Talk:Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana

The trouble with "awakening"

大乘起信論 translates literally as "Mahayana production of faith treatise".

The first two characters (shangsheng) are a common Chinese translation of Mahayana. The final character (lun) is also the Chinese term used in the title of many Buddhist, Confucian, etc. texts, typically translated into English as "treatise", "discourse", or "record". I see no problem translating 信 as "faith".

That leaves 起 (qi), which is certainly different from 佛 (jue, enlightenment or awakening). (It is also not the same as the qi in qigong.) Qi might be more accurately translated as "arising" or "production".

Evidently, the popular English-speaking imagination as well as the scholarly consensus likes the cadence and prosody of "awakening of faith". All the English translations use that phrase. Should Wikipedia change it in the name of accuracy, or leave it in the name of not advancing idiosyncratic theories? My suggestion is to leave the name of the article and its aliases to use the phrase "awakening of faith" and to go over the word-by-word translation in the article itself.

--Munge 07:18, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I would translate 起 as "arousing" faith (or confidence) in the Mahayana. It should be "arousing" and not "arising" because the treatise is not just descriptive but is intended as an inspirational stimulus to arouse faith in the reader. However the character above, 佛, is not the jue, 覺, for enlightenment or awakening, that is used for the Sanskrit Bodhi. 佛 is Buddha or "fo". Also, the "of" should be omitted as it is superfluous. Personally, I cringe every time I hear the title as "Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana" instead of "Arousing Faith in the Mahayana". Gregory Wonderwheel (talk) 08:33, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Merging

I am not ready to take that task right now, but this article should be merged somehow with Awakening of Mahayana Faith. Luis Dantas 10:24, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Forgot edit summary

Hi - I re-did my reversion w/ edit summary this time; the language was a bit OTT as it was, tried to make the tone a little clearer for non-specialists who might read the article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.184.45.197 (talk) 22:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

This article is biased and essentially slanderous against Paramartha.

The bias and slant of this article is offensive. While it is necessary to acknowledge the criticisms brought of by modern academics, there is no basis for choosing their side and stating that this is a Chinese text. There are many, if not most, Chinese translations in which the original Sanskrit text is no longer extant. For example, several of Vasubandhu's Sanskrit texts are no longer extant and are only found in the Chinese. Are those texts forgeries also? I think not. Also the aspersion on Siksananda is also uncalled for as he was definitely translating from a Sanskrit text. The only question about Siksnanda's Sanskrit text is whether it was an original or a Sanskrit translation of the Chinese text that he then retranslated back into Chinese. There is no basis to choose between those two choices because there are clues to suggest that they are both correct. There is no adequate basis to cast aspersions on Paramartha because he made several treatises on his own and took credit for them. There was no reason for him to concoct a story for this treatise when he could have just as easily taken the credit as he did for his other treatises. I find no credible evidence to suggest that Paramartha was anything more than an honorable monk who took his precepts seriously and who over saw the translation of this text from the Sanskrit as he received it. I don't know who is in charge of this article but it definitely needs major revision. In the past when I have tried to correct this errors someone comes behind me and changes them back, so I don't want to get into a battle about it. But as it stands now, this article is a disgrace for Wikipedia. Gregory Wonderwheel (talk) 08:46, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

"Bias and slant"? Or not voicing your personal opinions? We're looking forward to your sources. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 11:51, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

HOWEVER It cannot be a disgrace to Paramārtha, since he had nothing to do with this text. With the help of computer search tools available for several decades now, it has been conclusively demonstrated that the vocabulary, models, and ideology is drawn from Bodhiruci's circle (early 6th c), not Paramārtha's (mid-6th c). Aśvaghoṣa didn't write it, Paramārtha didn't translate or write it either. It is clearly a Chinese text, incorporating -- as the great 20th Chinese scholar of Buddhism, Lü Cheng, already pointed out in the 1930s and now confirmed by more recent research -- mistranslations from Bodhiruci's Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, and related texts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.206.120 (talk) 21:06, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

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