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A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms: With Sanskrit and English Equivalents and a Sanskrit-Pali Index

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Since this book it out of copyright, you'll find lots of versions of this. Most just call it "Soothill's" (the main author's name) or "Soothill-Hodous" (the names of both men who spent a decade of their lives compiling the data for this dictionary).

Some suggest that this dictionary is out of date. Work was finished in 1934, so maybe that is their point. However Buddhism stretches back some 2500 years. How much can change in just 75 years?

The more valid argument is that the dictionary may have some inaccuracies, omissions, or mistranslations. It's probably true that such issues exist, and the author warns of this possibility in his preface. If you ask seven different Buddhists from seven different sects of Buddhism, you will get seven different answers for what a certain title means. Therefore, it's impossible to create a completely accurate dictionary of such terms.

While some criticize the minor shortcomings of this dictionary, you'll find a copy of Soothill-Hodous on the bookshelf of almost every professor of Easter Philosophy, Eastern Religion, or who teaches anything about Buddhism.

This dictionary is worth having for anyone who is serious about the study of Chinese Buddhism (most of these terms also apply to sects of Japanese and Korean Buddhism as well). However, there is a free digitized version floating around the internet which is easier to search than the paper version.