ブラーフミー文字で音注を附した漢文経典について : 北大D020『金剛般若波羅蜜経』

Abstract

北大D020 is a Dunhuang Chinese manuscript that has been preserved in the Peking University Library. This fragment of the Chinese version of the Diamond Sūtra (金剛般若波羅密經: Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra ) includes 95 Chinese characters phonetically annotated in Central Asian Brāhmī script. A facsimile reproduction of this manuscript has been published, but not yet been studied. The current paper offers a transliteration of the Brāhmī transcriptions with annotations. The author compares the transcriptions with those encountered in another Dunhuang Chinese text, Ch.00120 + P.5597, also transcribed in Brāhmī script. The paper concludes with a discussion of the pronunciation of Chinese characters as reflected in the transcriptions, particularly in the historical context of a northwestern dialect during the late Tang and Five Dynasties. This analysis demonstrates that the phonetic transcriptions found in 北大D020 have certain peculiarities not observed in other comparable materials of the period. For example, zhuāngmǔ initial (莊母) is transcribed using retroflex letters. It is also noteworthy that the characters of both dàngshè (宕摂) and gěngshè (梗摂) preserve their nasality as reflected by the transcriptions using anusvāra.