《八千頌般若經》=Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā; 般若經=Bore Sutras; 重譯之道=A History of Re-translation; 中梵校勘=collation of Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist texts; 翻譯風格=the style of the Chinese translations; 佛經重譯=retranslation of Buddhist scriptures; 源典=original text; 中譯=Chinese translations; 文本之外=extra-textuality
The Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sutra was translated five times within a period of five hundred years, ranging from the late Han to the early Tang, with each of the translations bearing a completely different title. In comparing the texts, I found that there were great stylistic differences among them and that Xuan Zang’s text had not been rendered “strictly according to the Sanskrit,” as one commentator put it. In 1920, Liang Qichao raised stylistic issues in reference to “different translations of the same text” but did not delve into the ancient monks’ reasons for retranslating the sutra, nor did he touch on the purpose or the results of retranslation. For decades thereafter, scholars ignored this issue. It was not until the beginning of the twenty-first century that Karashima Seishi wrote two papers and Dang Suping wrote one paper respectively on the question, but those works are relatively short and none focuses on reasons for retranslation. Basing my discussion on various aspects of the term “Dao” as it is used in the five translations – beginning with Lokakṣema’s late-Han Daohang Boruo Jing and ending with Xuan Zang’s early-Tang Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sutra – I will explore the background of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sutra’s dissemination, the historical trajectory of the five different translations, and the reasons for and strategies of retranslation. Finally, by analyzing the style of the Chinese translations from a historical perspective, I will show that reasons for the retranslations of the sutra grew out of a combination of political interference, market demand, cultural shifts, language policy, translators’ ideologies, and a host of other possible factors as well.
