Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China

Introduction

Introduction With translation there is transmission; without translation there is but obscurity. —Sengyou (445–518) The transmission of Buddhism from India to China in the first millennium of the Common Era ranks among the most significant and most well documented examples of cross-cultural exchange in the premodern world. Although the study of the global spread of Buddhism is most commonly undertaken by scholars of religion, this cross-cultural encounter involved much more than simply the transmission of religious or philosophical knowledge. Buddhism influenced many other aspects of Chinese life, including contributing to the economy, inspiring changes in the sociopolitical order, and spurring the adoption of foreign material culture. This book is a study of one, often-overlooked facet of this Indo-Sinitic exchange: the introduction of Indian medicine to China. Knowledge about health and illness held a central place within Buddhist thought from the earliest times. Anatomical and physiological terminology was frequently invoked in early Indian Buddhist texts, particularly in descriptions of meditation practices and other ascetic discourses. Medical similes and metaphors were utilized in order to make accessible many aspects of the Dharma, including the most abstruse philosophical positions. Narratives of the healing exploits of deities, monks, and other heroes were a feature of the Buddhist hagiographic literature of all periods. Rites to dispel disease were central to the ritual repertoires of Buddhist clerics across Asia. Many Buddhist scriptures even go so far as to suggest that fully understanding the 2 introduction body is the very essence of the Buddha’s teachings. Taken collectively, such Buddhist perspectives on health, illness, healers, patients, therapies, and bodies are today often spoken of by East Asian scholars and devotees as “Buddhist medicine” (Ch. foyi or fojiao yixue; Jp. bukkyō igaku). Buddhist medicine, if I may employ that term here for purposes of convenience , is a moving target. It represents a loose collection of ideas and practices that originated in the Indo-European context in the latter centuries B.C.E., but that was modified and expanded as a result of cross-cultural interactions during the vigorous geographical expansion of Buddhism. Transmitted along the networks of land and sea trade routes, the core doctrines and perspectives of Buddhist medicine came to exert a powerful influence on medical thought and practice across a large swath of Eurasia. To this day, they continue to form the basis of traditional medicine in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Tibet, among other places. However, the history of how the tradition was locally received, understood, and transformed differed greatly from place to place. The Chinese reception of Buddhist medicine was complex and multifaceted . Medieval China was culturally diverse and politically fractured, and therefore it—like virtually all other facets of Buddhism—was subject to multiple interpretations in different contexts. Importantly, China had longstanding and prestigious traditions of learned medicine that were objects of official patronage and that looked to a corpus of ancient classics for authority . China also had long-established repertoires of ritual healing, bodily selfcultivation , and alchemical experimentation that claimed to be able to heal, to prevent illness, and even to confer immortality. Over the long term, the impact of some aspects of Buddhist medicine on the Chinese medical world was profound: Indian-inspired healing deities, rituals, occult practices, and hagiography, for example, all proved to be enormously popular and permanent contributions to Chinese culture. At the same time, some doctrines that lay at the very center of Buddhist medical thought and practice were perceived as conflicting with indigenous precedents. In the long run, these failed to catch on and were ultimately either ignored or actively replaced by homegrown models within Buddhist discourses. I am planning future publications that will provide in-depth analysis of the medical content of Chinese Buddhist texts, the relationship between this medical system and others throughout Eurasia, and the historical development of Buddhist medicine in a global context. The present book focuses on understanding the local reception of Buddhist medical ideas in China. While it starts with an overview of the transmission of Buddhist medical knowledge Introduction 3 to China, the majority of its pages are dedicated to exploring the processes of translation involved in this historic episode of cross-cultural exchange. The many Chinese Buddhist writings under consideration in this book demonstrate that foreign medical ideas introduced along with Buddhism were voluminouslytranslated ,enthusiasticallycommentedupon,andwidelydisseminated in China. At the same time, however, they show that translators went to great lengths to adapt Indian ideas...