This is another in a series of weekly blog posts comparing and contrasting the Sanskrit and Chinese Lotus Sutra translations.
Note: For an explanation of how Kern and Kumārajīva differ in their organization of the Lotus Sutra, see Kumārajīva vs. Kern Table of Contents.
At the start of Chapter 23, The Previous Life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva, Senchu Murano’s English translation of Kumārajīva’s Chinese Lotus Sutra has Star-King-Flower Bodhisattva say to the Buddha:
“World-Honored One! Why does Medicine-King Bodhisattva walk about this Sahā-World? World-Honored One! This Medicine-King Bodhisattva will have to practice hundreds of thousands of billions of nayutas of austerities in this world. World-Honored One! Tell me why! Not only the gods, dragons, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kiṃnaras, mahoragas, men and nonhuman beings but also the Bodhisattvas who have come from the other worlds’ and the Śrāvakas present here will be glad to hear the reason.”
Kern has Nakshatrarājasankusumitābhigña ask the Buddha:
Wherefore, O Lord, does the Bodhisattva Bhaiṣajyarāja pursue his course in this Sahā world, while he is fully aware of the many hundred thousands of myriads of koṭis of difficulties he has to meet? Let the Lord, the Tathāgata, &c., deign to tell us any part of the course of duty of the Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Bhaiṣajyarāja, that by hearing it the gods, Nāgas, goblins, Gandharvas, demons, Garuḍas, Kinnaras, great serpents, men, and beings not human, as well as the Bodhisattvas Mahāsattvas from other worlds here present, and these great disciples here may be content, delighted, overjoyed.
“Wherefore” is archaic, which one would expect in a document published in 1884, but it means “for what reason,” which is essentially just “why.” Of interest, is the fact that two of the seven English translations of Kumārajīva Chinese Lotus Sutra substitute “how” for “why.”
Burton Watson begins his translation of Chapter 23, “Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King,” with:
“World-Honored One, how does the bodhisattva Medicine King come and go in the saha world?”
Leon Hurvitz, whose translation is considered the academic gold standard, has:
“O World-Honored One! How does the bodhisattva Medicine King travel in the Sahā World.”
Clearly, asking why, or the archaic wherefore, sets the stage for the chapter differently than asking how the bodhisattva travels about Sahā World.
In discussing the previous life of Medicine King as Gladly-Seen-By-All-Beings Bodhisattva, there is another example of Murano’s effort to insert his clarification into his translation.
Here’s how Kern has Sarvarūpasandarsana (Gladly-Seen-By-All-Beings) respond to hearing the Lotus Sutra:
Then he made another reflection: Let me do homage to the Lord Kandravimalasūryaprabhāsasrī and this Dharmaparyāya of the Lotus of the True Law. No sooner had he entered upon such a meditation than a great rain of Mandārava and great Mandārava flowers fell from the upper sky. A cloud of Kālānusārin sandal was formed, and a rain of Uragasāra sandal poured down. And the nature of those essences was so noble that one karsha of it was worth the whole Sahā-world.
Murano makes explicit the cause of the rain of flowers and incense:
“He entered into this samadhi at once. He filled the sky with the clouds of mandārava-flowers, mahā-mandārava-flowers and the powdered incense of hard and black candana, and rained down those flowers and incense. He also rained down the powdered incense of the candana grown on this shore of the sea [between Mt. Sumeru and the Jambudvipa]. Six shu of this incense was worth the Sahā-World. He offered all these things to the Buddha.
None of the other English translations of Kumārajīva’s Chinese Lotus Sutra have these events explicitly caused by Gladly-Seen-By-All-Beings.
Other minor differences between Kern’s Sanskrit and Kumārajīva’s Chinese abound. For example, after the Bodhisattva’s sacrifice of his body he is reborn in the household of a king. Murano puts it this way:
He said to his father in a gāthā:
Great King, know this, [in my previous existence]
I walked about this world, and at once obtained
The samadhi by which I can transform myself
Into any other living being. With a great endeavor,
I gave up my own dear body.“Having sung this gāthā, he said to his father, ‘Sun-Moon-Pure-Bright-Virtue Buddha is still alive.”
Kern, however, has the Bodhisattva address both his father and his mother.
Kern also has the Bodhisattva burning “his own arm” and ending “deprived of a limb.” Murano and the other English translations of Kumārajīva Chinese Lotus Sutra have him burning both arms. Only Hurvitz differs. He says the Bodhisattva “burned his forearm” and ended “without an arm.”
Next: The Translator’s Touch