Cultural Transmission Behind The Language: A Study On Some Tangut Buddhist Texts Translated From Tibetan

In this paper,the main materials for the study are a group of Tangut Buddhist works,whichare translated from Tibetan by Zhou Huihai.These works include Tangut versions of AryaPraj(?)aparamita Ratnaguna Samcayagatha,Mahakarunika nama aryavalokitesvaradharanianusa msahitasutrat samgrhita and usnisa vijaya dharani anusamsahitasutrat samgrhita.The textsare selected here owing to their following specialties:(1) Among the presently unearthed Xixiamanuscripts,there are its multilingual versions consisting of Chinese,Tibetan and Tangut;(2) Thethree works presented here are all relevant to a batch of persons.The Tangut and Chinese versionswere translated by Zhou Huihai and Xianbei bao-yuan respectively,and the process of theirtransmission into Xixia was associated with Jayananda,an Indian monk.(3)In the currentacademic field,there are still some disputes,that is,whether the three versions of these threeworks (especially the Tangut version and the Chinese one) were directly translated from Sanskrit.The main content of this article is to interpret these Tangut texts by comparison with Chineseand Tibetan versions.And by the multilingual and elaborative comparison,the article not onlyexplains clearly some Tangut language words and expressions which have not been understoodpreviously,but also argues that the Tangut and Chinese versions were both translated from theTibetan version.The article consists mainly of five parts.Chapter One makes an overall introduction to the author of the Tangut versions,and thestorage condition of the unearthed manuscripts.There are a total of 25 unearthed manuscripts ofthe Mahakarunika nama aryavalokitesvara dharani,and they may be divided into four differenttypes;besides,there are a total of 20 surviving manuscripts of the usn(?)sa vijaya dharani,and theyalso belongs to four different categories;what's more,fragments of the Arya Praj(?)aparamitaRatnagu.na Samcayagatha have been found as many as 63,and can be classified into threedifferent kinds.Chapter Two briefly conducts the research condition of the corresponding Chinese andTibetan versions,and explicates that the Tibetan manuscripts XT16 from khara khoto do notcorrespond with Tangut versions of Arya Praj(?)aparamita Ratnaguna Saâ–¡cayagatha.Therefore,this article takes the Tibetan version from Fangshan,Beijing as the comparative material of theTangut version.Chapter Three,as the main part of the article,gives an explanation of the Tangut versions.Itadopts the approach that is to explain or understand the Tangut words one by one by comparisonwith the corresponding versions of Chinese and Tibetan.Chapter Four focuses on that the comparison of cross-language has the great value on thestudy of Tangut vocabulary.Firstly,it can help us not only give good judgment between the words and non-words but also understand the donation and the meaning of the word and its origin.Secondly,the difference between the synonyms,and the practical application of some complexfunction words,will be clearly shown through the multilingual comparison.Moreover,some termsof Buddhism will be discussed here in detail.Obviously,some of them are translated from theTibetan literally;others are influenced by certain corn sememe in the Tibetan vocabulary.In theZhou Huihai's versions,we can find some transliterations,but these terms have some commoncharacteristics,that is,those Sankrit words' real meaning is not very exact during theirtransmission process.Chapter Five explores the origin of the Tibetan and Chinese versions.By the comparativestudy of the Tangut,Chinese and Tibetan versions from the multi-level aspect,the article maintainsthat the Tangut and Chinese versions were both translated from the Tibetan versions.Moreover,these Tibetan versions were retranslated from the Sanskrit by monks during the Tangut periodbased on the previous Tibetan translation.Through the explanation of these Tangut Buddhistworks,which were translated from Tibetan by Zhou huihai,we can also see some regularity of theprocess during which Tibetan Buddhism spread into Xixia.For example,it is a basic model totranslate from Tibetan version into the Tangut and Chinese ones simultaneously.What's more,the"Sanskrit translation"in the Tibetan Buddhist Texts in Xixia does not refer to the Tangut orChinese version directly translated from Sanskrit one,but that from Sanskrit version into Tibetanone.