This is another in a series of weekly blog posts comparing and contrasting the Sanskrit and Chinese Lotus Sutra translations.
In Chapter 19, The Merits of the Teacher of the Dharma, we are told that those “who keep, read, recite, expound or copy this Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, will be able to obtain eight hundred merits of the eye, twelve hundred merits of the ear, eight hundred merits of the nose, twelve hundred merits of the tongue, eight hundred merits of the body, and twelve hundred merits of the mind.” That’s how Senchu Murano renders in English Kumārajīva’s Chinese text. H. Kern’s English translation of an 11th century Nepalese Sanskrit document is essentially identical, other than the fact that Kern numbers it Chapter 18, The Advantages of a Religious Preacher.
To show how close the two are, I put the gāthās for the eight hundred merits of the nose side by side. Here’s a PDF showing the results.
Below are the handful of verses where I felt the meaning diverged enough to note.
| Murano | Kern |
|---|---|
| Anyone who keeps This Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma Will be able to know by smell Whether the gods are walking, sitting, playing or performing wonders. |
28. The wise man who keeps this exalted Sūtra recognizes, by the power of a good-smelling organ, a woman standing, sitting, or lying; he discovers wanton sport and magic power. |
| He will be able to know by smell Whether an unborn child is a boy or a girl, Or a child of ambiguous sex, Or the embryo of a nonhuman being. |
34. He infers from the odor, whether the child that women, languid from pregnancy, bear in the womb be a boy or a girl. |
| He will be able to know by smell Whether a woman is an expectant mother, Or whether she will give an easy birth To a happy child or not. |
35. He can discern if a woman is big with a dead child; he discerns if she is subject to throes, and, further, if a woman, the pains being removed, shall be delivered of a healthy boy. |
| He will be able to know by smell What a man or a woman is thinking of, Or whether he or she is greedy, ignorant or angry, Or whether he or she is doing good. |
36. He guesses the various designs of men, he smells (so to say) an air of design; he finds out the odor of passionate, wicked, hypocritical, or quiet persons. |
| He will be able to know by smell Whether a heavenly palace Adorned with jeweled flowers Is superior, mean or inferior. |
40. By the power of his organ of smell he, without leaving his stand on earth, perceives how and whose are the aerial cars, of lofty, low, and middling size, and other brilliant forms shooting (through the firmament). |
Murano’s addition of “Or a child of ambiguous sex, Or the embryo of a nonhuman being” compared to Kern’s verse 34 prompted a check of the other English translations of Kumārajīva’s Chinese Lotus Sutra. All agree.
The BDK English Tripiṭaka translation offers:
They can smell and discriminate exactly
The scent of a pregnant woman
And determine whether the embryo
Will be male or female,
Without sex organs, or nonhuman.
The 1975 Rissho Kōsei-kai translation offers:
If there be a woman with child,
Who discerns not yet its sex,
Male, female, organless, or inhuman,
He, by smell, can discern it.
Leon Hurvitz, who used both Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation and a Sanskrit compilation of the Lotus Sutra, offers:
If there are pregnant women,
And it is not yet known whether theirs will be boy or girl,
Or defective or monstrous,
By smelling their scents he can know in each case.
This chapter exemplifies the uniformity of the Lotus Sutra message despite inconsequential differences.
Next: Expiating Sins