is, of course, that we are here dealing with the three klesas (san fan nao), viz., passion (rdga, t'an yfi), hatred (dvesa, consistently misrendered "anger," chWen i), and folly (moha, yfi ch'ih). What the present work is doing is translating in two somewhat different ways from the Chinese, then in another way from the Sanskrit.

283. "Shinjo caitta. That which the mind possesses, i. e., mental functions. Caitta is an abbreviation of caitasikii1 dharin7h (shinshouh6)." This entry sheds some veryN interesting light on the way in which the Japanese view the respective roles of Chinese and Sanskrit in Buddhist phi- lology. Caitta is anything but an abbreviation of caitasilca dharmdh, although, in this context, the two terms are synonymous. Caitta is a vrddhi derivative of citta, past passive participle of the verb cit, "to think." Caitasika is a vrddhi derivative of cetas, which, in turn, is a nominal derivative of the same verbal root. It is when one comes to the Chinese that one encounters the abbreviation, for shinjo (hsin so) is indeed an abbreviation of shinshouhi (hsin, so yu fa). The likelihood is that the original of this entry, written in Japa- nese, said that shinjo is an abbreviation of shinshouh., a perfectly valid proposition. The translator then puts it into English, and automatically and unthinkingly glosses the Japanese words with the Sanskrit that corresponds to them, without ever a thought that the proposition does not apply to Sanskrit at all.

331. " Yuima-gyo Vimalakirti-nirdes'a-siutra." The word sitra is superfluous, and is a "restoration " from the Chinese.

Note the following, however:

128. "Immyd-nisshori-ron Nydya-pravesa." The Japanese Buddhist specialists whose Sanskrit is

best are the logicians, who know enough not to affix the word sastra to the present title. They were not always consulted.

B. Mistranslations of other words.

No less serious are the translations made from Chinese or Japanese where Sanskrit is not an issue at all. These are accountable, in almost every case, to the circumstance that the translator is dealing with a language of which his knowledge is inadequate. When he is at a loss for an English equivalent, he consults one of his Japanese-Eng- lish pocket dictionaries (of which the kindest thing that can be said about them is that they should all be burnt). Thus kIaiso is rendered "founder," so is rendered "priest," tera is rendered "temple," and shft is rendered "sect," none of them accurate. Quite apart from this, the translator is not at home with the English language, and has not the facility in the formation of phrases and sentences that he would have in his mother tongue. At times, therefore, his phrase- ology is merely clumsy; at others, he says something he does not mean.

9. "Annen (-889). A priest of the Tendai Sect, . . ." A "priest" is an officiant in a sacri- ficial ceremony, and, in general, a mediator between the laity and the deity. Since in Buddhism there are no sacrifices and no deity, there are, by the same token, no " priests." No better than this can be expected of the Japanese, who do not really know what the English word " priest " means. What of the proofreaders, however, for whom English is a mother tongue? No more does shFlt mean "sect," and the same stricture applies here too.

14. "Belly3 The different teaching. The teaching that is different from the other three of the four kinds of teaching of the Buddha. As defined by the T'ien-t'ai (Tendai) Sect, this is the third of the four kinds of teaching, and is called keh5-no-shikyd." The first of these two sentences, as is so frequently the case throughout the present work, is a correct statement of the case, but so clumsily put that the uninitiated reader can do nothing with it. What Chih-i meant is that the Buddha had four methods of teaching, the third of which was meant to set the Mahdydna practi- tioner apart from the Hlnaydna practitioners. The second sentence is positively wrong, since the name kehe no shikya is given not to the third



S8 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 87.1 (1967)

alone, but to all four of them collectively. There can be little doubt that the Japanese original of this entry stated the case accurately, since these facts are well known in Japanese Buddhist circles. The translator made hash of them, however, pre- cisely because he was translating from his mother tongue into a foreign language.

54. "Emon Huui-wen. The founder of the T'ien-t'ai Sect in China, . . ." Now, when the Japanese say kaiso, they do not necessarily mean what we mean by "founder." In the first place, the schools of Buddhism in the Far East traced their lineage, real or imagined, as far back as possible, in order to endow themselves with pres- tige. In the second place, so means "ancestor," not "founder," in the sense that the so was the first to formulate in words the truths which lie at the core of the respective school's doctrinal position. The translator consults his wretched Japa- nese-English pocket dictionary and finds the equivalent "founder," which he sets down in writing for the unwary Occidental reader. Thus there is total misunderstanding.

I58. "Eshi Hui-ssu . . . The second patriarch of the Chinese Tendai Sect." The same applies here.

The fact of the matter is that the T'ien-t'ai doctrines were formulated by Chih-i. Like all the others, however, he wished to appear a tradi- tionalist, not an innovator. Thus he disclaimed any originality, shifting the anticipated glory to his master, who, in turn, did likewise. This ten- dency, crucial in the Far East, is nowhere explained in the present work.

82. " Gojflni-i The fifty-two bodhisattva stages, viz., the ten stages of faith (jusshin), the ten stages of security (jftjii), the ten stages of practice (jktgy5), the ten stages of devotion (jfiue), the ten stages of development (jf1ji), the stage of approaching Buddhahood (togaku), and the stage of Buddahood (myogaku)." 1) is properly read jisshin, not jusshin. 2) " Ten stages of security" is very misleading for jftjil (ten abodes). 3) "Ten stages of practice" is fine for jftgy5, but under its own entry (p. 147) it is rendered "ten stages of profitting [sic] others." 4) " Ten stages of devotion " is strange, albeit conceivable, for jhFek5, but under its own entry on p. 146 it is rendered "ten stages of transference of merits to others," a much more accurate rendition. 5)

"Ten stages of development" for jufji is mystifying. As to the last two, they are glosses, not translations, without a word of explanation that teng chiieh and miao chiieh are two Chinese translations of sambodhi, which the Chinese did not know render the same Indian word. But, after all, why waste these explanations on Occidentals?

133. "Isshin sangan. The three viewpoints in a single thought." There follows an explanation of the three, of which the first two are, albeit unfortunately phrased, roughly accurate. "III. Cha; since the phenomenon is a blending of both lc'Ft and ke, it should be seen as occupying a mid- way position between both poles." Now k'ung is a statement of the inaccessibility of Reality to thought-construction. Chia is the statement that the truth of kung is not to be taken as a denial of the data of common experience. Chung, finally, is the statement that there is no contradiction between 'ung and chia. Chung in this context is, in origin, a contraction of chung tao, Skt. ma- dhyama pratipat, which, in this framework, means a ' midpoint' between affirmation and negation, i. e., the scrupulous avoidance of both, since both are verbalizations of thought-constructions.

154. "Jitshichi-kemp5 A constitution in seven- teen articles said to have been written by Prince Shotoku in 604, . . ." A "constitution" in the seventh century? However, the pocket dictionary says that 7cempo means "constitution."

268. "Shakushi The name or title of lakya- putra or Buddha-putra, which is used by a Bud- dhist follower in order to show that he is a true follower of the Buddha." As written here, however, shakushi (shih shih) means "the Sakya clan," hence, by metonymy, the Buddhist order. Clearly, shih tzu (also read shakushi in Japanese) was meant here.

338. "Zen-sh f Ch'an-tsung. The Zen Sect. It is taught in this sect that the true nature of one's mind can be realized or attained only through meditation and self-training. Especially, meditation (zazen) is practised. This type of practice was transmitted by Bodhidharma (P'u-t'i-ta-mo, Bodaidaruma) to China about 480 and prospered in the middle part of the T'ang (To) Dynasty . . . According to tradition, there were 28 patriarchs of zen in India, but their biographies are not clearly known. . ." 1) No one seriously believes in the historicity of Bodhidharma. 2) "Their biogra-



Reviews of Books 89

phies are not clearly known " is a dog-translation of some Japanese phrase such as sono den wa fumei de aru, i.e., the details of their lives are shrouded in mystery, rather an elegant Japanese way of saying that they are all mythical. That is what the Japanese original meant, and that is what the English translator should have said, and would have said, had English been his mother tongue.

C. Mistranscriptions. These are of several types. The mistranscrip-

tions from Japanese are impossible to account for. Those from Chinese are due to the use of improper language aids and the failure to verify the tran- scriptions with properly qualified persons, of whom there are many in Tokyo. Those from Korean are due to the fact that it never occurred to the Japanese, with their well-known contempt for Korea, to verify the Korean readings with the aid of knowledgeable persons, of whom the number in Tokyo is very great indeed. The Japanese reading of the Korean name is therefore followed by a Mandarin (!) reading. The others will, it is hoped, explain themselves.

10. " Anuradapura Anuradhapura." In no Japanese word that came from or through Chinese can the p sound occur except in gemination (Hep- burn -pp-) or following the syllabic nasal (Hep- burn -mp-). The recognized Japanese reading of this name is Anuradafura. This sort of thing occurs throughout the present work.

55. "Enjilci Yiian-ts'e. A Korean from the state of Silla (Shiragi) . . . " Granted the Japa- nese attitude toward Korea, what sense is there in romanizing a Korean name in Wade-Giles? The name is W6n-ch'uk.

75. Giba-henjaku Jivaka; Bian-que. The instructions for the use of the present work say that Chinese readings are romanized according to Wade-Giles. By that standard the second name should be Pien-chiieh. If the French system is preferred, it is Pien-ts'io. But what on earth is Bian-que?

253. "Sangolcu iji San-lcuo-i-shih. A five-fascicle history of Korea containing much information on Buddhism written by the priest Ichinen." Since it is Korean, the Mandarin reading is almost irrelevant to a Japanese dictionary. The work, of course, is the Samguk yusa, and the "priests"

(i. e., the monk) who compiled it was Iryon. Also, no dates, no information about the time range of the work itself, etc., etc.

281. "Shindo Shindhu. An ancient name for India." Sindhu is meant, of course.

307. "S5-k5s&den Sung-kcao-seng-chuan." The Japanese who specialize in Buddhism are, in the majority of cases, not the least bit interested in Chinese as Chinese. Hence the abstention in the present work from giving the Mandarin reading of Buddhist technical terms. Persons such as the compilers of the present work are of course ignorant of the Mandarin sound system and, very largely, of the fan ch'ieh system as well. It stands to reason that they cannot proceed from fan ch'ieh to Mandarin. For the Mandarin readings they rely on incredibly small and incomplete hand- books. Now the character, in ancient Chinese, had a voiced initial. As a verb it was read in p'ing sheng; as a noun, in ch'il sheng. The result, in Mandarin, in the former case is a syllable in the second tone with an aspirated initial; in the latter, in the fourth tone with an unaspirated initial. The handbook, presumably, gives the former alone. This sort of thing-and its occurrence is rather frequent in this work-could have been obviated by showing the proofs to colleagues at Toky6 Uni- versity, some of whom know Mandarin Chinese very well indeed. America, apparently, is not the only country in which Buddhologues and Sino- logues do not talk to each other.

323. " Ubu Sarvilstivda. Also Sabbata-bu, . In Japanese, a non-nasal voiced geminate

is absolutely impossible. Most Japanese cannot even pronounce it. The word, of course, is sappazta.

326. " Urabon ullambana." But ullambana means literally " hanging upward," while the Urabon festival was based-in part, at least-on the tradition of the descent into Hell of Mahama- udgalyayana to relieve the sufferings of his mother, who was hanging by her heels, i. e., downward, from a wall. Yii-lan-p'en probably derives from olambana, a prakritic form of avalambana, " hanging downward."

D. No originals. As has already been said, where the Chinese

word is not a Chinese personal or place name or a book title, no Mandarin reading is given. The




Indian originals, on the other hand, are usually given. In the following they were not. This is only one feature among many that appear to indicate the lack of a unified editorial policy.

17f. "Bisharij5-ketsujft The Bishari Council." The Council of Vaisall is meant, of course, but the reader has no way of knowing it, unless his eye falls on the next entry, Bishari-koku, where the name is given in Sanskrit and Pdli as well.

81. " Goi-shichijfigo-h5 The seventy-five dharmas in five categories." The five are then named in Japanese alone, with no Sanskrit, and Nos. I and II of the five do not appear as separate entries, so that there is no way of ascertaining what originals the Japanese words represent. A total of all seventy-five dharmas is not to be found anywhere in the present work.

103. "Henge Erroneous discrimination." No- where does this entry say that the word renders Skt. pariikalpita.

139. "Jish3 I. Own nature . . ." But there is no mention of svabhava, which this word usually represents.

185. "Ku-jii-metsu-d5 The four noble truths." But no Sanskrit or Pdli is given in the case of this all-important term.

259. "Sansh5 I. The three kinds of existence ." These are, of course, parilealpita, paratantra,

and parinispanna, but the Sanskrit is nowhere given; merely romanized Japanese.

287. " Shinzoku-nitai The ultimate aspect of truth and secular aspect of truth." Three explanations are given, of which the first two obviously apply to paramartha and samvrti, without, however, mentioning the Sanskrit words. Apart from this, the two explanations are simply unintelligible.

-E. No explanation.

Rather frequently in this work, the entry consists of a bare list of categories, the names given in Sanskrit and Japanese, sometimes in the latter alone. At times the category will be listed as a separate entry, at times not. When it is not, the dictionary fails the, very persons for whom it is intended.

90. "Goshu-zen The five types of meditation. the technical names of which in Japanese are: T. shi-nenj&, II. kushidai-j&, III. shishi-funjin- zammai, IV. hachi-haisha, and V. chootsu-

zammai." Nos. II and IV do not appear as separate entries, which makes them gibberish for those very persons for whom the dictionary is intended.

201 f. " Mui asamskrta. That which is not created, i. e., the eternal, unchanging, and pure . . . According to the Abhidharma-kosa, there are three types of mui; in the Vijninavdda, however, there are six types." Very well, but what are they?

217. "Nijiugo-bosatsu The twenty-five bodhli- sattvas who protect the believers in Amitdbha Buddha, given in the Jft3j3-kyo&." Very well, but what is the Jfltj5-ky5? No entry.

248. " Sambu-iss5-no-honan Suppression of Buddhism by three Wu (Bu) Emperors and one Tsung (So) Emperor, i. e., by T'ai-wu-ti (Tai-bu- tei) of Northern Wei (Gi), T'lu-ti (Bu-tei) of Northern Chou (Shit), Wu-ti (Bu-tei) of T'ang (To), and Shih-tsung (Se-so) of Later Chou (Shft)." This is all: no details, no dates, no separate entries.

255 f. "Sanjiishichi-dohon saptatrirmsoad bodhi- paksika dharmruh. The thirty-seven conditions favorable to enlightenment." The entry then divides them into the four smrtyupasthanas, the four samyakprahanas, the four rddhipadas, the five indriyas, the five balas, the seven bodhyaitgas, and the eightfold satyamirga (sic), without ever saying what each of these categories consists of.

295. "Shojf-nijft-bu. The twenty schools of Iinayana." There follows a bare list of names, without so much as a summary attempt to state what doctrinal tendencies the several schools represented.

335. "Zen dhydna, jhdna. The word zen comes from the Sanskrit dhyana (meditation). The word 'dhyana' was transcribed as ch'an in Chi- nese, and the latter was transcribed as zen in Japanese. However zen does not exactly coincide with the Indian dhydna. "' (Dhycna is then explained.) "' Owing to the enormous variety in the conceptions of zen, the term cannot be confined to any practice." Very well, but what is it?

F. Unintelligible.

At times the dictionary leaves unexplained what it should have explained, thus mystifying the reader. At other times the translator found his job to be beyond his English. He would, accordingly, produce gibberish. The proofreader, in this case, being in all probability Japanese himself,



Reviews of Books 91

would have had no way of knowing how bad the English was.

35. "Chfiranja sthildityaya, thullaccaya. One of the rokuju-zai . . . An unconsummated offense of hcarai, sozan, and the four transgressions not included in gohin, i. e., the stealing of less than five mdsa." In the first place, for the non-specialist this is gibberish. In the second place, rnmsa should have been masa. In the third place, the first character in the entry should have been t'ou, not lun.

61. "Fugii-mumy5 Unique ignorance." The whole entry, of a piece with this "translation," is unintelligible, but too long to copy.

89. " Goshu-yuishiki The five kinds of con- sciousness-only." But I defy anyone to make sense of the entry itself.

127. "Ikkii-issailft The one sAinyata includes all sflnyatd. The ke, and the chi2 in the sangan are included within the suinyata." The only sort of person who can make sense of this is one who knows beforehand what the key word means. Such a person will never consult this dictionary.

G. Childish.

22. "Bukkyc." This is the subject to which the present work in its entirety is dedicated. In view of that, the content of this entry, nearly a page in length, is puerile beyond belief.

143. "J5-fugy5-bosatsu Saddparibhftta-bodhisattva." The text of this entry, which will not be reproduced here, is incredibly childish.

H. Misuse of English.

Slight misuses of the English language are rather frequent in the present work, though glaring faults are rare. These three are so grotesque, however, that they deserve to be singled out.

156. "Kaimy& Precepts-name."

158. "Kakujin agantuka. Guest-defilement, ." In the first place, ialcujin renders not

a7gantuka but &gantukarajas. In the second place, what is " guest-defilement " ? If a man, paying a courtesy-call on a friend in the latter's home, is spat on by his host, that, presumably, is "guest- defilement."

328. " WIaj3 The transliteration for the upa- dhjya. Same as the oshV'."

I. Miscellaneous.

5. " Ajitabattei A Chinese transcription of Hiranyavati." On the very face of it this is impossible. The transcription of Hiranyavat! is Hsi-lien, listed on p. 175 as "Kiren-ga." The name in the present entry transcribes Aciravati, another name for the river.

29. "Chibetto-bukkyly" This entry is also something to strain one's credulity. The last word in the entry is " Thlai-blama (Darai-rama) ." This name, which appears in English contexts under the form "Dalai Lama," is a composite of the Mongol word dalai ("sea") and the Tibetan word bla ma "superior one," conventionally used to mean, among other things, a reincarnation of a holy man). Japanese who specialize in Buddhism have no knowledge of the Mongolian language, and where they got " Tdlai " is anyone's guess. The title dalai bla ma, which is not official, signifies a holy man whose holiness and wisdom are as all-encompassing as the very ocean itself.

127. " Immo Slang which was used in the Sung (So) Dynasty. The word which was used as an affirmative or interrogative." 1) The word is a colloquial one, but is not "slang." 2) It lives in spoken Chinese to this day. 3) What does the third sentence mean?

131. "Ish& prthag-jana. An ordinary man." This is fine, but there is no entry under bombu, which is far the more common equivalent of p? thagjana.

164. "Kari-5 Kali. AiX king mentioned in a Jiltalca tale." So what?

227. " O-juzu A rosary. " 0 " is an honorific." It speaks for itself.

279. "Shikisoku-zeklt The opposite of lctsoku- zeshiki." The translator, in his relative ignorance of English, said "opposite" when he meant

counterpart." The two propositions are not "opposites," since they express the very same idea. Where, oh where, were those proof-readers ?

329. " Ya-taku-niryft The two schools of Ya and Taku, which are the two main schools of Japa- nese esoteric Buddhism. They are also called Ono and Hirosawa, respectively . . ." Nowhere is it said that Ono and Hirosawa are the real names, not the "also" names, or that ya and talcu are, respectively the on readings of the no in Ono and




the sawa in Hirosacwa. ("But they wouldn't understand!

The tragedy of the present dictionary is that it represents a futile expenditure of time, treasure, energy, and skill that could have been put to valid use. It cannot be overemphasized that Buddhism is an unknown in the English-speaking world, that therefore the point of departure of a work that purports to explain Buddhism in English must be India, the land of Buddhism's origin. A proper encyclopaedia of Buddhism in English is, in point of fact, an absolute necessity, an undertaking so important that it merits the best minds available, wherever they may happen to be, and all the time that a project of this magnitude demands. (That may well mean a century.) Most important is to give it all the time it needs, without rushing it.

The phrase "wherever they may happen to be" implies by design that the undertaking must be international. When one has ascertained to the best of one's ability the identity of the person(s) best qualified to execute a certain entry, one approaches him with a request to write it in the language in which he is most at home, taking all the time required. When his manuscript has been submitted, if it is not in English, it should then be translated into English by a person to whom that language is native and who also is well trained in the language of the writer. Needless to say, the language of the entry's heading should be the language of the country in which most of the necessary books are within reach. Japan certainly qualifies in this sense, and has many scholars who can render a signal service to such an undertaking.

Now what of the present work? It violates every principle just mentioned. First, it is Japa- nese and not international. It is, in fact not even Japanese in the wider sense of the word, for it represents the Tokyo University clique almost ex- clusively. It made use of only three non-Japanese, and them only because they happened to be in Tokyo at the time. None of the contributors, apparently, knows Chinese as Chinese, and the Sanskrit, as has been seen, is frequently below par. At that, the Sanskrit was certain to be provided only when the author of the entry knew it. If he

did not, it might be provided later by another hand, but it might not be provided at all.

The nagging question to which one inevitably returns is the presumable motive that underlay the production of the present work. Several possibili- ties suggest themselves.

Almost the only dictionaries of Buddhist terms that have real currency are those in Japanese (ODA, MOCHIZUKI, and the like). The compilers of the present work may well have been told that there is a considerable number of persons abroad who are interested in the subject, but who find themselves against a blank wall when con- fronted by MOCHIZUKI and his fellows. "The solution is simple: translate MOCHIZUKI into English." " MOCHIZUKI? But he was from K y t o! UI sensei was one of our boys. Why not do him instead?" MOCHIZUKI or UL, as was said above, the bare translation into English of a work of this type, or of almost any part of it (as in the present case), is meaningless. The typical Japanese has no way of knowing this, of course. Hence the present dictionary.

There is at present a fair number of Occidentals in Japan for the purpose of studying Buddhism. In the majority of cases, their Japanese is rudi- mentary, while their teachers, for the most part, know no English. The teacher says something to the pupil in Japanese, of which the pupil under- stands only a portion. The teacher cannot recom- mend any reading to the pupil, because the latter reads Japanese even less than he speaks it. For the teacher, who reads no English, the present dictionary is a godsend.

The Hobo girin fulfills some of the conditions specified some five paragraphs back. It is con- tinuing in Ky6to at the slow pace necessitated by the nature of the work. Rivalry between the two cities being what it is, the Toky6 people say, " We'll fox them! We'll get ours out in short order, and it will be in English, not French!" Rather a crude display of one-upmanship. (Two- upmanship, to be precise.)

On the other hand, the true explanation may be far simpler than any of us imagines. (Dreissig Dollar, meine Herrschaften!)

LE~oN HURVITZ UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON



Reviews of Books 93

GLOSSARY

Abidatsma-daibibasha-ron j p A I5lJ

All Ajitabattei /ig '14 1 J Annen Anuradapura ,qJj! tfj3BekBekky5 J -t Bisharij5-ketSujil f4 ffi

bombu4 t BuL. kky6 Bussho kaiseti dai-jiten 4

characterj chen i

chia1 Chiang-liang-yeh-she Chih-i ching

ch'ing chtimg i f chtt sheng ichung tj

chung tao Chiuranja __ Emon Enik:l

Eshi $ fen ch'ieh 0d12 Fugi-mumy { I d

Giba-henJakL u Gobun-hosshin igi2t k

Goi-sibhijisgo-ha 4?n t k(t Gojiuni-? i~ t

Goshu-yuishiki Goshu-zen Henge

Hirosawa Hsi-3ien hsin so yu fa

Ho'b6 gfrin huang i Ikkt-issaikCu - I-7)

ImmotW Imy-nisshori-ron ;

Iryon7 Ishlo 4 Isshin sangan

Jisho jisshin Jodo-sambu-ky3 ' .4L jj

J5-fugyti-bosatsu jueko r igr

Jihachi-k-a N/ < juji j+ im jilshichi-kempC ? Lt, (

kaiqmy kaiso tkaktujin Kari-0 b7

Karitei *f z~;;d kehd no shiky6 e

lKren-ga . ^ I/Jo

Eu-Ji-metsu-do e Kuan wuliang shouching

ung 11 lun lun(

miao Miroku-joso -kyo .5 3J ' '

mui, Mur y'gi-yo_-ti' NilJgo-bosatsu -

'JA~iZ ~jO- 9uzu on 0 Ono J 4 pting sheng

pu {r\ pu s 'he li k {Iung4 Sambo




GLOSSARY-Continued

Sambu-isso-no-h~nan ZT Sambu-ky6 Z

san fen nao 2 'g +$} san k'un

Sangokcus anjushichi-doahon 7 {

Sansho . 1@ sappata 4 Shakushi 4fi 1 ShLh pa k'ung Jun j k I= shih tzu. Shikisoku.-

zekLI Shindo '37 Shinjo f;C

k ::'4k; Sh~j5-nijti-bu/

shrl> so 44 S5-koso-den no

sono den wa fumei de aru 9)

Ta chih tulun a ang-c-hia-tto-yeh-she

tVan II x teng chUeh e r traou Ubus4 UI akju~ f; Urabon; j/$

Waj 3 Ya-takurnirya y41 U chtih

An Anthology of Sanskrit Court Poetry. Vidyd- kara's Subhiisitaratnakosa. Translated by DANIEL H. H. INGALLS. Pp. 611. Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 44. Cambridge: HAR-

VARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1965.

Although some great poets (for instance, Kzdli- dlasa) are well known to the Western public and some titles of works enjoy, even without the names of their authors (11itopadesa, etc.), world-wide fame, classical Sanskrit literature is generally speaking terra incognita to Westerners. Evell most of those who have professionally studied San- skrit have neglected India's classical literature! concentrating their attention on the older or more or less technical texts. The Veda is, with good

reason, studied for over a century from various points of view; enormous masses of literature of religious or philosophical import attract the attention of an increasing number of scholars, defi- nite difficult collections of writings dealing with highly technical or even abtruse subjects do not fail to provide several specialized research-workers with wide fields of inquiry, notable accomplish- ments have been reached in history, in linguistics, in the history of the Indian religions,-the study of the polite literature proper lags behind, not- withstanding the often quoted words of enthusi- astic praise sounded of some imperfect translations by Goethe, Schiller and von Humboldt. The opinions expressed in the leading books on Indian literature too often testify to their authors ina-



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Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary