Reflections | Why ‘fotuo’ is the Chinese word for the Buddha as his birthday is celebrated this week
- When the Chinese came across the Buddhist faith in the Han period (206BC-AD220), the Sanskrit and Pali word ‘Buddha’ was transliterated into Chinese as ‘fotuo’
- The phonology, or patterns of sounds, of the Chinese language evolved over several millennia, with the same words pronounced very differently in ancient times
Buddhists around the world commemorate the life of the Buddha in the latter part of May this year. In Hong Kong, the Buddha’s Birthday is being celebrated today, May 19, which is a public or bank holiday, but not a statutory holiday. In some parts of the world, the festival is known as Vesak or Wesak Day, which observes not just the birth of Siddhartha Gautama, who Buddhists believe is the current Buddha among multiple past and future Buddhas, but his enlightenment and death as well.
Vesak Day occurs primarily in the month of Vaisakha in the Buddhist and Hindu calendars, hence its name, but the exact day of observation varies across different geographical regions and Buddhist traditions. In Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, for example, Vesak Day is observed on May 26 this year, as opposed to a week earlier in the Greater China Region, where the festival is known as fodan, literally “the Buddha’s birthday”.
The modern Chinese word for the Buddha is fo. Buddhism is fojiao and Buddhists are fojiaotu. When the Chinese first encountered the Buddhist faith in the Han period (206BC-AD220), the Sanskrit and Pali word “Buddha” was transliterated into Chinese as fotuo and eventually its abbreviated form fo. Although the Buddha is strictly speaking not divine, the writers of History of the Later Han inform their readers that “there is a deity in the west, whose name is fo”.
One could be forgiven for thinking that the ancient Chinese were appallingly inept in foreign languages and transcribing foreign sounds into their own language. How on earth did “Buddha” become “fotuo”? To understand this, one must be aware that the phonology, or patterns of sounds, of the Chinese language had evolved over several millennia. The same words were pronounced quite differently in ancient times.
Phonologically, Chinese is generally divided into Old Chinese, spoken from around 1300BC to the first century AD; Middle Chinese, spoken for almost 700 years between the 5th and 12th centuries; and Modern varieties, spoken from the 13th century to the present day.