A Study on the Causes and Significance of Long Titles in Chinese-Translated Buddhist Sutras - Centered on Kaiyuan Catalogue of Buddhist Scriptures

Abstract Long titles are an important phenomenon formed during the process of titling Buddhist classics that cannot be ignored. According to the Kaiyuan Shijiao Lu, from the Han Dynasty to the 18th year of the Kaiyuan era in the Tang Dynasty, the number of long sutra titles showed a year-by-year increasing trend, and their proportion among the total sutra titles of the same period also gradually increased. The causes for long sutra titles can be summarized into three aspects: first, Namer tended to use longer titles to convey richer information about the sutra; second, Buddhist sutra Namer hoped to disseminate Buddhism and its sutras more widely through long titles; third, transliterated words in the titles led to an increase in character count. After the emergence of long sutra titles and their becoming a trend, as a unique cultural phenomenon, they held significant meaning for the Buddhist classics themselves, for the titles of Apocryphal Literature, and for the naming of Taoist classics.