Over the centuries, translation has played a crucial role in the survival and revival of Buddhism.
Buddhist traditions that still exist in some parts of the world, such as Japan, China, Korea, Tibet, Bhutan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Burma, have survived in large part because our ancestors compiled and translated many of the original texts into their own languages.
SURVIVING BUDDHIST TEXTS
The first collections of the Buddhist texts were compiled in Pali and Sanskrit. The Pali texts had been taken to Sri Lanka and survived; most of the Sanskrit texts were lost in the Muslim invasions that destroyed the Buddhist culture of northern India between the 11th and 13th centuries. Fortunately, by then most of the texts had already been translated into classical Chinese and Tibetan.
The three major collections of sacred Buddhist texts that have survived are:
- The Pali Canon or Tipitaka
- The Chinese Buddhist Canon or Chinese Tripitaka
- The Tibetan Kangyur and Tengyur
The classical Chinese translations started in the 1st century when Chinese pioneers and Indian scholars began to introduce Buddhism to China. The classical Tibetan translations followed later during the unparalleled state-sponsored cultural transfer of the Buddhist teachings into Tibet from the 8th century onwards .
The Tibetan collection contains a large number of texts not found in the Chinese canon, particularly tantras, and there are some Chinese texts that do not exist in Tibetan.
