Languages and Buddhist Texts: Translation, Transmission, and Interpretation Across Traditions

Dear Colleagues,

Language has always been central to the development, transmission, and interpretation of Buddhism—from the Buddha’s own refusal to restrict his teachings to the elitist register of Sanskrit, and his encouragement of teaching the Dharma in vernaculars, to the intricate multilingual translation projects that marked the spread of Buddhism across Asia—the religion has maintained a dynamic and complex relationship with language. In fact, Buddhism may be one of the earliest major traditions to actively recognize both the power and the limitations of languages in conveying truth.

As Buddhism moved across cultural and geographic boundaries—from the Pāli and Gāndhārī texts of early India to the vast canon of Classical Chinese translations, and from Tibetan scholasticism to the modern global discourse in English and other contemporary languages—it evolved new linguistic forms, translation strategies, and even metaphysical reflections on the nature of language itself. These developments not only facilitated the global transmission of Buddhist teachings but also helped shape the languages into which they were translated.

This Special Issue invites contributions that explore the dynamic relationship between Buddhism and diverse linguistic traditions, tracing the evolution of Buddhist textual language across historical periods, textual genres, and interpretive frameworks. It aims to bring together scholars working on Buddhist linguistics, philology, translation studies, and cognitive or philosophical approaches to language in Buddhist texts, as well as those applying digital tools such as corpus linguistics, topic modeling, and natural language processing (NLP) to the study of Buddhist literature.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome, and research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

• The linguistic features of Buddhist texts in Pāli, Sanskrit, Gāndhārī, Classical Chinese, Tibetan, and other scriptural languages;
• The use of vernaculars versus sacred languages in Buddhist history;
• Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and the linguistic traces of oral-to-written transmission;
• Translation theory and praxis in the Chinese and Tibetan traditions, including standardized terminologies and debates over fidelity vs. fluency;
• Cross-linguistic textual comparison of parallel texts;
• The role of language in Buddhist philosophical reflection, including both its instrumental uses and its perceived limitations in conveying ultimate truth;
• The development of specialized “Buddhist language” registers and their impact on local linguistic traditions;
• Computational and corpus-based analyses of Buddhist texts, including the creation of aligned multilingual corpora;
• The digital future of Buddhist textual research, including AI-assisted translation, automatic annotation, and textual stylometry.

Our goal is to encourage a genuinely interdisciplinary dialogue among linguists, Buddhologists, philosophers, digital humanists, and scholars working on textual and manuscript traditions. We hope this Special Issue will not only deepen our understanding of Buddhist texts as linguistic artefacts, but also provide new methodological bridges between humanities and computational sciences.

We warmly welcome proposals for theoretical, historical, and methodological studies, as well as case-driven textual analyses, digital experiments, or reflections on Buddhist language philosophy. Together, these contributions will enrich our understanding of how language has shaped, and continues to shape, the Buddhist tradition in all its complexity.

Authors who are unsure whether their research aligns with the scope of this Special Issue are welcome to contact the Guest Editors with a tentative title or a short abstract for initial feedback.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Lu Lu
Dr. Bohan Li
Dr. Zhouyuan Li
Guest Editors

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• Buddhist texts
• multilingualism
• translation studies
• Buddhist philology
• languages of Buddhist scriptures
• linguistic philosophy
• corpus linguistics
• natural language processing (NLP)
• digital humanities
• comparative Buddhist studies
• Chinese Buddhist translations