Indian Philosophy in China

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-106
Author(s):  
Tadas Snuviškis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Sanskrit Text ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
Buddhist Text

Daśapadārthī is a text of Indian philosophy and the Vaiśeṣika school only preserved in the Chinese translation made by Xuánzàng 玄奘 in 648 BC. The translation was included in the catalogs of East Asian Buddhist texts and subsequently in the East Asian Buddhist Canons (Dàzàngjīng 大藏經) despite clearly being not a Buddhist text. Daśapadārthī is almost unquestionably assumed to be written by a Vaiśeṣika 勝者 Huiyue 慧月 in Sanskrit reconstructed as Candramati or Maticandra. But is that the case? The author argues that the original Sanskrit text was compiled by the Buddhists based on previously existing Vaiśeṣika texts for an exclusively Buddhist purpose and was not used by the followers of Vaiśeṣika. That would explain Xuanzang’s choice for the translation as well as the non-circulation of the text among Vaiśeṣikas.

Lost in translation? The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun) and its modern readings

2008 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Tarocco
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Sanskrit Text ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The West ◽  
Textual History ◽  
English Translations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lost In Translation

AbstractThe Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, an indigenous Chinese composition written in the guise of an Indian Buddhist treatise, is one of the most influential texts in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Its outline of the doctrines of buddha nature (foxing), buddha bodies (foshen), and one mind (yixin), among others, served from the medieval period onwards as one of the main foundations of East Asian Buddhist thought and practice. The Treatise is putatively attributed to the Indian writer Aśvaghoṣa, and its current Chinese version was traditionally conceived of as a translation from an original Sanskrit text. In the course of the twentieth century, however, many important scholars of Buddhism have called into question the textual history of the Treatise. Even if the specific circumstances of its creation are still largely unknown, the view that the Treatise is an original Chinese composition (not necessarily written by a native Chinese) is now prevalent among scholars. Meanwhile, and for more than one hundred years, the text has also become a source of knowledge of Buddhism in the West thanks to a number of English translations. After examining the early textual history of the two existing versions of the text, this article will offer some examples of its modern appropriation by a novel group of readers and interpreters, an appropriation that took place during the first decades of the twentieth century amidst efforts to re-envision Chinese and East Asian Buddhist history and the place of Buddhism in modern society.

scholarly journals Kathāvatthu (“Points of Controversy”) as a Primary Source of Early Buddhist Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 81-101
Author(s):  
Anastasiya V. Lozhkina
Keyword(s):  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
Buddhist Text ◽  
Pali Canon ◽  
Early Buddhism ◽  
Logical Method ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Pāli Canon

This article focuses on the under-researched Buddhist text Kathāvatthu (“Points of Controversy”) and aims to better determine its place within Indian philosophy. We consider how the text was compiled, its contents, and main characteristics (such as its genre, its classification lists – mātika). To understand some of those characteristics, we suggest viewing them as shared with the whole Pali Canon (a large body of heterogeneous texts, of which the Kathāvatthu is part). This article also illustrates the issues of translating religious and philosophical texts from the Pāli language. Particularly, we highlight that the Kathāvatthu belongs to the part of Pāli Canon known as the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, and consider how this influences the philosophical discourse presented in this text. We analyze the historical and philosophical content of the Kathāvatthu. We argue that such content of this work is consistently revealed in the discussion of issues controversial for the schools of Early Buddhism. At the beginning of the text, there are the most significant questions for Early Buddhism (about the subject (pudgala), about the one who has reached perfection – arhat). As we get closer to the end of the text, the importance of the issues discussed diminishes. Its final part contains the latest questions. The discussion in each question depends on the logical method of the eight refutations, the use of lists (mātika), and the position of the Theravada school to which the final version of the text belongs. In the article, special attention is paid to the determination of the Kathāvatthu genre. We conclude that the genre of this work can be considered as a unique example of religious and philosophical dialogue in Early Buddhist literature.

scholarly journals Spatializing Enlightened Civilization in the Era of Translating Vernacular Modernity: Colonial Vietnamese Intellectuals’ Adventure Tales and Travelogues, 1910s–1920s

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 627-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yufen Chang
Keyword(s):  
East Asian ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
French Version ◽  
Rivers And Lakes ◽  
Adventure Stories

This article examines the strategy of literary spatialization employed by colonial subjects to imaginatively engage with colonial civilizing projects. It analyzes twelve adventure stories written between the 1910s and 1920s by colonial Vietnamese reformed scholars, whose lives were impacted by the pan-Asian reform movements that swept Japan, China, and Vietnam between the 1860s and 1900s. They reflected their experiences with Enlightened civilization as they were pushing for vernacularization and modernization through translating the Chinese transculturation of Japanese texts into Latin-basedquốc ngữscript while constructing a national literature. Adventure tales and travelogues were considered suitable for aspiring writers to translatively imitate Western literature as presented in Chinese translation of Japanese texts. The authors negotiated with the French version of Enlightened Civilization by employing two East Asian literary tropes: the dangerous but exciting Rivers-and-Lakes World, where the protagonist ventures to search forvăn minh, and the peaceful and other-worldly Peach Blossom Spring utopia, where the true qualities ofvăn minhare realized. These stories reveal colonial subjects’ admiration for and anxiety regarding the Frenchmission civilisatrice, and their literary efforts to imagine a Vietnamesevăn minhthat would both impress and surpass the original models.

scholarly journals Dialectics in early Yogācāra and bodhisattva ideal

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 713-732
Author(s):  
S. L. Burmistrov
Keyword(s):  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Original Study ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Sanskrit Text ◽  
Conceptual Construction ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
True Knowledge ◽  
Sentient Beings ◽  
The Ideal

The article covers several aspects of Buddhist dialectics, as recorded in the last section of the “Abhidharma Compendium” (Abhidharma-samuccaya). It was compiled by Asanga (4th cent. AD) who was one of the founders of the Mahayana Buddhist school of Yogacara. Based on the Sanskrit text, the author gives a detailed account of Asanga's perception of the phenomenon of dialectics. He highlights the aspects as follows: the doctrine of reasoning methods, which provide the student with true knowledge, and the evidence of the reliability of this knowledge. The first part of dialectics comprises the essence of Buddhist teachings, which according to Asanga sees in the idea of three natures - the imagined, the dependent and the absolute (parikalpita, paratantra, pariniṣpanna) one. The second part covers the principles of rhetorics and the argumentation theory. Common principles lying in the basis of Buddhist rhetoric are determined by the bodhisattva ideal, or the ideal of an enlightened person who rises above the difference between samsara and nirvana, thus achieving the force to save other sentient beings from the ocean of saṃsāra. The author also points to the paradox that is immanent in Buddhist rhetoric: a preacher must show the emptiness of any conceptual construction by using the same constructions to enable the audience to get through them and to reach the non-conceptual reality. The article is an original study on the history of ancient and medieval Indian philosophy and rhetoric and will be of interest to everyone who deals with this problem.

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