Bai ma fei ma: A case of folk etymology
白马非马﹕ 一个误传词源的实例
>Godfrey K.F. Liu 廖国辉; William S-Y.Wang 王士元

Abstract 摘要
In this paper we argue that the name of the temple, Bai Ma Si, 白马寺, comes from the Sanskrit word padma, which means ‘lotus’. The white horse was all but unknown as a symbol in ancient India, from whence Buddhism came to China; but it was a potent topic in Chinese thought at least since the famous philosophical discussion of Gongsun Longzi. To support this argument we note that the endings -t and -k were already merging or varying at least as early as Shijing times, thereby explaining why the pad- in Sanskrit was transcribed with the Old Chinese syllable brak, which eventually evolved into Putonghua bai. We further speculate that the -d sound in pad- indicated a low pitch first syllable in the Sanskrit word. The fact this syllable was transcribed with a b- in Chinese, rather than directly with a p-, shows the greater saliency of pitch over the segmental feature of voicing.

本文所论白马寺的“白马”并不是马，而是音译梵文“padma”（意即莲花）。白马寺就是莲花寺。白马并不是印度原始佛教的瑞兽，而是中国自公孙龙子以来著名的哲学讨论。我们的论据是汉代的西北方音，入声-t和-k已经混合不分，所以在翻译梵语“pad-”的时候用“bak”对音，就演变成为后世的“白马”了。而“pad-”的-d，更彰显了浊辅音调值的特性。

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