謝謝老師！ I have just begun the task of learning the Chinese language with the specific goal to read Buddhist scriptures. This video was extremely informative and helpful for this endeavor. As a lay Buddhist I often wondered about the various translations and agree that it is important to go directly to the primary texts available. Thank you for the advice and encouragement. Namo Amitabha Buddha 🙏🏻
You're very welcome Mister Meow 🙏 I'm very happy to hear that it is of some use for those beginning their journey in the language. Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions along your journey. Good luck! And thank you for taking on the challenge! Namo Amitabha Buddha 🙏
This video contains excellent advice for those wishing to learn to read Chinese Buddhist texts. I agree that the Kieschnick primers are probably to best starting place for most beginners, but thank you for also reviewing Lock and Linebarger - I have an interest here as I am one of the co-authors (Lock)! I apologise that the accompanying website is currently not accessible, or is only intermittently accessible. Your mention of it has motivated me to try and sort out the problem and also to upload more content asap.
Thank you so much for taking the time to watch our video! Your textbook is a fantastic resource, and a number of our temple members have purchased and utilised it. We are deeply indebted to your and Linebarger's efforts, in bringing us this wonderful resource. And would be very grateful for any resources you might provide on the website. Please feel free to post any updates to the website here for viewers, and if we can ever assist with anything, please don't hesitate to let us know 🙏.
Sensei, I just wanted to say, I deeply appreciate your pronunciation of Sanskrit titles, not to mention all the resources provided in this video. 🙏 I’ll be going to DRBU in California for translation and this video is truly a blessing.
I'm very glad you found the video useful, and I thank you for the positive feedback. It's also great to hear that you'll be going to DRBU for translation, and I hope it is a fruitful experience for you! Please give my best regards to DRBU for all their hard work, and let them know that they have admirers of their output - even here in Australia 🙂🙏
I'm by no means an expert on the topic, but when you were talking about learning characters (52:00) it came to my mind that free recall would probably be a good strategy. Benjamin Keep has good video in his TH-cam channel in which he explains and demonstrates the strategy: the video is titled "How to do free recall (AKA active recall) - Language learning demonstration"
Yes, this is good advice. Active Recall can be used to great effect with Literary Chinese. The Pleco Flashcard system can be used quite well for this, as you can make your own decks. The extensive reading of primary texts is also critical to such retrieval practise, as you are forced to review learnt material in entirely new scenarios. Thank you for suggesting it here for others 🙏
May I request teachings on two topics? If so, I'd like to request that you give a teaching for meditators on the cultivation of shamatha. Also, I'd like to request that you speak about improving one's character in daily life.
Hi Jon, thank you for the suggestions. I am certainly happy to make videos discussing these two topics, so I'll see if I can gather my thoughts in a helpful way 🙏
I hope it is of some use. My understanding is that the Primers currently exist only as PDFs. But Dr Kieschnick is regularly updating and improving them, so it is not beyond possibility that a print version/hard copy could be put together. I would certainly be interested in a hard copy version myself. Dr Kieschnick is also very approachable, so perhaps if we all email Dr Kieschnick and express our interest in a print version, we might just make it happen.
Thank you for your comment. You are correct that the word 'primer' is pronounced with a short vowel in American English (when referring to the book), and represents an earlier pronunciation. Indeed, this is admittedly closer to the Latin root 'primarius' from which it is drawn. Nevertheless as an Australian, the standard of English pronunciation I use is British English, not American English. And the word 'primer' (referring to the book), is pronounced the same way as 'primer' (the paint) in British English, and has been pronounced this way since the 1800s. I hope that you enjoyed the video nonetheless, and found something useful in it. 🙏
How I would rank them, would depend a little bit on what one hopes to get out of their study, and what tradition one is interested in. For example, if one is interested in the Chan/Zen school, then I would rank Classical Chinese as most important. Whereas, if one was keen on training with the Nyingma tradition, then Classical Tibetan would be most useful. But, I'll try my best to give a broad overview of the languages at play, and rank them (tentatively). The canonical languages for the study of Buddha-Dharma are: Sanskrit, Pali, Literary Chinese, and Classical Tibetan. All of these languages preserve very important elements of the Buddhist Canon. The first two of these languages are Indic, and if one is interested in the Mahayana/Vajrayana, they will get the most out of learning Sanskrit. If their interest is the Non-Mahayana, then they are best served by Pali. The Chinese Canon, contains many earlier versions of the works currently preserved in Sanskrit, and so comparing both versions can be very helpful. Chinese is also very useful for learning various recensions of the Abhidharma materials, and the Agamas preserved in it run parallel with many of the Pali texts of the Non-Mahayana canon. Tibetan translations are often very literal to the Sanskrit, and also preserves much of the content of what would became the "last generation of Indian Monastics at Nalanda". When it comes to the size of extent canons in each of these languages, I would tentatively rank them from largest to smallest as: Chinese, Tibetan, Pali, Sanskrit. As for languages for secondary scholarship, Japanese and Modern Chinese are perhaps the contemporary languages which provide the greatest scope.
What a gem of a video! Thank you Sensei! I've self-studied Sanskrit and Tibetan. I hope to learn enough Literary Chinese to one day read the long version of the Sutra of Sublime Golden Light
I am reading Classical Tibetan right now. Its so hard for me to understand due to few knowledge in english grammar. I cant understand most of the things being taught. The private tutors are very expensive for me. Is there any book would you recommend me please?
Thank you for the positive feedback. I'm glad to hear that you have a clear goal in mind for your study of Literary Chinese. Keep it close as you progress- it will keep you on the right track when things get difficult. Between you and I, Yijing’s 義淨 translation of the Longer Version of the Golden Light Sutra 金光明最勝王經 (T 665) is a personal favourite of mine! I have translations of part of it in draft form (first fascicle, and excerpts), so thank you for bringing it back to my attention- I need to get on with doing the rest. If you are ever looking for a good hard-copy Chinese edition for the "Deep Dive", be sure to try and get a hold of the 福建莆田廣化寺 edition. It is punctuated quite well, and has light notation (mainly on rare characters, Sanskrit transliterations and variant manuscripts) to assist. Keep me posted on how your journey unfolds 🙏 and good luck!
@@Language-rf5gy if you can afford it, try Translating Buddhism from Tibetan by Joe B Wilson. There's also a very helpful TH-cam channel dedicated to this: youtube.com/@learningbasicreadingtibeta337?si=SKd2j4N563LJ_RTC
Make life easy for yourself. Search for EVERY book by Russian sinologist J. J. Brandt, especially the one written in Russian, it is the perfect primer. Use google translate if you don't read Russian. His other books are in English.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I was unfamiliar with Dobson's work, but after having had a quick look, I can see that Dobson is indeed very comprehensive. It looks like a great resource, and I suspect that I will make use of it moving forward. Thank you again for bringing it to our attention 🙏
Do you think learning a modern language that uses Chinese characters first would make learning literary Chinese meaningfully easier? I've heard learning Japanese is very useful anyway due to how much scholarship happens in Japanese and the fact that the traditions have survived there almost uninterrupted so long, but course it's a different language and many characters are used completely differently.
It is a good question. In the long run, the answer is definitely: yes, having one of these modern languages up your sleeve will help. In the short term, learning modern languages using Chinese characters (like Mandarin and Japanese) can be both helpful, and make things more difficult for you. For example, if you learn modern Mandarin: the positive is that you'll be pushed to learn lots of characters fairly quickly; the negative is that you may end up learning simplified characters, which will divert some of your attention, and words that have shifted semantically will possibly cause confusion- take 但 for example, which in Modern Mandarin means "but; still etc", whereas in Literary Chinese it can mean that, but it most often means "only; merely". Japanese will help vis a vis scholarship and living traditions in the long run, and in the short term, given that Japanese often retains older approximations of the pronunciations of Chinese characters, you'll have a leg up in trying to work out transliterations of Sanskrit words: eg. 釋迦牟尼 would be pronounced as "Shijiamouni" in Mandarin, but "Shakamuni" in Japanese- which is much closer to the "Śākyamuni" that it transliterates. Nevertheless, as you say, Japanese is quite a different language with its own difficulties. My advice would be to start with Literary Chinese on its own first. As you begin to get comfortable with basic Literary Chinese, then you can start introducing a modern language like Mandarin or Japanese, and to a certain extent your brain will be able to differentiate between them easier. 🙏
@@ginabanadab may be it's not possible on the comment section, any social media of yours Question to be asked - on marriage, On war, tendai warriors monks , ethics on lay person etc. There can be holy war to establish justice and freedom, as mentioned in Nirvana sutra , buddha advices to punish the icchantikas . Tendai mostly focuses on Nirvana and Lotus sutra , but as a supplementary they used to read every sutra. it's not possible in comment section to discuss all this .
@@SubhoChak If you click on my TH-cam channel, you can find my Facebook page information in the channel description. You are welcome to send me a message there to discuss further 🙏
Thank you for your comment. A "dead language" is defined as a language no longer spoken as the native tongue, by any community. This does not mean that the language is not in use, merely that it is not how people speak. By this definition, 文言文 is indeed a "dead language", as no community learns to speak in this manner. The term "文言" intends to imply this, but this of course does not mean that one does not regularly encounter 文言文 in China today. 文言文 is still in extensive use, but this is entirely different to representing a community's vernacular speech.
@@ginabanadab it is awkward to claim a language is used but not spoken, So ,what the utility of this language ? toliet paper ?.even you just write it, you do at least speak inside your mind.. why you think you english definition works for chinese language? do you have something similar in english ? ,"文言文" is by chinese definition, it is a way of writing . it is not any language, you can certainly speak with it ,and it will just sound bookish . Today, any educated Chinese can read and write it .why it is dead?? by saying "literacy language " is dead, it just states, we Chinese are not literacy anymore under the communistic regime. . totally ignorant. You throw your definition all around ,it is not any good way of learning from Buddhism perspective. i see a clear colonial mentality and self-superiority in these statements, giving definition to other culture , or stating other culture are dead,. only you , colonial master can revive it. haha, no matter how much Chinese culture you learn, you will be only a humanoid form of British museum.. cause you said yourself, it it is dead..
@@leekinboo So many problems with what you just said. The term dead language is a technical term with technical uses. Your issues with it are irrelevant. Reading aloud or in your head is not speaking. Speaking is communicating with others. 文言文 cannot be used for speaking. You wouldn't sound "bookish". You wouldn't be understood at all. Modern Chinese is still literary. Just because 文言文 (a separate language) is dead, doesn't mean modern Chinese isn't literary. Your jump to colonialism is just absurd. Latin and Greek are also dead. So is old and middle English. It's not a political claim. It's just fact.
I am not in Taiwan, and stating that 文言文 was the official written language up to 1949 is merely a statement of fact, and not a political comment. It was government policy to write all official communiqués in 文言文 under the Republican government. As it happens, the People's Republic of China is actually very proud of their efforts to democratise the written language since 1949. And my recognising their shift to written vernacular is in no way political bias, or an attempt to make any political statements whatsoever. Take for example, the National Anthem of the People's Republic of China (义勇军进行曲), and compare it with the National Anthem of the Republic of China (三民主義歌) used until 1949. You will find that the former is vernacular Chinese 白話, and the latter is Literary Chinese 文言文. Thank you for taking the time to comment on our video 🙏
Thank you for your comment. Pali and Sanskrit are indeed very useful, and anyone willing to study either language should do so. However, the number of Buddhist texts preserved in Chinese is far greater than the entirety of the Pali and surviving Sanskrit materials combined. And so, learning Literary Chinese in order to read Buddhist texts is still a very useful endeavour. Many materials, such as the entirety of the Sarvāstivādin 說一切有部 Abhidharma 阿毘曇, survive only in Chinese. Furthermore, for most of the extant Sanskrit texts, the Chinese translations we have are far earlier, and in many cases preserve earlier versions of śāstra material. In short, learning all of these languages is useful, and it is not a case of 'instead'. Thanks again for taking the time to watch the video.
Friends, I appreciate you all watching my video. Our Christian friend here is following his scriptures (Mark 16:15) when he comments like this, and though we may not agree with said scripture when it follows this with "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.", we can surely appreciate someone who knows and follows their own canonical texts. There is always room for healthy debate, but given that the topic of this video is studying Buddhist canonical texts in one of the primary languages, it may not be here. Here, it is probably best to show him that we also have scriptures that we follow in response, and say to him: 《妙法蓮華經》卷6〈20 常不輕菩薩品〉：「如此經歷多年，常被罵詈，不生瞋恚，常作是言：『汝當作佛。』說是語時，眾人或以杖木瓦石而打擲之，避走遠住，猶高聲唱言：『我不敢輕於汝等，汝等皆當作佛。』」(CBETA 2024.R1, T09, no. 262, pp. 50c26-51a1) 《Lotus Sūtra: Ch. 20, Fasc. 6》: In this way over many years he was constantly abused and reviled, but did not give rise to malice. He would always say: “You will become Buddhas!”. When he would say this, many people would either beat him with staves, sticks, tiles or rocks. He would withdraw by running and standing at a distance, and then with a loud voice say: “I dare not disrespect you, for you all will become Buddhas!” 🙏
謝謝老師！
I have just begun the task of learning the Chinese language with the specific goal to read Buddhist scriptures. This video was extremely informative and helpful for this endeavor. As a lay Buddhist I often wondered about the various translations and agree that it is important to go directly to the primary texts available. Thank you for the advice and encouragement.
Namo Amitabha Buddha 🙏🏻
You're very welcome Mister Meow 🙏 I'm very happy to hear that it is of some use for those beginning their journey in the language. Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions along your journey. Good luck! And thank you for taking on the challenge! Namo Amitabha Buddha 🙏
THIS is what the people have been waiting for!
This video contains excellent advice for those wishing to learn to read Chinese Buddhist texts. I agree that the Kieschnick primers are probably to best starting place for most beginners, but thank you for also reviewing Lock and Linebarger - I have an interest here as I am one of the co-authors (Lock)! I apologise that the accompanying website is currently not accessible, or is only intermittently accessible. Your mention of it has motivated me to try and sort out the problem and also to upload more content asap.
Thank you so much for taking the time to watch our video! Your textbook is a fantastic resource, and a number of our temple members have purchased and utilised it. We are deeply indebted to your and Linebarger's efforts, in bringing us this wonderful resource. And would be very grateful for any resources you might provide on the website. Please feel free to post any updates to the website here for viewers, and if we can ever assist with anything, please don't hesitate to let us know 🙏.
Sensei, I just wanted to say, I deeply appreciate your pronunciation of Sanskrit titles, not to mention all the resources provided in this video. 🙏 I’ll be going to DRBU in California for translation and this video is truly a blessing.
I'm very glad you found the video useful, and I thank you for the positive feedback. It's also great to hear that you'll be going to DRBU for translation, and I hope it is a fruitful experience for you! Please give my best regards to DRBU for all their hard work, and let them know that they have admirers of their output - even here in Australia 🙂🙏
Pls make more videos your work is great
@@nn-kk4du 贊同
@@ClaimClam what sir?
@@nn-kk4du @ClaimClam is saying that they "concur" or "agree" with you :) 🙏
Thank you for your kind words. I will hopefully make some more soon 👍
I'm by no means an expert on the topic, but when you were talking about learning characters (52:00) it came to my mind that free recall would probably be a good strategy. Benjamin Keep has good video in his TH-cam channel in which he explains and demonstrates the strategy: the video is titled "How to do free recall (AKA active recall) - Language learning demonstration"
Yes, this is good advice. Active Recall can be used to great effect with Literary Chinese. The Pleco Flashcard system can be used quite well for this, as you can make your own decks. The extensive reading of primary texts is also critical to such retrieval practise, as you are forced to review learnt material in entirely new scenarios. Thank you for suggesting it here for others 🙏
May I request teachings on two topics? If so, I'd like to request that you give a teaching for meditators on the cultivation of shamatha. Also, I'd like to request that you speak about improving one's character in daily life.
Hi Jon, thank you for the suggestions. I am certainly happy to make videos discussing these two topics, so I'll see if I can gather my thoughts in a helpful way 🙏
Thank you for this. Do you know if there is a print version of the Kieschnick primers available?
I hope it is of some use. My understanding is that the Primers currently exist only as PDFs. But Dr Kieschnick is regularly updating and improving them, so it is not beyond possibility that a print version/hard copy could be put together. I would certainly be interested in a hard copy version myself. Dr Kieschnick is also very approachable, so perhaps if we all email Dr Kieschnick and express our interest in a print version, we might just make it happen.
According to the dictionary the i in primer is a short vowel instead of a diphthong when the word refers to a book.
Thank you for your comment. You are correct that the word 'primer' is pronounced with a short vowel in American English (when referring to the book), and represents an earlier pronunciation. Indeed, this is admittedly closer to the Latin root 'primarius' from which it is drawn. Nevertheless as an Australian, the standard of English pronunciation I use is British English, not American English. And the word 'primer' (referring to the book), is pronounced the same way as 'primer' (the paint) in British English, and has been pronounced this way since the 1800s. I hope that you enjoyed the video nonetheless, and found something useful in it. 🙏
@@ginabanadab Thank you. You broadened my knowledge. It's not really polite to pick on other people's pronunciation but I couldn't help it. 😉
What are other languages for Buddhism and can you rank them in order?
How I would rank them, would depend a little bit on what one hopes to get out of their study, and what tradition one is interested in. For example, if one is interested in the Chan/Zen school, then I would rank Classical Chinese as most important. Whereas, if one was keen on training with the Nyingma tradition, then Classical Tibetan would be most useful. But, I'll try my best to give a broad overview of the languages at play, and rank them (tentatively). The canonical languages for the study of Buddha-Dharma are: Sanskrit, Pali, Literary Chinese, and Classical Tibetan. All of these languages preserve very important elements of the Buddhist Canon. The first two of these languages are Indic, and if one is interested in the Mahayana/Vajrayana, they will get the most out of learning Sanskrit. If their interest is the Non-Mahayana, then they are best served by Pali. The Chinese Canon, contains many earlier versions of the works currently preserved in Sanskrit, and so comparing both versions can be very helpful. Chinese is also very useful for learning various recensions of the Abhidharma materials, and the Agamas preserved in it run parallel with many of the Pali texts of the Non-Mahayana canon. Tibetan translations are often very literal to the Sanskrit, and also preserves much of the content of what would became the "last generation of Indian Monastics at Nalanda". When it comes to the size of extent canons in each of these languages, I would tentatively rank them from largest to smallest as: Chinese, Tibetan, Pali, Sanskrit. As for languages for secondary scholarship, Japanese and Modern Chinese are perhaps the contemporary languages which provide the greatest scope.
What a gem of a video! Thank you Sensei! I've self-studied Sanskrit and Tibetan. I hope to learn enough Literary Chinese to one day read the long version of the Sutra of Sublime Golden Light
I am reading Classical Tibetan right now. Its so hard for me to understand due to few knowledge in english grammar. I cant understand most of the things being taught. The private tutors are very expensive for me. Is there any book would you recommend me please?
Thank you for the positive feedback. I'm glad to hear that you have a clear goal in mind for your study of Literary Chinese. Keep it close as you progress- it will keep you on the right track when things get difficult. Between you and I, Yijing’s 義淨 translation of the Longer Version of the Golden Light Sutra 金光明最勝王經 (T 665) is a personal favourite of mine! I have translations of part of it in draft form (first fascicle, and excerpts), so thank you for bringing it back to my attention- I need to get on with doing the rest. If you are ever looking for a good hard-copy Chinese edition for the "Deep Dive", be sure to try and get a hold of the 福建莆田廣化寺 edition. It is punctuated quite well, and has light notation (mainly on rare characters, Sanskrit transliterations and variant manuscripts) to assist. Keep me posted on how your journey unfolds 🙏 and good luck!
@@Language-rf5gy if you can afford it, try Translating Buddhism from Tibetan by Joe B Wilson. There's also a very helpful TH-cam channel dedicated to this:
youtube.com/@learningbasicreadingtibeta337?si=SKd2j4N563LJ_RTC
Make life easy for yourself. Search for EVERY book by Russian sinologist J. J. Brandt, especially the one written in Russian, it is the perfect primer. Use google translate if you don't read Russian. His other books are in English.
In regards to function words, you missed A Dictionary of the Chinese Particles by W.A.C.H. Dobson which is definitely the most comprehensive.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I was unfamiliar with Dobson's work, but after having had a quick look, I can see that Dobson is indeed very comprehensive. It looks like a great resource, and I suspect that I will make use of it moving forward. Thank you again for bringing it to our attention 🙏
Do you think learning a modern language that uses Chinese characters first would make learning literary Chinese meaningfully easier? I've heard learning Japanese is very useful anyway due to how much scholarship happens in Japanese and the fact that the traditions have survived there almost uninterrupted so long, but course it's a different language and many characters are used completely differently.
It is a good question. In the long run, the answer is definitely: yes, having one of these modern languages up your sleeve will help. In the short term, learning modern languages using Chinese characters (like Mandarin and Japanese) can be both helpful, and make things more difficult for you. For example, if you learn modern Mandarin: the positive is that you'll be pushed to learn lots of characters fairly quickly; the negative is that you may end up learning simplified characters, which will divert some of your attention, and words that have shifted semantically will possibly cause confusion- take 但 for example, which in Modern Mandarin means "but; still etc", whereas in Literary Chinese it can mean that, but it most often means "only; merely". Japanese will help vis a vis scholarship and living traditions in the long run, and in the short term, given that Japanese often retains older approximations of the pronunciations of Chinese characters, you'll have a leg up in trying to work out transliterations of Sanskrit words: eg. 釋迦牟尼 would be pronounced as "Shijiamouni" in Mandarin, but "Shakamuni" in Japanese- which is much closer to the "Śākyamuni" that it transliterates. Nevertheless, as you say, Japanese is quite a different language with its own difficulties. My advice would be to start with Literary Chinese on its own first. As you begin to get comfortable with basic Literary Chinese, then you can start introducing a modern language like Mandarin or Japanese, and to a certain extent your brain will be able to differentiate between them easier. 🙏
I'm in the interesting side of TH-cam again
Very helpful thank you.
I have many questions ⁉️ please solve it
What questions do you have my friend?
@@ginabanadab may be it's not possible on the comment section, any social media of yours
Question to be asked - on marriage,
On war, tendai warriors monks , ethics on lay person etc.
There can be holy war to establish justice and freedom, as mentioned in Nirvana sutra , buddha advices to punish the icchantikas . Tendai mostly focuses on Nirvana and Lotus sutra , but as a supplementary they used to read every sutra. it's not possible in comment section to discuss all this .
@@SubhoChak If you click on my TH-cam channel, you can find my Facebook page information in the channel description. You are welcome to send me a message there to discuss further 🙏
You are not calling “文言文“ dead language right ？
Thank you for your comment. A "dead language" is defined as a language no longer spoken as the native tongue, by any community. This does not mean that the language is not in use, merely that it is not how people speak. By this definition, 文言文 is indeed a "dead language", as no community learns to speak in this manner. The term "文言" intends to imply this, but this of course does not mean that one does not regularly encounter 文言文 in China today. 文言文 is still in extensive use, but this is entirely different to representing a community's vernacular speech.
@@ginabanadab it is awkward to claim a language is used but not spoken, So ,what the utility of this language ? toliet paper ?.even you just write it, you do at least speak inside your mind.. why you think you english definition works for chinese language? do you have something similar in english ? ,"文言文" is by chinese definition, it is a way of writing . it is not any language, you can certainly speak with it ,and it will just sound bookish . Today, any educated Chinese can read and write it .why it is dead?? by saying "literacy language " is dead, it just states, we Chinese are not literacy anymore under the communistic regime. . totally ignorant. You throw your definition all around ,it is not any good way of learning from Buddhism perspective. i see a clear colonial mentality and self-superiority in these statements, giving definition to other culture , or stating other culture are dead,. only you , colonial master can revive it. haha, no matter how much Chinese culture you learn, you will be only a humanoid form of British museum.. cause you said yourself, it it is dead..
@@leekinboo So many problems with what you just said.
The term dead language is a technical term with technical uses. Your issues with it are irrelevant.
Reading aloud or in your head is not speaking. Speaking is communicating with others.
文言文 cannot be used for speaking. You wouldn't sound "bookish". You wouldn't be understood at all.
Modern Chinese is still literary. Just because 文言文 (a separate language) is dead, doesn't mean modern Chinese isn't literary.
Your jump to colonialism is just absurd. Latin and Greek are also dead. So is old and middle English. It's not a political claim. It's just fact.
@@HakuYuki001Actually there were no problems with what he just said, it was precisely correct.
mark the end of “文言文“ in 1949，I see it is a political bias, no wonder you are in Taiwan ,congratulations to your journey
I am not in Taiwan, and stating that 文言文 was the official written language up to 1949 is merely a statement of fact, and not a political comment. It was government policy to write all official communiqués in 文言文 under the Republican government. As it happens, the People's Republic of China is actually very proud of their efforts to democratise the written language since 1949. And my recognising their shift to written vernacular is in no way political bias, or an attempt to make any political statements whatsoever. Take for example, the National Anthem of the People's Republic of China (义勇军进行曲), and compare it with the National Anthem of the Republic of China (三民主義歌) used until 1949. You will find that the former is vernacular Chinese 白話, and the latter is Literary Chinese 文言文. Thank you for taking the time to comment on our video 🙏
Just learn pali and sanskrit instead.
Thank you for your comment. Pali and Sanskrit are indeed very useful, and anyone willing to study either language should do so. However, the number of Buddhist texts preserved in Chinese is far greater than the entirety of the Pali and surviving Sanskrit materials combined. And so, learning Literary Chinese in order to read Buddhist texts is still a very useful endeavour. Many materials, such as the entirety of the Sarvāstivādin 說一切有部 Abhidharma 阿毘曇, survive only in Chinese. Furthermore, for most of the extant Sanskrit texts, the Chinese translations we have are far earlier, and in many cases preserve earlier versions of śāstra material. In short, learning all of these languages is useful, and it is not a case of 'instead'. Thanks again for taking the time to watch the video.
Return to Christ
He died 2000 years ago, we don't believe in dead zombie.
@@TalaySeedam rude
Jesus went to India and studied Buddhism in his missing years
@@slomo4672 And still died as a criminal.
Friends, I appreciate you all watching my video. Our Christian friend here is following his scriptures (Mark 16:15) when he comments like this, and though we may not agree with said scripture when it follows this with "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.", we can surely appreciate someone who knows and follows their own canonical texts. There is always room for healthy debate, but given that the topic of this video is studying Buddhist canonical texts in one of the primary languages, it may not be here. Here, it is probably best to show him that we also have scriptures that we follow in response, and say to him: 《妙法蓮華經》卷6〈20 常不輕菩薩品〉：「如此經歷多年，常被罵詈，不生瞋恚，常作是言：『汝當作佛。』說是語時，眾人或以杖木瓦石而打擲之，避走遠住，猶高聲唱言：『我不敢輕於汝等，汝等皆當作佛。』」(CBETA 2024.R1, T09, no. 262, pp. 50c26-51a1)
《Lotus Sūtra: Ch. 20, Fasc. 6》: In this way over many years he was constantly abused and reviled, but did not give rise to malice. He would always say: “You will become Buddhas!”. When he would say this, many people would either beat him with staves, sticks, tiles or rocks. He would withdraw by running and standing at a distance, and then with a loud voice say: “I dare not disrespect you, for you all will become Buddhas!”
🙏