Dear Stephen and friends,

thanks. The statement of Cantonese was popular at one time. Perhaps
it wasn't as wide spread as I thought. I will change the words "the
statement..." to become "a statement...".

As for Xuanzhuang, it is Xuanzhuang, which is his ordained name. His
family name is Chen, which is not used once a person enters monkhood
in the Chinese Buddhist tradition. The same applies to his given name.

I have no idea how exactly English/European materials come to
write/call him as Xuanzang. However, Xuanzhuang is honoured with the
title Sanzang Fashi, or Master of the Tripitaka, by the emperor of
his time. So, the sutras he translated will print Xuan-zhuang San-
zang, i.e. Master of Tripitaka Xuanzhuang. I do not know, but it is
likely that people mistook "Xuan Zhuang San Zang" as his name and
treated Xuan as his first name and Zang as his family name.

Similarly, my name is Yong Peng. Ong (Wang in hanyu-pinyin) is my
family name. :-)

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Hodge wrote:

Just one thing:

> so the statement that Cantonese (a southern dialect) is closest to
Mandarin (a northern dialect) is just an urban legend.
I have never heard anybody say this. In fact Cantonese preserves a
number of archaic features in its pronunciation -- in particular the
end-stops -k, -p, and -t which have all been lost in nortehrn
Chinese. These end-stops were still pronunced in medieval Changan and
Loyang and their traces can be seen in the use of certain characters
used for translitering Indic words.

> Xuanzhuang (Hanyu Pinyin).
I thought it was Xuanzang -- are you using the "zhuang" that was a
substitute for the tabooed character "zang" found in the name of the
emperor reigning around his time ?