《法句經》的「校讀」與「誤譯」

Abstract

《法句經》（T210）譯於三國時代（約當西元222 年），屬於漢譯佛典的草創時期，譯文詰屈聱牙難以理解，其中或有誤譯；本經在《開寶藏》雕版印刷之前歷經將近八百多年的輾轉傳抄，因此造成不少古典校勘學所謂的「衍、脫、倒、訛」等失誤。加上印度語系的《法句經》詮釋文獻並未迭譯成漢語，古德也未留下相關的字句註解，要貼切地詮釋或翻譯《法句經》（T210），顯得困難重重。 筆者認為，「校勘、訓詁、標點等基礎工程」與「跨文本對應偈頌的比較研究」是翻譯與詮釋此經的準備工作；前者用以求漢譯詞句的正確解讀，後者用以回溯印度語系源頭文本，以推求偈頌本意；本文稱此兩者的綜合運用為「校讀」，以別於古典校勘學的「校勘」。 基於此一考量，本文列舉少數經例來探討校勘、訓詁和標點的過程與細節，一方面藉助《一切經音義》（T1163）與傳統漢語文獻，另一方面追溯印度語系原典的可能用詞，用以提供一些字詞詮釋、異讀抉擇、篇章斷句等建議，作為《法句經》（T210）現代精校本或新版白話翻譯本的工作準則。 其次，藉由對應偈頌顯示問題詞句，以及造成此一誤譯的原因，並且以近代的《法句經》白話翻譯為例；顯示如未訂正誤譯，則有「所釋之義非其本義、所據之經非其本經」的問題。 最後，本文指出部分梵巴偈頌出現的分章差異，這也讓翻譯及詮釋《法句經》時，難以抉擇某些特定偈頌的起訖。 筆者希望藉此討論可以訂正《法句經》（T210）的詮釋與白話翻譯，也期待藉此類經例成為各本《法句經》校勘、校讀的討論平台。

The translation of the Faju jing (T210) was carried out during the Three-Kingdom period (around 222 CE ) when the work of translating Buddhist texts was still in an early phase of development. Translations made during that period were usually of poor quality and hard to understand. There was almost 800 years of transmission via manual transcription before the first printing of the Faju jing in the Kaibao Zang (開寶藏). It is therefore not surprising to find many errors such as added, missing, reversed or mistaken characters as defined by traditional Chinese textual criticism. Furthermore, we cannot find any commentaries for the Faju jing translated from Indic sources, nor do we see any commentary written by Chinese monks. This contributes to making the correct interpretation and translation of the Faju jing especially arduous. I recommend two basic steps as a preparation for translation: (1) collation, semantic research for individual characters, and adding modern punctuations, and secondly (2) the comparative study of different versions. The first step will focus on assigning a precise and correct meaning to each Chinese character, while the second step will look at the corresponding terms in parallel Indic sources. This article will first present several examples to illustrate the process by which these two tasks may be completed. Secondly, this article locates some troublesome word(s) or stanzas from the Faju jing and tries to show the mechanism by which these translation errors have occurred. In this way, the problems with contemporary vernacular translations of the Faju jing will be highlighted. Additionally this article points out differences between the Sanskrit and Pali version of the stanzas and shows how these differences make it sometimes difficult to ascertain the beginning and end of some stanzas and their proper reading in the Chinese Faju jing. It is the author’s hope that this article may spark a discussion regarding the issue of how a new translation of the Faju jing could be carried out.