ABSTRACT
A famous translator of Buddhist sutras, Zhi Qian, courtesy name Gongming, also named Zhi Yue, was born a member of the Yuezhi tribes at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. At the age of thirteen, he started to learn Hu-language, and became competent in six different languages. Zhi Qian observed that although Buddhism was becoming well received in China, most of the sutras had not been translated into Chinese. The Buddhist sutras contain words of sublime truth, and the title of this sutra means 'sayings of sublime truth'. Since he was conversant with a number of languages and dialects, he decided to collect versions of Buddhist sutras and translate them. When he translated he sometimes rendered the terms and expressions into Hu-language words and expressions, and at other times he relied on transliteration. The result was a translation that was unhewn and too straightforward.
