The Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā- sūtra) is one of the most popular and important Buddhist scriptures which has been translated by sixdifferent translators. Among them, Dharmagupta’s translation of the DiamondSutra is a word-for-word literal translation, without paying attention to theChinese morphology and sytax. Zacchetti (1996) called Dharmagupta’s ranslation“unfinished”. In this paper we have discussed the various rendition techniquesused specifically by Dharmgupta to demonstrate that his translation of theDiamond Sutra is a superliteral translation with every single word of the Sanskrittext translated into Chinese. Sanskrit is a highly inflected language while Chineseis an analytic language in that each word consists of a single morpheme.Dharmagupta translated the Sanskrit suffixes using Chinese characters as if theywere suffixes. In Section 2, three kinds of nominal inflections are illustrated: themasculine/feminine singular accusative suffix - am is translated using the Chinesecharacter 邊 / pen/ ‘border, boundary’; the dative plural suffix -bhyas is translated by the Chinese character 等 /tong / ‘a plural indicator; grade, rank’; and thelocative suffixes are translated by the Chinese character中 /trjuwng / ‘in; center,middle’. In Section 3, four different verbal nflections are shown: the first personsingular present suffix -mi is translated as我 /nga ‘I, me’; the gerund (orabsolutive) suffixes - ya and -tvā are translated as已 / yi/ ‘stop, cease, end;already’; the gerundive suffix -tavya is translated as應 /Ɂ ing / ‘should, ought to’;and the simple future suffixes - sya and -iṣ ya are translated as當 /tang / ‘ought to,should, must’. The suffixes are translated into separate Chinese characters which,unlike Sanskrit suffixes, are independent morphemes. That is why many readerscan not comprehend Dharmagupta’s translation of the Diamond Sutra, and whysome scholars even punctuate their translations into wrong phrases
