Reopening the Maitreya-files – Two almost identical early Maitreya sūtra translations in the Chinese Canon: Wrong attributions and text-historical entanglements
The vocabulary of the twin Maitreya sūtras
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| The vocabulary of the twin Maitreya sūtras
By means of careful investigation of the results obtained through electronic searches, a Chinese Buddhist translation might be success fully at tributed to a particular translator on the basis of its vocabu lary. I have extensively investigated all the vocabulary of the fi rst section of the twin Maitreya texts 18 within the other trans- lations of the Chinese Canon. 19 Basically every term or formula tion appearing in the twin Maitreya texts as well as at least in one other translation was taken into account. Those formulations that appear over sixty times were left aside, as their connection with a particu- lar translator or group of transla tors cannot be established. I have then catego rized the texts in which the terms are found according to their transla tor, if known, or to the epoch of their translation. In a further step the texts are arranged in their chrono logical order, and set in relation to the Maitreya text. These terminological investigations reveal that a great number of the linguistic features of the Ekottarika-āgama Maitreya text and the Maitreya sūtra no. 453 – both specifi c Buddhist termini as well as common language expressions – are not typical for 17 The fi nal results of my ongoing research project called “Comparative Studies on the Buddhist Canon: Analysis of the Chinese Translation of the Ekottarika-āgama, the Zengyi ahan jing 增壹阿含經” will be pub- lished in 2010. I thank the Swiss National Science Founda tion for the fi nancial support granted to this project. 18 In the Taishō edition this corresponds for both versions to the fi rst twenty-two lines of text, in the case of the Chinese Ekottarika-āgama: T2, no. 125, 787c2–22, and for the Mai treya sūtra: T14, no. 453, 421a6– 27. 19 The 1690 texts included in Taishō vols. 1–32. 258 Elsa I. Legittimo Dharmarakṣa, or even for Saṃghadeva, but refl ect a Chinese trans- lation idiom mainly found in Buddhasmṛti’s translations. 41.7% of all the occurrences in other texts of the searched terms can in fact be found in translations by Buddhasmṛti. While Dharmarakṣa’s translations account for 0.9% of the occurrences, none of the terms are found in a translation attrib uted to Saṃghadeva. The details of this investigation are given in Appen dix II. This result constitutes a small piece of evidence and supports my longstanding hypothesis that the extant Chinese Ekottarika- āgama was translated by Buddhasmṛti. tải về 1.27 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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