Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma (Records of Civilization: Sources & Studies)

Rating:
Summary: A very readable edition of the most important Mahayana text
Review: Many English versions of the Lotus Sutra are translated from a Chinese translation of the original Sanskrit version. Regardless of how well they were translated into English, the quality of these versions depends heavily on the quality of the Chinese translation. As many such translations were either done by merchants who didn't know that much about religion or by monks who didn't know much about the other language, there are quite a few bad versions of the Lotus Sutra.

This is not one of them. Not only was it translated from the best known of the Chinese versions (that of Kumarajiva), but Hurvitz also consulted the original Sanskrit to see where the versions differed. While the main text comes entirely from the Chinese, there are nearly 70 pages of endnotes on the Sanskrit, in which Hurvitz either comments on differences between that and the Chinese, or gives a translation of Sanskrit passages that don't appear in Kumarajiva's translation.

What this means for the text is that it is one of the most readable versions of the Lotus Sutra and, at the same time, one of the most informative.