Problems of Ascription in the Corpus of Paramārtha: A Computational Philological Study

六世纪的婆罗摩达是最伟大的佛经汉译者之一。他的“翻译”语料库对印度和中国的佛教典籍和教义的历史具有重要意义。然而，这个语料库充满了与文本的归属和性质有关的问题。接受的语料库肯定包含几个错误的归属;其他文本实际上根本不是翻译，而是在中国创作的;并且，通过类比其他类似的情况，有可能其他文本，实际上是由Paramārtha，隐藏在现代正典中，归属于其他翻译者。这个项目将系统地解决这些问题，使用我在过去十年中开发的一套计算语言学工具，以及相关的语言学方法，其价值已经在一系列出版物中得到了证明。该项目将产生三个相互关联的研究：（1）分析语料库特有的风格特征（术语，措辞），并在此基础上对归属问题进行批判性重新评估。(2)在语料库中，对不同类型文本的文体特征进行更精细的分析，目的是明确区分翻译和原始段落，并确定原始段落的出处。(3)第二个更精细的分析，也是在语料库中，区分在Paramārtha翻译活动的不同时间阶段产生的文本，并与他的翻译团队随时间变化的组成相关联。我在这里申请资助聘请一位博士研究员，以0.65的价格工作三年来完成这项工作。

Paramārtha (6th century) was one of the greatest translators of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. The corpus of “translations” ascribed to him is of great significance for the history of Buddhist texts and doctrines both in India, and in China. However, this corpus is riddled with problems relating to the ascription and nature of the texts. The received corpus certainly contains several false ascriptions; other texts are in fact not translations at all, but rather, were composed in China; and, by analogy to other similar cases, it is possible that other texts, in fact by Paramārtha, are hidden in the modern canon under ascriptions to other translators. This project will systematically address these problems, using a suite of computational philological tools I have developed over the past decade, and associated philological methods, the worth of which has already been demonstrated in a series of publications. The project will produce three interrelated studies: (1) An analysis of traits of style (terminology, phraseology) distinctive of the corpus, and a critical reassessment of questions of ascription on that basis. (2) A finer analysis, within the corpus, for stylistic distinctions marking different types of texts, with the aim of clearly differentiating between translation and original passages, and pinpointing the provenance of the original passages. (3) A second finer analysis, again within the corpus, differentiating texts produced in different chronological phases of Paramārtha’s translation activity, and associated with the varying composition of his translation group over time. I here apply for funding to employ a doctoral researcher at 0.65 for three years to achieve this work.