'God of Gods': An Iranian Buddhist Epithet and Its Traces in Early Chinese Buddhist Translations.
The Iranian flavour of the Chinese epithet of the Buddha, tianzhong tian 天中天, 'god among gods,' and its relationship with the Indo-Aryan parallel devātideva -, 'foremost god of gods,' have been repeatedly addressed. Past studies of the origin of the expressions sought to establish an ultimate connec...
| Publicado en: | Indo-Iranian Journal Vol. 67; no. 3; pp. 229 - 276 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Brill Academic Publishers
2024
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=179976762&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 179976762 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00197246 OG7 jtl: Indo-Iranian Journal issn: 00197246 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: 2024 vid: 67 iid: 3 pid: 639 pub: Brill Academic Publishers artinfo: ui: 179976762 10.1163/15728536-06703002 ppf: 229 ppct: 47 formats: tig: atl: 'God of Gods': An Iranian Buddhist Epithet and Its Traces in Early Chinese Buddhist Translations. aug: au: Barchi, Francesco Peschl, Benedikt affil: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie, München, Germany Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Iranistik, Berlin, Germany su: Iranian languages Chinese language Gods Legal evidence God sug: subj: Iranian languages Chinese language Gods Legal evidence God keyword: Bactrian Buddhist Chinese Iranian Buddhism Kushan Empire Middle Indo-Aryan Sogdian ab: The Iranian flavour of the Chinese epithet of the Buddha, tianzhong tian 天中天, 'god among gods,' and its relationship with the Indo-Aryan parallel devātideva -, 'foremost god of gods,' have been repeatedly addressed. Past studies of the origin of the expressions sought to establish an ultimate connection to the Achaemenid royal title 'king of kings' (Old Persian xšāya θ iya- xšāya θ iyānām) , assuming that the divine epithet was coined based on the royal one. However, the comparative Indo-Iranian evidence speaks for the considerable antiquity of the divine epithet '(foremost) god of gods'—Proto-Indo-Iranian * dai̯u̯ānām dai̯u̯a(tama) -, replaced by * bagānām baga(tama-) in Old Iranian—and against its secondary character in relation to 'king of kings'. The Middle Iranian corpora show a particularly broad usage of 'god of gods'-like epithets to refer to supreme figures worthy of veneration; the epithet therefore may be considered part of a pan-Iranian religious vocabulary during the first millennium CE. We further make the case that the Buddhist usage of the expression in Middle Iranian languages as well as the appearance of its equivalents in Chinese and Indo-Aryan sources is specifically due to the super-regional influence of a Bactrian prototype, * βαγανο βαγαδαμο. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2024 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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