漢譯佛典的語言=Language of Buddhist texts in Chinese translation; 中古漢語史=History of middle Chinese; 佛經語言學=Buddhist philology; 文本對勘=Textual criticism; 譯經詞彙=Glossary of Chinese translation; 維摩經=Vimalakīrtinirdeśa; 支謙=Zhi Qian; 眷屬=Juan shu
摘要
聲蜚國際的佛教文獻學家J.W.de Jong 曾經指出：「沒有任何的佛教研究者可以忽視數量如此龐大的漢譯佛典文獻，即使他們只對印度佛教有興趣。」針對J.W.de Jong 的說法，新一代研究Nikaya 與阿含文獻的德籍學者Bhikkhu Analayo 也補充性的指出：「沒有任何的佛教研究者可以忽視印度語系乃至藏譯的文獻資料，即使他們只對中國佛教有興趣，因為唯有如此方可避免基於口誦傳承、筆錄轉抄或翻譯訛誤而對文本妄作結論的風險。」正是基於前揭這種「互為文本」的理念，因此在有關佛教文本的研究領域裡，「文本對勘」(textual criticism)便自然而然地成為了學者之間經常採用的一種研究手段。不論是原典與譯本之間的對勘，或是同本異譯之間的互校，這種隨文逐句式的語文性對讀不但可 以提供我們大量有關各該文本的斠讎乃至文義解讀上的信息，並且也可以增進我們對文本之間可能發生的歷時流變的一些認識。《維摩經》是一部風靡中土的異域文本，而這一部佛教經典可以在華夏乃至整個東亞地區獲得庶民的尊仰與知識精英的青睞，當然與其譯筆的「漢化」有關。但是，我們仍然可以在該一經本的三個漢譯文本裡見到若干來自「源頭語」的語言現象。雖然如此，本文目前仍不打算深入這些和「源頭語」有關的語言現象，而只準備藉著該一經本新近發現的梵文原典與其漢藏諸本之間的語文學對勘，而嘗試性的指出在漢譯經本裡一些有趣而值得特別留意的語言現象。
Professor J. W. de Jong, a worldwide famous Buddhist philologist, once said “no student of Buddhism, even if he is interested only in Indian Buddhism, can neglect the enormous corpus of Chinese translations.” and Bhikkhu Anālayo, a newly emerged specialist on Nikāya and Āgama literature, proposed further that “no student of Chinese Buddhism can neglect the study of the Indic parallel versions, in order to minimize the risk of coming to conclusions that are based on transmission or translation errors.” Basing upon the idea similar to that of “inter-textuality”, textual criticism is usually taken as an approach by scholars in the Buddhist textual studies. Through comparison between original and its translation or between different translations, the verbatim linguistic reading can not only render a lot of information about wording and interpretation of the text, but also improve our knowledge about possible textual transformation through ages. Vimalakīrtinirdeśa is one of the most popular translated texts in China, and the Sinification of the translation style surely contributed to its popularity both among the intellectual elite and general public in China, even in whole East Asia. However we still can find some linguistic phenomena of the source languages from among the three extant Chinese translations. Instead of discussing those related to the source languages, attempt is made in this paper to point out some interesting and noticeable linguistic phenomena of the Chinese translations by textual comparison with the Tibetan translation and the newly discovered Sanskrit text
