『心経』と「心」「経」

The Chinese character Xin originally meant the heart. Then, the mental sense was added to the original meaning during the Yin to Zhou dynasty. In the year of T’ang, Yogācāra adopted the character as being equivalent to the Sanscrit word Vijñati, and added a philosophical interpretation to the two already established meanings. At the same time, the Sanskrit word hṛdaya was also referred to as the heart; during the year of T’ang, the resulting interpretation became essential and true, which the Chinese character Xin did not represent. Focusing on this semantic shift, the current paper argues that the Chinese character Xin denotes the concepts of Vijñati and hṛdaya as a consequence of XuanZhuang’s translation of Prajñā-pāramitā- hṛdaya into Chinese and its diffusion.