Dharmaksema (385-433 CE) was a renowned Buddhist monk of the Northern Liang Dynasty who translated numerous Buddhist scriptures. This paper examines the transcriptions of dhāraṇīs, proper names and aksara transliterations in his translations to explore the initial system of Hexi Chinese in the 5th century. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Voiced obstruents were pronounced as unaspirated consonants; (2) Labiodental and bilabial consonants had not yet differentiated; (3) The duān group and zhī group were largely differentiated, with the zhī group pronounced as retroflex consonants; (4) The zhāng group were palatal consonants, and the chán initial was an affricate; (5) Voiced nasal initials were pure nasals without stop components; (6) The correspondances of the xiá initial fell into three categories. Overall, the initial system of Chinese reflected in Dharmaksema’s translations does not exhibit features that can establish a historical link with later Northwestern Chinese dialects, but rather aligns closely with the common language of his time. Moreover, the corresponding forms of the transliterated terms indicate that, while the underlying language of Dharmaksema’s translations contained some Prākrit elements, the degree of Sanskritization was already quite high. This also demonstrates the validity of using Sanskrit as an intermediary for phonological studies of early monks’ translations.
Key words
Dharmaksema /
Hexi Chinese /
initial system /
underlying language
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