Under the circumstances of early Buddhist thought, academic circle has explained the meaning of “khandha”, however, it is insufficient if taking a careful inspection. This paper will explore the meaning of “khandha” on the base of the full literature review, current achievements and early Buddhist thoughts. Current achievements: (1) From the perspective of semantics, “khandha” has three meanings: accumulation, all, category. (2) From the perspective of the theories, “khandha” is a designation of sentient beings. The inadequate: (1) The use of the literature: the academic fruits on researching the meaning of khandha according to the Northern and the Southern materials simultaneously are insufficient. (2) The relationship among the meaning items of khandha is not analyzed, and so is the relationship among theoretical meanings. In view of this, the paper is based on the common literature of the extant northern Āgama sutras and southern nikāya. Taking “to research Buddhism on the base of Buddhist theory” as the main principle, combining with “semantic explanation” as the auxiliary principle. The method of semantic interpretation and the method of theoretical interpretation are used simultaneously to analyze the connotation of khandha. On semantic interpretation, the paper focuses on the relationship among the three meanings. On the theoretical interpretation, the paper emphasizes that the pratītya-dharma is the base of the theoretical meanings of khandha, and it is the root of the attributes of khandha —— “impermanence, suffering and no-self”. The conclusions of this paper is: (1) Semantic level: khandha can be defined as: the accumulation of all the time, all space, and all forms of a certain category (with commonality) . It refers to the “accumulation” of all factors of the sentient beings(phenomena). (2) Theoretical level: khandha is designation of sentient beings, and it is born of causation. pratītya-dharma reflects the law of the development of khandha which has the attributes of “impermanence, suffering and no-self”. (3) Semantic change: compared with the meaning of etymology, the meaning has been greatly developed in respects of depth, breadth and complexity. This reflects many problems in the fields of linguistics, thought history, etc., which is left to the academic community. The academic contributions of this paper are: linguistics and theoretical methods are used simultaneously to analyze the connotation of khandha. This paper explores the relationship among the three meanings of khandha and relationship among its theoretical meanings. It also raises new questions for the study of Buddhist Scripture Linguistics and Buddhist history of thought.
