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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ICPBS Digital Cllections 国際仏教学大学院大学研究紀要 Journal of the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies 第 15 号（平成 23 年) Vol. XV, 2011 On a Possible Origin of the « Ten Suchnesses » List in Kumārajīvaʼs Translation of the Lotus Sutra Jean-Noël Robert 国際仏教学大学院大学研究紀要第 15 号 平成 23年5月 143 On a Possible Origin of the « Ten Suchnesses » List in Kumārajīvaʼs Translation of the Lotus Sutra Jean-Noël Robert A Hubert Durt, en toute amitié et reconnaissance One of the most vexed questions concerning the Chinese translation of the Lotus Sutra made by Kumārajīva and his « workshop » at the beginning of the fifth century is probably the origin of the passage on the « Ten Suchnesses » 十如是 (ch. shí rúshì, jpn. jū-nyoze). The wide discrepancy between the Chinese text and the Sanskrit original has been intriguing monks and scholars for centuries and led them to suggest a number of solutions which have mostly done little to solve the riddle. Some sort of consensus seems to be prevailing about the probability of either a defect or variant in the manuscript used by Kumārajīva, or of his knowledge of oral or esoteric traditions about that passage that he would have reflected in his own translation. Everybody seems to concur on the fact that, whatever be the correct solution, the problem lies in translating the Sanskrit original into Chinese, the issue being so to say bilateral. Either the Sanskrit text the Chinese translators had under their eyes was defective in some way, or their own understanding was faulty, with barely the third possibility of an interference from some unknown exegetical tradition, perchance a Central Asian one. I shall venture here to offer another explanation that does not take into account the sole bilateral relation between the Sanskrit text and Kumārajīvaʼs translation (406 AD), but a trilateral, or triangular, relationship involving the work of Kumārajīvaʼs predecessor, Dharmaraksa ̇ (286 AD). The gist of my explanation is that Kumārajīva endeavoured to ― 72 ― 144 On a Possible Origin of the « Ten Suchnesses » List(Robert) preserve the structure of Dharmaraksaʼs version while bringing it closer to ̇ the Sanskrit original, thus attempting to quadrate the circle, if I may go on with geometrical comparisons, and giving the posterity a puzzling result from the philological point of view, although most fertile in the history of Buddhist thought. It should be first emphasized that Kumārajīvaʼs respect for Dharma- raksaʼs text does not appear in this only passage, but pervades his whole ̇ translation. Any research on his translation practice ought to consider such a proeminent characteristic before pronouncing any judgment. As a clear recognition of this respect, or reliance, is primordial for the acceptability of the demonstration I am proposing here, I shall first illustrate it by a very few concrete examples taken from the same Lotus Sutra. As Sanskrit and Chinese are so widely diverging languages, both by their accidence (or the lack thereof in Chinese) and their syntax, it would seem almost impossible for two different translators working independent- ly from one another to achieve the same pattern for any given sentence, unless they both decided to produce a crib or a word-for-word gloss, which is clearly not the case here. It is true that we can feel a definite uneasiness with Sanskrit in Dharmaraksaʼs awkward renderings, decisively contrast- ̇ ing with Kumārajīvaʼs often bewildering efficiency and accuracy, but still, even when he does not seem to understand quite well the original, his Chinese is mostly idiomatic, with a richness of vocabulary superceding by far Kumārajīva. Thus, without slipping into pseudo-scientific statistics, we can be sure that the probability that two scholars working one without being aware of the otherʼs work would produce quite different textual results. Obviously, this is not the case with Dharmaraksa and Kumārajīva. ̇ Even if we could find only a few cases of overlapping sentence patterns in each chapter, or in the whole text, that would already be sufficient evidence for the possibility of a textual influence from the former on the latter, but the fact is that such an overwhelming majority of Kumārajīvaʼs text ― 71 ― On a Possible Origin of the « Ten Suchnesses » List(Robert) 145 parallels his predecessorʼs translation that it is impossible to assess his work without referring to Dharmaraksa. ̇ Sometimes the parallel is almost perfect, Kumārajīva being content to replace a Chinese word by another closer to the original. Thus, in Chapter Three, for the Sanskrit : asmākam evaiso ´parādho naiva bhagavato ̇ ´parādhah1 « It is our own fault, not indeed the Blessed Oneʼs fault » , ̇ Dharmaraksa has : 自我等咎 非如來也2, which seems quite satisfactory, ̇ but Kumārajīva, while preserving the general meaning of the passage, renders an only slightly different sentence : 是我等咎 非世(也3, where the changes from rùlái (tathāgata) to shìzūn (bhagavat) and from zì (ʻfromʼ, implying an ablative in Sanskrit) to shì (ʻto beʼ, more faithful to the nominal sentence in the original) are mere technical improvements, where it is to be noticed that the alternating ʻemptyʼ and ʻfullʼ words in Chinese are equally distributed, Kumārajīva just filling differently the slots, so to say, defined by Dharmaraksaʼs text. ̇ Even when he corrects Dharmaraksaʼs obvious mistakes, Kumārajīva ̇ tries to keep as conservative a stance as possible in his use of the red brush. We have a good example of his tactfulness in this passage in Chapter Four : atha khalu sa daridra-purusa idam vacanam śrutv’āścaryādbhuta-prāpto ̇ ̇ ̇ bhavet | sa utthāya tasmāt prthivī-pradeśād yena daridra-vīthī tenopasam- ̇ ̇ krāmed āhāra-cīvara-paryesti-hetoh4 « Then the poor man, on hearing ̇̇ ̇ those words, would be seized with wonder, and raising from the ground, he 1 Wogihara, p. 59, l. 15 (I simplify some of the diacritics) I refer to the standard Ogiwara-Tsuchida edition of the Sanskrit unless it is necessary to quote other editions. 2 T IX p.73b (15). I leave a blank between each syntagm of four Chinese characters to emphasize the close correspondence of both translators. 3 T IX p.10c (7). 4 Wogihara, p. 99, l. 7-9. The conditional mood in my rendering follows the Sanskrit, where the parable is presented as a fiction : « suppose that… » ― 70 ― 146 On a Possible Origin of the « Ten Suchnesses » List(Robert) would go to some poor village in order to beg for food and clothing. » Dharmaraksaʼs version here is almost faultless : ̇ 窮子怪之 得未曾有 則從坐ค 行詣貧里 求衣索食5 : « The poor son was amazed like never before and raised from his seat to go to some poor village to beg for clothing and look for food. » It must be stated beforehand that Dharmaraksa misunderstood the ̇ general backdrop of this scene : he translates the passage as if the father and his son had a direct conversation between themselves, though it is actually mediated by the houselordʼs servants. With such premisses, it should be only natural that he imagines the son as raising from a seat where he would have been sitting while speaking to his father6. Kumārajīva here again corrects his elder tactfully, while following closely his sentence pattern : 窮子歡喜 得未曾有 從地而ค 往至貧里 以求衣食7 : « The poor son rejoiced as never before and raised from the ground to go to some poor village in order to beg for clothing and food. » In passing, he clarifies the meaning of the first verb to ʻrejoiceʼ, as Dharmaraksaʼs ʻamazedʼ can be ̇ interpreted negatively, but we can see he followed the same line as his predecessor in translating the same Sanskrit word daridra by two distinct Chinese words 窮 and 貧. Out of five segments, one is identical8, four follow the same grammatical pattern and three end with the same character, which definitely excludes any coincidence. 5 T. IX, p.80b (26-27). 6 Though Dharmaraksa had previously written that the son had indeed ̇ « collapsed on the ground » 躄地 (p. 8b (18)), he has him brought afterwards by the servants in front of his father (侍者執之 俱詣長者)(p. 8b (20)). 7 T. IX, p.17a (6). 8 The famous locution 得未曾有, that I choose to translate as an adverbial locution of degree, perhaps taken from the spoken language of the time and the ancestor of the modern Chinese construction. ― 69 ― On a Possible Origin of the « Ten Suchnesses » List(Robert) 147 Even when the correction to be done is minimal, it is often very interesting to superpose two parallel sentences to see how neatly Kumārajīva elaborates on Dharmaraksa, as if he saw his text as a template ̇ for his own translation and acknowledged, so to say, his right of primogeniture. Thus, in this passage of Chapter Three, for instance, the near perfect concordance of the two translators is all the more conspicuous that Kumārajīva seems to enjoy doing variations on his predecessorʼs pattern, clarifying many details as he does so : Sanskrit : āścaryādbhuta-prāpto’smi bhagavann audbilya-prāpta idam evam- ̇ rūpam bhagavato ´ntikād ghosam śrutvā.9 « I am overcome with wonder ̇ ̇ ̇ and bliss, o Blessed One, having heard such a speech from the Blessed One. » Dharmaraksa10 : 今聞大34此法要 心加歡喜 得未曾有 ̇ Kumārajīva11 : 今從丗( 聞此法音 心懷踊躍 得未曾有 It should be perfectly clear here that Kumārajīva is relying on Dharmaraksaʼs text as much as on the Sanskrit original, as the words for ̇ ʻnowʼ 今 or ʻ(my) mindʼ 心 are not in the Sanskrit text, and the three words meaning ʻmarvelingʼ and ʻrejoicingʼ in Sanskrit are translated by only one compound in Chinese. Two independent translators could not have reached such a symmetrical rendering.

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