《肇论》篇目《宗本义》与《涅槃无名论》文本真伪再辨——运用现代语言学方法的新考察

A Reexamination on the Authenticity of the Texts of“Seeking Ultimate Meaning”and“On Nirvana”in the Book of“A Collection of Seng Zhao's Articles”:A Method of Modern Linguistic

《肇论》是东晋高僧僧肇的代表作,其对大乘佛教般若中观学原旨的阐述历来受到佛教内外学界的关注,在佛教学术史上具有重要地位。然而由于历史原因,学界对其中《宗本义》和《涅槃无名论》两篇的真伪一直存在争论,至今久悬未决。有鉴于前辈学者将争论焦点集中在经学层面的局限性,有必要运用新兴的现代语言学考证方法,对这两个文本中以虚词用法为代表的语言现象进行考察,结果发现两者在写作习惯上与《肇论》其余诸篇存在较大差异。

A Collection of Seng Zhao's Articles is the masterpiece of the senior monk Seng Zhao in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.Its exposition of the original meaning of Mahayana Buddhism Prajna has always been concerned by the academic circles inside and outside Buddhism,and plays an important role in the academic history of Buddhism.However,due to historical reasons,there has been a long pending debate on the authenticity of the two articles such as“Seeking Ultimate Meaning”and“On Nirvana”.In the view of the limitations of the previous scholars’focusing on the level of the classics’meaning,this paper adopts the modern linguistic textual research method to investigate the language phenomenon represented by the usage of virtual words in these two texts.It is found that there is a great difference in the writing habits between the two texts and the rest of the book.