An Age of Translation: Geyi and the Chinese Cosmopolitan Imaginary

(Chicago Center in Paris, July 2015)

As scholars, we’re committed to critique and self-correction, but that doesn’t

mean we embrace it readily. I recently came across an article that offered good reasons

for thinking that a piece of my mental furniture, a term and a historical episode that I had

made a part of my thinking for years, was not what I (and a great many other people)

thought it was. This is most inconvenient.

We revise our vocabularies constantly over a lifetime. Perhaps a word, like

“orientalism” after Edward Said’s 1978 book, takes on a new and unfavorable meaning;

to make way for the new meaning, we adjust that part of our language, no longer

referring to a certain branch of philology as “oriental studies” unless we want to cast

blame on it. Or perhaps a symbol, such as the Confederate flag, becomes associated with

such odious ideas that we prefer to avoid it altogether. Language is always changing, and

we adapt to its changes more or less willingly. To the degree that a word is important to

us—to the degree that it comes up frequently in our speech and writing, or has strong

connections to other words and concepts—it will be harder for us to get used to using it

in different ways.

The phrase geyi 格義 has occupied a certain niche in Chinese intellectual history,

in Buddhist studies, and in theories of translation for about eighty years now. It owes its

prominence to an essay by Chen Yinque that examines a specific transition in Chinese

language, thought, religion and society: the introduction and assimilation of Buddhism

! 2

between the Han and Sui periods. It would be impossible to overstate the importance of

this transition, perhaps the greatest occasion of intellectual change in Chinese history up

to the nineteenth century. Ge Zhaoguang describes the conditions that favored the

introduction of a foreign and in many ways radically subversive ideology into the society

of the Six Dynasties:

In the second decade of the fourth century, after the Jin court fled south in

317, the fundamental situation of the elite intellectual world… finally underwent a

great change. ‘When [the Jin] crossed the Yangzi… Buddhism flourished greatly.’

… [C]elebrated scholars highly knowledgeable about philosophy… were ardently

discussing Buddhist ideas. Precisely because these men were deeply steeped in

traditional Chinese knowledge, their discussions of Buddhism went beyond the

ordinary concerns about redemption, offerings to the Buddhas, charitable

donations and retribution to explore the profound theories of the Buddhist

religion. As a result they very soon arrived at quite a few doubts and questions…

All these doubts required realistic explanations, and understandable terms were

needed to make these explanations, but such understandable terms could only

come from the Chinese cultural context. Therefore early translation of Buddhist

ideas relied on traditional Chinese terms, especially Daoist terms that seemed to

have similar meanings. This gave rise to the practice of geyi or ‘matching the

meanings.’ As Chen Yinque astutely pointed out, the geyi method represented the

first step in the beginning of the Chinese understanding of Buddhism, and Tang

! 3

Yongtong’s research also shows that it was perhaps used very early on… The geyi

method had to be used because the ancient Chinese language simply did not

contain terms that corresponded to all those complicated Buddhist concepts. …

Although this method of geyi was later criticized and abandoned by genuine

theoreticians of Buddhism, still at the time it served both a bridging and an

enlightening function and facilitated the emergence of the meanings of Buddhist

thought in the Chinese linguistic context. 1

Ge Zhaoguang’s account shows the pivotal role attributed to geyi in reconstructing the

history of ideas in this period of political instability, literati disaffection, and desire for

new ideals. In another register, I too have used the model of geyi as a way of

characterizing the goals of different types of translation. Here is how I used it to talk

about one kind of translation as resulting in a “creole,” a mixture of idioms rather than a

mirroring of the meanings of one language in another language:

The first renderings of Buddhist texts into Chinese, in the early centuries

of our era, groped for familiar equivalents in existing discourse, which turned out

to be mainly found in the authors of the Daoist canon: thus the concept of nirvana

was translated as wu-wei or non-action, an impressive metaphorical leap but not

an impossible one. Meditation practices characteristic of India with its long

history of yoga were expressed with the phrase 守⼀一, quoted from Laozi and

Zhuangzi where it means something like “preserving single-mindedness.” These

! 4

feats of cultural accommodation, motivated by the prestige of Daoist

philosophizing and the nonexistent reputation of Buddhist philosophizing at the

time, were superseded, however, a century or two later when a more exacting

translator, Dao’an 道安, wrote a scathing preface to his Chinese version of a

Sanskrit text in which he accused earlier translators of having settled for popular

phraseology that made nonsense of the subtleties of the original. He could do that 2

only if a public was ready to agree that the foreign texts held meanings that were

worth struggling to get. The remedy according to Dao’an was to make new

Chinese sentences with a word order that had never been used in Chinese before,

and to use exotic strings of nonsense syllables that imitated the sound of Sanskrit

words. The resulting prose was not immediately intelligible to anyone without

specialized training, but through the mimicry and incorporation of Sanskrit, it

assured the reader that the concepts were being transmitted in all their purity,

without fudging or compromise. Like an early Lawrence Venuti, Dao’an put a

value on foreignizing translation, the kind of translation that most consumers of

translation would describe as unsuccessful and that I would describe as a mix of

translation and transliteration. 3

Like Ge Zhaoguang, I see something pivotal happening here. It’s not just the

contact of two worlds of thought—those of China and India—and the radical disparity

between them, a disparity that must have appealed greatly to the anxious literati of the

fourth century, but the way that the contact is made. Logically, for there to be a

! 5

communication between speakers of two different languages, there must be some

information they share in common. Perhaps this information consists of pieces of the

outside world (as when we gesture at one another, or offer food and drink, or hand over

money); perhaps it consists of a code that is common to our languages (as when we use

written Arabic numerals to haggle silently over prices); but for a sophisticated

communication to occur, there has to be some individual capable of using both languages

and of establishing correlations between parts of language A and parts of language B.

This bilingual speaker, however, must address monolingual speakers of language A or B,

and if he is to express ideas familiar in language A but unknown to speakers of language

B, some ingenuity is required. Geyi offers a solution to this problem: take terms,

concepts, and attitudes that are familiar to speakers of Chinese—or more to the point,

take terms and concepts that are already cherished and important to an élite subset of

Chinese-speakers—and frame a Buddhistic discourse in those terms, trying to make sense

within the pre-existing habits of Chinese speakers. I imagine something similar must

have happened when the early Christian missionaries went out to convert the pagan

Goths, Gauls, Anglo-Saxons, and Slavs. The vocabulary of concepts and concerns that

the early Buddhist teachers of China relied on, according to the notion of geyi, was

Daoist. This made sense both in a broad philosophical sense and in a cultural sense.

Philosophically, Daoism put “not having” before “having,” wu before you; and in the

culture of the Six Dynasties, the Daoist texts were most appreciated by the disaffected

élites who were looking for a means of escape from a harsh social environment. All this

! 6

is quite familiar and it tends to be recited as a package in accounts of early Buddhist

activity in China. The Foguang da cidian, for example, says of geyi:

佛教東傳中國之初，知識分⼦子常以其類似⽼老莊思想⽽而接受之。︒至西元三、︑四世紀魏晉

時代，清談之風盛⾏行，尤其以⽵竹林七賢為代表的學者雅⼠士，常以⽼老莊思想來說明般若

的空理。︒此種過渡時期的學風稱為「格義」。︒佛教被⽼老莊空理的清談之風所影響，舉

凡佛教講述、︑佛典注釋，常引⽤用⽼老⼦子、︑莊⼦子、︑《易經》的⽤用語，皆稱為「格義佛教」。︒

後世亦有以儒家思想比附佛法者，亦被視為是格義佛教的⼀一種。︒

　　以格義⽅方式弘揚佛法的代表⼈人物有竺法雅、︑康法朗等。︒東晉道安⼤大師最初以⽼老莊

義理講述佛教，注釋佛典，因恐格義歪曲佛教教義，乃主張應以佛教原義正確翻譯佛

典，並藉由佛典本身探究佛理。︒直到鳩摩羅什⼤大師之後，中國佛教才擺脫格義模式。︒ 4

So, in sum, geyi accounts for an otherwise mysterious change in opinions; it gives a

mechanism for that change to occur; and it ties together two major families of thought,

one native to China and one imported. That’s why it matters.

But a recent article by Victor Mair casts doubt on this whole attractive story. His

article is not exempt from problems, but it does three useful things: it reexamines the key

source text referred to by every discussion of geyi, it scours the whole body of Chinese

literature (secular, Daoist and Buddhist) for occurrences of the term, which are

surprisingly rare; and it traces the proliferating concept of geyi in twentieth-century

scholarship back to a pair of 1930s essays by Chen Yinque “Zhi Mindu xueshuo kao” ⽀支

愍度學說考 and “Qingtan wuguo (fu ‘geyi’)” 清談誤國（附 ‘格義’). Victor has bad news 5

! 7

for those of us who see in geyi a model of translation or of cultural fusion. He announces

early on in his article that “geyi had nothing whatsoever to do with translation, but that it

was instead a highly ephemeral and not-very-successful attempt on the part of a small

number of Chinese teachers to cope with the flood of numbered lists… that came to

China in the wake of Buddhism.” That is, when confronted with a list of enumerated

items, the Chinese Buddhist teachers sought to correlate it with a similar list from a more

familiar non-Buddhist source. This reduces greatly the scope of geyi and makes it an

extremely unlikely vehicle of cultural change, for it was in Mair’s view merely a

technique for dealing with a specific local kind of problem.

The starting point for all discussion of geyi is the biography of Zhu Faya in

Gaoseng zhuan ⾼高僧傳.

竺法雅，河間⼈人。︒凝正有器度，少喜外學，長通佛義。︒衣冠⼠士⼦子，咸附諮稟。︒時依

雅⾨門徒，並世典有功，未善佛理。︒雅乃與康法朗等，以經中事數，擬配外書，為⽣生

解之例，謂之格義。︒及毘浮、︑曇相等，亦辯格義，以訓⾨門徒。︒雅風彩灑落，善於樞

機，外典、︑佛經，遞互講說。︒與道安、︑法汰，每披釋湊疑，共盡經要。︒後⽴立寺於⾼高

⾢邑，僧眾百餘，訓誘無懈。︒雅弟⼦子曇習，祖述先師，善於⾔言論，為趙太⼦子⽯石宣所敬

云 。︒ 6

On the interpretation of the sentence 雅乃。︒。︒。︒以經中事數，擬配外書，為⽣生解之

例，謂之格義 turns the case for or against geyi as a significant interpretative practice.

Tang Yongtong, in a 1968 essay following out his classmate Chen Yinque’s suggestion,

! 8

translates the sentence thus: “taking the 事數 (categories) which were within the

scriptures, [Faya] compared and paired them with the outer books [i.e., non-Buddhist

writings], thus making instances (examples) to promote understanding: this he called

geyi.” In Mair’s reading, the sentence should be translated as follows: “Consequently, 7

[Zhu]… correlated the enumerations of items in the sutras with non-Buddhist writings as

instances of lively explication; this was called ‘categorizing concepts.’” The differences 8

are not great, as to the interpretation of the sentence. What differs is the scope of the thing

here named “geyi.” Chen Yinque, noticing an apparent absurdity in a Six Dynasties text,

accounts for it as strategic or punning quotation:

But what we see here is not just a misunderstanding; in fact, it can be explained

by the intellectual temper of the times. For those scholars who participated in

‘pure conversations’ during the Jin often enjoyed bringing Buddhist canonical

texts and secular writings into forced combinations. Among monks and their

followers there was, moreover, a specific method known as ‘geyi.’ Although geyi

is rarely mentioned, it flourished for a time, and its influence on the thinkers of

the period was extremely deep, so it cannot go without a discussion here.

但此不僅由於誤解，實當⽇日學術風氣有以致之。︒蓋晉世清談之⼠士，多喜以

內典與外書互相比附。︒僧徒之間復有⼀一種具體之⽅方法，名曰格義。︒格義之

名雖罕⾒見載記，然曾盛⾏行⼀一時，影響於當⽇日之思想者甚深，固不可以不論

也。︒ 9

! 9

Chen then goes on to cite the biography of Zhu Faya and similar texts to demonstrate that

the pedagogy of early Buddhist teachers often relied on citing more familiar non-

Buddhist writings as analogies and exempla. The biography of Huiyuan 慧遠, the

founder of the Pure Land sect, from Gaoseng zhuan notes that once when a hearer found

the doctrine of ultimate reality too difficult to understand, “Huiyuan then cited the

Zhuangzi as a parallel, and the one who had been perplexed saw clearly” 遠乃引莊⼦子為

連類，於是惑者曉然. After this, Huiyuan’s teacher Dao’an 道安 “made an exception

and let Huiyuan continue to study non-Buddhist writings” 是後安公特聽慧遠不廢俗書.

Chen Yinque adds: “The introduction of analogies and examples by citing the Zhuangzi is

similar to [the above-mentioned] ‘geyi.’” Allowing “outer” or non-Buddhist books to be 10

used as glosses and pedagogical helps was a strategy designed to enable potential

converts to enter the Buddhist way of thinking. The strategy could go too far: Chen cites

the case of one sutra (known as the 提謂經) that had been expanded with references to

Chinese classical texts, and was therefore rejected as corrupt. 11

Although the “numbered lists” or shishu were seen as particularly obscure and

thus in special need of such analogizing treatment, Chen does not make those lists the

exclusive objects of geyi. Mair does. Mair’s corrective, then, lies in restricting the term

geyi to “an exegetical technique of circumscribed application and limited duration,”

namely “the correlation of lists of enumerated Buddhist concepts with presumably

comparable lists of notions extracted from non-Buddhist works.” 12

! 10

If Mair is right about the meaning of the seldom-used compound term geyi, then

its use should be reformed in future writing on the subject. “So lernt ich traurig den

verzicht,” as Stefan George puts it. Renunciation is in order. But it is not quite the case 13

that, as George goes on to say, “Kein ding sei wo das wort zerbricht.” Mair’s corrective 14

is haunted by the very inflation of meaning that he wishes to cut back.

After the meager series of texts cited above, there is no significant mention of

geyi until the twentieth century, when it is miraculously revived by modern

historians and made to play a key role in the early development of Buddhism in

China.

The overwhelming majority of the modern translations and interpretations

of geyi are partially or totally false…. [M]ost of what Chen [Yinque] has to say

about geyi is sheer speculation…. Given Chen Yinke’s enormous prestige, it is

not surprising that his uncharacteristically poorly substantiated article and

lectures on geyi set the tone for all discussions of this topic for the next seven

decades.

Chen’s lead was taken up in a hugely influential article on geyi by Tang

Yongtong… Tang’s understanding of geyi… is consistent with his interpretation

in his History [of Buddhism]: ‘What is geyi?… It is a method of comparing and

matching with Chinese thought to cause people to understand Buddhist writing

easily.’…

! 11

Among the many bizarre twists in the saga of geyi is the development of

what Japanese specialists refer to as kakugi Bukkyô 格義佛教 (‘geyi Buddhism’).

Here we have the reification of a hypothetical construct that never existed in

historical reality, but one that—once born—takes on a life of its own… with

countless disquisitions being written on the nature and impact of what is

essentially an imaginary phenomenon. 15

Mair cites Tsukamoto Zenryû, Feng Youlan, Xiao Gongquan, Arthur Link, Arthur Wright,

Wing-tsit Chan, Kenneth Chen, Whalen Lai, Leon Hurvitz, Erik Zürcher, Ren Jiyu, and

others as “geyi enthusiasts” “ensnarled in the labyrinthine coils of the geyi trap” and

prone to “confusion and imprecision” in their “sweeping assertions… unsupported by the

actual textual evidence.” But is their error simply one of having misunderstood the term 16

geyi? In rejecting the term geyi as it is (since Chen Yinque) commonly understood, Mair

also means to reject the claim that there existed “a method of comparing and matching

with Chinese thought to cause people to understand Buddhist writing easily,” relying

chiefly on a vocabulary taken from Daoist texts. But his own argument should lead us to

treat the term geyi and the practice formerly known as geyi as two separate things. It does

not follow from the statement “Scholars have been mistaken about the meaning of the

term geyi” that “the practices scholars have mistakenly called geyi never occurred,”

unless there is an essential link between the term geyi and those practices. If indeed the

practice of citing pre-Buddhist Chinese texts, most often but not exclusively the Laozi

and Zhuangzi, in support of Buddhist argument, never, or rarely, or only trivially,

! 12

occurred, then that should be shown through a discussion that does not depend on the

meaning assigned to the term geyi. Mair attempts to rebut the scenario of a syncretic

“Daoistic Buddhism” (Dôkyôteki Bukkyô 道教佛教)” (Tsukamoto’s coinage) in the

Eastern Jin by asserting that “Daoist religion was hardly enough well established [then]…

to have subsumed or significantly colored Buddhism.” But the examples of cross-17

cultural glossing given by Chen Yinque have nothing to do with the Daoist religion,

which everyone agrees developed in China partly as a rival cult to expanding Buddhism;

they refer only to adaptive use of the Daoist philosophical texts that were in favor among

the disaffected intelligentsia of the Six Dynasties. Mair is closer to the truth when he

points out that “early translators of Indian texts into Chinese creatively used the entire

inventory of Literary Sinitic (LS), picking and choosing from what was available to

convey as best they could the ideas and images of this alien religion.” But the subsequent

assertion that “There is no evidence whatsoever that indicates that they favored Daoist

terminology over any other sector of the whole lexicon of LS” overreaches. It may be

true that the term geyi, and the extension of its meaning pioneered by the brilliant Chen

Yinque, have licensed imaginative reconstructions and exaggerations, but to deny the

importance of syncretism to the spread of Buddhism among the gentry is absurd. The

syncretism that assured Buddhism its upper-class audience had, by most accounts, a

strong if not exclusive basis in the texts favored by reclusive Six Dynasties intellectuals:

Zhuangzi as commented by Xiang Xiu 向秀 and Guo Xiang 郭象, Laozi and the Book of

Changes in the commentaries of Wang Bi 王弼. Of course the translators of Indian texts

! 13

“picked and chose” in the wide field of Chinese written expression when seeking to give

Buddhism an appropriate voice. But the question of what sources they “favored” needs to

be framed carefully. Is influence to be assessed quantitatively? Or might a few choice

allusions, well-crafted and memorably put, not do at least as much to legitimize the new

religion as any number of banal repetitions of familiar phrases? The phenomenon of

translation through citation, a subversive mixture of old and new, is both undeniable and

complex; it deserves a careful treatment attentive to social, occasional, pedagogical,

poetic, narrative and personal dimensions, to the degree that the texts permit these to be

recovered. 18

The lexicographical cast of Mair’s corrective leaves it wanting in another regard.

Mair speaks as if attributing a meaning to geyi were simply a matter of getting it right or

wrong—mostly wrong, of course: “erroneous understanding… wildly imaginative

articles… overblown theses… empty and ahistorical… a colossal, chimerical

congeries…” What was Chen Yinque’s motive for calling attention to the phenomenon 19

of intercultural glossing, even if he erred in giving it the name geyi? Why did the term

appeal to other scholars, not only historians of early Buddhism but those working in

religion more generally, the history of ideas and the theory of translation, for example?

What new perceptions did it make possible? To what thoughts did it give an outlet? What,

in a word, was at stake?

To answer such questions, it will be convenient to step back from the scene of

geyi and look into an earlier investigation uncluttered by its terminology. The translation

of Buddhism into the Chinese language and its assimilation into Chinese civilization were

! 14

topics already raised in public discussion by Liang Qichao in the early years of the

Republic’s formation. Their importance was pegged to issues of language, translation and

culture, thought at the time to be decisive for any future of a Chinese identity. What Chen

would later call geyi—a retroactive, domesticating translation-process—furnished a

model for thinking about the contemporary situation, above and across national, religious,

ethnic or linguistic identity.

Liang Qichao’s 梁啟超 1920 essay “The Literature of Translation and the

Buddhist Canon” 翻譯⽂文學與佛典 closed with a clear indication of its intended

relevance to the contemporary situation: “Through lack of time and space I have been

unable to address this topic as exhaustively as I had wished, but the reader of these pages

should be able to judge of the importance of the literature of translation for a nation’s

culture. We are today in a second age of translation, and those who are engaged in that

work should aspire to equal the ancients!” 吾對此問題，所欲論者猶未能盡，為篇幅

及時⽇日所限，姑⽌止於此。︒讀斯篇者，當已能略察翻譯事業與異國⽂文化關係之重⼤大。︒

今第⼆二度之翻譯時期至矣，從事於此者，宜思如何無愧古⼈人也！ The “second age 20

of translation” of which Liang spoke included such hybrid works as Yan Fu’s translations/

adaptations of Darwin and John Stuart Mill, Hu Shi’s “experiments” in vernacular free

verse, and Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman” (based on Gogol’)—and countless other

cultural forms pervading daily life and communications, making contact with foreignness

more or less the hallmark of modernity as experienced by Chinese. Foreignness had 21

been similarly pervasive and valued in China only once before.

! 15

In ancient times our nation was often in contact with alien races. But the

foreigners’ culture was always treated as lower than our own, and the relationship

was always conducted using our language and characters. The dragoman was not

worth mentioning. As for a warm reception given to foreign cultures, an open-

minded receptivity toward them, and the sense that translating was an honorable

endeavor—all that came only with the introduction of Buddhism.

然我國古代與異族之接觸雖多，其⽂文化皆出我下，凡交際皆以我族語⾔言⽂文

字為主，故“象鞮”之業，無⾜足稱焉，其對於外來⽂文化，為熱情的歡迎，為

虛⼼心的領受，⽽而認翻譯為⼀一種崇⾼高事業者，則⾃自佛教輸入以後也。︒ 22

A cultural nationalist might see this as a lamentable concession. (Indeed Hu Shi would

later complain bitterly about the “humiliating domination of the whole nation by a

foreign religion which was opposed to all the best traditions of the native civilization.” ) 23

But Liang Qichao had a different criterion for cultural vitality.

The stronger the receptivity of a nation’s culture, the greater its power of growth:

this is a constant principle. Our nation’s receptivity to cultures outside it was

exhibited principally in the epoch of the introduction of Buddhist teachings. Thus

not only the world of ideas underwent an unprecedentedly vast transformation;

the world of letters did as well…

! 16

凡⼀一民族之⽂文化，其容納性愈富者，其增展⼒力愈強，此定理也。︒我民族對

於外來⽂文化之容納⾏行，惟佛學輸入時代最能發揮，故不惟思想界⽣生莫⼤大之

變化，即⽂文學界亦然。︒。︒。︒

And indeed the overwhelmingly powerful current in twentieth-century Chinese letters,

the vernacular movement with its upending of the traditional hierarchy of genres and

styles, was an outgrowth, Liang tried to argue, of the Buddhist translation movement of

the fourth and fifth centuries.

The Flower Sutra, the Nirvana Sutra, the Prajñaparamita Sutra… Texts like

these, so rich in literary value, and translated by masters of the art into the most

beautiful Chinese, were enjoyed by people of every stratum of society…. Their

influence was transmitted directly to ordinary literary works. … And in more

recent eras, great works on the order of Shuihu zhuan or Honglou meng show, in

many points of their style and structure, their debt to the Flower and Nirvana

Sutras.

若華嚴，涅槃，般若等。︒。︒。︒此等富裕⽂文學性的經典，復經譯家宗匠以極

優美之國語為之迻寫，社會上⼈人⼈人嗜讀。︒。︒。︒ 其影響乃直接表⾒見於⼀一般⽂文

藝。︒。︒。︒。︒ ⽽而近代⼀一⼆二鉅製⽔水滸紅樓之流，其結體運筆，受華嚴，涅槃之

影響者實甚多。︒ 24

! 17

These premodern novels, along with play-scripts and ballads, were just emerging from

the netherworld of popular entertainment to occupy the top ranks of the modern Chinese

literary canon. Once again, Liang’s fourth-century Buddhists are pointing at the

contemporary.

Liang had always been willing to learn from other cultures and to put forth

particular products drawn from them (like the social novel) as models to be followed in

China, but this essay is something of a manifesto. Under the cover of recounting a

history, it argues that foreign influence in literature is not something to which one

submits, as to a powerful master, but that it is necessary for the good of the receiving

culture. It came at a particular juncture in Liang’s career, an intended shift from

journalism to scholarship. In 1917 Liang retired from his job at the Ministry of Finance;

in 1919-1920 he took a long trip to Europe. His first writing project after his retirement

was to be a history of Buddhism in China, of which the essay on translated literature and

Buddhist classics is one rounded-off fragment. The choice of topic addresses

contemporary anxieties. Was Chinese culture dying out? Was the whole civilization

losing its way? Certainly the nation was in a weak state, with the provinces dominated by

warlords and the port cities sliced up for foreign concessions. Liang’s praise of the long-

past outward-looking moment of Chinese culture under Buddhist influence asserts that

receptivity is not an index of weakness, but of strength. The hybrid culture, wrought

through and in translations, of the late Qing and early Republic is no anomaly. It does not

represent a break in the continuity of Chinese identity, but belongs rather to the regular

and attested processes of cultural growth: a second “era of translation.”

! 18

When Chen Yinque turned to the same theme some fifteen years later, it was to

refine and reply. Liang’s judgment of the quality of translations follows a “golden mean”

pattern: translations should be faithful but not rebarbative, legible but not loose. He

quotes contemporaries’ praise of An Shigao’s 安世⾼高 versions as “well-argued but not

over-elaborate, straightforward but not rustic” 辯⽽而不華，質⽽而不野， and “surprising

in thought and delicate in reasoning, impossible to put down” 義妙理婉，每覽其⽂文，欲

罷不能. Some translations, however, 25

‘dilute the wine with water’ and ‘equip Hundun with holes, killing him in the

process’—two extremely telling analogies for translators’ failures. There is no

greater flaw than introducing a subjective ideal that surreptitiously puts itself in

the place of the spirit of the original. Chen Shou said: ‘What the Buddha

transmitted, they weave and mingle with the Chinese Laozi.’ For the translators

of the early period were steeped in Laozi and Zhuangzi, and plucked out

expressions from them to adorn the Buddha’s words. For example, the Forty-Two

Chapter Sutra: not only is the writing style imitated from Laozi, but the teaching

follows him as well. Sutras of this sort adulterate Buddhist teaching with the pre-

existing Chinese philosophy of non-existence: just what is meant by ‘wine

diluted with water.’

‘葡萄酒被⽔水’，‘竅成混沌終’ 之兩喻，可謂痛切，蓋譯家之⼤大患，莫過於羼

雜主觀的理想，潛易原著之精神。︒陳壽謂：’浮屠所載，與中國⽼老⼦子經⽽而相

! 19

出入。︒’ 蓋彼時譯家，⼤大率漸染⽼老莊，采其說以溫食佛⾔言，例如四⼗〸十⼆二章經

非惟⽂文體類⽼老⼦子，教理亦多沿襲。︒此類經典，攙雜我國固有之虛無思想，

致佛教變質，正所謂被⽔水之葡萄酒也。︒ 26

In Liang’s view, it was a happy day when “the honest and loyal Dao’an” 忠實之道安 saw

the error of the earlier translators and raised up a cry against it. Liang’s essay responds, as

it were, to Mair’s questioning. Being earlier in time than Chen Yinque, Liang is exempt

from the “enthusiasm” for the word geyi, and what he has to say about the practice Chen

would later call geyi is decidedly unenthusiastic. But of the existence of that practice,

under whatever name, Liang has no doubt.

Chen Yinque seems in turn to answer Liang Qichao when he makes this very

“weaving and mingling,” under the name of geyi, a means of assimilation by extending

the native tradition to cover the foreign concepts. Thus we see that a style of translation is

a cultural option. For Liang, the most receptive, that is, the most faithfully passive

translation, the one most exempt from “subjectivity,” is the one that best realizes the ideal

of cultural integration. But the end result must be the replacement of the native culture by

a foreign one (the object of Hu Shi’s resentment). Chen has a different idea of

cosmopolitanism. He allows the pre-Buddhist words, texts, and concepts to have an

active role in the process of representing Buddhism in Chinese, not simply to get out of

the way. Although Chen acknowledges that what he calls geyi was rejected by later

translators, he credits it with a subterranean influence, suggesting that Song daoxue 道學

! 20

is an application of the geyi mechanism on a wider scale. These are examples for modern

people to follow as they incorporate words, practices and things from near and far into

their lives. And if the real subject of Liang’s and Chen’s discussions of Buddhist

translation practices is the condition of “translated modernity,” their differences lie in the

role they sketch out for the native tradition. And the model of an active hybridity,

condensed in Chen’s notion of geyi, has appealed to many, as the fortunes of the concept

attest.

Notes

Ge Zhaoguang 葛兆光, An Intellectual History of China, volume 1: Knowledge, 1

Thought and Belief before the Seventh Century CE, tr. Michael S. Duke and Josephine Chiu-Duke (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 327-328.

See Miao Ri, “Dao’an geyi fojiao sixiang shuping” (Dao’an’s Buddhist thought about 2

‘matching meanings’: an account and a discussion), Pumen xuebao 5 (2001), 1-22.

“Créolité for Everybody,” presented at the Harvard Cultural Politics Seminar, April 29, 3

2010.

Cited from http://dictionary.buddhistdoor.com/word/29862/什麼叫「格義」佛教︖？. 4

Mair, “What is Geyi, After All?,” 227-264 in Alan Chan and Yuet-keung Lo, eds., 5

Philosophy and Religion in Early Medieval China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010), p. 260.

(Shi) Huijiao 釋慧皎, Gaoseng zhuan, ed. Tang Yongtong 湯⽤用彤 (Shanghai: Guji, 6

1992), pp. 152-153.

! 21

T’ang Yung-tung [=Tang Yongtong], “On ‘Ko-yi,’ The Earliest Method By Which 7

Indian Buddhism and Chinese Thought Were Synthesized,” 276-286 in W. R. Inge et al., eds., Radhakrishnan: Comparative Studies in Philosophy Presented in Honor of His Sixtieth Birthday (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968), p. 276.

Mair, “What Was Geyi,” p. 231.8

Chen Yinque 陳寅恪, “Zhi Mindu xueshuo kao,” 426-443 in Chen Yinque xiansheng 9

lunji 陳寅恪先⽣生論集 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan lishi yuyan yanjiu suo, 1976), p. 431; “Qingtan wuguo (fu ‘geyi’), ###-### in Chen Yinque xiansheng lunwenji 陳寅恪先⽣生論⽂文集 (Hong Kong: Wenwen chubanshe, 1972-1973). The name “Yinque” is sometimes transcribed “Yinke.”

Gaoseng zhuan 6, cited in Chen Yinque, “Zhi Mindu xueshuo kao,” pp. 432-433. The 10

passage is also cited by Mair, who adds that the use of the passage to support the assertion “that geyi was a technique used by Buddhists for borrowing from Daoism is completely fallacious” (pp. 235-236).

Chen, “Zhi Mindu xueshuo kao,” p. 433. 11

Mair, "What is Geyi," pp. 227, 233.12

“So I renounced and sadly see…” Stefan George, “Das Wort,” quoted by Martin 13

Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1985), p. #. English translation by Peter D. Hertz in Heidegger, On the Way to Language (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 140.

“… Where word breaks off no thing may be.” Stefan George, “Das Wort,” concluding 14

line.

Mair, “What is Geyi,” pp. 241-243.15

Mair, “What is Geyi,” pp. 243-247. 16

Mair, "What is Geyi," p. 243. 17

I am undertaking a study of word frequencies and co-occurrences using the CBETA 18

database of Buddhist texts, in an attempt to answer these questions.

Mair, "What is Geyi,” pp. 250-251.19

Liang Qichao, “Fanyi wenxue yu fodian” (1920), Yinbingshi wenji 飲冰室⽂文集 v. 61 20

(Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1926), 61/1a-24b, reprinted as 345-382 in Zhang Mantao 張曼濤, ed., Fojiao yu Zhongguo wenxue 佛教與中國⽂文學 (Taipei: Dacheng wenhua chubanshe, 1977), p. 382.

! 22

On this vast subject, see Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice (Stanford: Stanford 21

University Press, 1994); Gang Zhou, Placing the Modern Chinese Vernacular in Transnational Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Mark Gamsa, The Reading of Russian Literature in China (New York: Palgrave, 2010).

Liang Qichao, “Fanyi wenxue,” p. 349. 22

Hu Shi, The Chinese Renaissance: The Haskell Lectures, 1933 (Chicago: University of 23

Chicago Press, 1934), p. 85. On Hu Shi’s persistent drive to reverse this obedience, see his “The Indianization of China: A Case Study in Cultural Borrowing,” 219-247 in Harvard Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Sciences, ed., Independence, Convergence and Borrowing in Institutions, Thought and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937), and John A. McRae, “Religion as Revolution in Chinese Historiography: Hu Shih (1891-1962) on Shen-hui (684-758),” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 12 (2001): 59-102.

Liang Qichao, “Fanyi wenxue,” p. 381.24

Liang Qichao, “Fanyi wenxue,” p. 364.25

Liang Qichao, “Fanyi wenxue,” p. 365. 26

I would like to thank Mr. Hou Jue 侯崛 of Tsinghua University for research assistance.