Based on the author’s PhD dissertation (defended in 2017 at The Education University of Hong Kong), this book is a grammatical survey of the Chinese translations of the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūhasūtra (= L.Sukh). The first chapter introduces the book’s theoretical framework, as well as the primary sources employed and the methodological approach to their analysis. Chapter 2 presents a selection of relevant examples quoted from the Chinese translations of L.Sukh, discussing different approaches to the translation of the instrumental, ablative and locative cases. Chapter 3 compares the results drawn from the analysis of L.Sukh to the Chinese translations of another influential sūtra, namely the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa (= Vikn). In the fourth and final chapter, the linguistic phenomena described in the preceding chapters are examined from the perspective of language contact, evaluating what role grammatical interference from Sanskrit played in the development of Middle Chinese.

The book is data-driven and has a strong comparative approach: all of the examples are presented by comparing the Chinese translations to the corresponding portion of text in the extant Sanskrit parallels, which is quoted by resolving the sandhi and providing interlinear glosses. The motivation behind the author’s selection of primary sources is compelling, as both L.Sukj and Vikn enjoyed broad popularity in East Asia and were translated several times from the earliest to the later phases, providing a certain degree of diachronic variation for the linguistic analysis. The author also quotes material from the Chinese translations of two other important Buddhist sūtras (i.e. the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka and the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā), as well as from non-Buddhist sources. Li Bohan’s work is not the only contribution in recent Chinese scholarship to approach the linguistic study of Buddhist translations from this perspective. For one insight into the broader state of the field, we may also consider Wang Jihong’s 基于梵汉对勘的《阿毗达磨俱舍论》语法研究 (Shanghai: Zhongxi Book Company, 2014) and 《金刚经》同经异译与语言研究 (Shanghai: Zhongxi Book Company, 2018), as well as Jiang Nan’s 基于梵汉对勘的《法华经》语法研究 (Beijing: Commercial Press, 2011). One hopes that other works employing the same helpful comparative approach will be written and published in the future.

A point of criticism pertains to the philological treatment of primary sources. As stated above, the book provides Sanskrit examples with resolved sandhi. Sanskrit quotations of the L.Sukh are based on Fujita’s critical edition (The Larger and Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtras, Kyoto: Hōzokan, 2011). However, the author does not provide direct references to page and line numbers in Fujita, but gives instead figures corresponding to a system of paragraphs and subparagraphs – partially based on the subdivision in Gomez’s The Land of Bliss (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996) – used in the synoptic edition serving as the appendix to her PhD dissertation. Unfortunately, the book does not include this useful appendix which, according to Zhu Qingzhi’s preface (p. 12), might appear in the future as a separate volume. However, checking the Sanskrit text in Fujita, even by resorting to this yet-to-appear appendix, is a strenuous task for the reader. The Sanskrit text of Vikn is based on the digital edition included in the “Database of Chinese Buddhist translations and their Sanskrit parallels for Buddhist Chinese Studies” (https://bcbs.eduhk.hk/), and presumably the same applies to the quotations from the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka. The Sanskrit source for the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā’s quotations does not appear to be specified (at p. 160 the Sanskrit text is even quoted in abbreviated form without signalling ellipsis). Besides this, grammatical errors in the Sanskrit glosses are a little too common. At p. 82 the reader can find an instance well exemplifying these issues in quoting and analysing the Sanskrit text: while quoting a passage from Vikn, the author provides the agrammatical form jātyāu glossed as “f.sg.loc.” In truth, the Sanskrit manuscript from the Potala Palace (Study Group on Buddhist Sanskrit Literature, Vimalakīrtinirdeśa: A Sanskrit Edition Based upon the Manuscript Newly Found at the Potala Palace, Tokyo: Taisho University Press, 2006), which is said to have been used for the digital database, reads the locative singular jātyāṃ, which the editors aptly emend to the instrumental jātyā (p. 35, 20b5). The book is clearly aimed at linguists rather than philologists – nonetheless, greater rigour in the treatment of Sanskrit sources is required.

From the theoretical point of view of language contact, I believe the book operates under two misapprehensions. Firstly, since Sanskrit and Chinese are very distant languages typologically speaking – the former is an inflected language with a very complex nominal and verbal inflectional system, while the latter is a topic-prominent language where grammatical relations are mainly governed by pragmatic and semantic factors – the potential for establishing translational equivalences between the source (Sanskrit) and target (Chinese) languages is quite low. In her survey, the author seems to assume that it is always possible to define which category or use pattern in Chinese corresponds to case-marking in Sanskrit. It is certainly possible to do this in some instances, as it happens with the ablative, but this is not always the case. Overlooking the fact that in many regards pragmatic and semantic factors were more relevant than mere case-marking for the Chinese translators leads the author to some arguable conclusions, especially when dealing with complex structures such as passive and ditransitive constructions.

The second problem concerns the language contact model used: language contact through translation (as is the case with Chinese Buddhist translations) is a particular type of language contact determined by specific socio-linguistic factors not necessarily relevant in other contact situations. As regards many of these factors (sociopolitical dominance relations, attitude towards the source language, degree of standardization of the target language…) the case of the Chinese Buddhist translations does not meet the conditions required for a significant degree of grammatical interference. The analysis of the Sanskrit-induced interference phenomena occurring in the translations of L.Sukh and Vikn presented by the author is often insightful and in most cases convincing. However, it is unlikely that such interference phenomena could affect the internal developments of Chinese on a large scale, as proposed in the concluding part of the book.