Encounter And Replacement Between Christianity And Buddhism

Timothy Richard is a missionary of Baptists in 19 centuries.He came to China in 1870,and spent his 45 years on missionary work.He translated many western works and paticipated in the Reform movement of 1898,when he met Li Hongzhang,Zhang Zhidong,Kang Youwei,Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen.In case of his association with those mentioned above in the event,many researchers mainly follow his political statue,or give the systematic studies to his translation of Western learning.However,Richard,during those years of missionary also dedicated himself in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism works,many of which were translated and Xi You Ji for instance,becomes the first and the most completed edition of his time.But these translations have not received enough attention and systematical discussion compared with those pointed out above.This paper,based on the historical primary resources,makes an exhausted and entire research to Richard’s Sinology translations in the world of Buddhism.With the line of Richard’s thoughts of Christianity and Buddhism,both of which are the basis of his text choice,translating practice and the translation influence in history,the following questions are proposed: first,why Richard,a Christian missionary,should exert great interest in Buddhism and how is this focal point reflected in terms of his religious thoughts? Second,what is Richard’s intention of selecting the texts from the countless Buddhism sutra? Third,in practice,what are Richard’s translation principles and how are they representing in the versions? Forth,in late Qin dynasty,what is the position and model of his translating activity? Based on these,this paper futher points a new and possible way of translation studies in pespective of history.The major findings are as follows.Under the guidance of liberal and social gospel Theology,Richard attempted to build a kingdom of God on the earth.This kingdom is deprived of illness but full of harmony.This kind of harmony,for him,can only be obtained by the union of religions in the world and then the world peace can furtherly be achieved with the removal of the differences caused by religious discrepancy.To make it work,Richard chose Mahayana Buddhism as the first union friend when he found the salvation of it was similar to that of Christianity,with which people could only be saved by God as by Buddha.Christianity and Buddhism belong to one family and people of these two religions were actually living in brotherhood.To disseminate this idea to the world,he translated the sutra like Da Cheng Qi Xin Lun,Fa Huan Jing,Jin Gang Jing,Xin Jing and Xi You Ji,all of which are fully colored with Chinese taste.To be specific,Da Cheng Qi Xin Lun,under his reading,contained full riotousness,which was love,tolerance and mercy from God;he read a prophecy from Jing Gang Jing that Jesus would take the place of Buddha to be the saver of the world;he explained the“色”and“空”from Xin Jing as the human and god nature of Jesus;and the Buddhism thoughts in Xi You Ji,was also understood as the earliest Christian form of China with the author being depicted as the Qui Chuji of Paul’s character.Under such fusion of Christianity and Buddhism,Richard then translated“真如”as God,“佛”,“法”and“僧”were translated as Trinity.“如来”was translated into Jesus,and other Buddhism concepts like“十八层地狱”,“劝持”and“塔庙”were also merged into Christianity.Besides,“观音”and“耶稣”are blended in different levels in the texts.During the process of fusing Christianity and Buddhism,the latter is nearly replaced.In the Christianity-dominated translation version,otherness is dispelled and Richard’s dream of building a harmonious kingdom of God comes into being.Contrary to the other missionaries,Richard did not regard Buddhism as enemy but devoted himself in the research of it.Although he rejected the idea of “salvation only by God”,yet is controlled by the Theology of “salvation only by Jesus” and replaced Buddhism with Christianity in his version and drew a vague line between the two.In spite of his freindliness to Buddhism and the new translation,the Buddhism thoughts could ill be found and the Christian ideas in the versions are also impure.Actually,the replacement between the two religions is achieved by translation and the result finally keeps a distance to other literal sutra translators in late Qin dynasty.He did his translation alone,charting a new chapter in the communication between the religions of east and west.Richard’s translation activities were attempted and done with the dream of building a “kingdom of God”.This dream can be explained by his eager for peace in late Qin dynasty.Isolated from such historical background,his eager,and then the translation can’t be objectively expounded.This paper shows that translation research,once stating from the historical angle and constructing the relation between translators and historical environment with resourceful data,will give a more detailed and crystal result.This is a new way for researchers to enhance the translation studies both deeply and broadly.