Korea Journal of Buddhist Studies ISSN:1598-0642(Print) 불교학연구

Some Chinese linguists pay close attention to Chinese Buddhist Sutras [CBS] which have received attention in recent years. We hereby try to summarize the preceding studies on the linguistic characteristics of CBS, and add some elementary views of us.CBS has linguistic characteristics different from general classical Chinese as follows: 1) many words of transliteration by phonetic loan characters, 2) polysyllabic words and polysyllabizing morphemes without substantial meaning, 3) many synonyms by various word formations and equivalents for translation, 4) format of four letter passage (breathing), 5) sentences of relaxed syntactic government, etc.These characteristics could have been derived from the translation between Sanskrit and Chinese. Sanskrit, the source language, belongs to the inflectional languages, uses phonograms and polisyllabic morphemes, and does not prefer the long and enumerating expression. On the other hand, Chinese belongs to the isolating languages, uses ideographs and monosyllabic morphemes, and does not prefer the concise and symmetrical expression. CBS also reflexes many features of colloquial Middle Chinese of the East Han to Six Dynasty period, but the sense of difference between classical Chinese seems no greater than that between Sanskrit and Middle Chinese.Key Words