Vernacular Language and the Wu Dialect in the Formation of a Chan Koine and the Rise of Chan/Zen Philology: The Seventh to Seventeenth Centuries

Abstract

Chan monks had a language problem. They needed to deal with at least four registers; the language of the street in their district, the Chan koine with its colloquialisms and argot, the guanhua or official language, and the elite formal language in Literary Sinitic that was packed with allusions. Zen monks in Japan had to deal with registers of Japanese, plus the Chan koine and the formal Literary Chinese. One response was philological, glosses on vocabulary that were likely to be misunderstood, such as dialect words and words that had changed meaning over time. Notably, most of these responses originated in or were connected to the greater Hangzhou region and its Wu language. After discussing whether there was a “standard” or common language used by elites throughout China, this article contends that the awareness of language differences between the “standard” or Mandarin Chinese and the Wu language by native Wu speakers contributed to the rise of Chan philology and then Zen philology. A few key examples of specialized Chan philological texts will be examined, but it should be kept in mind that examples of Chan philology may be embedded in other Chan works.