ABSTRACT
As noted in Part IV, the Trirpsikä, and consequently the entire Ch'eng wei-shih lun seeks to discuss one thing: vijiiäna-pariIJäma, the alterity of consciousness.\ Hsüan-tsang subtly introduces a terminological distinction in the first verse whose full import will not become clear until the Ch 'eng wei-shih lun' s commentary to v. 17.2 The distinction both announces and instantiates alterity. The Sanskrit to v. 1 says:
... vijiiäna-pari{lämo 'sau pari{lämal) sa ca tridhä. Two different grammatical forms of the word pari1}äma occur in this line. The first 'pari1}äma' is locative, the second nominative. Hsüan-tsang inscribes this grammatical distinction into the Chinese by rendering the first as so-pien PJT~ and the second as neng-pien ~~~. Pien means "to change; to alter; to transform; metamorphosis; ... "3 and here stands for pari1}äma-in-general. PariIJäma means 'change, alteration, transformation into,' etc.4 The neng-so distinction in Chinese, here used to denote the distinction between nominative and locative, has two primary senses: (1) Neng means 'ability to, capability for' and thus signals the active case, while so signals the passive case; and/or (2) Neng denotes the agent of an action, the subjective, active doer while so denotes the recipient of an action, the objective, passive field manipulated by a doer. Neng-pien would then imply 'he who alters,' 'that which alters,' 'that which has the ability to alter,' and so-pien would indicate 'what is altered.' Since so also means 'place,' 'locus,' it is an appropriate indicator of the locative. However, Hsüan-tsang's choice of the opposition between active and passive, doer and what is done (neng-so), subjective and objective, creates a much neater distinction in Chinese than the distinction between locative and nominative would suggest in Sanskrit. After all, Sanskrit still has six other declensions to choose from (ablative, genitive, etc.), whereas the neng-so dyad does not imply even a third case, much less a number of others. More significantly, the locative/nominative distinction not only lacks any clear oppositional tension, but suggests an entirely different notion of identity and difference than that implied by neng-so, as will be demonstrated momentarily. What is actually at issue here?
