TITLE
Hridaya in this book refers to a Sanskrit version of the Heart Sutra or versions such as Tibetan that have derived from it; the word sutra is seldom used in its title.
SANSKRIT
When Sanskrit terms are treated as English words in the main text — that is, when they have been adopted by Webster’s dictionary or are commonly familiar to American readers of Buddhist-related materials — they are anglicized so that diacritical marks are omitted (for example: prajna and sutra). The widely used IAST system (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration) is used in italics when the meanings of the words are examined (for example: prajñā and sūtra). IAST romanization is also used in the sutra texts presented in the section called “Texts for Comparison” in the appendices. Compounds are divided except when the original versions transcribed or quoted in “Texts for Comparison” present them in an undivided form.
No Sanskrit words except proper nouns (and Sanskrit words that appear at the beginning of English sentences) are capitalized in this book.
Diacritical marks are omitted in the Notes and Bibliography. Gate is spelled gaté in “Heart of Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom” (translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Joan Halifax) so as not to be pronounced as in “gateway” by some readers who may not be familiar with the text.
CHINESE
The pinyin system of transliteration is used. In this book romanized Chinese words are spelled in two ways: When they represent the transliteration of lines or phrases following a text given in ideographs, they are divided by syllables (i.e., bo re bo luo mi duo). Otherwise, two or more syllables are put together as compounds (i.e., bore boluomiduo) that correspond to the original Sanskrit words.
In the following list, the right column gives approximate English pronunciations of potentially misread letters used in the pinyin system (shown in the left column):
| c | ts |
| q | ch |
| x | sh |
| zh | j |
For Chinese ideographs the unabridged form is used.
The ideographs of names indicated in the notes with asterisks (*) are listed in “Names in Ideography” in the appendices in order to assist readers of any East Asian languages.
JAPANESE
Macrons are omitted in the main text. For ideographs, the unabbreviated form is used.
DATES
This book follows the lunar calendar, used traditionally in East Asia. The first to third months correspond to spring, and the other seasons follow in three-month periods.
AGE
This book follows the traditional East Asian way of reckoning a person’s age, where he or she is one year old at birth and gains a year on New Year’s Day.