The Translation Of Buddhist Scriptures Into Chinese And Its In Fluences On Chinese Culture

Buddhism, originating in ancient India, was introduced to China during the late years of the Western Han Dynasty. It slowly spread through China and gradually merged into the mainstream Chinese culture. The popularity of Buddhism made Buddhist Scriptures fascinating for Chinese to read and recite. Beyond doubt, the translation of Buddhist Scriptures into Chinese played a very important role for the Chinese to understand Buddhist Scriptures. By ascending back to the history of translation activities in China, this dissertation mainly describes the features and strategies of the translation of Buddhist Scriptures into Chinese, together with its great influences on Chinese culture. In addition, the dissertation innovates in the induction and analyses of the overall features of the translation.These translation activities went through four historical phases (initial, growing, prosperous and effete phases) in China. During the four phases of evolvement of these activities, all translators, represented by Jiu Mo-luoshi, Zhen Di, Xuan Zang and Bu Kong, were committed to the great cause and made tremendous contributions to it. They continually reviewed their experiences and were bold in blazing new trails. At last, they wisely changed their strategy of translation from "foreignizing strategy" to "domesticating strategy" which was mainly adopted later. Consequently, they succeeded in tightly attaching Buddhist doctrine to Chinese native culture and satisfying the political needs of ruling class as well as the spiritual needs of the ruled class. Therefore, Buddhism gained living space in China. Relying on the translation, Buddhism exerted an extensive and far-reaching effect on Chinese philosophy, language, literature, later theories of translation, architecture, painting, statue, music and so on. In other words, Chinese culture absorbed a large part of contents of Buddhist culture.The translation of Buddhist Scriptures into Chinese can be regarded as world-class influential activities, because so many people participated in the activities and attained great success. These activities are beyond compare in the world history of translation. It was the prelude to large-scale Chinese activities of translation of foreign culture and enormously promoted the cultural communications among China, India and other countries. I explore these great activities at my angle to discover more academic and historic values. On the base of consulting a lot of historical documents and modern works concerned, I make a more comprehensive and thorough analysis of the features, strategies of the translation and its effects on Chinese culture. With the methods of longitudinal and paralleled comparison, exemplification, induction and summarization, not only have I got a deeper understanding of the academic and historical values of the translation, but also I have learned some theories and methods of translation that I didn't know before. So I have benefited a lot from the exploration.This dissertation consists of six parts:Part one is the preface of this dissertation, including the review of academic history concerned and the introduction of the background of the translation of Buddhist Scriptures into Chinese. It also makes clear the important significance of the study of these activities of translation.Part two introduces the four historical phases of the translation, summarizing the situation and features of these activities in every historical phase.Part three expounds that the strategy of the translation gradually changed from focusing on "foreignizing strategy" to focusing on "domesticating strategy". Due to the change, Buddhist doctrines were more tightly attached to Chinese native culture and, as a result, it gained a wider spread in China.Part four analyses the three distinguishing features of the whole activity of translation: the gain of vigorous political support, the participation of governments and the establishment of translation sites.Part five discourses the important influences on Chinese culture exerted by these activities of translation in many aspects.Part six is the epilogue of this dissertation. It stresses the vital historical significance of the Chinese Buddhist Scriptures and the activities of translation.