Intertextuality in the Chinese Buddhist Canon: Computational-Philological Assessment of Sources, Authorship/Translatorship, and Style

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Michael Radich
• Subject Area: Asian Studies ; Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: from 2019 to 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 423248604

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

This project undertook to apply original software tools and related methods to the study of texts in the Chinese Buddhist canon. We aimed principally to address two classes of problem: (1) ascription and dating of translations; and (2) the discovery of borrowing between texts, with a focus on discovering scriptures that were composed in Chinese, drawing upon earlier Chinese scriptures as their sources (socalled "apocrypha"). The project achieved the following main advances in scholarship. First, we demonstrated the value of new, specific computational methods for both types of research question, through specific case studies. Second, in those case studies, we discovered new concrete cases of scriptures that were composed in Chinese, rather than translated; and several dozen new ascriptions (with associated changes in dating) of canonical texts. Third, we further developed our computational tools and the methods associated with them, and described them in a way that will allow other researchers to take them up and transfer them to other materials and problems. Fourth, we ran a Summer School that trained a cohort of scholars in the tools and methods, and kick-started independent projects applying them to fresh research questions. The project produced two monographs, one close to publication and one still in the works (2/3 complete), and four research articles, three peer-reviewed, and one with the scope of a small monograph in its own right (Publication 5).

Publications

• "Zhu Fonian suo 'yi' dasheng jingdian de jisuanji fuzhu wenben fenxi yanjiu" 竺佛念所"译"大乘经典的计算机辅助文本分析研究. Shijie zongjiao wenhua 世界宗教文化 (2020), no. 6: 16-22
  Lin Qian & He Shuqun
  
• Computer-assisted Analysis of Zhu Fonian’s Original Mahayana Sutras. Buddhist Studies Review, 38(2).
  Qian, Lin & Radich, Michael
  
• Notes on the Fo yi jing 佛醫經 T793. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 143(4).
  Lin, Qian & Radich, Michael
  
• What happened to the Ekottarikāgama 增壹阿含經 T125 after the death of Dao'an?. International Journal of Asian Studies, 23(1), 23-63.
  Radich, Michael & Norrish, Jamie