Lokakṣema
| English Phonetics | Lokakṣema |
|---|---|
| Sort Name | Lokakṣema |
Tibetan calendar dates
Biographical Information
Lokakṣema (C. Zhi Loujiachan; J. Shi Rukasen; K. Chi Rugach'am 支婁迦讖 (c. 178–198 CE ). A pioneering translator of Indic Buddhist materials into Chinese. Lokakṣema was an Indo-Scythian monk from the Kushan kingdom in the Gandhāra region of northwest India, who was active in China sometime in the last quarter of the second Century CE, soon after the Parthian translator An Shigao. His Sanskrit name is a tentative reconstruction of the Chinese transcription Loujiachan, and he is often known in the literature by the abbreviated form Zhi Chan (using the ethnikon Zhi). Lokakṣema is said to have arrived in the Chinese Capital of Luoyang in 167 CE, where he began to render Indic Buddhist sūtras into Chinese. Some fourteen works in twenty-seven rolls are typically ascribed to him (although the numbers given in the literature vary widely), of which twelve are generally presumed to be authentic. The translations thought to be genuine include the first Chinese renderings of sūtras from some of the earliest strata of Indic Mahāyāna literature, including the Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā (Xiaopin bore jing), the Kāśyapaparivarta (Yi rimonibao jing), the Pratyutpannabuddhasaṃmukhāvasthitasamādhisūtra (Banzhou sanmei jing), and the Akṣobhyatathāgatasyavyūha (Achu foguo jing). Given the time of his arrival in China, the Indic texts on which his translations were based must already have been in circulation in Kushan territory by at least 150 CE, giving a terminus ad quem for their composition. Rendered into a kind of pidgin Chinese, these "translations" may actually have targeted not Chinese readers but instead an émigré community of Kushan immigrants who had lost their ability to read Indic languages. (Source: "Lokakṣema." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 480. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
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