Translating the Dharma: The Role of Buddhist Texts in Shaping Early Chinese Buddhism from Han to Northern Dynasties

Abstract

The role of the Sanskrit to Chinese translations of the Buddhist works was also in the establishment and formation of Chinese Buddhism, particularly in the periods between the Han (206 BCE–220 CE) and the Northern Dynasties (386-581 BCE). This was a project that was typified by very intense lexical and semantic challenges, with the translators struggling to find a way out of the abstract and metaphysical language of Buddhist philosophy and come to the realm of the concrete and relational language of the Chinese language. Such trailblazers as An Shigao安世高 and Zhi qian 支謙embraced a number of tricks to diminish the linguistic divide, like the use of phonetic transcription, semantic similarity and deriving neologisms. Not only by allowing the integration of Buddhist ideas, but also by facilitating extremities of syncretism, these innovations in methods made it possible to blend Buddhist ideas with the local Chinese philosophies of Daoism and Confucianism. The kind of ramifications of such translations went beyond transmissions of doctrines, they included giving rise to specific Chinese Buddhist scholars, influenced elite intellectual discourse, and provided the basis upon which the institutionalisation of Buddhism in China would take formal shape. In this way, by examining the translational works which defined early Chinese Buddhism, this paper throws some light on how language, culture, and philosophy interacted with each other and, therefore, highlights the transformative effect of the Buddhism texts on the course of Chinese religious and intellectual history.