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Gāndhāri and the Early Chinese Buddhist Translations Reconsidered: the Case of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra

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Gāndhāri and the Early Chinese Buddhist Translations Reconsidered: the Case of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra Gāndhāri and the Early Chinese Buddhist Translations Reconsidered: The Case of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra Daniel Boucher Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 118, No. 4 (Oct. – Dec., 1998), pp. 471 – 506 GANDHARI AND THE EARLY CHINESE BUDDHIST TRANSLATIONS RECONSIDERED:THE CASE OF THE SADDHARMAPUNDARIKASUTRA DANIEL BOUCHER CORNELLUNIVERSITY Scholars have for several decades now assumed that most if not virtually all of the Indic texts transmittedto China in the first few centuries of the Common Era were written in a Northwest Middle Indic language widely known as Gfndhari. Much of the data for this hypothesis has derived from the reconstructedpronunciation of Chinese transcriptionsof Indian propernames and Buddhist technical terms contained in the early Chinese Buddhist translations. This paper, inspired by the recent brilliant work of Seishi Karashima,attempts to reexamine this assumption from another angle. A closer look at problems in the translation process itself reveals that the collaboration of the Chinese members of the early translationteams may have been instrumentalin formulatingthe final shape these render- ings assumed. Such a realization will require us to reassess our use of these documents for the history of Indian Buddhist languages and texts. I. THE GANDHARI HYPOTHESIS such a process into account and to raise some caveats with regard to our understanding of the underlying IT HAS FOR SOMETIME NOW been assumed that many Indian language of these translations. if not most of the early Chinese Buddhist translations Until quite recently, there were few thorough exami- derive from originals written in Northwest Middle Indic. nations of the early Chinese Buddhist translations.With A number of scholars have attempted to show that the the exception of a few brave Japanese souls, scholars of reconstructedpronunciation of many of the Chinese tran- both Indian and Chinese Buddhism have generally been scriptions of Indian proper names and Buddhist tech- put off by the difficult if not at times impenetrable lan- nical terms in these translations reflect a Prakrit source guage of these texts. Moreover, there has been little to text that has much in common with, and perhaps is even attract scholars to these abstruse texts. While the trans- identical to, a language now widely known as Gandhari. lations of the first few centuries of the Common Era While there can be little doubt that the Chinese trans- had considerable impact on the gentry Buddhism that lators often heard recitations of Indic texts that were emerged after the collapse of the Han dynasty, they were heavily Prakritized,containing a numberof features that subsequently eclipsed by the translationsof Kumarajiva coincide with what we know of the Gandharilanguage, and his successors. It was these later translationsthat had it is not as certain that they saw such texts. This is to a greater impact on the development of the indigenous say, what has not been sufficiently taken into consider- schools of Chinese Buddhism. ation is the fundamentallyoral/aural nature of the trans- From the other side of the Himalayas, Indologists have lation process in China. This paper is an attempt to take generally questioned-with good reason-the reliability of these first attemptedtranslations as documents for the study of Indian Buddhism. The majorityof our historical I have been fortunateto receive the kind advice and sug- data-prefaces, colophons, early bibliographies, etc.- gestionsof severalscholars who readan earlierversion of this paint a rather dismal picture of the earliest translation I paper. wouldlike at thispoint to extendmy profoundgratitude teams in China. The Indian or Central Asian missionary to Victor H. Mair and Seishi Karashimafor comments on things is frequently described as having little or no skill in Chinese;to KlausWille and Jens-Uwe Hartmann on variousIn- Chinese; it is virtually certain that practically no Chinese dianmatters; to RichardSalomon and G6rard Fussman for very of this early period commanded any Indian literary lan- usefulsuggestions on Gandharimatters; and to JanNattier and guage; and it is not at all clear how these texts were PaulHarrsion for miscellaneoussuggestions throughout. All of copied, transmitted,or preserved. As a result, it has been thesescholars contributed greatly in helpingme to avoida num- universally accepted that the translationsof later Indian- ber of mistakes; those that remain are where I strayed alone. trained specialists such as Xuanzang, as well as the very 471 472 Journal of the American Oriental Society 118.4 (1998) literal renderings in Tibetan, are far more trustworthyin transcriptionsand the language of the Dutreuil de Rhins absence of an Indic original. manuscript of the Dharmapada that had been discov- Be that as it may, the early translations are currently ered in the late nineteenth century.5Nevertheless, there enjoying an upsurge of scholarly attention. This new- were unresolved problems that kept Waldschmidt from found interest has come from two camps. Sinologists, led drawing firm conclusions concerning the nature of the in the West by Erik Ziircher, have sought to mine these underlying Prakrit. texts as repositories of early Chinese vernacular lan- The first attempt to identify and describe the features guage. The fundamentally oral/auralnature of the trans- of the Middle Indic idiom that appears in some of these lation process in China-a process that will be discussed early Chinese transcriptions as well as in a number of in detail below-has left remnantsof what appearsto be Central Asian languages is the groundbreaking article the spoken idiom of Luoyang during the first few cen- by H. W. Bailey entitled "GGndhari," by which name turies C.E.1Indologists, on the other hand, have been scholars have continued to identify this Northwest drawn to these texts as early representatives of Maha- Prakrit.6 For Bailey, this Middle Indic language encom- yana Buddhist sitras drafted at a time thought to be passed the Asokan kharosthi edicts from Shahbazgarhi ratherclose, by Indian standards,to that of their compo- and Mansehra,7the various donative inscriptions from sition. In fact, these early translationspredate our oldest northwest India,8 the Dharmapada found near Khotan Sanskritmanuscripts by as many as four or five centuries (the Dutreuil de Rhins manuscript),9the documents from and may well reveal an earlier redaction of the Indian the ancient Shanshan kingdom found at Niya and Lou- textual tradition.In addition, it is also believed that these lan,10 and the miscellaneous traces preserved in Central early translationsmay contain clues concerning the Indic Asian and Chinese sources. language of transmission. Given the fact that almost all Since the publication of Bailey's article, attention paid of our extant Indic language materialsdate from a period to this language has steadily increased. In 1962 John when Sanskritization had already profoundly reshaped Brough published a masterful study of the Gandhari their idiom, these early Chinese sources may be one of Dharmapada which thoroughly discussed all aspects of our few windows into their earlier Middle Indic stage. the discovery, publication, and language of the manu- script as well as its relationship to other versions of the in 1914 Paul Pelliot had surveyed the tran- Already text. In discussing the broader role of Gandhari Prakrit of names in the Chinese translationsof scriptions proper in the transmission of Buddhist texts, Brough also ad- the Milindapaiha in order to reconstruct their under- vanced the growing consensus that some early Chinese Indic forms.2 While Pelliot had noted similarities lying translations may have been translated from originals writ- between some of the names in the Chinese texts and forms originating in Northwest India, as well as the pos- sibility of Iranianinfluence, this was, in his own words, 5 Waldschmidt 1932, esp. pp. 231ff. "une etude provisoire." 6 1946. In the early 1930s Friedrich Weller and Ernst Wald- Bailey 7 Prior to article, the of the Asokan edicts schmidt turned their attention to the early fifth-century Bailey's language had received extensive such scholars as Johansson, Chinese translationof the Dirghagama.3Weller examined analysis by Senart, Biihler, and Woolner. For a systematic description of thirty-six transcriptions from the fifteenth sutra of the the language of the kharosthi edicts, see Hultzsch 1925, Dirghdgama, noting that their reconstructedpronuncia- lxxxiv-xcix. The of Asokan studies that has since accu- tion showed many features closer to Prakritthan to San- corpus mulated is now quite large, constituting something of a sub- skrit, though he hesitated to label the specific idiom. field in its own right. Waldschmidt investigated an even larger body of tran- 8 On the language of these inscriptions, see Konow 1929, scriptions from the nineteenth sutra (the Mahdsamdja- xcv-cxv. important contributions have since been made sutra).4 He was perhaps the first to notice similarities Many toward some of the problems posed by these epi- between the reconstructed language of these Chinese clarifying graphs,particularly by H. W. Bailey, GerardFussman, and Rich- ard Salomon; see the bibliography in Fussman 1989, 488-98. 1See Ziircher 1977 and 1991. 9 For a list of the early studies on the linguistic problems of 2 Pelliot 1914. this text, see Brough 1962, viii-x. 3 Weller 1930 and Waldschmidt 1932, esp. pp. 226-49. 10 Boyer et al. 1920-29 and Burrow 1937. See also the rather 4 A revised edition of this text and a discussion of its lan- comprehensive list of kharosthi text/Gandhari Prakrit related guage in light of fifty more years of research can be found in publications focusing on finds from Chinese Turkestan (Xin- Waldschmidt 1980. jiang) in Lin 1996. BOUCHER:Gandhdri and the Early Chinese Buddhist Translations Reconsidered 473 ten in Gandhari.1 Brough was prudently cautious in his described as the impact of a lingua franca, a common remarks, recognizing that very few texts had been sys- language shared by speakers of diverse language groups tematically studied with this problem in mind.
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