摩訶衍, great vehicle, is the body of teaching Yangshan announces. Blyth prints the Japanese sound “Makaen” in the koan line while writing “Mahayana” freely in his own prose on the facing page. The Mu archetype: an English reading attested, a Japanese cipher printed.
The confrontation
The dictionary's band
Attested band verbatim from the dictionary entry 摩訶衍
- great vehicle
- the great conveyance
Entry Explanation (verbatim)
The great vehicle is a named body of teaching that Chan masters announce, quote, test, and sometimes declare insufficient. Baizhang Huaihai gives the corpus's direct word-by-word gloss: 'mahā means great; yāna means vehicle' (摩訶是大義，衍是乘義).
Blyth knew better
Blyth knew better
Makaen (na) is the representation of the sound of Mahayana
Zen and Zen Classics, Volume 4: Mumonkan, p. 183
On the facing page Blyth writes “Mahayana” freely in his own prose and glosses the cipher himself, yet in the koan line he prints the Japanese sound “Makaen” of the Chinese transcription of the Sanskrit. This is the Mu archetype exactly: the dictionary attests an English reading, and the master's word is delivered as a Japanese cipher while the English stands available a page over.
The literal reading
Yangshan announces 摩訶衍法, the Dharma of the Great Vehicle, and declares it beyond the four propositions and the hundred negations. 摩訶衍 is the Chinese transcription of Sanskrit mahāyāna; the corpus glosses it directly, 摩訶是大義，衍是乘義, mahā means great and yāna means vehicle. The band is plain English: the great vehicle, the great conveyance. It is a named teaching, not an untranslatable sound.
The alteration
Blyth leaves the announced teaching as the Japanese sound “Makaen.” Where the dictionary attests an English reading, an untranslated transliteration is outside the band, and the cipher is a Japanese sound of a Chinese transcription in a Chinese koan, so it is load-bearing, not apparatus. The line names the Great Vehicle and then puts it beyond all propositions; rendering the name itself as an opaque sound quietly reinforces the mystery the koan is staging, rather than translating the word the master actually spoke. That “Mahayana” sits in his own prose on the facing page is what makes the koan-line choice visible as a choice.