Adapting Language to Culture: Translation Projects of the Jesuit Missions in Japan and China
- Book Title:
- Cross-Cultural History and the Domestication of Otherness
- Book Editor:
- Format:
- Book Chapter
- Year:
- 2012
- Publisher:
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Place published:
- New York
- Language:
- Abstract:
Francis Xavier (1506–1552) was one of the first Europeans to encounter the difficulties of adapting European religious terminology and translating it into the language and culture of Asia. Shortly after his arrival near Kagoshima, Japan, in 1549, Xavier was shown a representation of the Buddhist bodhisattva Dainichi. It was explained to him that Dainichi had no material human body but was a trinity of heads, each of which had a particular function. Dainichi, or Vairocana, was the universal aspect of the historical Gautama Buddha and the embodiment of the Buddhist concept of shunyata or Emptiness. Xavier began to use this Sino-Japanese Buddhist term, Dainichi, to refer to the Christian concept of God.
Buddhist monks of the Shingon sect, which used the same term to designate the source of all things, welcomed Xavier during the initial stages of his preaching in Japan because he used the word Dainichi for the Christian God. Xavier preached Dainichi as the creator of all things, the ultimate goal of the immortal soul, the pure Substance having neither form nor accident.
It was not long before Xavier realized that Dainichi, which was at the center of Shingon Buddhist belief, was not a personal deity at all, but seemed closer to what contemporary Western philosophers might have called material prima, or matter without form.
Before he became familiar with the popular and religious nuances of the word, Xavier had gone through the streets with his translator, shouting “Pray to Dainichi!” (Dainichi no ogami are).
- Who (Jesuits):
- What (Subjects):
- Where (Locations):
- When (Centuries):
- Page Range:
- 67–82
- ISBN:
- 97802303399720230339972