Abstract
The goal of this paper is to disprove Pulleyblank (1984), Kalgren (1922) and Chao (1940)'s assumption that there were long vowels in Middle Chinese. The main arguments are: first, in Chen's (2000) study of Chinese loanwords from Sanskrit, and in Lo's (1963) list of the forty-nine Sanskrit sounds transliterated from sixteen Buddhist works, it was found that there was no distinction between short vs. long vowels. Moreover, in data collected from Soothill and Hodous' A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms (1968), it was found that all the characters frequently used to transcribe long vowels were also used to transcribe short vowels. Had there been a short-vs.-long-vowel distinction in Middle Chinese, different characters should have been used. Finally, I have found that even within the same words there were short and long vowels which were transliterated with the same Chinese characters.