Yes,there are books and theses from China and Taiwan
deal with the grammar in buddhist texts.I can't
remember the name.A canadian scholar like Pulleybank
often deal with shang gu yin in buddhist texts for the
translation of special words.
I haven' met anyone saying old chinese grammar is
simpler than modern chinese.nouns can turn into verbs
which is not easy to understand.
Pali grammar texts are enormous only for those who can
read different scrpits or Burmese languages because
they are so many nissaya from there.For people we can
only read english ,there are only a few books to read
about pali grammar.


--- Stephen Hodge
<s.hodge@...> wrote:

>
> Dear Teng Kee,
>
> > We already have so many,many books on learning old
> > chinese grammar in chinese and english.
> But I have never seen one for Buddhist style texts.
> The problem is that
> Buddhist Chinese is quite different to the Classical
> Chinese that became
> standardized for the literati. Buddhist texts use a
> lot of elements, both
> vocabulary and grammar, from the early medieval
> colloqual language and this
> is almost never covered in books dealing with
> Classical Chinese. For
> non-Chinese speakers /readers, it would be best to
> get an overview of
> Classical / Literary Chinese and then try working
> directly with the easier
> Buddhist material. Modern Chinese would not be any
> help but a definite
> hindrance as the language is so different.
>
> > It is easier for anyone to learn any kind of
> modern chinese
> > languages without having to suffer much in basic
> > level.
> It depends where one starts from. Personally, I
> have always found Classical
> Chinese or even Buddhist Chinese, much simpler that
> modern Chinese --
> especially if the ugly simplified characters are not
> used.
>
> > However,old chinese is just too hard to learn to
> > write or read them.I can't write old chinese but I
> can
> > only read them slowly with dictionary behind me.
> Given that the grammar of pre-modern classical /
> literary Chinese is musch
> simpler that modern Chinese, the main difficulty for
> anybody would be the
> vocabulary. In my view, it should be possible for
> somebody starting from
> scratch to learn the basics of classical / Buddhist
> Chinese grammar in 3 - 6
> months or even less if they have a good memory.
> Indeed, the absolute
> minimum could be summarized on a postcard -- the
> volume of grammar for Pali,
> let alone Sanskrit, is enormous in comparison.
> Chuck Muller's on-line
> dictionary of Buddhist and Literary Chinese is a
> vital resource for anybody
> trying to read Buddhist Chinese texts.
>
> > Chinese translation of pali tipitaka done a few
> years
> > ago in 70 volumes are in old chinese which is a
> big
> > trouble for common layman to read them.They need
> to
> > have good chinese language level first
> Yes, I can understand this. The situation in Japan
> used to be similar with
> "translations " from Chinese but now things have
> changed. For modern
> non-specialist readers, it is important to have
> proper modern translations.
>
> Best wishes,
> Stephen Hodge
>
>
>
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