Transcendents in Translation: Buddhist Affordances for Imagining xian 仙 in China

Abstract:Many Buddhist scriptures in Chinese translation render the Indic ṛṣi (non-Buddhist sage or ascetic) as the Chinese xian 仙 (transcendent). This article explores how such a nativizing act of translation afforded Chinese users of Buddhist scriptures, from the medieval to the late imperial periods, various interpretive and polemical opportunities. Sometimes the appearance of xian in Buddhist scriptures facilitated Chinese Buddhist polemics against Daoism, but in other cases the same Buddhist xian provided Daoists the chance to appropriate Buddhist ideas into a Daoist soteriological framework. Still other cases involved complex negotiations over the precise meaning of xian, the nuances of which we must carefully tease out. Besides exploring many cases that illuminate the Chinese reception of Buddhist references to xian, I suggest that the concept of "affordance" is useful for analyzing the ramifications carried by particular translation choices made during the rendering of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.