Two-Fold Linguistic Evidences on the Identification of Chinese Translation of Buddhist Sutras: Taking Buddhacarita as a Case

Abstract

As a product of language contact, the Chinese translation of Buddhist sutras has significant linguistic values. However, it is hard to accurately identify the translators and years of translation for some early translated sutras. Considering that the Chinese translation was mingled with elements loaned from foreign languages, mostly Sanskrit, in order to conduct identification from the linguistic perspective, it is necessary to adopt both external and internal linguistic evidences. The external approach is to analyze the characteristics of translation embodied in the corpus using the proofreading method with parallel texts of the Sanskrit original and the Chinese translation, and the internal approach is to examine the language style and language use habits of the translator according to the identification criteria of the Chinese corpora. Taking Buddhacarita as a case, this paper attempts to identify its translator with both the two-fold evidences, which provides a new way for the identification of such corpora.