The first CCCC is with Dan Boucher, Cornell University presenting a text reading titled, 'Sengyou on Translating Scripture: China’s First Attempt to Conceptualize a Literary Other.'

Sengyou was a fifth-century Vinaya specialist and bibliographer whose catalogue is the earliest extant recording of lists of early Buddhist translations. In addition to his preoccupation to verify authentic scriptures, Sengyou is also the first to attempt a reckoning of how Indic scripts and languages work, marking this as the first extant effort in Chinese history to make sense of a significant foreign literary tradition. His essay early in his bibliographic work will be the focus of our reading.

CCCC is a reading group for students and scholars with interest in premodern Sinographic text.

All are welcome, at any level of experience with classical Chinese.

At each session, one participant presents a text in classical Chinese. Attendees discuss historical, literary, linguistic, and other aspects of the text, and work together to resolve difficulties in comprehension and translation.

Presentations include works of all sorts, from the earliest times to the twentieth century.

No preparation required: all texts will be distributed at the meeting.

contact: eap-guwen@cornell.edu