Among the many spiritual friends Sudhana, the protagonist of the Ga.ndavyuuha, visits in his quest of realization is one traditional Indian .r.si. His name is rendered variously in the Chinese translations, by way of either transliteration or translation, and the present paper tries to explain what might have been behind these forms. Four T'ang Dynasty commentaries are consulted and it is shown that only one of them, Li T'ung-hsu-an's work, accepts the name as given in the Hua-yen ching while the other three claim that it represents only a partial rendition. Li translates the phonetic transcription as "A Cry Frightening" which is, compared with the other commentators, quite remarkable but still poses some minor problems. The glosses by Fa-tsang, Hui-yu an, and Ch'eng-kuan offer more complete transliterations that come close to "Bhii.smottaranirgho.sa",the.r.si's name transmitted in the extant Sanskrit version of the Ga.n.davyuuha, though in the case of Hui-yuan's text in a rather garbled form · More important than phonetic differences, however, is the way these Hua-yen patriarchs interpreted the element "bhii.sma ／ bhiima". They gave its meaning as fearless ＂, diametrically opposed to its connotations in Sanskrit. Since a similar phenomenon can be observed with the Hua-yen ching transla tion of the kumbhaa.n.da name hiimottara, it was probably less linguistic inability than culturally conditioned reluctance which led to these interpretations –– while "bhii.sma ／ bhiima ＂ can be easily found in Indian names Chinese are definitely not fond of calling a respected person terrifying ＂﹗ This conclusion, as well as the identification of probably shortened transliteration forms sheds furth er light on the translation techniques employed by the ancient masters.
