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붓다의 말씀이라는 뜻의 ‘buddha-vacana’의 성격 규정에 대해 인도와 중국의 논서에서 나타나는 몇 가지 논의를 살펴보았다. 특히 그 논의가 인도 아비달마 논사들의 저술에서 나타난 이래, 중국 번역 불교에서 어떤 의미로 변천되고 변화 되었는지에 중점을 두었다. 아비달마 불교에서 ‘buddha-vacana’는 붓다의 말씀, 즉 소리를 의미하기도 하고, 붓다의 가르침, 그 내용을 말하는 buddha-dharma를 가리키는 두 가지 의미가 발견되지만 아비달마 문헌이 2세기부터 중국에 번역되기 시작하면서 ‘佛言’, ‘佛語’, ‘佛說’ 등으로 번역되다가 최종적으로 7세기에 현장의 아비달마 문헌 번역에서 ‘佛敎’라는 번역어로 통일됨으로써, 소리로서의 의미는 점차 희석되고 진리로서의 의미가 부각되는 것을 알 수 있었다. 더구나 현장은 ‘svabhāva’의 번역어로 ‘體’라는 이미 여러 다른 뜻을 함의하고 있는 단어를 채택하고, 어떤 경우는 ‘체’를 임의로 삽입하였기에, 아비달마 문헌에서 공통적으로 자주 등장하는 이 특정 구절은 불교의 ‘체’, 즉 본질이 무엇이냐는 질문으로 전의되어, ‘buddha-vacana’는 불교 즉 붓다의 가르침의 體, 또는 본질이라는 뜻으로 정착되게 된다. 그런데 당시 현장의 학문적 관심을 잇는 제자인 원측이나 규기 등의 저술에 보면 이들은 당시 산스크리트 문헌에서 나오는 이러한 혼동스러운 여러 가지 정의에 대해 알고 있었음을 알 수 있다. 하지만 이 논의는 이후 중국 화엄학에서 붓다의 말씀 또는 가르침의 ‘체’, 즉 ‘敎體’라는 말로 대표되어 붓다의 가르침의 진리성을 보장해 주는 것이 무엇이냐는 형이상학적 질문의 방향으로 그 관심이 뻗어 나갔다.
The Transformation of the Meaning of the Word ‘Buddha-vacana’ in the Chinese Translations of the Abhidharma Texts and Its Implications Cho, Eun-su Seoul National Univ. After the translation of some Abhidharma texts into Chinese, Chinese Buddhists found interesting arguments in the texts about the nature of the Buddha’s word: whether it was “speech,” “sound,” or “name.” These Indian texts based their argument primarily on the assumption that the Buddha’s word should be speech or speaking. The matter of concern was: is the “sound” enough to carry the meaning or do we need another category of “name” in order to communicate? The puzzle began in the different positions in Indian Abhidharma schools. The Sautrāntikas asserted that the nature of the Buddha’s word should be “sound” only. Taking a nominalist position, they refuse to accept the category of “name,” which is abstract and hypothetical to them. However, the ambivalent attitude of the opposing Sarvāstivādins, attested in the orthodox Sarvāstivādin literature, Mahāvibhāṣā, who should have advocated “name” because this is one of the entities approved in their ontological structure, indicates to us that they were hesitant about this delicate issue. Later in the acclaimed Abhidharma compendium, Abhidharmakośa, both positions were introduced and no claim was made by the author as to which was valid. All these debates across several centuries in India reflect the agony of the situation buddhists had to face once their Buddha had gone. While the Buddha lived, his words were of the nature of speech in a direct, primary sense, as well as of the nature of name, in the sense of a conveyed meaning or second-hand knowledge. Now the teachings transmitted orally from generation to generation had to be set down in writing for preservation; meanwhile the challenges to the authenticity of the teaching they claimed to have heard or to have heard from one who had heard it aggravated the intensity of the questions, which the Indian Abhidharma Buddhist had to answer one way or another. To the Chinese Buddhists, whose contact with the Buddha’s teaching was solely through written words in a foreign language, the question as put to them would not have had the same implications. Accordingly their answers were different. The role Xuanzang played in the “language issue” as it developed in Chinese Buddhism should be pointed out here. The Chinese word for the “essence of the Buddha’s word,” jiao-ti, is an abbreviation of fo-jiao-ti and was used by for the first time Xuanzang, who did massive translations of the Indian Abhidharma texts into Chinese. Jiao-ti which literally means “the essence of the [Buddha’s] teaching” was chosen as the translation of buddha-vacana, i.e. the word of the Buddha, in Sanskrit. The implication of “the essence” was not there in the first place. Xuanzang, however, by the addition of the component “ti” in translating svabhvāva to make the question as “what is the ‘essence’ of the Buddha’s word,” must be said to have paved the way for the change in the Chinese Buddhists’ concerns over this issue. This effort to define the Buddha’s word based on their doctrinal position, integrated with the pursuit of the classification, should be the outcome of the Chinese Buddhist conclusions on the essence of the Buddha’s teaching. The issue of language, which was mainly a linguistic concern in India, became transformed into a self-contained system in China to be altered into a religious and metaphysical concern.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
buddha-vacana, Buddha’s Words, Xuanzang, Wŏnch’ŭk, Chinese transformation of Buddhism
