IN THE FOREST OF THE BLIND: THE EURASIAN JOURNEY OF FAXIAN'S RECORD OF BUDDHIST KINGDOMSBy Matthew W. King. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. Pp. 312. Paperback, $40.00; Hardcover, $160.00; E-Book, $39.99.

This review of King's new book examines the themes of nationalism, centers, and frontiers presented in this book in the context of Buddhist identity and translation alongside questions of continuity and agency. This review focuses on Chapters 3 and 5 and the appendix containing the annotated translation of the Tibetan version of Faxian's Travels. These chapters of King's study explore the evolution of Buddhist ideas and understanding of the world from the viewpoint of the Inner Asian polymaths who were the translators of the Mongolian and Tibetan versions of Faxian's Travels.

In preparation for the 2022 AAR panel discussion of the present book under review, I posed the following questions: (1) To what extent can the twentieth-century Mongolian and Tibetan language translations of Faxian's travels be read as continuity of and/or breaking away from the pre-Qing, early-Qing, and high-Qing period Buddhist historiography authored by Mongolians? (2) How would these translations read through the lens of “Mongolian agency” instead of “Qing inflected” or “Qing synthetic” perspectives?

To the first question, it is necessary to point out that despite the Mongolian and Tibetan language used to translate Faxian's Travels, the translators were both ethnic Mongolians, one a Buryat Mongol and the other a Khalkha Mongol. As King points out, the echo of Mongolian nationalism sounds in the language choice found in both translations, and these have continued to serve as the sources for Mongolian Nationalists today in their search for historical “Mongolness.” King draws the reader's attention to the linguistic choices made by the two Mongolian translators Banzarov (1822–1855) and Lubsangdamdin (1867–1937) in rendering the foreign into local and familiar cosmologies and geographies as well as the traditional Geluk Buddhist literary genres they translated the works into. In this sense, their works represent both their attempt at the continuity of their long-standing heritage of Geluk Buddhist scholastic traditions as well as their critique of the new bodies of knowledge that flooded in when the dam that held modernity at bay finally broke.

To the second, the book takes us on a journey through the process of Faxian's Travels being translated from Chinese into French, French into Mongolian, and finally from Mongolian into Tibetan, a process that maps a multidimensional network of translation and transmission which challenges the traditional model of the diffusion of knowledge in “Buddhist Asia.” Chapters 3 and 5 trace the multilinear and multidirectional process of translations, dictionary compilations, and transmission of texts by traditional Geluk scholars from regions that King calls the “Qing Frontier” or “Sino-Tibeto-Mongolian Frontier.” Although the term “frontier,” itself suggestive of centers is problematic, for lack of a better term, it remains to encompass the regions into which Buddhist scholars of Inner Asian heritages are slotted into. For these scholars, the circulation of Faxian's Travels presented “the conditions of possibility for making history from the past are not only mutable but also mobile. They are nonlinear, circulatory, and centerless” (75).

In short, King's work presents an innovative approach to look within and beyond academic fields such as Buddhist Studies and History. The circulation and afterlife of the Travels of Faxian through translation is approached following the Deleuze and Guattarian rhizomatic model of inquiry as “circuitous and centerless” (14). It is an important work for many reasons, but among them, I would like to highlight how this book unearths and contextualizes the scholarly interventions made by lesser-known Inner Asian polymaths of the twentieth century by juxtaposing their contributions within and against the backdrop of what is imagined as “Buddhist Asia” in the wider global scholarly context. In The Forest of the Blind, figures such as Banzarov and Lubsangdamdin emerge not as the objects of inquiry but as innovators of literary traditions, agents of discursive thought, and producers of history.

《盲人森林：法显佛教王国记录的欧亚之旅》作者：Matthew W. King。纽约：哥伦比亚大学出版社，2022 年。页码。312 . 平装本，40.00 美元；精装本，160.00 美元；电子书，39.99 美元。

对金的新书的评论在佛教身份和翻译以及连续性和代理性问题的背景下审视了本书中提出的民族主义、中心和前沿主题。本评论重点关注藏文版《法显游记》的第三章和第五章以及包含注释译本的附录。金研究的这些章节从蒙古文和藏文版《法显游记》的翻译者、内亚博学者的角度探讨了佛教思想和对世界的理解的演变。

在准备 2022 年 AAR 小组讨论时，我提出了以下问题：（1）法显游记的 20 世纪蒙古语和藏语翻译在多大程度上可以被解读为延续和/或脱离蒙古人所著的清前、清初、清盛时期的佛教史学？（2）这些译文如何从“蒙古代理”而非“清曲折”或“清综合”的角度来解读？

对于第一个问题，需要指出的是，尽管《法显游记》是用蒙藏文翻译的，，翻译者都是蒙古族，一个是布里亚特蒙古人，另一个是喀尔喀蒙古人。正如金指出的那样，蒙古民族主义的回声在两种翻译中的语言选择中都得到了体现，而这些仍然是当今蒙古民族主义者寻找历史“蒙古性”的来源。金提请读者注意两位蒙古翻译家班扎罗夫（1822-1855）和卢桑丹丁（1867-1937）在将外来事物转化为本土和熟悉的宇宙观和地理以及他们翻译的传统格鲁派佛教文学流派时所做出的语言选择。作品进入。在这个意义上说，

第二，本书带我们回顾了法显游记的过程从汉语翻译成法语，法语翻译成蒙古语，最后从蒙古语翻译成藏语，这一过程描绘了一个多维的翻译和传播网络，挑战了“佛教亚洲”知识传播的传统模式。第三章和第五章追溯了传统格鲁派学者从被金称为“清朝边疆”或“汉藏蒙边疆”的地区进行翻译、词典编纂和文本传播的多线和多向过程。尽管“边疆”一词本身暗示着中心是有问题的，但由于缺乏更好的术语，它仍然涵盖了内亚传统佛教学者所处的地区。对于这些学者来说， 《法显游记》的流传提出“从过去创造历史的可能性条件不仅是可变的，而且是流动的。它们是非线性的、循环的、无中心的”（75）。

简而言之，金的作品提出了一种创新的方法来审视佛教研究和历史等学术领域的内部和外部。《法显游记》通过翻译的流通和来世是按照德勒兹和瓜塔里安的“迂回而无中心”的根茎式探究模式来探讨的（14）。出于多种原因，它是一本重要的著作，但其中，我想强调的是，这本书如何通过将二十世纪不太知名的内亚博学者的贡献并列在其背景下，发掘并背景化他们的学术干预。在更广泛的全球学术背景下被想象为“佛教亚洲”。在盲人森林里在书中，班扎罗夫和卢桑丹丁等人物的出现并不是作为探究的对象，而是作为文学传统的创新者、话语思想的推动者和历史的创造者。