The Dharma's Gatekeepers: Sakya Pandita on Buddhist Scholarship in Tibet.

• Author: Sobisch, Jan-Ulrich
• Position: Book review

The Dharma's Gatekeepers: Sakya Pandita on Buddhist Scholarship in Tibet. By JONATHAN C. GOLD. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 2007. Pp. xii + 267.

The Dharma's Gatekeepers is a study of Sakya Pandita's Gateway to Learning (mKhas pa 'jug pa'i sgo), and in particular of its first two chapters, which deal with some linguistic principles of the Tibetan language and the proper application of these principles in order to clarify the word-meaning relations for both the composer and exegete ("interpreter") of texts. Jonathan Gold provides an analysis of some of the chief topics along with an English translation of the first chapter of Sapan's work, minus Sapan's summary of Dandin's Kavyadarsa. The author studied the second chapter with the help of David P. Jackson's unpublished translation; the publication of an English translation of this chapter remains a desideratum. (1)

Sakya Pandita, one of the foremost scholars in the Indian tradition of scholarship, was relying, in the Gateway to Learning in particular, on the succession of Abhidharma literature in general; in his lexicographic studies on the Amarakosa and Visvaprakasa; in grammar on Kalapa and Candrapa; and in poetry and poetics on aryasura, Dandin, Kalidasa, and so forth. Sapan's mission was to secure this standard of scholarship in Tibet, too, since he believed that only great expertise in these matters assured a sound interpretation and correct subsequent teaching of Buddhist texts translated into Tibetan from Sanskrit. Indeed, Sapan advocated "a Tibetan variety of pandityam"; such scholars "must form a kind of elite Buddhist guard to protect the stronghold of the dharma--using, as their main intellectual tools, the great Indian traditions of grammar, literature, and philosophy." Gold's purpose is to show that the Gateway to Learning "provides distinctive Buddhist arguments as to why scholars need to learn epistemology, philosophy of language, translation studies, hermeneutics, and literary theory" (p. 8). His usage of distinctive modern terminology such as "translation studies" and "literary theory" is intentional, for apart from his attempts to present Sapan's thought on the basis of his works (and that of his immediate predecessor Sonam Tsemo), he also draws in all chapters on modern theory (Ferdinand de Saussure, Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Hans Robert Jauss).

In chapters 1 and 2 Gold portrays the development of Tibetan translations from the time of King Thri Desongtsen (r. 804-815) onwards as a conscious decision for an official, "designed" translation language that preferred "reflective authenticity over target language comprehensibility." That is to say, a partly artificial "dharma language" (chos skad) had to be designed in order to faithfully preserve the linguistic features of Sanskrit at the expense of the recipient/interpreter, who would have to be familiar with aspects of the source language (Sanskrit) and Indian literary norms in order to compensate for the difficulties resulting from such a choice. But before he embarks on a discussion of "dharma in translation," Gold first explains to what extent the Gateway is a gateway to omniscience, exactly how Sapan claims to be omniscient (at least, according to Gold, in a relative sense), how such omniscience is attainable through study, and why it is necessary to attain omniscience in order to "protect the doctrine against all comers" (p. 23). Here, omniscience is defined as the perfect knowledge of everything one "needs to know in order to respond appropriately to every situation, but this does not require ... the knowledge of every particular" (p. 20). This is what Gold terms "relative omniscience." Through the study of the "five Buddhist sciences" the scholar will at least obtain the "next best thing," namely knowledge of everything one needs to know.

As mentioned above, the interpreter of texts, that is, in Sapan's thinking, the expositor (bshad pa po), must have a close familiarity with translated texts and with Sanskrit language and literary norms. Gold's second chapter therefore deals with Sapan's treatment of obscure vocabulary (pp. 28ff.), techniques of translators (pp. 30f.), common translation mistakes (pp. 31f.), and unintelligible context (pp. 32-35). Yet, despite all these challenges, Sapan does not assert the untranslatability of texts, but he does put the weight of responsibility on the interpreter's shoulders--the latter has to be able to read the texts "as though they were still in Sanskrit" (p. 36). Whatever shifts in phonetic qualities, grammatical relations, and etymological implications occur are all the...