Kåre A. Lie wrote:

> I hope someone also can give some idea of the early Chinese translations
> as

well.

As there don't seem to be any other takers, I'll have a go.
For the compound phrase, "saranam *gam", the normal Chinese is "guiyi" in
which the individual charcaters mean something like "turn to" and "rely on".
I think the connotation would simply have been "rely upon". There may be
other earlier non-standard equivalents but come spring to mind at present.
In the "diipo le.na ..." chain, saranam is often just translated by "gui" =
something you rely on or turn to.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge