ABSTRACT
Dao Sheng, a Buddhist monk who had studied under Kumarajiva, was best known for his views - about the distinct features of Buddhahood and the possibility of immediate attainment of Buddhahood returned to the capital, in the fifth year of the Yixi reign. Dao Sheng's view of language was certainly shared by Seng You, who used in his own writing exactly the same images from Zhuangzi. In fact, it is this view of language - this attitude towards signs - that makes the practice of translation possible and provides the philosophical foundation for it. He sighed deeply and commented: Signs and symbols are there to evoke a meaning. When the meaning has been successfully evoked, the signs can be forgotten. Words are there to convey a point, or a reasoning process. "Translation is exegesis", as Seng You says. It is exegesis, explication, unraveling - not just on an interlingual but also on what we nowadays call an intersemiotic level.
