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Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t25: Jin Kemu

Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t25

Language
English

Jin Kemu

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Jin Kemu (August 14, 1912-August 5, 2000), was a Chinese Indologist, poet, essayist and expert in translation. His style name was Zhi Mo and his pen names were Xin Zhu, Wei Gu, Yan Hui and An Qi. His family origin was Shou County, Anhui Province. He was born in Wanzai County, Jiangxi Province. Jin Kemu, Ji Xianlin, Zhang Zhongxing and Deng Guangming were collectively known as “Yanyuan Four Old Person”.

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Jin Kemu

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Jin Kemu dropped out of middle school for a few reasons. He used to teach at an elementary school when he was 16-18 years old for supporting his family. In 1930, he went to Peiping (now Beijing) for study and learned several languages including English, French, German and Esperanto. In the winter of 1932, he went to De County, Shandong Province and taught Chinese at the Normal Junior High School. He started to work at the library of Peking University in 1935, but he left Peiping to the south after the July 7 Incident of 1937. In 1938, he was an international News Editor of ‘*Li Bao*’ (《立报》, *State Newspaper*). In 1939, he became an English teacher in Hu’nan Taoyuan Girl’s Middle School and held a concurrent post of French teacher of Hu’nan University, during which he was in contact with Shi Zhecun, Dai Wangshu and Xu Chi and created poetries. In 1941, he went to Calcutta, India via the Burma Road and became an Editor of ‘*India Daily*’. In 1943, he went to Sarnath, Banaras to learn Sanskrit and Pali from Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi, father of a famous Indian historian Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi. After that, he learned ‘*Upaniṣad*’ from Master Jagadish Narayana Kashyap, visited Professor Prabodh Chandra Bagchi and assisted Professor Vasudev Gokhale to collate the Chinese and Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit version of ‘*Mahāyānābhidharma-samuccaya*’. Since then, he began his studies of Sanskrit. In 1946, he returned to China and became a professor of the Department of Philosophy of Wuhan University. He taught Sanskrit and the history of Indian philosophy at the university and published at the same time many academic writings and literary works like poetries, novels and essays. In 1948, he became a professor of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature of Peking University. In 1951, he joined Jiusan Society and successively served as the Publicising Minister and member of the 5ᵗʰ, 6ᵗʰ and 7ᵗʰ sessions of the Standing Committee, and member of the 3ʳᵈ to the 7ᵗʰ Session of the National Committee of CPPCC. He died of illness in Beijing on August 5, 2000.

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He started to translate and create literary works since he was young and began to publish poetries and translation works on newspaper supplement after he went to Peiping in 1930. ‘*Beach House and Cemetery*’ (1934) is translated by him from Esperanto. He was an important member of China’s new poetic circles in 1930s. In 1936, his first collection of poems ‘*Bat Collection*’ was published. He had other poem collections published like ‘*Rain and Snow*’ (1986), (《少年行》‘*Shao Nian Xing*’) ‘*Junior Line*’ (1998), the collection of autobiographical novels ‘*Trace of the Old Nest*’ (1985), and the memoirs ‘*Past Events in India*’ (1986). He wrote a number of collections of essays such as ‘*Swallows in Spring*’ (1987) and ‘*Collection of Old Learning and New Knowledge*’ (1991) with rich contents. In 1956, he joined the Chinese Writers’ Association and attended the 3rd and 4th Congress of the Chinese Literature and Art Workers. Apart from translating and creating literary works, he also engaged in studying aesthetics, semiology, anthropology, folklore, semantics, astronomy and science. His representative works include the translation work ‘*Popular Astronomy*’ (1938) and the collected papers ‘*Discussion on Arts and Sciences*’ (1986).

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He knew many languages including Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Urdu, Esperanto, English and French and had a good command of German and Latin. He began to study Sanskrit when he was in India. In 1945, he accomplished the compilation of ‘*Summary of Panini’s Aphoisms on Sanskrit Grammar*’ and gave a detailed discussion of the author, written time, style, grammar system and many other aspects of ‘*Pāṇinisūtra*’ with the deciphering of some chapters and sections.

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In the same year, he wrote ‘*A Preliminary Probe into the Concept of “Being” in Sanskrit*’. In 1947, he published is article ‘*Fundamental Problems of Sanskrit Grammatical Theories*’ on ‘*Shun Pao Literature and History Weekly*’. Since then, he began to focus on translating and studying ancient Indian literature. ‘*Meghadūta*’ (1956) was translated from Sanskrit by him who has introduced the greatest achievement of classical Sanskrit lyric poetry to Chinese readers. In 1982, his translation work ‘*Bhartṛhari Śatakatraya*’ was published. It is the most popular Sanskrit collection of minor poems in India and shows the life and emotion of an ordinary man of letters and thus gives a glimpse of the life and thoughts of Indian common people. He also translated the ‘*Collection of Ancient Indian Poems*’ (1984) from Sanskrit and Pali, including vedic poems, epics, aphorism poems and lyric

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Literary works of Jin Kemu

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poems. After that, he launched and organised the translation of one of the two great Indian epics - ‘*Mahābhārata*’. He led the translation of ‘*Selected Annotations on Mahabharata*’ that was published in 1987. In 1993, the China Social Sciences Press published the ‘*Adi Parva*’ of the epic, and he wrote the preface and translated first four chapters of the ‘*Adi Parva*’ that provided references for future translation and laid a foundation for the publishing of all the six volumes of ‘*Mahabharata*’ in 2005. Apart from the ancient Indian literature, he also translated related theories of literature and art. His translation work ‘*Selected Works of Ancient Indian Aesthetics*’ was published in 1980, including five translation works that were selected from theoretical works namely ‘*Natyasastra*, *Kavya Darpan*, *Dhvani Aloka*, *Kavya Prakash*’ and ‘*Sahitya Darpan*’. These works and the forewords he wrote enabled the Chinese academic community to get an initial understanding of the theories of ancient Indian art and literature.

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In 1960s, he also taught “the history of Sanskrit literature” apart from teaching Sanskrit and his lecture notes have been incorporated in the liberal art teaching material plan and were published under the name of ‘*History of Sanskrit Literature*’ in 1964. This book mainly discusses Indian literary works and theoretical works of literature and art from the Vedic Age to the 12th century and represents a foundation work of Chinese studies on Sanskrit literature. He wrote a large number of research papers related to Indian literature, including epic studies, comparative literature studies and ‘*Rigveda*’ studies that are included in ‘*The Analects of Indian Culture*’ (1983) and ‘*The Analects of Comparative Culture*’ (1984), respectively. During the post Cultural Revolution period, he wrote a series of articles related to Buddhist study and the general topic is “On the Origin of Buddhism”, pointing out that China should strengthen studies on the original works of Buddhist scriptures in Sanskrit and only by pursuing the original works could the understanding of Chinese Buddhist scriptures be strengthened. He made a demonstrated analysis by taking the translated scripture style of Kumarajiva and the Chinese translation of another two Buddhist sutras ‘*Lankavatara Sutra*’ and ‘*Heart Sutra*’ as examples. He also translated the ‘*Trisvabhāvanirdésha*’ from Sanskrit in 1984. All these translations and relevant research works have introduced Indian ancient languages and documents to China, which has exerted greater influence.

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When it comes to the Indian culture, he studied Indian philosophy and Mahatma Gandhi. In 1947, he published the article ‘*Comments on Vedantasara*’ that introduced the general situation of the Indian philosophy and clarified the ideology of the ancients of Indian in “emphasising nazaritism and proof” in three aspects. During his teaching period in the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature, Jin Kemu wrote the article titled ‘*Conception in the History of Indian Philosophical Thoughts*’ that explained by concentrating on the main points of philosophy history including the stages, contents and the questions that need to be probed into. Afterwards, his study interest shifted to Indian philosophical thoughts and he wrote successively ‘*Analysis of the Mysticism of Mandukya Upanishad*’ (‘*Philosophical Researches*’, Edition 7, 1980), ‘*Views on Ancient Indian Materialistic Philosophy - Simultaneous Discussions on “Brahman” “Sramana” and Secular Culture*’

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(‘*Jianghuai Tribune*’, Edition 4, 1981), and other articles. He analysed the social status quo of modern India and made an objective comment on Gandhi in his monograph ‘*Gandhism*’ (1943) and the two articles published in 1983, namely, ‘*Brief Discussion about the Political Thoughts of Gandhi in South Africa in Early Stage*’ and ‘*Brief Discussion about Death of Gandhi*’.

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From the perspective of India-China cultural exchange studies, Jin Kemu wrote ‘*Historical Narrative of the Friendship between Chinese and Indian Peoples*’ in 1956. It was published by China Youth Publishing House in 1957 and has been translated into English, Hindi and Bengali. The book gives an account of the friendship between China and India from 100 years before Christ to 1950s and the history of exchanges between Chinese and Indian

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Collection of Jin Kemu's literary works

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peoples from the perspectives of the influence of Indian science, language, literature and art on China, diplomatic exchanges, the spreading and development of Buddhism in China.

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After the formation of the People’s Republic of China, Jin Kemu and Ji Xianlin cultivated the first batch of Sanskrit and Pali scholars of the New China. Jin Kemu used to teach Sanskrit orally as with the Indian mode and often sang Sanskrit eulogistic poems like what Indians did, which strengthened students’ languages sense and appreciation ability to Sanskrit. His lectures explained profound theories in simple language and enabled students to have a thorough mastery and thus enjoyed tremendous popularity.

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Jin Kemu also leaned Eastern and Western cultures and made great contributions in many fields like Indian language, culture and India-China exchanges. He also contributed a lot to China’s studies in Sanskrit, Pali and even in Indian literature. In May 2011, the Joint Publishing Company published the ‘*Complete Works of Jin Kemu*’ (eight volumes, over four million characters).

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(*Jiang Jingkui, Ren Xiaoke*)

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