Sanskrit in China and Japan

Contents: Foreword. Introduction. Important information. I. Linguistics: 1. Buddhism comes to China. 2. Chinese meets Sanskrit. 3. Sanskrit comes to China. 4. Hsieh Ling-Yun discovers Sanskrit. 5. Sanskrit after Hsieh Ling-Yun. 6. The Sanskrit Primer His-t-an-tzu-chi. 7. Sanskrit and Chinese phonetics. 8. Rime dictionaries and rime tables. 9. Sanskrit-its perception in Japan. 10. Sanskrit in Japanese linguistic studies. II. Our shared heritage: 11. Our shared heritage. 12. Scientific ides. 13. Religion. 14. Literature. 15. Sanskrit words in Japan. III. Dictionaries: Sanskrit-Chinese dictionary. Chinese and Japanese readings of linguistic terms. Chinese characters. Index.

This book covers the great academic exchange that took place between Indian monks and Chinese intellectuals during the first millennium of the Christian era. Information on Sanskrit linguistics transmitted by Indian monks helped Chinese intellectuals to evolve a phonetic system to read their pictographic script. It solved one of their greatest eadaches. Introduction of the theories of Sanskrit prosody led to the innovation of a totally new genre of poems that became a part of the Chinese civil service examination. This genre is popular even today. The Chinese theory of arts was influenced considerably by its Indian counterpart. The Chinese were, perhaps, the first to write on the Indian decimal system, and record the symbol for zero. Indian astronomers heading the imperial bureau of astronomy translated Indian astronomical treatise, and used methods given therein in astronomical calculations. Stories from Ramayana, Mahabharata and Panchatantra were popular among the masses. Thanks to Indian monks, the Chinese developed a great faith in mantras. Finally, a number of Sanskrit-Chinese dictionaries were compiled in China. These also carry information on ancient Indian political and social situation and legends. Many of these ideas migrated to Japan with far reaching consequences.