Observations on the Intertextuality of Selected Abhidharma Texts Preserved in Chinese Translation

Textual reuse is a fundamental characteristic of traditional Buddhist literature preserved in various languages. Given the sheer volume of preserved Buddhist literature and the often-unmarked instances of textual reuse, the thorough analysis and evaluation of this material without computational assi...

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Main Author: Sebastian Nehrdich
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2023-07-01
Series:Religions
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/7/911
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author Sebastian Nehrdich
author_facet Sebastian Nehrdich
author_sort Sebastian Nehrdich
collection DOAJ
description Textual reuse is a fundamental characteristic of traditional Buddhist literature preserved in various languages. Given the sheer volume of preserved Buddhist literature and the often-unmarked instances of textual reuse, the thorough analysis and evaluation of this material without computational assistance are virtually impossible. This study investigates the application of computer-aided methods for detecting approximately similar passages within Xuanzang’s translation corpus and a selection of Abhidharma treatises preserved in Chinese translation. It presents visualizations of the generated network graphs and conducts a detailed examination of patterns of textual reuse among selected works within the Abhidharma tradition. This study demonstrates that the general picture of textual reuse within Xuanzang’s translation corpus and the selected Abhidharma texts, based on computational analysis, aligns well with established scholarship. Thus, it provides a robust foundation for conducting more detailed studies on individual text sets. The methods employed in this study to create and analyze citation network graphs can also be applied to other texts preserved in Chinese and, with some modifications, to texts in other languages.
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spelling doaj.art-236f56defa8a4be38df28c514b9e0a2e2023-11-18T21:10:25ZengMDPI AGReligions2077-14442023-07-0114791110.3390/rel14070911Observations on the Intertextuality of Selected Abhidharma Texts Preserved in Chinese TranslationSebastian Nehrdich0Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USATextual reuse is a fundamental characteristic of traditional Buddhist literature preserved in various languages. Given the sheer volume of preserved Buddhist literature and the often-unmarked instances of textual reuse, the thorough analysis and evaluation of this material without computational assistance are virtually impossible. This study investigates the application of computer-aided methods for detecting approximately similar passages within Xuanzang’s translation corpus and a selection of Abhidharma treatises preserved in Chinese translation. It presents visualizations of the generated network graphs and conducts a detailed examination of patterns of textual reuse among selected works within the Abhidharma tradition. This study demonstrates that the general picture of textual reuse within Xuanzang’s translation corpus and the selected Abhidharma texts, based on computational analysis, aligns well with established scholarship. Thus, it provides a robust foundation for conducting more detailed studies on individual text sets. The methods employed in this study to create and analyze citation network graphs can also be applied to other texts preserved in Chinese and, with some modifications, to texts in other languages.https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/7/911Buddhist literatureAbhidharmatextual reusecitation network graphcitation network
spellingShingle Sebastian Nehrdich
Observations on the Intertextuality of Selected Abhidharma Texts Preserved in Chinese Translation
Religions
Buddhist literature
Abhidharma
textual reuse
citation network graph
citation network
title Observations on the Intertextuality of Selected Abhidharma Texts Preserved in Chinese Translation
title_full Observations on the Intertextuality of Selected Abhidharma Texts Preserved in Chinese Translation
title_fullStr Observations on the Intertextuality of Selected Abhidharma Texts Preserved in Chinese Translation
title_full_unstemmed Observations on the Intertextuality of Selected Abhidharma Texts Preserved in Chinese Translation
title_short Observations on the Intertextuality of Selected Abhidharma Texts Preserved in Chinese Translation
title_sort observations on the intertextuality of selected abhidharma texts preserved in chinese translation
topic Buddhist literature
Abhidharma
textual reuse
citation network graph
citation network
url https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/7/911
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