The dates assigned to the translators offer little ground for scepticism.  The exactitude of the Chinese in such matters is well attested, and there is a general agreement between several authorities such as the Catalogues of the Tripitaka, the memoirs known as Kao-Seng Chuan with their continuations, and the chapter on Buddhist books in the Sui annals.  There are no signs of a desire to claim improbable accuracy or improbable antiquity.  Many works are said to be by unknown translators, doubtful authorship is frankly discussed, and the movement of literature and thought indicated is what we should expect.  We have first fragmentary and incomplete translations belonging to both the Maha and Hinayana:  then a series of more complete translations beginning about the fifth century in which the great Hinayana texts are conspicuous:  then a further series of improved translations in which the Hinayana falls into the background and the works of Asanga and Vasubandhu come to the front.  This evidently reflects the condition of Buddhist India about 500-650 A.D., just as the translations of the eighth century reflect its later and tantric phase.

But can Chinese texts be accepted as reasonably faithful reproductions of the Indian originals whose names they bear, and some of which have been lost?  This question is really double; firstly, did the translators reproduce with fair accuracy the Indian text before them, and secondly, since Indian texts often exist in several recensions, can we assume that the work which the translators knew under a certain Sanskrit name is the work known to us by that name?  In reply it must be said that most Chinese translators fall short of our standards of accuracy.  In early times when grammars and dictionaries were unknown the scholarly rendering of foreign books was a difficult business, for professional interpreters would usually be incapable of understanding a philosophic treatise.  The method often followed was that an Indian explained the text to a literary Chinese, who recast the explanation in his own language.  The many translations of the more important texts and the frequent description of the earlier ones as imperfect indicate a feeling that the results achieved were not satisfactory.  Several so-called translators, especially Kumarajiva, gave abstracts of the Indian texts.[761] Others, like Dharmaraksha, who made a Chinese version of Asvaghosha’s Buddhacarita, so amplified and transposed the original that the result can hardly be called a translation.[762] Others combined different texts in one.  Thus the work called Ta-o-mi-to-ching[763] consists of extracts taken from four previous translations of the Sukhavativyuha and rearranged by the author under the inspiration of Avalokita to whom, as he tells us, he was wont to pray during the execution of his task.  Others again, like Dharmagupta, anticipated a method afterwards used in Tibet, and gave a word for word rendering of the Sanskrit which is hardly intelligible to an educated Chinese.  The later versions, e.g. those of Hsuan Chuang, are more accurate, but still a Chinese rendering of a lost Indian document cannot be accepted as a faithful representation of the original without a critical examination.[764]