Abstract
This paper examines 275 Sanskrit compound words found in the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitāhṛdayasutra (Diamond Sutra). According to the six Chinese traditional interpretations of Sanskrit terms, Liu He Shi 六合釋, these compound words are classified into six categories: tatpuruṣa (determinative compounds), karmadhāraya (descriptive compounds), dvandva (co-ordinative compounds), dvigu (compounds with a numeral), avyayībhāva (adverbial compounds), and bahuvrīhi (possessive compounds). In Chinese there are five main types of compounds; however, most of the Sanskrit compounds are translated into modified-head structure in Chinese. Besides modified-head compounds, many Sanskrit compounds are translated into Chinese as verb-object phrases. We also study the translation techniques employed by Kumārajīva and Xuanzang based on the translation of the Sanskrit compound words. It is found that Kumārajīva did not translate the compound words for 150 times, while Xuanzang, for only two times. The former sometimes did not translate the first or the second components in compound words, whereas the latter would faithfully translate every component, including negative prefixes and prepositions. Xuanzang also used calques (loan translations), a kind of literal morpheme-to-morpheme translation, to translate Sanskrit compounds. His translation of compound words mostly sticked to the Sanskrit word structures, and was supposed to be much more correct. However, nowadays Buddhists study only Kumārajīva''s translation of the Diamond Sutra, despite his less faithful translation skills. Kumārajīva''s translation of Sanskrit compounds words uses more familiar word structures and terms in Chinese, and thus one cannot tell that they were translated from Sanskrit. On the contrary, Xuanzang though faithfully follows Sanskrit word structures, he created some terms which were unfamiliar to the public and thus difficult to understand. That is why Kumārajīva''s translation is widely accepted in the Buddhist circles.