Religious Founders
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Many, and indeed perhaps most, religions rely on a text that is associated with the founder of that religion. Either because of the reverence due to the founder himself or herself or because the founder or prophet is believed to been inspired to write the text because he or she was divinely inspired (or both), it is extremely important to the adherents of that religion that the original text not be "corrupted". As understandable as this desire is, it is also difficult if not impossible to achieve. In cultures in which knowledge (including knowledge of religious issues) is passed down from one generation to the next by word of mouth, the possibilities for reinterpretation, change and mistakes are myriad. Even in cultures in which religious knowledge is transmitted through writing, there are still numerous possibilities for mistakes to creep in and change the original meaning of the text. This is especially true when the original text is translated into another language.Of course, people are not unaware of these possibilities for mistake and misinterpretation and try to correct the mistakes that enter into later versions of religious texts. This paper examines one of the most important of these "revisionist" scholars in the history of Buddhism. Kumarajiva (343-413), was an early Buddhist monk and scholar, who was known in his own time (and continues to be celebrated) for his translations of sutras from Sanskrit into Chinese and for correcting mistakes that had
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became established in China and Nagarjuna's treatises became the core of the Chinese San-lun or Three Treatises school of Buddhism.
The most important element of Kumarajiva's translation was his insistence on remaining true to the original intent of the text. This was a shift from earlier translations fro Sanskrit into Chinese. These "archaic" translations (from the second to fourth centuries of the Christian era) were relatively mechanical and inaccurate. These translators
àused the traditional Chinese (mostly, Taoist /Daoist) notions for rendering the Sanscrit terms. Such a method made the texts more understandable for the Chinese public but corrupted greatly their meaning changing the Buddhist ideas and approaches into the Daoist ones.
Kumarajiva's work opened the "classical period" of Buddhist scholarship in China. This period, from the fifth to the seventh centuries of the Christian era, was epitomized by the work of Kumarajiva:
Kumarajiva, who was a really great translator, developed a system of "ge yi" (ke i), or "chosing the meaning). It is a method of semantical translation. Kumarajiva and his followers (Bodhiruci, Paramartha, etc.) used the Chinese words of daily use as technical terms (such words had no Daoist c
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Approximate Word count = 1590
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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