耶稣并非空中无色——李提摩太节译《般若波罗蜜多心经》动机之考辨

Jesus is Manifested and Eternal:A Case Study of Timothy Richard’s Omission in the English Translation of Heart Sutra

一、引言李提摩太是19世纪英国浸礼会传教士,1870年来华,随后开展了长达45年的传教活动。在华期间,他不仅大量译介西学,还致力研究中国大乘佛教典籍并有多部译著,《般若波罗蜜多心经》(以下简称《心经》)就是其中的代表。然而,对于玄奘本的这短短260字经文,李氏在其英译本中居然删减了52个字,当前学界只有王鹏做了相关原因的探讨,王鹏指出:……李提摩太在看到《心经》中"是故空中无色……亦无老死尽"这一句复杂而饱含哲思的佛教经句时,他采取的办法是置之不理……可能是因为这是佛经要义,译出则会让西方人更好地了解了佛教,对基督教的垄断地位不利,不译,则会使这篇短小经文内涵大打折扣,从而把佛教降格为基督教之下。^(①)

In 1910,the British Baptist missionary Timothy Richard translated the Heart Sutra(心经)into English and included it in his collection of translations,The Advanced Buddhist New Testament(高级佛教新约).Later,in his 1913 English translation of Journey to the West,he used it as an English translation of the Heart Sutra given to Master Xuanzang(Book 19),with only minor modifications to its mantra.However,this short 260-word sutra has been trimmed by the same 52 words in both translations,which has not received much attention in current scholarship.Based on a large amount of primary historical evidence,this paper argues that the meaning of the words“eternal”and“manifested”in the translation are key to Richard’s construction of Jesus's divine and human nature,and that the omission of the text is intended to highlight the divine and human nature of Jesus in the translation and erase elements irrelevant to Jesus.The study concludes that explanations of phenomenon of translation should begin with historical sources closely related to translators such as the paratexts and parallel translations;by combining translation studies and history,the conclusions drawn are more persuasive.