The author of this book, Kenneth Roy Norman (1925-), emeritus professor of Cambridge University, is one of the greatest Indologists and Buddhist philologists in the world today. , whose expertise is primarily in the study of Medieval Indo-Aryan. This type of language is also called Indian common language (Prakrit), which is relative to Sanskrit (Sanskrit), the scripture language of ancient Brahmanism and Hinduism in India. During his student life, he studied under Sir Harold Walter Bailey (1899- 1996).
Sir Bailey’s academic achievements should be introduced in a special article. Here is just a brief mention. Even if it is impossible to confirm the legend that he can read more than fifty languages, if the documents are available, at least he can The languages ??he reads include English, French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Latin, ancient Greek, Tamil, Arabic and Japanese. Due to his teaching relationship, he can be said to be "very proficient" in Sanskrit, Pali, Gandhara, Khotan, Avesta and many other ancient Indo-Aryan languages.
Unlike such a teacher who specializes in Iranian languages ??but can also be called a generalist, Professor Norman mainly specialized in the grammar, phonetics and inscriptions of Asoka's stone inscriptions in BC during his long academic career. Its linguistic properties, at the same time, Professor Norman is also one of the greatest living experts on Pali language. During his lifetime, he collated or translated the Pali sacred scriptures "The Elder's Gatha", "The Elder's Nīgatha", "Sutra Collection", "Dhammapada", "Palati Muksha", etc. In 1983, he also published the exemplary book Pāli Literature (Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1983).
A large number of single research articles from his academic career were later included in eight volumes of works compiled and published by the Pali Text Society. It is precisely because of his great contribution to Buddhist literature, especially the compilation of Pali literature, that he became the president of the century-old Pali Scripture Society from 1981 to 1994. Moreover, as the highest honor in the British humanities and sciences, he is also a Fellow of the British Academy with a long history. By the way, Professor Shizushi Shinjima, a Japanese scholar who is currently making unprecedented achievements in the field of Chinese Buddhist literature and the director of the Institute of Advanced Buddhist Studies at Soka University, also studied at Cambridge University in the 1980s, and his supervisor at that time was Norman. Moreover, according to Mr. Shinjima’s own recollections many times, Professor Norman’s research style had a huge impact on his life.
In March 1994, SOAS University of London invited Professor Norman to give a series of lectures in the name of "Visiting Professor of the Buddhist Missionary Society". This lecture is divided into ten lectures, mainly discussing some important issues in Buddhist research from the perspective of a Buddhist philologist. The content of these lectures was later compiled into a book (A Philological Approach to Buddhism, SOAS, London; reprinted by Pali Text Society), which is the basis for this translation.
The programmatic importance of Norman's series of speeches lies in that, as one of the top scholars of Buddhist language and philology, he tried to explain extremely profound issues in this field in a simple and easy-to-understand way. way to give a detailed explanation to "ordinary readers".
However, I would like to remind you in advance that even so, we still need a lot of patience and knowledge reserves, especially knowledge of ancient Indian languages, in order to "fully understand" many contents in this small book.
In these ten lectures, Professor Norman talked about some important issues about how to view the origin of Buddhism from the perspective of linguistic philology, focusing on the oral tradition of Buddhist documents before the writing of written words, and pointed out that this This tradition had a significant influence on the formation of later Buddhist literature. In his speech, Norman also talked about the relationship between Buddhism and regional dialects in India, as well as the academic research on issues such as which dialect the Buddha spoke in history. Later, Buddhist texts were written down, and this writing down not only allowed the Theravada Buddhist scriptures such as Sri Lanka to be fixed, Norman also tried to show that at the same time, this also provided convenience for the new Mahayana scriptures. door. BC, Buddhism gradually returned to the path of Sanskritization from its initial attitude of rejecting Sanskrit. However, in this process of Sanskritization, as far as practical operations are concerned, various distortions of the literature have occurred. Norman allows us to see the causes and processes of the formation of these document errors through various detailed case analyses.
Ashoka was a key to early Buddhism's transformation from a local religion to a pan-Indian subcontinental religion and its eventual internationalization. Professor Norman also analyzed the various legends about Ashoka in the past from the perspective of Buddhist linguistics and philology, and took into account the Ashoka with actual documentary records (Ashoka cliff inscriptions and stone pillar inscriptions) to see which one More real. At the end of the entire lecture series, Norman also used a large amount of detailed information to elaborate on the final compilation of Buddhist documents into the Tibetan scriptures, as well as the various impacts of the entire Pali commentary tradition on the future of Buddhism.
From the above introduction, we can see that although this is an introductory popular reading, Norman himself has been using a clearer and more concise way to explain Buddhist language. philological research, but the amount of information in this book is equally huge. Therefore, it can be said to be a microcosm or specimen of Professor Norman's lifelong research, and a real "little book for everyone". I believe that through reading this book, we will find that some simple questions that we take for granted actually have a completely different and deeper meaning in the eyes of Buddhist philologists. For example, basic concepts such as the "Four Noble Truths", "Pratyekabuddha", "Bodhisattva", and "Lotus Sutra" are quite misunderstood by our Buddhist community and even the Buddhist academic community. In many cases, "vulgar etymology" is not just a patent for laymen and civilians. Even among academic circles, it still has a large market.
As for the translation of this book, let me first talk about the philological in the title and the Chinese translation of philosophy. In this book, Shifeng and I both translate this series as "philology" and "philology". However, in the Chinese-speaking world, there are various translation methods such as "philology", "historical linguistics", and "philology" for this word. The root cause is that it is difficult to find a completely suitable Chinese translation for the original meaning of this word. In a private communication on March 14, 2017, Professor Chen Huaiyu of Arizona State University suggested that I translate it as "philology" or "linguistic philology" to distinguish it from "philology" as textual criticism. I actually have my own thoughts on this issue. As early as April 15-20, 2013, at the "Past, Present and Future of Chinese Buddhism" seminar held by Fo Guang University in Taiwan, I published a paper entitled "Chinese Buddhism". The current situation and future of philology". Among them, I mentioned:
Currently influenced by Western Buddhist philology, many equate Buddhist philology with Philology in Buddhist research. Let me explain a little bit here. Regarding the Chinese corresponding translation of this word, some directly correspond to "philology", which makes sense. Because in English, it originally has the meaning of "the study of language and literature".
In other cases, this word will be translated as "linguistics" and "philology", because this word also has "the study of classical languages, documents and history, but the most common meaning at present is the science of language." , and more often than not, a "comparative" qualifier is added, so that its semantics is relatively clear, that is, it means "comparative linguistics" (The New Webster Dictioary, New York: Grolier, 1968, p.623).
I will mention in the introduction to the study of Western Buddhism later that the study of Buddhist literature in the entire West is mainly the study of Buddhist classic languages, including Sanskrit, Ba, Tibetan and other languages ??including ancient Chinese. The core is the collation, translation and comparative study of Buddhist scriptures in the language of classical Buddhist scriptures.
Precisely because the research foundation of Western Buddhism is based on some work in Philology, my review of Western philological research later will only involve the research results of this kind of comparative linguistics. But Philology is not exactly the same as what I call Buddhist philology. As mentioned before, Philology also has a strong linguistic tendency, especially when it comes to the history and development of linguistics. Most of the Western Buddhist philologists we see now are proficient in the classical Buddhist languages ??such as Sanskrit, Ba, Tibetan, etc., and are mainly engaged in the translation and revision of these classical Buddhist documents, and are familiar with the grammatical structure of these classical languages. , pronunciation characteristics, word exegesis, etc. are all comprehensively discussed. This has actually entered the scope of linguistics to a large extent.
Although we have seen that in the process of translation and revision of Buddhist scriptures, these Western Buddhist philologists (i.e. Philologists) will also explore different versions of Buddhist scriptures, but they will not do so like Chinese Buddhist philologists. Treat the characteristics and classification of these versions as your own research objects, and only use them as auxiliary tools. This can be exemplified by the study of the Dhammapada. Europe initially translated the Pali Dhammapada into Europe. After the discovery of the Sanskrit and Gandhara Dhammapada in Xinjiang, China, it inspired more inspired the research passion of Buddhist philologists.
The most common work they have done is a comparative study of parallel passages in these different texts, such as a comparative study of the Dhammapada in different languages. , which is very similar to the comparison of different versions in traditional Chinese philology; or cross-references to related items in different texts, such as citing ancient commentaries or ancient books when studying the Dhammapada. To analyze it, this is very similar to other schools in traditional Chinese philology. But one thing is very obvious. We see that what Buddhist Philologists (philologists) mainly do is translation and editing between different languages, while traditional Chinese Buddhist philologists are basically not part of their work. field.
In the same way, sometimes these Philologists will compile some catalogs, but most of them are just for the convenience of translation and revision, and do not regard these catalogs as a science in themselves. In addition to compiling catalogs, Chinese Buddhist literature scholars will also study a series of issues such as the historical evolution and future development of ancient Chinese Buddhist scriptures. This is also an area that Western Buddhist Philologists generally do not get involved in.
In comparison, the unique research scope of Chinese Buddhist philology includes at least the following aspects:
The edition of Buddhist scriptures, as far as Daduan is concerned, includes the Tripitaka edition Research, research on single editions outside Tibet, etc.; Buddhist bibliographic research, which includes research on the history of Buddhist bibliography, compilation and publication of Buddhist scriptures and editions, etc.; Buddhist collation research, which includes the special situations and processing of Buddhist collation etc.; research on the identification of Buddhist scriptures, including the authenticity of Buddhist scriptures, the age, place and religious background of their production, etc.; research on the compilation and loss of Buddhist scriptures, including the compilation of lost Buddhist documents from internal and external classics, collections and other classics. wait.
So we see that "Chinese Buddhist Philology" within the framework of the traditional "Chinese Philology" is a kind of research method based on traditional Chinese research methods, and is mainly within the single language of "Chinese" philological research. As for this kind of literature research within a single language, as I have been emphasizing, when faced with the complex situation of Buddhist literature involving a series of branch languages ??from the source Indian language to Chinese, Tibetan and other languages, it is inevitable to will be subject to huge limitations.
Therefore, although I have made it very clear that there is a big gap between the term philosophy in the West and the "philology" in our Chinese world, the former is more inclined to linguistics, especially "comparative" "The discipline establishment of linguistics. But here I decided to use the translation term "philology" for the following reasons. First of all, there are indeed examples of translating this word into "philology" and it is also one of the common usages in academia; secondly, this Western (Buddhist) linguistics research orientation can be integrated into a larger overall Within the research framework of Buddhist philology, this Eastern and Western research methods should indeed be integrated. Recently, some particularly outstanding Chinese Buddhist philologists, such as Shizhi Shinjima and Stefano Zacchetti, etc., their research itself actually integrates the Eastern and Western traditions of Buddhist philology research.
Especially in Zuo Guanming's research, in addition to the traditional European comparative linguistics, he also has a close knowledge of the Chinese version of the Tripitaka and Buddhist collation; thirdly, Also from the perspective of being more receptive to the audience, Buddhist "philology" is at least more approachable than Buddhist "philology" or "comparative linguistics", and is not so alien and rejecting. Thousands of miles away. Well, to be honest, I was afraid that not many people would be willing to read such a dry and purely academic book, not to mention it has such a scary name.
What these outstanding Chinese Buddhist philologists have done, or what we dream of pursuing, is to strengthen Sanskrit as the language of Buddhist scriptures and sacred texts in the Chinese Buddhist research community. Linguistic study of Chinese, Pali, Gandhara, as well as Tibetan, Mongolian, Uighur, Manchu, etc., while using these languages ??as the frame of reference, making full use of editions, collations, and catalogs in traditional Chinese philology , compiling and studying methods, re-examining the word meanings, grammar, etc. of Buddhist literature. After truly clarifying the "meaning" in Buddhist literature, we will gradually carry out a series of other studies on Buddhist philosophy, history, literature, art, etc. I sincerely hope that more schools offering master's and doctoral programs related to Buddhist studies will consider one or more of these languages ??as one of the required introductory courses for every student.
Of course, I am not saying that everyone engaged in Buddhist research must be proficient in the basics of these philology, but there is no doubt that those who engage in these basic researches in the Chinese Buddhist research community are not too familiar with it. More, but far from enough. The importance of this aspect cannot be emphasized more. For example, the "Da'an Panshou Yi Jing" (T.602) in the Tripitaka, now attributed to An Shigao, is an important specimen used by many scholars to analyze An Shigao and early Chinese meditation literature. However, Zuo Guanming's Research shows that this is not translated by An Shigao at all, and it is not even a Buddhist scripture. The real translation by An Shigao is hidden in the Kongo Temple in Japan. So, looking back at the many inferences we made based on this sutra as "An Shigao's translation", how much value is there?
Needless to say, in the past, in the domestic Chinese Buddhist circles, linguistic philology, especially Indo-European linguistic philology, in addition to the Beida Eastern language tradition represented by Ji Xianlin, Wang Bangwei, Duan Qing, Ye Shaoyong, etc., and more recently Apart from a few institutions such as Renmin University (Master Wei Shan, etc.) and Fudan University (Liu Zhen, etc.), which have gradually developed in recent years, it can be said to be a rather marginal field of Buddhist studies in mainland China.
But as a matter of fact, as repeatedly emphasized in this book, Buddhist philology (and of course Buddhist Chinese philology) is the cornerstone of all Buddhist research in the past, present and future.
If we cannot even understand or truly understand the original meaning of Buddhist scriptures or basic Buddhist documents, how can we talk about its history, philosophy and other issues? We hope that through the publication of such a small book, we can introduce a little bit of the best achievements in Buddhist linguistic philology in the West. Of course, we hope to use this booklet as a starting point to bring more excellent Western Indology, Buddhism and philology works to the Chinese academic circle, and to attract more students to join the research team of Buddhist literature among.
Speaking of the translation of this book, I first read this book probably in 2008. When I was at Fudan, I basically received traditional Chinese philology training (I would like to thank my tutor, Mr. Chen Yunji, and Mr. Chen Shangjun and Wu Ge, who taught me philology, although I learned it very badly), in 2006 After going abroad, I felt that my horizons were broadened. I devoured many Western Buddhist research monographs at a rate of nearly a hundred per year. I also experienced the elegance of Western Buddhist literature research, including this booklet.
Besides me, the main translator of this book is Dr. Chen Shifeng. I have known him since September 2013. He is an Australian Chinese originally from Singapore and later moved to Australia for nearly 30 years. Year. His major was agriculture (Ph.D. in Agriculture from the University of Queensland in 1987), but he systematically studied Sanskrit for a year at the Australian National University, a center for Buddhist studies, from 2007 to 2008. After that, he continued to study Sanskrit unremittingly for many years. with Pali. Since 2014, he has translated many of Professor Norman’s research articles, and our correspondence has mainly been about discussing some professional issues.
On February 18 of this year, Shifeng sent a letter to Ms. Karen Wendland, the office manager of the Pali Sacred Society, asking about the translation copyright of a Professor Norman paper. On that day, he received an approval email from Professor William Pruitt, who is now solely responsible for Mr. Norman's copyright. Professor Pratt, as everyone in the circle knows, is also an outstanding Buddhist philologist. Therefore, I also got in touch with Pratt himself, and wrote to me on March 4 to ask if I could get authorization for the translation of Norman's book. The next day, he wrote back saying that there was no problem, and told me that he would borrow it in August of that year. I hope to give the Burmese government an opportunity to compile a catalog of the Burmese Buddhist scriptures, and we can meet at that time. Later, the publishing house needed a more formal authorization, and Shi Feng wrote to get their written approval.
Although we have obtained the authorization, because in the first half of 2014 I have been busy translating Paul Williams's famous book "Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations", so this The book, like my countless research plans that are like castles in the air, has been delayed. This year, I believe, is also a busy time for Shifeng traveling between Australia, Singapore and Guangzhou.
Throughout 2015, while I was teaching, I was also busy preparing several conference papers. In September, I compiled a collection of works on Chinese translation of Buddhist philology for Zuo Guanming. In addition to recruiting temporary help, by March 2016, I had finally completed the translation of ten articles with a draft of about 300,000 to 400,000 words, but soon other chores kept popping up. That is to say, in November of this year, Shifeng asked me about the translation of Norman's book after he was free from work at hand and offered to co-translate with me.
At that time, I proposed that one person should translate half of the manuscript and I would coordinate the Chinese translation and compile the translation index. At the same time, I would give priority to finding a domestic publishing house. If that was not possible, the Singapore Journal of Buddhist Studies (The Journal of Buddhist Studies) would be edited by me. Singaporean Journal of Buddhist Studies) is published as a special issue. In this way, free downloads can be provided online and free journals can be sent directly to universities and research institutions, which can also be widely circulated. But later I felt that the teaching, administration, and constant chores were too much for me, so Shi Feng translated Chapters 3-10.
Therefore, most of the translation of this book is due to Shi Feng, and I only gave the book a beginning.
Shi Feng’s chapters 3-10, he sent me the first translation draft on September 29, 2016. The translation of my two chapters was delayed until February this year. After that, I worked hard to proofread all the translations and started to compile the translation index, which lasted until May 15th. I added comments to all the translations in revision mode and sent them to Shi Feng. Shifeng considered this translation and sent it back to me on August 14th. On this basis, I printed it out and read it again. I corrected some obvious typos, grammatical errors, mistranslations, etc., and published it on August 25th. It was sent back to Shifeng for review on the same day, and Shifeng's partial draft was finalized on September 7, and our book was basically completed (I will compile a terminology index after the proof is out).
Shifeng may be one of the few in the Chinese academic translation community. Although his native language is Chinese, his Chinese is slightly weaker than his English. Therefore, his real strength is Chinese-English translation. Just at the beginning of this year, it only took him three or four months to translate my nearly 70,000-word long article "Re-Study on Doubts and Falsehoods" ("Research on Fuyan Buddhism") that I wrote a few years ago. , 2012, Volume 7: 115-182). It not only involves specialized knowledge of Buddhist literature, but also a large number of special terms and technical terms. I was really surprised that he completed the English translation in such a short time. Therefore, his English understanding is rarely wrong, and my main job is to modify and translate his Chinese expressions. Of course, there will definitely still be mistranslations and misexpressions. We sincerely welcome any criticism and will use it as a spur to prepare for improvements in the next edition.
While I was revising the book, I sent a text message on Sina Weibo on March 10, asking if any domestic academic publishers were interested. At the first opportunity, Mr. Liu Sai from Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House contacted me about publishing matters. Although the book was not published in Shanghai Ancient Books in the end, I cannot forget Mr. Liu's kindness and kindness, and I feel extremely sorry for not being able to respond positively to Mr. Liu's offer of help.
Almost at the same time, junior brother Lin Xiaoguang from Zhejiang University sent a message saying that he had contacted Dr. Li Biyan from Zhongxi Book Company and that Dr. Li was very interested in this book. On the morning of the 11th, Professor Chen Yinchi of Fudan University also sent me a text message, telling me that if there were any problems with the publication of this book, he could help. At midnight on March 12, Professor Lu Yang from Peking University sent a text message, strongly recommending Dr. Li Biyan and Zhongxi Bookstore. His original words were: "... Zhongxi (Bookstore) is currently the best publishing house in China for Buddhist studies in India. , Li Biyan is the best editor. Xin Shi’s book has just been published there. You might as well consider making a series of them and include both of Norman’s books...” March 14th. , Dr. Li Biyan sent me an email asking about the specific matters of publication.
On the same day, Professor Chen Huaiyu of Arizona State University also recommended Dr. Li Biyan to publish this book. On March 17, Professor Ye Shaoyong from Peking University recommended it to me and introduced the publishing situation of the Indology series of Zhongxi Book Company. If some people still think that the recommendations of these teachers and friends are not enough, on March 26, when I attended the seminar "From Xiangyuan to Ceylon: The Life and Legacy of Chinese Monk Fa Xian" in Shanxi, I took a walk with Teacher Yan Yaozhong after dinner. He listened Talking about the publication of our book, he also recommended Dr. Li Biyan to me. It was during this meeting that Professor Wang Song of Peking University learned that the book had not been signed by a publishing house, so he proposed that he could help solve the publishing issues. On April 13th, Brother Liu Zhen of Fudan University sent an email asking if the book was available. If not, it could be included in the translation series he hosted.
This thin booklet has alarmed so many teachers and friends, which really makes me feel ashamed. At the same time, I would also like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank these teachers and friends for their selfless help. Of course, I would also like to thank Dr. Li Biyan for her academic passion, Teacher Wu Junhan for her professional and meticulous editing and proofreading, and Zhongxi Book Company for its unremitting support for academic unpopularity, so that those of us with "special habits" people can find a small plot of land for themselves.
Ji Yun Bishan, Singapore on September 8, 2017
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