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The Language of the Buddhist Sanskrit Texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

John Brough
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Extract

When Buddist works in Sanskrit were first introduced into Europe, it was at once obvious that the language of some of them as it appears in the manuscripts was, in comparison with Classical Sanskrit, frequently ungrammatical, and on occasion barbarously so. The immediate and natural reaction of scholars accustomed to the regularity of Sanskrit was to stigmatize these shortcomings, and to attempt to remove as many irregularities as possible by forcibly emending the text. It was, however, very soon recognized that many of the seeming anomalies could not be abolished, and that they must be accepted as genuine in their own context. This was especially clear in the case of the verses of some of the older texts, where the metre often guaranteed non- Pāηinean forms; and the language of these verses, variously called the Gāthādialect, mixed Sanskrit, or hybrid Sanskrit, was recognized as something in its own right. The same courtesy was readily extended to the prose of the Mahāvastu, which in places could only have been made to resemble Sanskrit by completely rewriting the text. The prose of the other texts, being in many waysvirtually Sanskrit, took considerably longer to win the same recognition; but for many years now it has been generally admitted that here also is a language which must be judged according to its own standards, and not exclusively by the canons of classical Sanskrit grammar.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , June 1954 , pp. 351 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1954

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References

page 351 note 1 Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary; and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Reader. Yale University Press, 1953. See also below, p. 421.Google Scholar

page 352 note 1 References in figures with no other indication are to the sections of the Grammar.

page 353 note 1 In Manuscript remains of Buddhist Literature found in E. Turkestan, ed. Hoernle, A. F. B., p. 161.Google Scholar

page 358 note 1 See. Burrow, T., The Language of the Documents from Chinese Turkestan, p. 19Google Scholar (e.g., for ; also the Prakrit Dhammapada, ed. Bailey, H. W., BSOAS., 11,Google Scholar which has satśana, satśara, ahitśa for respectively; and also bhametśu, (previously read by Senart bhameŋsu), which ia strikingly like the forms under discussion here. The Pali version (Dhp. 371) has bhavassu, which editors have emended to bhamassu, on the basis of the Prakrit passage. But the whole situation here appears still to await a satisfactory explanation.

page 360 note 1 If the writing is careful, they ought not to be confused. In the manuscript of the Kalpanā (ed. with selected facsimiles by Lüders, , Kleinere Sanskrit-Texte, 2)Google Scholar, the distinction between tm and nm is perfectly clear, and an editor could hardly be forgiven for mistaking one for the other. This, however, does not mean that a scribe, who did not necessarily understand what he was writing, might not on occasion have slipped even in copying an exemplar as clear as this.

page 363 note 1 To Edgerton's references from the -vyūha, Diet. s.v. avaropaηa, can now be added -avadāna, x. Note, however, that in the ratna- around which the Dvā. is built, the separate manuscripts have in the colophon here dhātvāropaηa-, and the text has only the phrases dhātur āropyate, dhātum āropya. We may then say that for Buddhist kāvya in correct Sanskrit the form āropaηa only seems to be used, and that the avadāna form with āva- results from a contamination of the other with ava-.

page 364 note 1 See also below, p. 421.

page 365 note 1 Kleinere Sanskrit-Texte 2, pp. 203, 207, 208.Google Scholar

page 365 note 2 ibid., pp. 29, 30.

page 365 note 3 Hoernle, , Manuscript Remains, pp. 133 f.Google Scholar

page 365 note 4 MAS, pp. 13, 27, 39.

page 365 note 5 MAS, p. 35.

page 366 note 1 Ed. Lüders, H., Kleinere Sanskrit-Texte, 2, p. 139.Google Scholar

page 366 note 2 ibid., p. 39.

page 366 note 3 Transactions of the Philological Society, 1946, p. 17.Google Scholar

page 366 note 4 Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde, 105,1, pp. 137 ff.

page 369 note 1 For a full discussion of this matter, see Li-kouang, Lin, L'aide-mémoire de la vraie loi, 1949, pp.176 ff.Google Scholar

page 371 note 1 Ed. sanirmalam.

page 371 note 2 i.e. ‘ (a voice) spoke to him from the sky ’.

page 371 note 3 MSS. abhyantare .

page 372 note 1 i.e. .

page 372 note 2 i.e. adbhuta ‘ astonished ’. One manuscript has, in fact, atbhūta.

page 373 note 1 P ═ the consensus of the interpolated group of manuscripts.

page 374 note 1 The translation given implies a ‘ hyper-sandhi ’ in the first pāda, for -samudgatā. (This could be avoided if we understood the whole of the pāda as a compound in the vocative plural,‘ O noble beings, born of pity, etc ’ But such a vocative is out of keeping with the context, and would also imply that the second ca is merely a verse-filler.) The Tibetan translation would seem to support the view that the are not the subject of the second half of the verse, but are merely held up as a model. This at least seems a possible interpretation of the two small additions to the word-for-word rendering: ‘ Considering that (sñam ste) noble beings are produced, etc.: in like manner (ḥthun par) for the sake of the lives of others (I) shall show pity ’. (The subject of course is indeterminate.) Corresponding to the conjectured karotu, upakāram, theTibetan has only brtse, v. 1. rtse, of which the former is taken by the Kalmuck version (enerikü, have pity, Altan Gerel, ed. Haenisch, E., p. 106.12)Google Scholar, and the latter by the east Mongolian (Schmidt, I. J., Grammatik der Mongolischen Sprache, p. 166Google Scholar, erfreuen—though the normal sense of rtse in the dictionaries is ‘ play, sport ’, Skt. .) The Chinese versions given no assistance, since Dharmaksema omits the verse entirely, and I Ching has in its place an entirely different passage (Taishō Tripiṭaka, 16, p. 354b, and p. 451b, c)Google Scholar. I am grateful to my colleague Professor W. Simon for his assistance in comparing all these versions with the Sanskrit text.

page 374 note 2 The other formal possibility, that might be taken as a genitive with yasya, is awkward and at best yields a tame sense, and seems to me most unlikely.