[Buddha-l] A question for Jewish Buddhists

[Dan Lusthaus]

Lance,

> Well, I don't know this word chiasmic - it's not in my dictionary.

Try
http://www.onelook.com/?w=chiasm&ls=a

(However the definitions are too curt, not fully adequate. The term became
important in philosophic circles because of Merleau-Ponty -- Al Gore's
favorite philosopher, and one of mine as well -- when he adopted it for the
title of one his most most important late essays, titled "The Chiasm"
(French: "L'Entrelacs -- Le Chiasme"). He adopted the term from its
anatomical use as a descriptor of optic biology, in which the impulses
coming out of the back of the eye into the optic nerves split, some going
from the left eye to the right brain, some to the left brain, and some going
from the right eye to the right brain as well as the left brain,
crisscrossing, only to be reconfigured, re-"constructed" by the brain as an
integral visual image. That intermediary dialectical process intrigued
Merleau-Ponty. A simple gloss for chiasm would be "crisscross".)

> Most of the Dīrghāgama information is in:
>
> Hartmann, Jens-Uwe (2004), 'Contents and Structure of the Dīrghāgama of
> the (Mūla-)Sarvāstivādins', Annual Report of The International Research
> Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University, 15=7, 119–37.

Thanks. I'll look into this.

> > If we assume (and it would only be an assumption) that the Chinese
> > translations follow some source texts at least in terms of which sutras
end
> > up in which Nikaya/Agama, then there are lots of disparities.
> >
>
> I don't think there can be any doubt that at least the Chinese
> Dīrghāgama and Madhyamāgama were collections translated together as a
> whole, preserving their order.

The contemporary literature tell us that the teams (and they were translated
by teams, despite the fact that only one or two figures get the by-line)
worked on it as a consolidated project, but the actual day to day decisions
these groups made while translating -- such as whether to pare down
repetitions, to omit sections, choices of equivalents, etc. -- still remain
unclear.

One of the interesting things that becomes clearer when one looks behind the
standard doxographical accounts is that many of the earlier translations
(1st-5th c) typically involved teams in which the figurehead whose name
eventually gets credit for the translation is usually a foreigner or someone
from China's western regions where foreigners were a prominent presence.
This lent "authenticity" to the translation. That foreigner often (not
always) knew no Chinese, or very little. He merely enunciated the indic
text, and explained it to another team member, who would render it, orally,
into Chinese. It was this second person -- very often his name not being
recorded except occasionally in colophons or prefaces -- who actually
"translated". The oral Chinese was then written down by additional team
members, and then worked over and proofread by still additional team
members. The initial figurehead may or may not have been consulted about the
work in progress; additional questions about meaning, etc., may or may not
have been put to him at later stages as the work progressed. One result,
detected in many translations, is that glosses (i.e., the oral explanations
offered by the figurehead, perhaps in response to questions by the actual
translator or other team members; perhaps glosses or additions/omissions
committed by the actual translator; or something produced by the whole team,
in committee) were often seamlessly included in the translation.

We are still far from having a handle on the differences of approach of the
many different teams. Some apparently worked better together than others.
There are suggestions of personality conflicts and other factors that led to
team members being shuffled around, or moving to other teams, sometimes in
other locals, sometimes due to patrons dispatching them, or requesting them,
and so on. So there was a politics to the process as well.

The image many might have, based on modern day practices, of a lonely
translator sitting alone in his study with a copy of the original text in
one hand and a writing brush in the other is simply a fantasy. Translation
was a social process.

> I have used:
> Anālayo and Bucknell, Roderick S. (2006), 'Correspondence Table for
> Parallels to the Discourses of Majjhima Nikāya: Toward a Revision of
> Akanuma’s Comparative Catalogue', Journal of the Centre for Buddhist
> Studies, Sri Lanka, 4, 215–38.
> But that is part of the same project. I hadn't realized it had got so far.

They are trying to be comprehensive, including parallel Skt mss., etc. They
are also trying to link online to the different versions, easier to do with
the Chinese and Pali which have already been digitized and are freely
available on the web, but with more obstacles (copyrights, etc.) in other
materials. Hopefully some day soon, when one is working on a text, one can
pull up instantaneously all the variant versions in all relevant languages.
We are going in that direction, if copyright laws, etc., don't derail
things.

> Neither of these occur in the Sanskrit Dīrghāgama. So the reason is:
[...]
> For this reason they are found twice.

Interesting, and plausible in broad features.

Dan