Saddharma Pundarika

Author(s): H Kern
Publisher: Oxford

Page 26

xxiv
SADDHARMA-PUNDARIKA.
part of No. 134 is retained). The reader is requested not to have any suspicion about these differences.'
According to the opinion of an eminent Chinese scholar, the late Stanislas Julien, the translation of Kumâragiva widely differs from Burnouf's. He gives utterance to that opinion in a letter dated June 12, 1866, and addressed to Professor Max Müller, to whose obliging kindness it is due that I am able to publish a specimen of Kumâragiva's version rendered into French by Stanislas Julien. The fragment answers to the stanzas 1-22 of chap. iii. As it is too long to be inserted here, I give it hereafter on page xl.
On comparing the fragment with the corresponding passages in Burnouf's French translation and the English version in this volume, the reader cannot fail to perceive that the discrepancies between the two European versions are fewer and of less consequence than between each of them and Kumâragiva's work. It is hardly to be supposed that the text used by Kumaragiva can have differed so much from ours, and it seems far more probable that he has taken the liberty, for clearness sake, to modify the construction of the verses, a literal rendering whereof, it must be owned, is impossible in any language. It is a pity that Stanislas Julien has chosen for his specimen a fragment exclusively consisting of Gathâs. A page in prose would have been far more useful as a test of the accuracy of the Chinese version.
Proceeding to treat of the contents of our Sutra, I begin by quoting the passage where Burnouf, in his usual masterly way, describes the general character of the book and the prominent features of the central figure in it. The illustrious French scholar writes:
'Là, comme dans les Satras simples, c'est Çakya qui est le plus important, le premier des êtres ; et quoique l'imagination du compilateur l'ait doué de toutes les perfections de science et de vertu admises chez les Buddhistes; quoique Çâkya revête déjà un caractère mythologique, quand il
1 Iptroduction, p. 119.
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