Source: Gotō 2006

Gotō Gijō 後藤義乗. "Jiku Hōgo no yakugo to Hōun, Buddabadora no yakugo 竺法護の訳語と宝雲・ブッダバドラの訳語." Shūkyō kenkyū 宗教研究 79, no. 7 (2006): 244-245[R].

Assertions

Assertion Argument Place in source Search

Gotō's article is very brief, but methodologically quite interesting. He begins by noting that prior scholars have propounded two main theories about the translatorship of T360, ascribing it either to Dharmarakṣa or Buddhabhadra-Baoyun. His article very briefly summarises a study in which he first took samples in blocks of 160 characters each from a range of texts reliably ascribed to Dharmarakṣa and Buddhabhadra-Baoyun, in order to determine whether or not some sort of stylometric test could consistently distinguish between their authorial signatures. He reports that this test (the nature of which he does not describe) was able to correctly identify Dharmarakṣa texts 94.3% of the time, and Buddhabhadra-Baoyun texts 89.8% of the time. He then applied the same test to T360, and found that only 39 samples, out of a total of 120, were judged by the stylometric measure to be by Buddhabhadra-Baoyun. This ratio, he asserts, cannot be explained by the accuracy rating of the test method itself, and in incompatible with either translation solely by Dharmarakṣa or solely by Buddhabhadra-Baoyun. Gotō therefore hypothesises that our present T360 is a revision by Buddhabhadra-Baoyun of an earlier translation by Dharmarakṣa.

To further test this hypothesis, he isolated two sets of markers, used respectively either only by Dharmarakṣa, and never by Buddhabhadra-Baoyun, or vice versa:

Dharmarakṣa: 宣布, 班宣, 演法, 權方便, 積累, 通慧, 聖旨, 佛樹, 從順, 所當+[verb], 聖明, 諸德本, 無極 etc.
Buddhabhadra-Baoyun: 愛語, 煩惱, 一切煩惱, 受記, 應供等正覺, 那由他, 疲倦 etc.

Terms from both sets are found in T360, further supporting his hypothesis.

A final section describes computer methods by which Gotō arrived at the identification of these markers. I [MR] do not fully understand the description of these methods, but he began by using a computer to compare portions of the (eventual) *Buddhāvataṃsaka translated by Dharmarakṣa and Buddhabhadra-Baoyun respectively, and identify bigrams with a frequency of zero on one side. He then ran grep searches through a directory of texts ascribed to the two different translators (teams) to find examples of those terms in context.

Gotō also mentions in passing that the ascription to Buddhabhadra and Baoyun is also accepted by Kagawa Takao 香川孝雄 in his 無量寿経の諸本対照研究.

Edit

 Goto's article is very brief, but methodologically quite interesting. He begins by noting that prior scholars have propounded two main theories about the translatorship of T360, ascribing it either to Dharmaraksa or Buddhabhadra-Baoyun. His article very briefly summarises a study in which he first took samples in blocks of 160 characters each from a range of texts reliably ascribed to Dharmaraksa and Buddhabhadra-Baoyun, in order to determine whether or not some sort of stylometric test could consistently distinguish between their authorial signatures. He reports that this test (the nature of which he does not describe) was able to correctly identify Dharmaraksa texts 94.3% of the time, and Buddhabhadra-Baoyun texts 89.8% of the time. He then applied the same test to T360, and found that only 39 samples, out of a total of 120, were judged by the stylometric measure to be by Buddhabhadra-Baoyun. This ratio, he asserts, cannot be explained by the accuracy rating of the test method itself, and in incompatible with either translation solely by Dharmaraksa or solely by Buddhabhadra-Baoyun. Goto therefore hypothesises that our present T360 is a revision by Buddhabhadra-Baoyun of an earlier translation by Dharmaraksa. To further test this hypothesis, he isolated two sets of markers, used respectively either only by Dharmaraksa, and never by Buddhabhadra-Baoyun, or vice versa: Dharmaraksa: 宣布, 班宣, 演法, 權方便, 積累, 通慧, 聖旨, 佛樹, 從順, 所當+[verb], 聖明, 諸德本, 無極 etc. Buddhabhadra-Baoyun: 愛語, 煩惱, 一切煩惱, 受記, 應供等正覺, 那由他, 疲倦 etc. Terms from both sets are found in T360, further supporting his hypothesis. A final section describes computer methods by which Goto arrived at the identification of these markers. I [MR] do not fully understand the description of these methods, but he began by using a computer to compare portions of the (eventual) *Buddhavatamsaka translated by Dharmaraksa and Buddhabhadra-Baoyun respectively, and identify bigrams with a frequency of zero on one side. He then ran grep searches through a directory of texts ascribed to the two different translators (teams) to find examples of those terms in context. Goto also mentions in passing that the ascription to Buddhabhadra and Baoyun is also accepted by Kagawa Takao 香川孝雄 in his 無量寿経の諸本対照研究. Baoyun, 寶雲 Buddhabhadra, 佛陀跋陀羅, 覺賢 Dharmaraksa 竺法護, 曇摩羅察 T0360; 佛說無量壽經; Sukhavativyuha-sutra