CHAPTER XXII.

BUDDHIST PHRASEOLOGY IN RELATION TO CHRISTIAN TEACHING.

Use of Buddhist terms in the Nestorian inscription, A.D. 781--Mo, "demon;" in Sanscrit, mara--Ti-yu, "hell," is naraka--Ten judges of hell--Among them Pau Cheng, the famous judge of the Sung dynasty--The Sung philosophers encouraged the popular belief in future retribution--This prepares for Christianity--T'ien-t'ang, "heaven"--Defects of this term--Ming-kung, &c., as names for "heaven"--Buddhist paradises possibly borrowed from Western Asia or some other country farther west--Redemption--Ti-tsang and Kwan-yin--Pity--Instruction--Effect of sin--Decreed forgiveness to penitents--Secret merit--Happiness and merit confounded--Sin and misery confounded--Illustration from the narrative of a Christian convert.

WE teach the Chinese the Christian religion by means of their own language, and in their vocabulary of religious terms many words and phrases of Buddhist origin have come into common use.

The Syrian inscription, A.D. 781, shows that no scruple was felt by the first Christian missionaries in China in adopting many Buddhist terms.

We find there mo, "devil." This is the common word used in mo-kwei. Both name and being are of Hindoo origin; the "delusions of the devil" are called mo-wang. Hell is called "palace of darkness," an-fu. The "ship of mercy" conveys the faithful disciples across the sea to heaven. The ship is ts'i-hang; "heaven" is ming-kung;

[paragraph continues] Christian "monks" were called seng, from the Sa limit sanga, "assembly;" a "monastery" is called si, as by the Chinese Buddhists; a "monk's robe" is called kia-sha, which is the Sanscrit word for "gown," kashaya.

Buddhism throve in the T'ang dynasty. It was the era when Hiuen-tsang went to India. His journey was an instance of the depth of religious faith which characterised the Chinese followers of Gautama in his age, and it also secured an immense increase of popularity to the ideas of his sect. Buddhism was very powerful in the court, and profoundly influenced the literature. Translations from Sanscrit were made with extreme care, and received from the literati a high literary finish. The influence of Buddhism is distinctly seen in the dictionaries of the time, in the syllabic spelling, in the discovery of the four tones, and the settlement of the laws of poetry consequent on that discovery. The poets and critics of the T'ang dynasty were conscious of great obligations to Buddhism, and made scarcely any decisive and persistent effort to check the spread of popular faith in that religion, and the general adoption of Hindoo phrases and terms in the language. Han Yu, in his Fo-ku-piau, was an exception.