To Revise and Reimagine: On Tradition and Theories of Language in Theravāda Buddhism

Across Buddhist literary traditions, texts are commonly rewritten, repurposed, and essentially “re-newed.” This is evident in the multiple tellings of various stories, wherein we might see shifts either in content, form, or both. It is also evident in the common Buddhist literary practice of interpolating excerpts from other—often uncited—texts into new texts; in the production of editorial revisions that expand significantly upon their predecessors; and, of course, in the translations of texts into different languages. Put simply, we know that Buddhists alter texts. Here, I ask what more they might be doing, and how thinking about practices of revision and rearticulation might shed light on some aspects of South Asian Buddhist theories of language and its relationship with religious innovation.

Above all, this paper explores a few of the ways Theravāda Buddhists have utilized language creatively, both (1) to manifest new texts through specific linguistic revisions of earlier texts, and (2) to re-imagine and re-present other texts by engaging with the surplus of meaning that language facilitates.

Building on the insights of such scholars as Paula Richman and A.K. Ramanujan in their respective studies of the various tellings of the Ramayana, as well as Katherine Bowie’s anthropological study of the Vessantara Jataka as it is performed by and for vastly different audiences across modern-day Thailand, I show how the practice of rewriting texts by engaging with language and its affordances is a powerful tool Buddhists have used to participate in the writing, and thus creation, of their thought-worlds. Specifically, I consider how the literary activities of revising and translating are not merely mechanisms of textual reproduction or the perpetuation of stable ideas. Rather, revision and translation are highly generative linguistic practices that shape, re-shape, and, in some cases, even subvert the beliefs and practices that constitute tradition.

Taking three closely related texts as a case study, each of which is in some way a “reproduction” or alternate version of one of the others, I consider the role language and linguistic-literary practices play in shaping Buddhist traditions. All three of the texts at the center of this study are Theravāda Buddhist narrative anthologies that were composed in Sri Lanka between the last few centuries of the first millennium and the first few centuries of the second millennium. Each comprises a collection of approximately one hundred short stories that illustrate the importance of such qualities as generosity and faith. The first two, entitled Sahasavatthu and Rasavāhinī, were composed in Pali and are believed to share a common source text which is now lost. Each utilizes starkly different linguistic styles to communicate what appears on the surface to be analogous content. The later of the two texts, the Rasavāhinī is a self-proclaimed revision of its source text that aims to remove its aesthetic flaws, whereas the earlier Sahassavatthu does not articulate its purpose. According to the author of the Rasavāhinī, its source text (and presumably also the source text of the Sahasavatthu) is itself a translation into Pali from the original Sinhala in which the stories were first told.

The third text, entitled Saddharmālaṇkāra, was composed in Sinhala and is a self-described translation of the Rasavāhinī for the purpose of making it accessible to inhabitants of Lanka who were not fluent in Pali. Of note, the Saddharmālaṇkāra is roughly twice as long as the Rasavāhinī—which itself is roughly twice as long as the Sahasavatthu—calling into question what more it is besides a translation from one language to another language.  

The activity of revision is typically regarded as a simple editorial activity with the explicit aim of removing errors, often for improved clarity. In other words, it is not understood to be a process of creating a new text, but rather, it is regarded as a way of making a text more itself, allowing it to reach its full potential by allowing it to communicate precisely what it was always meant to communicate. Translation is often understood along similar lines, literally meaning the carrying over of a text from one language directly to another language. A “good” translation, therefore, is generally understood as one that reproduces the original but in a different language, serving the function of making it accessible to a new audience. However, as Jorge Luis Borges affirms in his claim that “the original is unfaithful to the translation,” translations can (and perhaps must) be regarded as independent works altogether.[1] Like translation, which I suggest is necessarily more than—if not utterly other than—a faithful reproduction of an original, revision is also more than the objective activity of restoring a text. At minimum, I suggest, revisions (like translations) are colored by context, including an editor’s own subjective interpretations and opinions, and implicitly (if not explicitly) reflect the contemporary cultural attitudes of a constantly evolving sociocultural milieu. In some cases, revising adds or emphasizes certain interpretive possibilities and in other cases it might even alter or challenge prevailing interpretations or accepted meanings of a given text and of the tradition more broadly. The significance of this is such that with each composer’s artistic engagement with the language of one text to create a new text, the entirety of the tradition is also fundamentally re-created.

Through a close, comparative, and contrastive reading, I show how each composer’s use of language contributes to the creation and perpetual re-creation of Theravāda. In doing so, I also explore the theory of language underlying these distinctly Buddhist literary-linguistic practices in order to better understand how Buddhists have engaged with their own texts. Finally, I make a case for the importance of considering the relationship between language and tradition, arguing that both are forces that simultaneously shape and are shaped by the communities that receive them. In this way, I propose that traditions, languages, and texts, are never actually received but repeatedly recreated.

[1] “[E]l original es infiel a la traducción.” Borges, “On William Beckford’s Vathek” (“Sobre el Vathek de William Beckford”), 1943, collected in Selected Non-Fictions, 1999.