The Koran and the transmission of Oriental Sacred Texts

The Koran has hardly been translated until recently. Muslims, in the splendor of their empire, taught the Arabian language to those who wished to know the Islam. So, in the last fourteen centuries the Koran has only been translated into sixty five languages. The Bible, for instance, has been translated into 1808 languages, according to the repport of Bible Societes.

To face this situation, the Ahmadia International Community, which was founded in 1898 in order to expand Islam all over the world, has translated the Koran into fifty languages, and for the next year first centennial of the foundation of the Community intends to make an antology of versicles of the Koran into another fifty languages.

Sacred Sanskrit literature, and mainly Budism, presents some similarities with the Koran. Thus, as it has happened in other cases, language, being transmitter of religion, has acquired a sacred character, with all that this implies, exegesis, purism, codification, maintenace of language, etc. In fact, Sanskrit was at the beginning a religious language, although later it would have other uses. Still today it is sometimes used as a language of culture among Indians of different languages. But as far as the translation is concerned, the situation is different, as budist texts were translated early and into many languages. Thus, for example, in the first century a. C., Budism started to enter China, as well as the translation of budist texts into Chinese; but due to the enormous linguistic differences between both languages more than a translation they were paraphrase, which a Chinese who was not acquainted with Budism could hardly understand.

In Tibet, on the other hand, we find an exemplary case of team work. In this sense hindus and tibetan monks, working toghether, ellaborated a Tibetan-sanskrit glossary containing more than 9800 words. Tibetan translations are so perfect that, when the original sanskrit texts were lost in the course of several pillages, they were used to reconstruct the said originals; ii has been thus possible to know hindu budism of the Middle Ages. Astor the transmission of oriental literatures, mainly arabian, what it is called "Translators Schol of Toledo", founded by Archbishop Raimundo in the XIIth century, should he mentioned. Christians, arabs and jews carried out a very important work translating arabian and greek works into Latin, thus establishing a bridge between oriental and occidental cultures.