A Critical Study of the Term ‘Weixin’: Is it a Mistranslation of ‘Vijãaptimātra’ in Chinese Yogācāra Texts?

The teaching of vijãāna is one of the main fundamentals of Mahayana Buddhism, originally put forward by the Laākāvatārasūtra in Sanskrit. Later, teachers like Asangha, Vasubandhu developed this teaching writing commentaries (Kārikā) on it. The Laākāvatārasūtra and these commentaries in Sanskrit were translated into the Chinese language at the beginning of Chinese Buddhism, and the term Vijãaptimātra (weiliao) was used as Vijãānamātra (weixin). Later, even the great Chinese scholar, Xuan Zang, used this term in his Chinese translations of Yãgācara Sanskrit texts. Modern scholars, such as Kalupahana, Zhou Guihua, and Lai Yonghai, have pointed out that this Chinese term has caused a misunderstanding of the teaching of vijãāna in the Yogacara as ‘the mind only philosophy,’ and the tradition was also wrongly named as ‘the Mind only school’ (Yogacara vijãānvāda). Hence, this article discusses and critically examines these modern scholars’ view point and tries to point out that Chinese translators did not misunderstand the teaching of Yogācāra vijãāna using the term “weixin”.