In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

xvii Conventions in the list of sources for each translated item, when citing lu Xun’s compendium , Gu xiaoshuo gouchen, and the recent Japanese work Hōon jurin no sōgōteki kenkyū, edited by Wakatsuki, Hasegawa, and inagaki, what i provide are page numbers, but when citing Wang Guoliang’s edition of the text, Mingxiang ji yanjiu, what i give is the serial number of the item in his ordering, not the page number. i have generally based my translation on the first of the texts listed as “source texts.” Most often this is a quotation preserved in Daoshi’s Fayuan zhulin. When deviating from this and preferring a reading found in another textual witness to the same story, i indicate in a note the alternate version or versions i am following. in cases where similar narrative material is reproduced elsewhere but not attributed directly to Mingxiang ji, often in significantly different wording, or else in the case of different stories in which the same protagonists appear, i list most of the relevant passages known to me under “additional texts.” When translating from a text in the Taishō canon, I have often departed from the punctuation given in that edition, usually without indicating this in my notes. stories are arranged in the approximate chronological order of the events they depict, to the extent that this can be determined. in this i have largely followed the ordering used by both lu Xun and Wang Guoliang in their respective editions. Following many stories, i append a section—longer or shorter depending on the case—titled “comments.” Here i record observations on the stories and certain of their details, or else i provide background to something mentioned in a tale. These comments inevitably reflect my own interests, predilections, and limitations as a reader. They trail off toward the end of the series of stories because i typically comment on themes or ideas at first mention but not later, so as to avoid needless repetition. Generally, when the chinese text translates the meaning of an indic term, i translate it, and when the chinese transliterates, i render the equivalent term in romanized sanskrit. But i do not follow this rule consistently : fa 法, for example, is consistently rendered here as “Dharma,” xviii Conventions not as “law,” and the various transliterative terms meaning “monk” are all alike simply rendered as “monk.” (i have not distinguished in my translation between those various terms, principally shamen 沙門 for śramaṇa, biqiu 比丘 for bhikṣu, or seng 僧, since in this and similar texts they are used interchangeably.) When a person or monastery is mentioned in the text and i have no information on him, her, or it, i remain silent; when i do have information, i indicate this in a footnote. all dates given fall in the common Era (cE) unless noted. When chinese dates are given within the translation text, Western conversions appear in square brackets. When quoting modern scholarly works, i silently convert all romanizations to pinyin and all English spellings to american English, except in titles of modern publications. in translating office titles i generally follow Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles. For converting chinese to Western dates i have followed Fang shiming and Fang Xiaofen, eds., Zhongguo shiliri he zhongxi liri duizhao biao. For converting weights and measures i have followed Wang li, Wang Li gu hanyu zidian, 1807–1815. When the translated text mentions a person’s age—but only when the person in question is quite young—i convert the age into Western terms. Then as now in chinese and some other East asian cultures, age was counted from conception, not birth, and newborns started at one year of age. i have preferred to use English spelling of sanskrit terms in cases where the latter have been recognized as standardized English. Thus, except when giving the titles of modern published works, i have written “sutra” instead of sūtra and “sangha” rather than saṃgha or saṇgha. i cite different sorts of chinese primary sources differently. These citation conventions are explained in the bibliography. Florian Deleanu has made the important point that, if one wants to prepare a good critical edition of a chinese Buddhist canonical text, it is necessary to collate at least two editions: the one found in the very widely used Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新修大藏經 (on the basis of which a digital edition with excellent search capability, cBETa Dianzi Fodian 電子佛典, has also been made available—one that has been...

Share