[Buddha-l] MPNS & Buddha-nature (Lusthaus)

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 01:43 -0500, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> I have no idea why certain texts got chosen and not others. I don't
> know why Candrakirti, Dharmakirti, Santaraksita, Dharmottara,
> Vinitadeva, et al. were NEVER translated in Chinese, even though
> missionary translators kept arriving in China and translating
> materials well into the Song dynasty. Go figure...

This question has long puzzled me. The only hypothesis (and a very
tentative one at that) that I have come up with is that all the authors
you named are extremely technical and given to making points that are
readily comprehensible to any Sanskrit pundit but are quite difficult to
express even in another Indo-European language (I recall Matilal telling
me once that it is next to impossible to translate Sanskrit
philosophical literature into Bengali!), let alone in languages of other
families. (I rest my case on any Tibetan translation of their works; the
Tibetan translations tend to lose a great deal of the subtlety of the
close linguistic reasoning of the originals.) Every text loses something
in translation. Indian logic loses almost everything. (Some would say it
is not a great loss, but that may reflect a prejudice in those who say
such things.)

I forget who it was who said "The question to ask is not why science did
not develop outside Europe, but why it DID develop in Europe." In a
similar vein, I think the question to ask is not why certain post-
Dignagan Buddhists were NOT translated into Chinese, but why they WERE
translated (sort of) into Tibetan.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico