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A Study on Siddhavastu of Daeseungsaronhyeonuigi written by Hyegyun

Kang Dae-hyun 1

1동국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

There are many phonological summaries in Sanskrit about the Siddhavastu of India. In the history of Korea, references of Siddhavastu appear in Beopgyedogichongsurok written during the Goryeo Dynasty, and in Jineonjip which forms part of the Buddhist Ritual Collection of the Korean Medieval Period. References of Siddhavastu in Korean texts of the Ancient Period, on the other hand, had yet to be found. However, the author was fortunate enough to discover one trace of Siddhavastu from Ancient Korea; this was the Siddhavastu of Hyegyun of the Baekje Dynasty, which was discussed by Annen in his book Shittanzō, which was about a series of Japanese Siddham studies. One trace of Siddhavastu is found in Daeseungsaronhyeonuigi Sipsaeumui, and it is possible that Hyegyun adopted the GO-On (吳…音) type of Chinese character pronunciation, since Siddhaṃ (肆曇) or Siddhavastu (肆曇章) was also included in his book. Furthermore, this is the first evidence of literature for the Siddhavastu written by ancient Korean. The Siddhavastu of Hyegyun contained fourteen phones which formed the roots of the letters [a⋅ā⋅i⋅ī⋅ u⋅ū⋅e⋅ai⋅o⋅au⋅ṛ⋅ṝ⋅ḷ⋅ḹ] in Mahaparinirvanasutra; he holds the same view of Dharmakṣema⋅Xie Lingyun etc, and also adopts the notions of the fifty letters [ka⋅kha etc] of Mahaparinirvanasutra. In particular, the author realized that a⋅ā are the back vowels (後舌) in the fourteen phones inside the root of letters, ṛ⋅ṝ⋅ḷ⋅ḹ are the entering or checked tone (入聲) in the four tones (四聲), and the last two, aṃ⋅aḥ are from a⋅ā, and after aṃ⋅aḥ, the ultimate vowels, no other vowels exists. As mentioned above, it was good enough for verbal interchange between Korea and Japan in ancient times, as is proven by the citation in Annen’s Shittanzō. Consequently, it can be firmly established that one clear piece of evidence about Siddhavastu written by an ancient Korean does indeed exists.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.