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Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t24: Ji Xianlin

Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t24

Language
English

Ji Xianlin

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Ji Xianlin (August 6, 1911-July 11, 2009), was a Chinese Indologist, linguist, writer, translator and social activist. His style names were Xi Bu and Qi Zang. He was born in in Guanzhuang, Qingping County (now Linqing City, Shandong Province). He was a member of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor of Peking University.

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Ji Xianlin was born into a peasant family and was given the name of “Ji Baoshan” and his infant name was “Shuang Xi”. In 1917, he began to study in a home school with a private tutor and was renamed “Ji Xianlin”. In 1923, he was admitted to Jinan Zhengyi Middle School. In 1926, he graduated from the middle school and studied in the high school. After half a year, he was transferred to the high school attached to Shandong University and began to learn German. He stopped schooling for one year between 1928 and 1929 when Japanese troops occupied Ji’nan. In February 1929, he was transferred to Shandong Jinan No.1 High School. In 1930, he was admitted to Tsinghua University where he majored in German in the Western Literature Department. During his studies here, he also took optional courses in the literature of Buddhist scriptures translated by Chen Yinque’s, Zhu Guangqian’s psychology of literature and art,

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Ji Xianlin

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and learned English and Sanskrit. After graduation in 1934, he went back to his Alma Mater Shandong Jinan No.1 High School to teach Chinese language. In 1935, he became a graduate exchange student of Tsinghua University and went to study at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen majoring in Indology. He studied Sanskrit, Pali, Tocharian, Russian, Yugoslavia, Arabic, etc., under the guidance of Ernst Waldschmidt and Emil Sieg. In 1937, he also lectured at the Institute of Sinology, University of Goettingen. In September 1941, he received his PhD. In 1946, he returned to China and was appointed as a Professor of Peking University and the Director of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature. In 1956, he was elected as a member of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences in the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Annotated and collated version of 'Da Tang Xiyou ji' (Record of the Travels to the western region during the great Tang dynasty)

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After 1978, he served as the Vice President of Peking University, holding the post of Director of many societies, such as Chinese Association for South Asia Studies, Chinese Language Society, China English Language Education Association, Chinese Dunhuang Turpan Society and Chinese Asia and Pacific Society. He died of illness on July 11, 2009 in Beijing. He won many overseas honours: the highest honourary award “Samman Patra” given by the Indian Varanasi Sanskrit University in 1992; the title of honourary academician given by Sahitya Akademi in 1999; the gold certificate of doctoral degree issued by Georg-August Universität Göttingen in 2000; World Laureate elected at the 19th World Congress of Poets in 2005; the Padma Bhushan awarded by the Government of India in 2008.

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Ji Xianlin began to write, translate and review literature from a very young age. Between 1928 and 1929, he created the short stories *The Rationale of a So Called Civilized Man*, *Bachelor of Medicine* and *Watching Opera* that are published on Tianjin *Yishi Daily* with “Xi Bu” as the pen name. In 1930, he translated essays of Иван Сергеевич Тургенев including *The Old Woman*, *The End of The World*, *The Old Man* and *How Beautiful, How Fresh Were the Roses* and had them published on *Shandong National News-Baotu Weekly* and Tianjin *Yishi Daily*, successively. Between 1933 and 1934, he made comments on *Sons*, novel of Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, Ba Jin’s novel *The Family* and Lao She’s *The Divorce* and published the comments on Tianjin *Ta-Kung-Pao Literary Supplement*. In 1955, he translated German works *Anna Seghers Collection of Short Stories*. In 1980, he published successively *Impression of India* (1980), *Collection of Essays Written in the Lang Run Garden* (1981), *Random Thoughts on Life* (1996), *Dreaming by the Weiming Lake* (1998), *Spring Returns to Yanyuan* (2000), *New Writings of a Nonagenarian* (2002), *Miscellaneous Essays on Sickbed* (2007), and many essays, memoirs and essay collections. Over the decades, he never stopped working and created works that have reached more than one million words.

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Ji Xianlin had a good command of English, German, Sanskrit, Pali, Tocharian, and could read French and Russian books. Initially, he was mainly engaged in the research of ancient Indian languages which he continued for nearly for five decades. In 1941, he obtained doctorate with his dissertation *Die Konjugation des finite Verbums in den Gāthās des Mahāvasthu* that comprehensively and systematically summarised various morphological changes of verbs in hybrid Sanskrit used in the Hinayana Lokottaravadin Vinaya Mahāvasthu. His work broadened the research field of hybrid Sanskrit morphology and promoted the studies on hybrid Sanskrit. In 1944 and 1949, he respectively published two essays namely *Die Umwandlung der Endung – am in – o und – u im Mittelindischen* and *Die Verwendung des Aorists als Kriterium für Alter und Ursprung buddhistischer Texte*, comparing and analysing existing ancient Buddhist scriptures by employing the method of compare comparative linguistics, determining the general location and time of these scriptures and their circulation situation in India and Central Asia based on various morphological changes of Buddhist language. This opened a new channel for studying Indian Buddhism history. Since then, he wrote *The Language Problem of Primitive Buddhism* (1956), *More Exposition on the Language Problem of Primitive Buddhism* (1958), *Two Questions of Medieval Indo-Aryan Language* (1984), *Third Exposition on the Language of Primitive Buddhism* (1984), among other academic dissertations in which he demonstrated the existence of primitive Buddhism and that its language was the ancient Ardhamagadhi, a dialect of east India. This was a breakthrough in the research of the language of primitive Buddhism. On the basis of study in literature and language, he carried out further researches on the *History of Indian Buddhism*. He wrote more than 20 dissertations including *Stupa and Buddha* (1947), *The Historical Origin of the Primitive Ruddhism* (1965), *Problems on Mahayana Sthaviravāda* (1981), *Distorted and Forgotten “Route Struggle” in Creation Period of Buddhism - Devadatta Problem* (1987) and *Backflow of Buddhism* (1991).

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Since 1982, he began to interpret Maitreyasamiti-Nāṭaka, a Tocharian A scripture unearthed in Yanqi, Xinjiang in 1975 and had written a dozen of articles on this topic. He published them in major periodicals in both China and abroad which caught the attention of the world of linguistic. In 1993, Taiwan Xinwenfeng Publishing Company published his monograph titled *Introduction to Researches on Tocharian language* that has become a detailed and reliable guide to both Chinese and foreign scholars related to the subject. In 1998, he completed the translation of Tocharian A *Maitrisimit*. In the same year, he collaborated with a German Tocharian expert Werner Winter and a French Tocharian expert G J (Georges-Jean Pinault) to publish *Fragments of the Tocharian A Maitreyasamiti-Nāṭaka of the Xinjiang Museum, China*.

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Since 1950s, he began to translate and study Indian classical documents. He translated many Sanskrit works, such as the playwright Kālidāsa’s *Abhijñānaśākuntalam* (1956), Ancient Indian fable *Pañcatantra* (1959) and Kālidāsa’s playwright *Vikramōrvaśīyam* (1962). China Youth Theatre

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Ji Xianlin's '*Zhe tang shi*'

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successfully performed the *Abhijñānaśākuntalam* based on his translated version in 1950s and after the Cultural Revolution. Between 1973 and 1977, he translated ‘*Rāmāyaṇa*’ (1980-1984), one of the two great Indian epics. At the same time, he also wrote ‘*Primary Investigation into Rāmāyaṇa*’ (1979) that put forward incisive opinions of some important questions about ancient history of India, such as the characteristics, stages, and land possession forms of Indian feudal society apart from discussing literary contents of the epic. He also translated an Indian writer Maitreyi Devi’s English version of ‘*Tagore by Fireside*’ (1986). The Chinese translations of all these classical documents and related writings have had a great influence on China.

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When it comes to India-China cultural exchanges, since 1957, he had written ‘*The History of China-India Cultural Relations*’ (1957), ‘*The History of China-India Cultural Relations*’ (1982), ‘*Buddhism and Sino-Indian Cultural Exchanges*’ (1990), ‘*History of Sino-Indian Cultural Exchanges*’ (1993), and other works. In 1985, the ‘*Commentary on Great Tang Records on the Western Regions*’, which he was responsible for was published. The book has altogether 6,30,000 words including the original text, preface, amending excursus and notes and represents a significant result of China in studying geography and history of Western Regions including ancient India and in collation of ancient books. He also personally organised the translation and correction in person of ‘*Modern Translation of Great Tang Records on the Western Regions*’, which was published in the same year. In 1987, his ‘*Commentary on Great Tang Records on the Western Regions*’ and ‘*Modern Translation of Great Tang Records on the Western Regions*’ were given Han Suyin-Vincent Ratnaswamy Sino-Indian Friendship Award. In 1991, ‘*History of Ancient Indian Literature*’ edited by him was published. In 1998, his monograph on the History of Sugar was published which has more than 8,00,000 words and involves more than a dozen of Chinese and foreign languages. It has mastered the method of historical linguistics of German academism and the textual research method of China’s Qian-Jia School and showcased the complex yet vivid history of Sino-foreign cultural exchanges. India-China cultural exchanges took up a large space of the book.

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Ji Xianlin guided and taught academic talent in the study of Indology and Sinology. In 1946, he established the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature in Peking University. In 1960, he gave lessons to the first batch of students majoring in Sanskrit and Pali. After the Cultural Revolution, he was reappointed as the Dean of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature, Peking University and taught a large number of researchers in Indology.

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He was always actively engaged in India-China cultural exchange activities. In 1951, he visited India along with Chinese cultural delegation and was warmly welcomed there. In 1855, he went to New Delhi as a member of the Chinese delegation to attend “Asian Countries Conference”. In 1978, he visited India as a member of the delegation of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC). During his visit, he was invited to meet the faculty and students of University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University. He also went to Japan to attend the “Conference on Indian Buddhism” in 1980. In 1985, he attended the “International Symposium on India & World Literature” and the “Valmiki International Poetry Festival” held in New Delhi and was designated as the Chair of Indian and Asian Literature (China and Japan) Session. In 1986, he participated in the “15th World Fellowship of Buddhists” held in Kathmandu.

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‘*Complete Works of Ji Xianlin*’ (30 volumes altogether, more than two million words) was published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) in September 2010.

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