也谈《玄应音义》的“近字”

A Talk on "Neologisms" in The Sound and Meaning of the Buddhist Scripture

《玄应音义》中的"近字"概指随着社会和语言生活的发展变化,文字为适应此种变化而新造的字。此种造字,或因同源词的分化而造成同源字,或由于为同一个词另造记录符号而成异体字,或者是为对译佛典而新造音译用字。这三种现象跟魏晋南北朝至隋唐五代作为汉字大变革时期的基本特征是相符的:一方面产生了大量新字,另一方面汉字的使用非常混乱。

By ＂neologisms＂ in The Sound and Meaning of the Buddhist Scripture is meant characters coined in conformity with c differentiation or hanges in social and linguistic aspects. Characters thus coined are either homonyms due to cognate allomorphs for marking similar objects differently or newly transliterated words for translating Bud- dhist scriptures. These three phenomena are consistent with the basic features of the period from Wei, Jin, North- ern and Southern dynasties to Sui, Tang and Five dynasties, during which Chinese characters had witnessed great changes ： on one hand, many a new Chinese character was coined; while on the other hand, the use of Chinese characters was extremely confusing.