Brough, John. "The Chinese Pseudo-Translation of Ārya-Śūra’s Jātaka-mālā.” Asia Major 2 (1964-1965): 27-53.
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Brough studies a "unique class of Chinese apocrypha". As summarised in Buswell (1989): "In this case, the difficulty the Chinese translators had in construing the complex poetic style of the Sanskrit original led them to produce an apocryphal text while having the Sanskrit manuscript right in front of them. This was not simply a matter of a few mistranslations or interpolations. In their despair at rendering the text, the few Sanskrit phrases the Chinese were able to construe served as clues for lifting entire stories verbatim from other texts that contained the same key words: for example, finding the term "tigress" (vyāghrī) in their manuscript, they simply wrote out the Vyāghrī-parivarta, the last chapter of the Suvarṇaprabhāsottama-sūtra (Simile of Golden Light Sutra; T 665). Apart from the titles of a few stories, there is virtually nothing in their Chinese rendering that compares with the original Sanskrit. Compounding their problems, the translators were working without dictionary or grammar and did not have the luxury of an Indian pundit to assist them in construing the text. There is also evidence that they were working under a deadline and were not given time to revise their hurried copy. Even with these caveats, this text must stand as one of the most bizarre products of Chinese translation efforts, and we can only sympathize with the horrific plight of these 'translators'." |
Brough studies a "unique class of Chinese apocrypha". As summarised in Buswell (1989): "In this case, the difficulty the Chinese translators had in construing the complex poetic style of the Sanskrit original led them to produce an apocryphal text while having the Sanskrit manuscript right in front of them. This was not simply a matter of a few mistranslations or interpolations. In their despair at rendering the text, the few Sanskrit phrases the Chinese were able to construe served as clues for lifting entire stories verbatim from other texts that contained the same key words: for example, finding the term "tigress" (vyaghri) in their manuscript, they simply wrote out the Vyaghri-parivarta, the last chapter of the Suvarnaprabhasottama-sutra (Simile of Golden Light Sutra; T 665). Apart from the titles of a few stories, there is virtually nothing in their Chinese rendering that compares with the original Sanskrit. Compounding their problems, the translators were working without dictionary or grammar and did not have the luxury of an Indian pundit to assist them in construing the text. There is also evidence that they were working under a deadline and were not given time to revise their hurried copy. Even with these caveats, this text must stand as one of the most bizarre products of Chinese translation efforts, and we can only sympathize with the horrific plight of these 'translators'." T0160; 菩薩本生鬘論 |