也说“白衣”

A Further Discussion on the Word Baiyi(白衣)

"白衣"在先秦文献中已出现,东汉以后常用来指佛教在家者。佛经梵汉对勘研究表明,这一新义项是汉语向梵语源头语词汇avadāta-vasana(或avadāta-vastra)义借的结果,并非由"黑衣"表僧人相因生义而来。

The word Baiyi（白衣）,which came out already in Pre-Qin（秦） Dynasty documents, has been always employed to indicate the layman from Late-Han（汉） Dynasty. The comparative analysis of Sanskrit and Chinese versions of Buddhist scriptures suggests that, such new sememe is actually resulted from a semantic loan from its original Sanskrit word avadāta-vasana or avadāta-vastra, rather than the semantic analogy of another word Heiyi（黑衣）.