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DO THE TIBETAN TRANSLATIONS OF INDIAN BUDDHIST TEXTS PROVIDE GUIDELINES FOR CONTEMPORARY TRANSLATORS? Sean Gaffney (SOAS) The translation of Indian Buddhist texts has posed an array of problems of a philosophical, conceptual and cultural nature, to any translator during all periods of history. In particular, the large number of technical terms utilised in these Indian texts, which are crucial to their understanding, present by far the biggest challenge to translators. Beginning with the earliest extant translations from Buddhist texts into Chinese (Mizuno 1982: 45) by the translator Lokakshema in the second century CE, followed by the Tibetan translations commencing in the eighth century CE and the Western academic translations of the last one and a half centuries, there has been a continuing quest for reliable translations of original Indian Buddhist texts. From as far afield as Gandhåra, Sogdiana, the Central Asian regions of Khotan, Turfan or Tun-huang, China and Tibet, successive generations of translators have been engaged with the many problematic issues connected with such a task. There have been a variety of approaches to the translation process in these different regions, some translating literally, some by means of paraphrase, but the ultimate aim of them all has been to produce faithful and comprehensible renderings of the Indian originals in their own respective languages. The attempts at the translation of Indian Buddhist texts are illustrative of some of the problems involved in the translation of religious works generally, though these issues also arise with the translation of any ideological, scientific or literary work. For example the translation of the Ma'o-tse-tung-dgongs-pa (Thoughts of Chairman Mao) from Chinese into Tibetan necessitated the creation of an entirely new range of Tibetan SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 vocabulary. In order to represent such Marxist concepts as ‘proletarian’, ‘bourgeoisie’, ‘means of production’ and ‘class-struggle’, to name but a few, the Tibetans had to coin new words. Similarly, the translators of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese or Tibetan were presented with the specific problems of how to render the religio-philosophical terminology, and the Indian literary forms, into their own languages without distorting the meaning or intention of the original. During the early period of translation activity in China and Tibet each translator would use their own interpretations of these terms, leading to an inconsistency of terminology when compared with texts prepared by other translators. Some of the Chinese translators often translated a Buddhist technical term using a Taoist technical term, thus importing totally inappropriate philosophical assumptions into the text, while others merely transliterated the terms. The method of dealing with these issues was gradually refined over a period of centuries until an Indian Buddhist text could be translated into Chinese or Tibetan with a high degree of accuracy in terms of its representation of the original intention of the text and the consistency of its philosophical terminology. The problems associated with the translation of Indian Buddhist texts are by no means confined to ancient history. Since the beginnings of Western academic philological and historical studies of Buddhism, commencing with Csoma de Koros in the mid-nineteenth century, the philological, philosophical and cross-cultural problems inherent in the translation of ancient Indian texts have been studied and debated. Even today there is no universally agreed method for rendering even some of the most basic and frequently-met technical terms found in Tibetan and Sanskrit into English, or for that matter into any other European language. Therefore any contemporary scholar dealing with a Tibetan translation of an Indian work has several choices regarding their approach to the work of 2 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 translation and the vocabulary used to translate technical terms into English. Whatever approach is adopted, a knowledge of the text's historical background, if available, and of its philosophical assumptions is of course a prerequisite. When the history of a text can be traced it may provide evidence of the distinct types of literature that have been utilised in its composition. The translation of Indian Buddhist texts into Tibetan Much of what is currently known about the content and scope of Buddhist literature, produced in India from the early centuries BCE up to the thirteenth century CE, comes not from any of the Indian languages themselves, but from translations made into the Tibetan language. The historical reason for this is that very few of the Buddhist works written in India survive in their originals, whether in Classical Sanskrit, Buddhist Sanskrit or one of the Pråkrit languages. The Tibetans became prolific translators of Indian Buddhist texts from the seventh century CE and continued this process as long as it was possible for them to obtain texts from India — through Tibetans who visited India or from Indian teachers — up to about the early fourteenth century CE. It is for this reason that the Tibetan translations of Indian texts are so important for a complete understanding of the development of Indian Buddhist philosophy during this period of lost Indian history. The written Tibetan language was a relatively late creation, being ‘invented’ in the seventh century CE by Thon-mi-sam-bhota, a minister of King Song-tsen-gam-po (c. 609-649), who created the Tibetan script after having spent years in India studying various Indian scripts and grammar. He composed the first works explaining Tibetan grammar and was also the first recorded person to translate a text from Sanskrit into Tibetan. Therefore, at the time of the Tibetans' initial contact with Indian literature 3 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 the amount of indigenous written Tibetan material was really very small. This material falls into two main categories, the earliest being the rDo-rings (Pillar Inscriptions) of the various Tibetan kings, and the second consisting for the most part of historical works, the earliest of which is the bSam-yaslo-rgyus (Annals of Samye Monastery) (Vostrikov 1970: 24), that are principally concerned with the genealogy of the royal line. There are also early written materials from the Silk-Road region, most notably the textual materials discovered at Tun-huang which, excepting the large amount of Buddhist material, are mainly of an administrative nature consisting of communiqués between Lhasa and the various outposts on the edge of the newly-created Tibetan empire. The period in question then has no works that we would recognize as 'literature' in its broadest sense, though there were of course oral traditions that later came to be committed to writing. The earliest extant written Tibetan materials are of a utilitarian nature, that is to say they make known the kings’ intentions and their lineage; or they are orders for food, reinforcements and objects of trade from military commanders on the borders of the new Tibetan empire. The Tibetan world view at the time of the creation of written Tibetan had no connection whatsoever to the primarily Indian Buddhist world view gradually being encountered through the import of Buddhism and Buddhist ideas and concepts from India. This lack of a common world view would itself seem to be a serious obstacle to the making of accurate and intelligible translations into Tibetan. However the Tibetans were able to avoid any inconsistencies between the two world views by a wholesale importation of the Indian Buddhist world view. The latter initially operated only within the confines of the intellectual world of the Tibetan translations of Indian texts, while the indigenous Tibetan world view provided the actual viewpoint of Tibetan culture in general. Only after some centuries was the Indian Buddhist world view fully assimilated within Tibet itself, 4 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 and then with some important modifications that have their origin in the indigenous Tibetan world view. For a considerable period of time there were in effect two entirely separate views of the world in Tibet, one literary and theoretical belonging to the higher culture, the other being the actual everyday world view of the majority of the Tibetan population. Prior to the translation of Indian Buddhist texts into Tibetan there is no evidence, or at least any surviving evidence, of any text being translated into Tibetan from any other language. This lack of any discernable tradition of translation into Tibetan makes the achievements in the sphere of translating Indian Buddhist works even more remarkable. However, the process of developing a system of translation was not without its problems. Very early on it was recognised that in translating Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Tibetan, different translators were using disparate Tibetan terms to translate the same Sanskrit technical terms. This could lead to confusion and misunderstandings, as many of the Sanskrit texts were of an extremely technical nature and so required a method of rendering Sanskrit technical terms with great precision and in a standardized manner. This problem was addressed after about 150 years of translation work when an authoritative Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary, called simply the Mahåvyutpatti (Great Dictionary) or Bye-brag-tu-rtogs-parbyed-pa-chen-mo in Tibetan, was compiled at the command of King Thritsug-de-tsen (c. 815-838). Following this all earlier translations were retranslated and a new system of translation terminology and methodology was introduced which attempted to standardize both the terminological consistency and the semantic accuracy of the translations. Within 200 years of its creation, the Tibetan language had become the medium for translating some of the most refined and complex concepts and ideas of Indian Buddhism. 5 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 This is the background to the beginnings of the process of translation of Indian Buddhist texts into Tibetan. It should however be mentioned that while the Mahåvyutpatti provided authoritative guidelines for translation terminology, it must not be assumed that only forms found in that dictionary were used in later translations. Modern lexical studies (Chandra 1982), based on the analysis of a variety of Tibetan translations of Indian and Buddhist works, have noted that different Tibetan terms are in fact often employed in different texts to represent the same Sanskrit terms. In other words the Mahåvyutpatti was not treated by later generations of Tibetan translators as being completely prescriptive in all cases, but rather as providing the basis for a standardization of translation terminology. In the centuries after the compilation of the Mahåvyutpatti the Tibetan translation tradition continued to develop, adding new Tibetan calques as new texts and vocabulary were encountered. The scale of the translation work carried out by Tibetans is phenomenal; thousands of Indian Buddhist texts, on philosophy, logic, grammar, medicine and poetics, and other subjects, were rendered into a specialized form of the Tibetan language. This form, used solely for the translation of Indian texts, differed markedly from the way in which Tibetan was used in all other spheres of writing. Furthermore, many of these Indian Buddhist texts relied upon either an oral or a written commentary, that may or may not have been available to the Tibetans, in order to make their import clear. The conceptual and grammatical difficulties of the Indian originals were fully understood by the Tibetans, and as well as creating a special translation language they devised a rigorous translation method aimed at capturing the precise meaning of the texts. The process developed for the translation of each text consisted of a collaborative effort between one or more Tibetan translators (lo-tså-ba) and one or more Indian panditas (scholars) or åcåryas (teachers). The Indian 6 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 scholars could bring out the full import of the text at any sections where the Tibetans were in doubt as to the intended meaning. By having scholars from both the Indian and Tibetan traditions the Tibetans attempted to create translations that were as faithful as possible to their source texts. The language that was evolved for this translation process has been called an ‘artificial language’ (Inaba et al. 1985: iii) in that, in its very literalness, grammar, vocabulary and style, it is totally alien to any of the indigenous written Tibetan styles. The Tibetans also created tens of thousands of loan translations or calques in order to be able to accurately represent the rich vocabulary of the Sanskrit language; the Tibetan language itself simply did not have the range of vocabulary necessary to be able to supply a different word for each of the technical terms, synonyms and nuances employed throughout the Sanskrit works. Therefore the Tibetans simply created a whole new range of vocabulary by compounding existing Tibetan words together to represent Sanskrit technical terminology, and by the addition of suffixes and affixes to verbs to represent the various Sanskrit tenses. The result is a language that could not easily be read by a Tibetan who was not familiar with the vocabulary and syntax of this specialized translation language. The Jåtakanidåna — background The Påli Jåtakanidåna (Introduction to the Birth Stories) is still extant in its Indian original and has a history that can be traced with some precision; This text and its Tibetan translation (for which the date and place of translation, and the names of the translators, are known), are the outcome of both oral and written traditions spanning many centuries. The Jåtakanidåna is a composite work containing material from the earliest strata of the Påli canon, dating to about the fourth century BCE, as well as the old oral commentaries accompanying them, and finally commentarial 7 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 material from as late as the fifth century CE. This text is one of the few Påli canonical texts whose date of composition can be located within narrow parameters. From the introductory verses (Fausbøll 1897: I, 1) we also learn that the text was composed at the request of three theras (elders) of the Buddhist monastic community, probably from the Mahåvihåra monastery in Anuradhapura in Ceylon during the early fifth century CE. The authorship of this text is uncertain, being ascribed by the Sinhalese tradition to the great Indian commentator and translator Buddhaghosa (Norman 1983:128), though this is disputed by many on stylistic and other grounds. To say that the text had an author in the contemporary sense of the term is misleading, for, as already mentioned, the Jåtakanidåna is made up of layers of early canonical materials, particularly gåthås (verses), interspersed with both early and later prose commentary. The early commentarial material contained in the Jåtakanidåna has a history almost as old as the canonical literature itself, being collected together at a very early date in Buddhist history. The oral traditions preserving the Buddhist canonical teachings were taken to Ceylon when Buddhism arrived there in the third century BCE. At that time, or very soon after (Frauwallner 1956: 18), the oral commentaries on the canonical texts were also taken to Ceylon. The canonical works were in Påli while the commentaries appear to have been in a north Indian Pråkrit (Norman 1991: 38) very closely related to Påli. In Ceylon the canonical works were maintained in an oral tradition in Påli but the commentaries, excepting any canonical gåthås (verses) contained in them which were retained in Påli, were soon translated into Old Sinhalese Pråkrit in order to make them more easily accessible to the Sinhalese. So from a very early period the canonical material in Ceylon was preserved orally in Påli, with the Indian commentaries being preserved orally in Old Sinhalese Pråkrit, until these 8 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 commentaries were committed to writing at an early though unknown date. These Old Sinhalese commentaries came to be known collectively as the Atthakathås (Commentaries) and were considered as authoritative sources for elucidating the topics contained in the canonical works. With the committing of the Påli canon to writing in Ceylon during the first century BCE the ability to preserve and disseminate canonical texts was greatly improved. From this time up to the fifth century CE the Old Sinhalese commentaries were retained as they were, with other newer commentaries being added to them over time. Thus by the fifth century AD a mass of commentarial literature in Sinhalese Pråkrit, ancient and medieval, had built up around the canonical sources. As the original canonical literature was preserved in the now sacred language of Påli a movement arose aimed at translating, or retranslating, all of the commentarial materials into that language. This had a twofold objective, the first being to clarify the meaning of these works, as the Sinhalese language had changed significantly since their translation from Påli into Old Sinhalese, so much so that the interpretation of some of them was uncertain; the second task was to edit the texts, eliminating duplications and spurious texts, and expounding a teaching consistent with that of the Mahåvihåra monastery. Whichever of these Indian translators composed the Jåtakanidåna, it is evident that they relied heavily on these Old Sinhalese commentaries for the traditions explaining the canonical gåthås (verses) that were included in the canonical texts. Of the several Indian translators from this period working in Ceylon, who were associated with this translation and editing work, the most important figure was that of Buddhaghosa, though whether he composed the Jåtakanidåna is a contentious issue. He is the undisputed compiler of a great many Påli commentarial works who read many different commentaries, paraphrasing the essential points from them into a 9 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 new text; his method was therefore not a straightforward translation. Unfortunately since none of the Old Sinhalese commentaries are currently extant, it is impossible to ascertain what relationship his works have to their original texts. What is significant is the fact that the Jåtakanidåna itself is the product of numerous levels of canonical text, translation of old commentary and the commentary of its compiler. While parts of it were initially compiled in a north Indian dialect, followed by a further translation into Old Sinhalese Pråkrit and finally a retranslation into Påli, other parts of it were composed in Påli during the fifth century CE. The translation of the Jåtakanidåna into Tibetan The Jåtakanidåna was translated into Tibetan using a system of translation that had been evolved by the Tibetans over a five-hundred-year period (the Tibetans actually had a larger amount of texts translated into Tibetan from Indian works than was contained in the entire corpus of Tibetan literature at that time). The translation of the Jåtakanidåna is from Påli, one of the north Indian Pråkrits or colloquial dialects (Lüders 1954: 5) used by the early Buddhist schools, which is very close to Sanskrit in both its grammar, vocabulary, and technical terminology. The Tibetan translation was carried out on the principles laid down for the translation of Indian texts. The Påli text abounds in gåthås (verses), extensive use of similies, long nominal compounds, and complex sentences. Of the thousands of Indian texts preserved in Tibetan less than twenty Påli texts (Skilling 1993: 73) are recorded as having been translated. The Tibetan colophons of thirteen of these texts, including the Jåtakanidåna, inform us that they were translated by the same two Buddhist monks, the Tibetan translator Nyi-ma-rgyal-mtshan-dpal-bzang-po and the Sinhalese scholar Anandasri. One authoritative fourteenth-century Tibetan historical work (Bu-ston 1988: 206) compiled by Bu-ston, a student of Nyi-ma rgyal-mtshan-dpal-bzang10 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 po informs us that the translations were carried out in Nepal during the mid-fourteenth century. The most striking feature of the Tibetan translation of the Jåtakanidâna is the extremely literal way in with which the Tibetans have translated much of the text. Only in a few instances, usually similes or metaphors, is any kind of paraphrasing employed. This literalist approach to translation is in keeping with the underlying aim of the Tibetan tradition (Ruegg 1973: 249), namely to present as accurate and faithful a translation of the original source text as possible. Of course it may be objected, with some justification, that literalness is not always equivalent to accuracy; but it does have the virtue of presenting just the bare content of the text, free from any exegetical interpolations or glosses on certain words. Any standardized and systematic translation method, such as that established by the Tibetans, can only lay down the basic principles for the translator to adhere to. It is an implicit assumption of this method that the literal translation of a text will ipso facto be a faithful representation of the original text. The system of literal translation is a reasonably coherent way to convey the semantic content of a text, but the style may leave much to be desired. While the result of such translation principles may appear as something of a contrived creation, it does however allow for a thorough presentation of the content and meaning of a text with a minimum amount of distortion. Translating Indian Buddhist texts today In many respects a modern translator of Indian Buddhist texts, such as the Jåtakanidåna, is in a position similar to that of the early Tibetan translators, that is to say the world view of the contemporary translator is as far from that of ancient India as was the case for the early Tibetan translators. This similarity is reflected in the way in which many contemporary translators 11 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 of the Tibetan translations of Buddhist texts employ an almost artificial use of the English language and newly-created English terminology. This has interesting parallels to the Tibetan method of creating calques, or loan translation words, to convey the precise meaning of the original Indian term without importing any presuppositions or connotations from the Tibetan language. A very similar method is currently employed in America by what might be termed the ‘Hopkins school’ initiated by Professor J. Hopkins of the University of Virginia. When applied universally this method leads to a good literal translation but with the disadvantage that the English is of a decidedly peculiar nature (Griffiths 1981: 20), and the reader has to learn a new vocabulary of English loan translations in order to understand the text. Very often with this type of translation it takes a reader already versed in Sanskrit, Pråkrit and Tibetan to be able to understand the meaning of the English translation, which is obscure to a non-specialist reader. Translation of course presupposes an audience, and one has to make some decision when translating as to who precisely is one's audience. A translation for the specialist is an entirely different matter than a translation for the non-specialist. One widely-used method in translations for the specialist is to leave the technical terminology in its original Sanskrit or Påli form, with no English rendering, but on the first occurrence of each term a footnote is added which explains it and gives the translator's preferred choice of English equivalents. This method has the advantage of being able to discuss or paraphrase the term without adding material to the actual text of the translation itself. Both of the methods mentioned do have the drawback of producing a somewhat unwieldy finished translation. One is either faced by a mass of English loan translations of various technical terms, or the translation becomes heavy with explanatory footnotes with untranslated Sanskrit or Påli terms left in 12 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 the main text. The real root of the problem regarding this Indian technical vocabulary is not that vocabulary itself, but the inability of English to convey these terms, without using paraphrase or multiple word translations, in an accurate and definitive manner. The method of translating Tibetan and Indian texts by paraphrase has been used by a number of French scholars, but is strangely out of favour in the English speaking world. For the non-specialist reader this provides the most satisfactory results, the text being unencumbered by footnotes or unexplained loan words. Some of these translators have often incorporated materials from later commentaries into their paraphrases of canonical texts, though for the textual purist this can be annoying. Interestingly this paraphrase method was used by the Chinese in some of their early translations of Buddhist texts, though it was superceded by the more literal approach. The use of these various methods is indicative of the translator's dilemma, which, at it most basic level, is centred on the problem of conveying meaning from one language and cultural background into another, without adding to or diminishing it by inapt translation terms. What emerges out of the attempts to render the Tibetan translations of Indian texts into English are those very same problems encountered by the Tibetans themselves. Namely, how could they bridge the conceptual gap between Tibetan and Sanskrit or Påli? The problem is the same for the contemporary Western scholar trying to find the right English term with which to translate one of these Indian technical terms or long and complex sentences. These terms are unique to India, Indian culture and the Indian languages; there is very often no English term that could be safely employed that would not distort the sense of the original or, more seriously, import some cultural or philosophical nuances that are absent in the original. One is reminded of the adage that 'the translator is a traitor', 13 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 that is, the translator in the very act of interpreting one language in terms of another is hoplessly enmeshed within the limits and usages of that language into which they are attempting to translate. The original Indian texts were composed in a distant time, where the compilers and audience shared the same mental outlook. Overcoming the problems posed by these kinds of questions of how to achieve semantic accuracy, and a reasonably normal English style, are the universal aims of translation, where the translator is trying to elucidate the text and express its ideas and world view in a language that is totally alien to the original. Works Cited Bu-ston (1988) Bu-ston-chos-’byung-gsung-rab-rin-po-che’i-mdzod, (Buston’s History of Religion and Treasury of Precious Sayings), Qinghai: China Tibetology Publishing House. Chandra, L. (1982) Tibetan-Sanskrit Dictionary, 13 vols, New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture; repr. Kyoto: Rinsen Book Company, 1959-61. Fausbøll, V. (ed.) (1877-97) The Jåtaka Together with its Commentary, 6 vols, London: Påli Text Society. Frauwallner, E. (1956) The Earliest Vinaya and the Beginnings of Buddhist Literature, Rome: Serie Orientale Roma. Griffiths, P.J. (1981) 'Buddhist Hybrid English: Some Notes on Philology and Hermaneutics for Buddhologists', Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 4, pp. 17-32. Inaba, S. et al (1985) The Tibetan Tripitaka Peking Edition: Catalogue and Index, Kyoto: Rinsen Book Company. Lüders, H. (1954) Beobachtungen über die Sprache des buddhistischen urkanons, ed. E. Waldschhmidt, Berlin: Academie Verlag. Mizuno, K. (1982) Buddhist Sutras: Origin, Development, Transmission, Tokyo: Kosei Publishing. 14 SOAS Literary Review (2), July 2000 Norman, K.R. (1983) Påli Literature, Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. — (1991) Collected Papers, vol 1, Oxford: Påli Text Society. Skilling, P. (1993) 'Theravådin Literature in Tibetan Translation', Journal of the Påli Text Society, 19, Oxford, pp. 69-201. Vostrikov, A.I. (1970) Tibetan Historical Literature, tr. H.C. Gupta, Calcutta:Soviet Indology Series. Ruegg, D. Seyfort (1973) 'On Translating the Buddhist Canon', Studies in Indo-Asian Art and Culture, 3, ed. P. Ratnam, pp. 243-261. 15