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Art. XVI.—On Hiuen-Tsang instead of Yüan Chwang, and the necessity of avoiding the Pekinese sounds in the quotations of ancient proper names in Chinese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

1. The reasons which induce me to preserve the spelling Hiuen-Tsang instead of adopting the newly-proposed Yüan Chwang are that the latter is erroneous and without any standing whatever, while the other, besides its long acceptance by European scholars, is more true to history.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1892

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References

page 835 note 1 Yüan chwang or Hiouen Thsang? By Davids, T. W. Rhys, above pp. 377379Google Scholar.

[The learned writer has not quite understood the point I intended to raise in my letter. No two of the six European writers (all of them well-known writers on Chinese subjects) quoted in the letter agree in their method of representing in English letters the pronunciation of a name that has to be constantly used by Indianists. How then are they to pronounce it? Asa first step I ascertained by the method set out in the letter, that the modern pronunciation of any ordinary person in Pekin of the second of the two sets of characters used in China for the pilgrim's name would be represented (in the transliteration used by Indianists) by Yüan Chwāng. I expressed no opinion as to whether that pronunciation was erroneous or not, and distinctly reserved the further (and very important) questions as to what the pronunciation ‘may have been elsewhere and in the pilgrim's time.’ The sole object of the letter was to elicit the opinion of others competent to speak on those points.—Rh. D.]

page 836 note 1 Hiuen Tsang or Hiouen Tsang in French. Sir Thomas Wade himself is quoted in the above paper as prefering Hiouen to hsüan or yuan. Morrisson wrote Heuen Tsang (with the first e for i); Edkins writes Hiuen Tsang.

page 836 note 2 The following works contain interesting information on the subject:— Liuhia, Sin lun, kiv. 6 (a special paper written by a Chinese author of the VIth cent.). Friend, Hilderic, Euphemism and Tabu in China, Folklore Record, 1881, vol. i. pp. 7191Google Scholar. Douglas, R. K., On Tabu-ed Characters, Chinese Manual, 1889, pp. 372376Google Scholar. , T. de L., Babylonian and Oriental Record, 1889, vol. iii. p. 219Google Scholar; Catalogue of Chinese Coins from the VIIth Cent. B.C. to A.D 621, Including the Series in the British Museum, 1892, p. xsxvi.

page 836 note 3 R. K. Douglas, l.c.

page 837 note 1 Cf. Tsiuen She, kiv. 9, f. 23; 10, f. 3; 12, f. 8.

page 837 note note 2 I always write tch for English ch, because of the confusion otherwise possible with the French ch(=sh) and the German ch(=χ).

page 838 note 1 Cf. K'ang hi tze tien, s. v. .

page 838 note 2 On some doubts about chuang, cf. infrà note.

page 839 note 1 Cf. The chronological table of Chinese dialects in my work on The Languages of China before the Chinese, 1887, § 205.

page 839 note 2 Cf. Liraye, P. Legrand de la, Pronunciation figurée des caractéres Chinois en Mandarin Annamite, Saïgon, 1875, p. 297Google Scholar.

page 839 note 3 Stanislas Julien, who was not aware of the archaic sounds preserved in the dialects, could only state that represented ҫô in Aҫoka (while it represented really ҫok). Cf. his Methode pour déchiffrer et transcrire les noms Sanserits quise rencontrent dans les livres Chinois, 1861, No. 2265.

page 839 note 4 In Williams, Wells, Syllabic Dictionary, 217Google Scholar out of 1150 pages; in Stent, G., Pekinese Vocabulary, 110 out of 643 pagesGoogle Scholar.

page 840 note 1 Cf. K'ang-hi tze tien, s. v. .

page 840 note 2 In Pekinese, these two words tsang are still at present pronounced tsang, and it may be asked if the diverged sound chwang ought to be applied to in a proper name.