A Buddhist Chinese-Sanskrit Dictionary

A Buddhist Chinese–Sanskrit Dictionary, compiled by the distinguished Buddhist scholar Akira Hirakawa and published by The Reiyukai, Tokyo, in 1997, is a specialized reference work designed to identify the Sanskrit equivalents of technical terms found in Chinese Buddhist translations. The dictionary emerged from Hirakawa’s long-term research on the relationship between Sanskrit Buddhist texts and their Chinese translations and was intended to assist scholars in recovering, as far as possible, the Indic terminology underlying Chinese canonical expressions. The work contains approximately 4,374 principal Chinese entries, supplemented by a very large number of compounds, idioms, and phrases arranged under those entries. Its method is based primarily on comparing Chinese Buddhist terminology with corresponding Sanskrit words found in extant Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures and treatises. The dictionary also explains transliterated expressions, partial transliterations, and reconstructed or assumed Sanskrit forms. A particularly useful feature is its extensive system of indexes, including the Total Number of Strokes Index, Four-Corner System Index, Wade-Giles System Index, Pinyin System Index, and Chinese Phonetic and Japanese Rendering Reading Index, making the work accessible through several different methods of Chinese character retrieval. This dictionary remains an important research tool for the study of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Chinese Buddhist translations, canonical terminology, Buddhist philology, and Sino-Indian textual transmission.