Writing the History of Buddhism in the French Translation of Fo Guo Ji: The Paratexts

This article focuses on the French translation of Fo Guo Ji (佛国记), entitled Foě-kouě-ki, ou Relation des royaumes bouddhiques, co-translated by four scholars, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, Julius Klaproth, Ernest Clerc de Landresse, and Eugène Burnouf. This study examines how the translators interpreted Buddhist doctrines and history by analyzing the translation’s paratexts, including an extensive introduction, detailed in-text annotations as well as the translators’ related studies of Buddhism and other fields. As renowned Sinologists whose expertise spanned religion, linguistics, geography, and other fields, the translators infused their interpretive work with multifaceted academic perspectives. These paratexts collectively serve as pivotal sources for understanding how the French translation constructed and interpreted Buddhist history. The study finds that Abel-Rémusat profoundly elaborated on the core of Buddhist doctrines, dispelling the prevalent mystification of Buddhism in European academia and uncovering its inherent rational logic. All four translators, endowed with profound philological and linguistic expertise, analyzed Buddhist history through a distinctive approach. Moreover, Abel-Rémusat and his successors focused more on the history of Buddhist transmission across regions and languages, positioning Buddhist history as well as Asian studies into the framework of world history.