Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-fnpn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-02T15:29:02.755Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Sanskrit Udānavarga and the Tocharian B Udānastotra: a window on the relationship between religious and popular language on the northern Silk Road1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2016

Michaël Peyrot
Michaël Peyrot*
Affiliation:
Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
*
peyrot@bbaw.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The majority of the Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts from the northern part of the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang (China) were found in an area where the local languages Tocharian A and B were spoken. In this article, the interplay of Sanskrit, the religious language, and Tocharian, the popular language, is investigated based on the example of the relationship between the Sanskrit Udānavarga and the Tocharian B Udānastotra. To this end, a reconstruction of the text of the introduction to the Udānastotra is attempted, which forms the transition from the Udānavarga to the Udānastotra proper. It is argued that this Tocharian B text was found in otherwise Sanskrit manuscripts, which suggests that speakers of Tocharian preferred certain doctrinal texts in Sanskrit.

Keywords

UdānavargaUdānastotraSanskritTocharian BCentral Asian BuddhismBilingual manuscripts
Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 79 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 305 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This article is an adaptation of a lecture with the title “The beginning of the end? On the introduction to the Tocharian B Udānastotra” held at Munich University on 4 April 2014 as part of the workshop “Überlieferung der buddhistischen Texte in Zentralasien: Tocharischer Buddhismus und seine Rolle” organized by Hiromi Habata and Olav Hackstein, whom I thank again for their kind invitation. For valuable feedback I am indebted to the participants of the workshop, in particular Stefan Baums, Gudrun Melzer and Georges-Jean Pinault, as well as to an anonymous reviewer. I further thank Nicolé Fürtig and the other staff of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and Nathalie Monnet and Laurent Héricher of the Bibliothèque nationale de France for their kind help with checking the originals.

Abbreviations: TochA = Tocharian A; TochB = Tocharian B; UdS = Udānastotra; Uv = Udānavarga

References

Bernhard, Franz. 1965. Udānavarga. Band I: Einleitung, Beschreibung der Handschriften, Textausgabe, Bibliographie. (Sanskrittexte aus den Turfanfunden 10.) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Bernhard, Franz. 1968. Udānavarga. Band II: Indices, Konkordanzen, Synoptische Tabellen. (Sanskrittexte aus den Turfanfunden 10.) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Bernhard, Franz. 1969. “Zum Titel des sogenannten «Udānavarga»”, in Voigt, Wolfgang (ed.), XVII. Deutscher Orientalistentag vom 21. bis 27. Juli 1968 in Würzburg. (Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Supplementa 1.) Wiesbaden: Steiner, 872–81.Google Scholar
Brough, John. 1962. The Gāndhārī Dharmapada. (London Oriental Series 7.) London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
cetom = A Comprehensive Edition of Tocharian Manuscripts. www.univie.ac.at/tocharian Google Scholar
Emmerick, Ronald E. 1968. The Book of Zambasta. A Khotanese Poem on Buddhism. (London Oriental Series 21.) London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Emmerick, Ronald E. 2009. “Khotanese and Tumshuqese”, in Windfuhr, Gernot (ed.), The Iranian Languages. London: Routledge, 377–415.Google Scholar
Hartmann, Jens-Uwe. 2013. “Die Schulzugehörigkeit von Maitreyasamitināṭaka und Maitrisimit ”, in Kasai, Yukiyo, Yakup, Abdurishid and Durkin-Meisterernst, Desmond (eds), Die Erforschung des Tocharischen und die alttürkische Maitrisimit. (Silk Road Studies 17.) Turnhout: Brepols, 37–50.Google Scholar
von Hinüber, Oskar and Norman, Kenneth R.. 2003. Dhammapada. Oxford: Pali Text Society.Google Scholar
Xianlin, Ji. 1998. Fragments of the Tocharian A Maitreyasamiti-Nāṭaka of the Xinjiang Museum, China. Transliterated, translated and annotated by Ji Xianlin in collaboration with Werner Winter and Georges-Jean Pinault. (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 113.) Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenz, Timothy. 2003. A New Version of the Gāndhārī Dharmapada and a Collection of Previous-Birth Stories. British Library Kharoṣṭhī fragments 16 + 25 . (Gandhāran Buddhist Texts 3.) Seattle: University of Washington.Google Scholar
Lévi, Sylvain. 1933. Fragments de textes koutchéens. Paris: Imprimerie nationale.Google Scholar
Maue, Dieter. 2015. “Tumschukische Miszellen II – the Haṃsasvara puzzle”, in Melanie Malzahn, Michaël Peyrot, Hannes Fellner and Theresa-Susanna Illés (eds), Tocharian Texts in Context. International Conference on Tocharian Manuscripts and Silk Road Culture held June 26–28, 2013 in Vienna. Bremen: Hempen, 117–26.Google Scholar
Nakatani, Hideaki. 1987. Udānavarga de Subaši. Édition critique du manuscrit sanskrit sur bois provenant de Subaši. (Publications de l'institut de civilisation indienne 53.) Paris: Collège de France, Institut de civilisation indienne.Google Scholar
Hirotoshi, Ogihara. 2011. “Tokarago B «Udānālaṅkāra» ni okeru Avadāna riyō ni tsuite – On the quotation of an Avadāna text in the Udānālaṅkāra in Tocharian B”, Tokyo University Linguistic Papers 31, 213–33.Google Scholar
Hirotoshi, Ogihara. 2012. “Tokarago B «Avadāna shahon» ni tsuite – The «Avadāna manuscript» in Tocharian B”, Tokyo University Linguistic Papers 32, 109–243.Google Scholar
Hirotoshi, Ogihara. 2013. “Tokarago B «Udānālaṅkāra» ni okeru Avadāna riyō ni tsuite (2) – On the quotation of an Avadāna text in the Udānālaṅkāra in Tocharian B (2)”, Tokyo University Linguistic Papers 34, 97–109.Google Scholar
Hirotoshi, Ogihara. 2014. “Fragments of secular documents in Tocharian A”, Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 15, 103–29.Google Scholar
Pauly, Bernard. 1960. “Fragments sanskrits de Haute Asie (Mission Pelliot). X. Vingt-cinq feuillets d'un manuscrit de l’Udānavarga de Dharmatrāta (Ms. Pelliot Skt. Ud. 1, 1–25)”, Journal Asiatique 248, 213–58.Google Scholar
Peyrot, Michaël. 2008a. Variation and Change in Tocharian B. (Leiden Studies in Indo-European 15.) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peyrot, Michaël. 2008b. “More Sanskrit–Tocharian B bilingual Udānavarga fragments”, Indogermanische Forschungen 113, 83–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peyrot, Michaël. 2014. “Notes on Tocharian glosses and colophons in Sanskrit manuscripts I”, Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 15, 131–79.Google Scholar
Pinault, Georges-Jean. 1990. “Compléments à l'Udānālaṅkāra et à l'Udānastotra en koutchéen”, in Haneda, †Akira (ed.), Documents et archives provenant de l'Asie Centrale. Kyoto: Association Franco-Japonaise des Études Orientales, 51–69.Google Scholar
Pinault, Georges-Jean. 2007. “Concordance des manuscrits tokhariens du fonds Pelliot”, in Malzahn, Melanie (ed.), Instrumenta Tocharica. Heidelberg: Winter, 163–219.Google Scholar
Pinault, Georges-Jean. 2013. “Contribution de Maitrisimit à l'interprétation de textes parallèles en tokharien”, in Kasai, Yukiyo, Yakup, Abdurishid and Durkin-Meisterernst, Desmond (eds), Die Erforschung des Tocharischen und die alttürkische Maitrisimit. (Silk Road Studies 17.) Turnhout: Brepols, 183–234.Google Scholar
Poucha, Pavel. 1955. Thesaurus Linguae Tocharicae Dialecti A. (Institutiones Linguae Tocharicae 1.) Prague: Státní Pedagogické Nakladatelství.Google Scholar
Schmithausen, Lambert. 1970. “Zu den Rezensionen des Udānavargaḥ”, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 14, 47–124.Google Scholar
Sieg, Emil and Siegling, Wilhelm. 1921. Tocharische Sprachreste, I. Band. Die Texte. A. Transcription. Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sieg, Emil and Wilhelm, Siegling. 1953. Tocharische Sprachreste. Sprache B, Heft 2. Fragmente Nr. 71–633, aus dem Nachlaß hg. v. Werner Thomas. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Thomas, Werner. 1966. “Tocharische Udānastotras der Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris”, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung 80, 163–81.Google Scholar
Thomas, Werner. 1974. “Zu einigen weiteren sanskrit-tocharischen Udānavarga-Fragmenten”, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung 88, 77–105.Google Scholar
Waldschmidt, Ernst. 1965. Sanskrithandschriften aus den Turfanfunden. Teil I. Unter Mitarbeit von Walter Clawiter und Lore Holzmann. (Verzeichnis der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland 10/1.) Wiesbaden: Steiner.Google Scholar