The Proto-History of Buddhist Translation:

From Gāndhārī and Pāli to Han-Dynasty Chinese

Jan Nattier (jnattier@gmail.com)

Conference on Translation and Transmission
Boulder, Colorado, 2 June 2017

Buddhist texts in the Indian cultural realm: some basic terms and concepts

Prakrit (< prakṛta “natural, unrefined”) vs. Sanskrit (< saṁskṛta “put together, elegant, refined”)
• = Middle Indic vernacular languages (also called MIA, “Middle Indo-Āryan”)

Pāli: pāli-bhāsā (in commentaries, not in the canonical texts) “the pāli language”
• pāli “[canonical] texts” (NB: not the name of a language!)

nikāya “collection, group”:

• often translated as “school,” but perhaps better thought of as “ordination lineages,” some but not
all of which developed distinctive doctrinal profiles
• distinguished, above all, by the possession of their own collections of sacred texts,
in particular a distinctive version of the Vinaya

Gāndhārī (the language of Gandhāra [northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan], but also used far
beyond this region):
• see the ongoing dictionary and bibliography being compiled by Stefan Baums and Andrew Glass
(2002- ) at gandhari.org
• for a general introduction to the remarkable findings in this language see Salomon 1999

Skt. pustaka (Pāli potthaka) –> pothi “book, text”:

• according to Mayrhofer (vol. 2, p. 319) a “culture-word” borrowed from the Iranian world

Buddhist translators in China: the first generations (2nd century CE)

Three periods in Chinese Buddhist translation history according to de Jong 1968 (based on the places of origin
of foreign translators):
(1) from the beginning [mid-2nd c.] until 265 CE: mostly from the “Western Regions” 西域 (i.e., Central
Asia)
(2) from 265-479 CE: mostly from Kashmir
(3) 479-618 CE: mostly from the Indian subcontinent

Ethnic background of the translators translators during the first of these periods:
• Ān 安 (Parthian)
• Zhī 支 (Yuezhi)
• Kāng 康 (Sogdian)

Translators active in Luoyang during the 2nd century CE and their works:
• Ān Shìgāo 安世高, c. 147-168 CE: exclusively non-Mahāyāna texts, generally considered to reflect a
Sarvāstivādin tradition; some but not all containing signs of having been translated from Gāndhārī
– translation policy: translated Buddhist terms (karma, nirvāṇa, etc.), transcribed proper names
– style: very clunky/rough, no literary appeal (translates verses as prose), retains much of the
Indian word order
• Lokakṣema (Zhī Lóujiāchèn 支婁迦讖) and his group, c. 179 CE: exclusively Mahāyāna texts, again
with some indications of Gāndhārī sources
– translation policy: transcribed virtually all Buddhist terms (including upāyakauśalya,
sarvajña, and anuttarasamyaksambodhi!) as well as proper names
– style: very inelegant, long (un-Chinese) sentences bristling with multi-syllabic foreign terms
– completely omits the phrase “Thus have I heard” at the beginning of sūtras
• Ān Xuán 安玄 and Yán Fótiào 嚴佛調 (var. 嚴浮調), c. 180 CE: just one (Mahāyāna) text
– translation policy: translated virtually all proper names, as well as Buddhist terms (e.g., Śrāvastī
as 聞物 wén wù “hear” + “things”, cf. Tib. mnyan yod; 各佛 gè fó “individual Buddha” (for
pratyekabuddha)
– style: not at all literary, sometimes difficult to understand
and one translator from the beginning of the 3rd century:
• Kāng Mèngxiáng 康孟詳 : sole surviving work is (part of) a biography of the Buddha
– translation policy: translated many but not all proper names, as well as Buddhist terms
– first translator to use regular unrhymed meter (5-character “verse”) to translate Indian verse passages
– beginnings of a more literary style in Chinese translations

References

Brough, John. The Gāndhārī Dharmapada. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Haberman, David L., and Jan Nattier. “What Ever Became of Translation?” Religious Studies News, vol.
11, no. 4 (November 1996), p. 13.
Hinüber, Oskar von. “Pāli as an Artificial Language.” Indologica Taurinensia, vol. 10 (1982), pp. 133-
140.
__________. A Handbook of Pāli Literature. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996.
Jong, J. W. de. “Buddha’s Word in China.” 28th George Ernest Morrison Lecture (given in 1967).
Canberra, 1968.
Lancaster, Lewis R., and Sung-bae Park, eds. The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
Lenz, Timothy. Gandhāran Avadānas: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments 1–3 and 21 and
Supplementary Fragments A–C. Gandhāran Buddhist Texts 6. Seattle/London: University of
Washington Press, 2010. [see the introduction for an accessible discussion of the very distinctive
genre of avadānas in Gāndhārī]
Mayrhofer, Manfred. Kurzgefasstes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen = A concise
etymological Sanskrit dictionary. 4 vols. Heidelberg : C. Winter, 1956-1980.
Nattier, Jan. "Church Language and Vernacular Language in Central Asian Buddhism." Numen, vol. 37
(1990), pp. 195-219.
__________. “The Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa): A Review of Four English
Translations.” Buddhist Literature, vol. 2 (2000), pp. 234-258.
__________. A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations: Texts from the Eastern Han 東漢
and Three Kingdoms 三國 Periods. Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica, X. Tokyo:
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__________. “Now You Hear It, Now You Don’t: The Phrase ‘Thus Have I Heard’ in Early Chinese
Buddhist Translations.” In Tansen Sen, ed., Buddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material,
Intellectual and Cultural Exchange, vol. 1 (Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, 2014),
pp. 39-64.
Norman, K. R. “The Dialects in Which the Buddha Preached.” In Heinz Bechert, ed., The Language of
the Earliest Buddhist Tradition/Die Sprache der ältesten buddhistischen Überlieferung,
Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, Dritte Folge, No.
117 (1980), pp. 61-77.
__________. Pāli Literature, Including the Canonical Literature in Prakrit and Sanskrit of All the
Hīnayāna Schools of Buddhism. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 1983.
Salomon, Richard. Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra: The British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments.
Seattle: University of Washington Press/British Library, 1999.