Theos-Talk Archives (November 2002 Message tt00449)

brianmuehlbach wrote:
> The name of Hsuan Tsang is also written Xuan Zang, Hiouen Thsang,
> Huan Chwang, and Yuan Chwang. His name in Mandarin Chinese is
> pronounced "Shyu-ann Dzang". As you can see, "Dzang" is awfully close
> to "Dzyan". It seems possible to me that HPB may have cribbed the
> name of this monk to gain some authenticity with individuals who were
> vaguely familiar with Beal's translation of his writings.
> 
> What do you think?

If you learn to speak Mandarin, you will find that many of the words
sound, to a Western ear, as if you were sneezing. Or, to put it another
way, I think you're making too far a stretch.

To expand on this a bit more, one should also note that the idea of
there being a Chinese language with numerous dialects is, linguistically
speaking, bullshit. Other than the fact that the various languages of
China use 5 tones as part of their meanings, most of the so-called
"dialects" are as different from each other as French and German. The
reason why Chinese writing is in picture form is because it is not a
written form of any language, but a language in and of itself, but in
the form of written symbols rather than spoken symbols; it was a means
by which scholars speaking different languages could create written
records understandable by all. That is the reason why names, especially
names which are really titles (like Lao-Tse) can have so many
alternative spellings in Western languages; because they can differ
widely among Chinese people, and narrow-minded Westerners confused
different languages with different accents and idioms of the same
language. 

Bart Lidofsky