Reading section 35

The dates assigned to the translators offer little ground for scepticism. The exactitude of the Chinese in such matters is well attested, and there is a general agreement between several authorities such as the Catalogues of the Tripitaka, the memoirs known as Kao-Sêng Chuan with their continuations, and the chapter on Buddhist books in the Sui annals. There are no signs of a desire to claim improbable accuracy or improbable antiquity. Many works are said to be by unknown translators, doubtful authorship is frankly discussed, and the movement of literature and thought indicated is what we should expect. We have first fragmentary and incomplete translations belonging to both the Mahâ and Hînayâna: then a series of more complete translations beginning about the fifth century in which the great Hînayâna texts are conspicuous: then a further series of improved translations in which the Hînayâna falls into the background and the works of Asanga and Vasubandhu come to the front. This evidently reflects the condition of Buddhist India about 500-650 A.D., just as the translations of the eighth century reflect its later and tantric phase.

But can Chinese texts be accepted as reasonably faithful reproductions of the Indian originals whose names they bear, and some of which have been lost? This question is really double; firstly, did the translators reproduce with fair accuracy the Indian text before them, and secondly, since Indian texts often exist in several recensions, can we assume that the work which the translators knew under a certain Sanskrit name is the work known to us by that name? In reply it must be said that most Chinese translators fall short of our standards of accuracy. In early times when grammars and dictionaries were unknown the scholarly rendering of foreign books was a difficult business, for professional interpreters would usually be incapable of understanding a philosophic treatise. The method often followed was that an Indian explained the text to a literary Chinese, who recast the explanation in his own language. The many translations of the more important texts and the frequent description of the earlier ones as imperfect indicate a feeling that the results achieved were not satisfactory. Several so-called translators, especially Kumârajîva, gave abstracts of the Indian texts[761]. Others, like Dharmaraksha, who made a Chinese version of Aśvaghosha's Buddhacarita, so amplified and transposed the original that the result can hardly be called a translation[762]. Others combined different texts in one. Thus the work called Ta-o-mi-to-ching[763] consists of extracts taken from four previous translations of the Sukhâvatîvyûha and rearranged by the author under the inspiration of Avalokita to whom, as he tells us, he was wont to pray during the execution of his task. Others again, like Dharmagupta, anticipated a method afterwards used in Tibet, and gave a word for word rendering of the Sanskrit which is hardly intelligible to an educated Chinese. The later versions, _e.g._ those of Hsüan Chuang, are more accurate, but still a Chinese rendering of a lost Indian document cannot be accepted as a faithful representation of the original without a critical examination[764].

Often, however, the translator, whatever his weaknesses may have been, had before him a text differing in bulk and arrangement from the Pali and Sanskrit texts which we possess. Thus, there are four Chinese translations of works bearing some relation to the Dhammapada of the Pali Canon. All of these describe the original text as the compilation of Dharmatrâta, to whom is also ascribed the compilation of the Tibetan Udânavarga[765]. His name is not mentioned in connection with the Pali text, yet two of the Chinese translations are closely related to that text. The Fa-chü-ching[766] is a collection of verses translated in 224 A.D. and said to correspond with the Pali except that it has nine additional chapters and some additional stanzas. The Fa-chü-p'i-yü-ching[767] represents another edition of the same verses, illustrated by a collection of parables. It was translated between 290 and 306. The Ch'u-yao-ching[768], translated in 399, is a similar collection of verses and parables, but founded on another Indian work of much greater length. A revised translation containing only the verses was made between 980 and 1001[769]. They are said to be the same as the Tibetan Udâna, and the characteristics of this book, going back apparently to a Sanskrit original, are that it is divided into thirty-three chapters, and that though it contains about 300 verses found in Pali, yet it is not merely the Pali text plus additions, but an anthology arranged on a different principle and only partly identical in substance[770].

There can be little doubt that the Pali Dhammapada is one among several collections of verses, with or without an explanatory commentary of stories. In all these collections there was much common matter, both prose and verse, but some were longer, some shorter, some were in Pali and some in Sanskrit. Whereas the Chinese Dhammapada is longer than the Indian texts, the Chinese version of Milinda's Questions[771] is much shorter and omits books iv-vii. It was made between 317 and 420 A.D. and the inference is that the original Indian text received later additions.

A more important problem is this: what is the relation to the Pali Canon of the Chinese texts bearing titles corresponding to Dîrgha, Madhyama, Samyukta and Ekottara? These collections of sûtras do not call themselves Nikâya but A-han or Agama: the titles are translated as Ch'ang (long), Chung (medium), Tsa (miscellaneous) and Tseng-i, representing Ekottara rather than Anguttara[772]. There is hence _prima facie_ reason to suppose that these works represent not the Pali Canon, but a somewhat similar Sanskrit collection. That one or many Sanskrit works may have coexisted with a somewhat similar Pali work is clearly shown by the Vinaya texts, for here we have the Pali Canon and Chinese translations of five Sanskrit versions, belonging to different schools, but apparently covering the same ground and partly identical. For the Sûtra Pitaka no such body of evidence is forthcoming, but the Sanskrit fragments of the Samyuktâgama found near Turfan contain parts of six sûtras which are arranged in the same order as in the Chinese translation and are apparently the original from which it was made. It is noticeable that three of the four great Agamas were translated by monks who came from Tukhara or Kabul. Guṇabhadra, however, the translator of the Samyuktâgama, came from Central India and the text which he translated was brought from Ceylon by Fa-Hsien. It apparently belonged to the Abhayagiri monastery and not to the Mahâvihâra. Nanjio[773], however, states that about half of it is repeated in the Chinese versions of the Madhyama and Ekottara Agamas. It is also certain that though the Chinese Agamas and Pali Nikâyas contain much common matter, it is differently distributed[774].

There was in India a copious collection of sûtras, existing primarily as oral tradition and varying in diction and arrangement, but codified from time to time in a written form. One of such codifications is represented by the Pali Canon, at least one other by the Sanskrit text which was rendered into Chinese. With rare exceptions the Chinese translations were from the Sanskrit[775]. The Sanskrit codification of the sûtra literature, while differing from the Pali in language and arrangement, is identical in doctrine and almost identical in substance. It is clearly the product of the same or similar schools, but is it earlier or later than the Pali or contemporary with it? The Chinese translations merely fix the latest possible date. A portion of the Samyuktâgama (Nanjio, No. 547) was translated by an unknown author between 220 and 280. This is probably an extract from the complete work which was translated about 440, but it would be difficult to prove that the Indian original was not augmented or rearranged between these dates. The earliest translation of a complete Agama is that of the Ekottarâgama, 384 A.D. But the evidence of inscriptions[776] shows that works known as Nikâyas existed in the third century B.C. The Sanskrit of the Agamas, so far as it is known from the fragments found in Central Asia, does not suggest that they belong to this epoch, but is compatible with the theory that they date from the time of Kanishka of which if we know little, we can at least say that it produced much Buddhist Sanskrit literature. M. Sylvain Lévi has suggested that the later appearance of the complete Vinaya in Chinese is due to the late compilation of the Sanskrit original[777]. It seems to me that other explanations are possible. The early translators were clearly shy of extensive works and until there was a considerable body of Chinese monks, to what public would these theological libraries appeal? Still, if any indication were forthcoming from India or Central Asia that the Sanskrit Agamas were arranged or rearranged in the early centuries of our era, the late date of the Chinese translations would certainly support it. But I am inclined to think that the Nikâyas were rewritten in Sanskrit about the beginning of our era, when it was felt that works claiming a certain position ought to be composed in what had become the general literary language of India[778]. Perhaps those who wrote them in Sanskrit were hardly conscious of making a translation in our sense, but simply wished to publish them in the best literary form.

It seems probable that the Hinayanist portion of the Chinese Tripitaka is in the main a translation of the Canon of the Sarvastivâdins which must have consisted of:

(1) Four Agamas or Nikâyas only, for the Dhammapada is placed outside the Sutta Pitaka.

(2) A voluminous Vinaya covering the same ground as the Pali recension but more copious in legend and anecdote.

(3) An Abhidharma entirely different from the Pali works bearing this name.

It might seem to follow from this that the whole Pali Abhidharma and some important works such as the Thera-Therîgâthâ were unknown to the Hinayanists of Central Asia and Northern India in the early centuries of our era. But caution is necessary in drawing such inferences, for until recently it might have been said that the Sutta Nipâta also was unknown, whereas fragments of it in a Sanskrit version have now been discovered in Eastern Turkestan[779]. The Chinese editors draw a clear distinction between Hinayanist and Mahayanist scriptures. They exclude from the latter works analogous to the Pali Nikâyas and Vinaya, and also the Abhidharma of the Sarvâstivâdins. But the labours of Hsüan Chuang and I-Ching show that this does not imply the rejection of all these works by Mahayanists.

5

Buddhist literary activity has an interesting side aspect, namely the expedients used to transliterate Indian words, which almost provided the Chinese with an alphabet. To some extent Indian names, particularly proper names possessing an obvious meaning, are translated. Thus Asoka becomes Wu-yu, without sorrow: Aśvaghosha, Ma-ming or horse-voice, and Udyâna simply Yüan or park[780]. But many proper names did not lend themselves to such renderings and it was a delicate business to translate theological terms like Nirvâṇa and Samâdhi. The Buddhists did not perhaps invent the idea of using the Chinese characters so as to spell with moderate precision[781], but they had greater need of this procedure than other writers and they used it extensively[782] and with such variety of detail that though they invented some fifteen different syllabaries, none of them obtained general acceptance and Julien[783] enumerates 3000 Chinese characters used to represent the sounds indicated by 47 Indian letters. Still, they gave currency[784] to the system known as _fan-ch'ieh_ which renders a syllable phonetically by two characters, the final of the first and the initial of the second not being pronounced. Thus, in order to indicate the sound Chung, a Chinese dictionary will use the two characters _chu yung_, which are to be read together as _Ch ung_.

The transcriptions of Indian words vary in exactitude and the later are naturally better. Hsüan Chuang was a notable reformer and probably after his time Indian words were rendered in Chinese characters as accurately as Chinese words are now transcribed in Latin letters. It is true that modern pronunciation makes such renderings as Fo seem a strange distortion of the original. But it is an abbreviation of Fo-t'o and these syllables were probably once pronounced something like Vut-tha[785]. Similarly Wên-shu-shih-li[786] seems a parody of Manjuśri. But the evidence of modern dialects shows that the first two syllables may have been pronounced as Man-ju. The pupil was probably taught to eliminate the obscure vowel of _shih_, and _li_ was taken as the nearest equivalent of _ri_, just as European authors write _chih_ and _tzŭ_ without pretending that they are more than conventional signs for Chinese sounds unknown to our languages. It was certainly possible to transcribe not only names but Sanskrit prayers and formulæ in Chinese characters, and though many writers sneer at the gibberish chanted by Buddhist priests yet I doubt if this ecclesiastical pronunciation, which has changed with that of the spoken language, is further removed from its original than the Latin of Oxford from the speech of Augustus.

Sanskrit learning flourished in China for a considerable period. In the time of the T'ang, the clergy numbered many serious students of Indian literature and the glossaries included in the Tripitaka show that they studied the original texts. Under the Sung dynasty (A.D. 1151) was compiled another dictionary of religious terms[787] and the study of Sanskrit was encouraged under the Yüan. But the ecclesiastics of the Ming produced no new translations and apparently abandoned the study of the original texts which was no longer kept alive by the arrival of learned men from India. It has been stated that Sanskrit manuscripts are still preserved in Chinese monasteries, but no details respecting such works are known to me. The statement is not improbable in itself[788] as is shown by the Library which Stein discovered at Tun-huang and by the Japanese palm-leaf manuscripts which came originally from China. A few copies of Sanskrit sûtras printed in China in the Lanja variety of the Devanâgari alphabet have been brought to Europe[789]. Max Müller published a facsimile of part of the Vajracchedikâ obtained at Peking and printed in Sanskrit from wooden blocks. The place of production is unknown, but the characters are similar to those used for printing Sanskrit in Tibet, as may be seen from another facsimile (No. 3) in the same work. Placards and pamphlets containing short invocations in Sanskrit and Tibetan are common in Chinese monasteries, particularly where there is any Lamaistic influence, but they do not imply that the monks who use them have any literary acquaintance with those languages.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 708: [Chinese: ] For an account of some of the scriptures here mentioned see chap. XX.]

[Footnote 709: _A catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka_. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1893. An index to the Tokyo edition has been published by Fujii. Meiji XXXI (1898). See too Forke, _Katalog des Pekinger Tripitaka_, 1916.]

[Footnote 710: [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 711: Tan-i-ching [Chinese: ]. Some of the works classed under Tan-i-ching appear to exist in more than one form, _e.g._ Nanjio, Nos. 674 and 804.]

[Footnote 712: These characters are commonly read Pojo by Chinese Buddhists but the Japanese reading Hanṇya shows that the pronunciation of the first character was Pan.]

[Footnote 713: Vajracchedikâ or [Chinese: ] Chin Kang.]

[Footnote 714: Winternitz (_Gesch. Ind. Lit_. II. i. p. 242) states on the authority of Takakusu that this work is the same as the Gaṇḍavyûha. See also Pelliot in _J. A_. 1914, II. pp. 118-21. The Gaṇḍavyûha is probably an extract of the Avatamsaka.]

[Footnote 715: Nos. 113 and 114 [Chinese: ] and [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 716: _Catena of Buddhist Scriptures_, pp. 160 ff.]

[Footnote 717: The longer Sukhâvatîvyûha is placed in the Ratnakûta class.]

[Footnote 718: The Sûtra of Kuan-yin with the thousand hands and eyes is very popular and used in most temples. Nanjio, No. 320.]

[Footnote 719: No. 399 [Chinese: ] and 530 [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 720: Said to have been revealed to Asanga by Maitreya. No. 1170.]

[Footnote 721: [Chinese: ] No. 1087. It has nothing to do with the Pali Sûtra of the same name. Digha, I.]

[Footnote 722: See below for an account of it.]

[Footnote 723: _Record of Buddhist Practices_, p. 20.]

[Footnote 724: See Oldenberg, _Vinaya_, vol. I. pp. xxiv-xlvi.]

[Footnote 725: See Watters, _Yüan Chwang_, I. p. 227. The five schools are given as Dharmagupta, Mahîs'âsika, Sarvâstivâdin, Kâ'syapîya and Mahâsanghika. For the last Vatsiputra or Sthavira is sometimes substituted.]

[Footnote 726: _Record of Buddhist Practices_, p. 8.]

[Footnote 727: The Chinese word lun occurs frequently in them, but though it is used to translate Abhidharma, it is of much wider application and means discussion of Śâstra.]

[Footnote 728: See Watters, _Yüan Chwang_, I, pp. 355 ff.]

[Footnote 729: Nos. 1179, 1190, 1249.]

[Footnote 730: For a discussion of this literature see Takakusu on the Abhidharma Literature of the Sarvâstivâdins, _J. Pali Text Society_, 1905, pp. 67 ff.]

[Footnote 731: Nanjio, Cat. Nos. 1273, 1275, 1276, 1277, 1292, 1281, 1282, 1296, 1317. This last work was not translated till the eleventh century.]

[Footnote 732: Nanjio, Cat. Nos. 1263, 1267 and 1269.]

[Footnote 733: See Takakusu's study of these translations in _B.E.F.E.O._ 1904, pp. 1 ff. and pp. 978 ff.]

[Footnote 734: Nanjio, Cat. Nos. 1321, 1353, 1365, 1439.]

[Footnote 735: [Chinese: ] No. 1490.]

[Footnote 736: [Chinese: ] No. 1661. For more about the Patriarchs see the next chapter.]

[Footnote 737: [Chinese: ] No. 1524, written A.D. 1006.]

[Footnote 738: [Chinese: ] No. 1482.]

[Footnote 739: [Chinese: ] No. 1640.]

[Footnote 740: [Chinese: ] and [Chinese: ]. Nos. 1634 and 1594.]

[Footnote 741: See for some account of it Masson-Oursel's article in _J.A._ 1915, I. pp. 229-354.]

[Footnote 742: [Chinese: ] by [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 743: See chap. XX on the Mahayanist canon in India.]

[Footnote 744: It is described at the beginning as Ta Ming San Tsang, but strictly speaking it must be No. 12 of the list, as it contains a work said to have been written about 1622 A.D. (p. 468).]

[Footnote 745: Thus the Emperor Jên Tsung ordered the works of Ch'i Sung [Chinese: ] to be admitted to the Canton in 1062.]

[Footnote 746: Taken from Nanjio's Catalogue, p. xxvii.]

[Footnote 747: Ch'ien-Lung is said to have printed the Tripitaka in four languages, Chinese, Tibetan, Mongol and Manchu, the whole collection filling 1392 vols. See Möllendorf in China Branch, _J.A.S._ xxiv. 1890, p. 28.]

[Footnote 748: But according to another statement the southern recension was not the imperial collection begun in 1368 but a private edition now lost. See Nanjio, Cat. p. xxiii.]

[Footnote 749: See for the complete list Nanjio, Cat. p. xxvii. Those named above are (_a_) [Chinese: ], [Chinese: ], [Chinese: ], Nos. 1483, 1485, 1487, and (_b_) [Chinese: ], No. 1612. For the date of the first see Maspéro in _B.E.F.E.O._ 1910, p. 114. There was a still earlier catalogue composed by Tao-an in 374 of which only fragments have been preserved. See Pelliot in _T'oung Pao_, XIX. 1920, p. 258.]

[Footnote 750: For the Korean copy now in Japan, see Courant, _Bibliographie coréenne_, vol. III. pp. 215-19.]

[Footnote 751: See Nanjio, Cat. p. xxii.]