ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a salient work in the period, called Huainanzi, with respect to its rhetorical achievements, analyzes the rhetorical ideas and theories rooted in sutra translations from Sanskrit to classical Chinese. Buddhism was introduced into China during the reign of Emperor Mingdi in the Han dynasty. Buddhism, like any other religion, uses rhetoric to win converts, that is, to persuade people to believe and obey its doctrines. From the perspective of lexicology, a large number of new words were created by using metaphors in Buddhist sutras, which constitute the unique rhetoric aesthetic of Buddhist expression. Buddhism culture inadvertently practices and promotes the development of phonetic rhetoric by creating aesthetics embedded in the melody of chanting. In the early stage of translation, translators of Buddhist scriptures from the Western Regions were inclined to respect the original meaning and its language style. The chapter concludes by scrutinizing three other prominent works from the perspective of rhetoric.
