The synaesthetic & metaphorical uses of wei 'taste' in Chinese Buddhist texts

This paper investigates the non-gustatory uses of the gustatory word wei 'taste' in Chinese Buddhist texts, in particular, in the Agamas. The non-gustatory uses of wei 'taste' basically fall into two categories: The synaesthetic category and the metaphorical category. The former features the use of wei 'taste' as an umbrella sensory term which can collocate with all the other sensory words, whereas the latter shows that wei 'taste' can modify abstract and sublime Buddhist terms, such as fa 'dhamma' and jietuo 'enlightenment', for the sake of concretization. These two categories of uses have one sense in common: The sense of "pleasure and joy", which can be interpreted in both mundane and supra-mundane levels, depending on the context. Moreover, we find that the versatile uses of wei 'taste' are most likely to be influenced by its equivalent in the Pali Buddhist texts. This finding sheds light on the history of Chinese language development, specifically, how Chinese language has been influenced by Buddhist text translation.