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c h a p t e r 3 Translating Medicine in Buddhist Scriptures This chapter explores in the aggregate the large number of medieval Chinese Buddhist scriptures containing medical knowledge in order to provide a corpus-level analysis of translation norms. As mentioned previously, the translation of Buddhist medical doctrine was never thoroughly standardized at the level of vocabulary. Individual translators rendered medical terms in a variety of ways throughout the many centuries of their activity. At the same time that their lexical choices were highly variable, however, the basic strategic approaches Buddhist translators took to the translation of the medical material in their source texts followed some surprisingly consistent patterns over the long term. This chapter illuminates these patterns and explores what light they might shed on the priorities, goals, and intended audiences of the translators who produced these target texts. Buddhist Medical Metaphors Rather than provide an exhaustive transeme-by-transeme analysis of the corpus , this chapter focuses on the Chinese translation of five important metaphors that are pervasive in Buddhist scriptures dealing with medical topics. These five can be understood as “conceptual metaphors,” as famously defined by cognitive linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson. Lakoff and Johnson (and a number of scholars following in their footsteps) have taught us that metaphors are much more than mere wordplay. Conceptual metaphors are deeply ingrained patterns that structure our speech and our 68 chapter 3 thought. They are fundamental to human cognition, allowing us to think about and express complex ideas by mapping those abstractions onto more concrete processes and objects. Though they are central to our speech and thought, conceptual metaphors are unlike conventional metaphors used as rhetorical flourishes in that they often remain invisible to those who use them. To repeat an often-cited example that Lakoff and Johnson discuss extensively: in English, we often say that an argument is something to be “won,” that positions taken by one’s opponent are to be “attacked” or “shot down,” and that particularly valid points are “right on target.” Lakoff and Johnson claim that, while few in the English-speaking world may consciously realize the connection, this constellation of ways of speaking points to an underlying conceptual metaphor, argument is war. As they point out, this particular metaphor (and many others such as time is money, the mind is a machine, theories are buildings , love is a journey, and so on) not only structures the way we speak and think about but also how we experience and perform some of the most basic everyday activities in our lives. This chapter illuminates five conceptual metaphors that are inherent within Buddhist writings on medicine. While these certainly do not encompass the sum total of all Buddhist references to medical knowledge, each metaphor lies at the foundation of a complex edifice of dependent metaphors, similes, imagery, symbols, and other patterns of language that include many of the most basic and influential Buddhist medical ideas. These five metaphors are: (1) the body is a collection of parts, (2) health and disease are rewards and retributions, (3) the dharma is medicine, (4) deities are healers, and (5) healing is an occult power. While the local reception and translation of individual medical terms and doctrines could vary greatly from place to place across Asia, these metaphors represent enduring cultural-linguistic structures at the very heart of the pan-Asian Buddhist tradition. These conceptual metaphors are evidenced in the earliest Indian Buddhist texts known to us, and they maintained their explanatory power as they were translated into other languages throughout the first millennium. These five metaphors were highly influential in shaping medical thought in many recipient cultures, where they often continue to form the basis of discourses on health, illness, and the body and to provide the foundation for systems of traditional medicine even in the contemporary period. More to the point for the present discussion, these metaphors are ubiquitous in medieval Chinese Buddhist literature, transcending all phases of trans- Translating Medicine 69 lation in China. Clearly defined “schools” or “lineages” (zong) of Chinese Buddhism did not emerge until the Tang and are not reflective of social realities in the earlier period. However, these metaphors are notable for the ways in which they supersede conventional designations such as “Tiantai,” “Pure Land,” and “Yogācāra,” and transcend such megacategories as “Hinayana,” “Mahayana,” and “Tantric” or “Esoteric” Buddhism. These metaphors also cut cleanly across scholarly categories of analysis extrinsic to the...

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