A Primer in Chinese Buddhist Writings

From the second century CE to the tenth, Chinese Buddhists engaged in the greatest translation project in the history of the world: the translation of a vast corpus of Buddhist texts from Indian languages into Chinese. The vast majority of these texts were translated from Sanskrit (some were translated from Gāndhārī, and we know of at least one translated from Pali). Aside from a few exceptions, they were translated not by individuals, but by teams of translators, with each participant assigned a specific duty, usually including at least one member charged with polishing the style in Chinese, another with verifying the accuracy of the translation and another with overseeing the project as a whole. Virtually all of these translations were completed with Chinese imperial support and entered into the Chinese Buddhist canon, first in hand-written, manuscript form, and later, with the invention of printing, in printed texts. Taken together, we have over 1500 extant Indian Buddhist works in Chinese translation, many if not most of which are not extant in any other language.

Below we will sample texts from each of the “three repositories”: the sutras, the abhidharma and the vinaya. These works all belong to the Nikāyan (a.k.a. Mainstream) tradition (traditionally known in Chinese pejoratively as the “lesser vehicle,” xiǎoshèng 小乘). Ideally, you should read a selection of Mahāyāna and Esoteric works as well, each written in different styles with some distinctive vocabulary. I have made a rough supplement to this volume that introduces Mahāyāna material, and plan to some day make another for Esoteric texts, but the vocabulary and structure of the following texts are standard enough to provide a foundation for reading any Chinese Buddhist texts derived from Indian originals.

After completing the first volume, you should now have some feel for the grammar of Chinese translations of Indian Buddhist works; the greatest challenge is in acquiring the range of vocabulary needed to read these texts easily, with each genre relying on a distinctive set of technical vocabulary. My hope is that, after reading the samples from texts provided here, you will be ready to delve into the particular genre of Indian Buddhist writings in Chinese that most interest you.

For those interested in Chinese Buddhism, these are all texts that literate monastics in China were familiar with (ideally, again, you should read a sampling of popular Mahāyāna texts as well). Volume 3 will introduce a variety of Buddhist writings composed in China that draw more heavily on native Chinese literary and philosophical traditions.

In theory, all the vocabulary you need for the following texts should be supplied either here or in volume one, but you may want to consult a dictionary for terms you have forgotten or that I haven't explained clearly. A useful dictionary for Buddhist terms is the Digital Buddhist Dictionary http://www.buddhismdict.net/ddb/ . If you are at an institution that subscribes to the dictionary, you have unlimited access. If not, you can consult ten words a day by logging in as a “guest.” The best Chinese-English dictionary for classical Chinese is Paul W. Kroll, A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese (Leiden: Brill, 2015); this dictionary is also available in digital form for subscribing institutions.