Tagged: Māgadhī
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Cousins - The Early Development of Buddhist Literature and Language in India (2013)
1L.S. Cousins re-examines the early development of Buddhist literature, arguing that the Pali Canon was first systematically written down not in Ceylon, but on the Indian mainland around the first century B.C. before being imported to the island. This written canon was based on a largely non-sectarian oral tradition of chanted texts (*bhāṇaka* tradition) that had been developing since the Buddha's time (c. 400 BCE), and its initial contents included the four main Nikāyas, Vinaya, Abhidhamma, and several Khuddakanikāya texts. The language used was not a spoken dialect but an evolving written lingua franca, which Cousins terms 'Old Pali,' derived from a post-Asokan epigraphic Prakrit. This written language subsequently underwent a process of Sanskritization, becoming 'Hybrid Pali,' before being standardized into the classical Pali we know today by commentators around the fourth or fifth century A.D., who consistently referred to it as Māgadhī.
Karpik - Light on Epigraphic Pali - More on the Buddha Teaching in Pali (2023)
2Stefan Karpik argues that the 20th-century scholarly consensus that the Buddha spoke Māgadhī, as reflected in Eastern Aśokan inscriptions, is a myth. He contends, based on computer searches and a re-examination of Pali commentaries, that the term 'Māgadhī' was deliberately avoided and that the Buddha, a Kosalan, most likely spoke Pali. Karpik introduces the concept of 'Epigraphic Pali' to reclassify what others have called 'central-western epigraphic Prakrit', demonstrating through analysis of nine inscriptions from various contexts that this widespread inscriptional language is a later, naturally evolved form of canonical Pali. This evidence suggests Pali was not an artificial, ecclesiastical language but a standard, non-sectarian vernacular used across India for centuries. Consequently, he proposes that all early Buddhist canons were originally composed in Pali, the language of the Buddha, before being transmitted and adapted into other dialects and languages, a hypothesis that resolves questions of linguistic authenticity without privileging any single canon.
Karpik - The Buddha taught in Pali - A working hypothesis (2019)
3This paper challenges the scholarly consensus that the Buddha taught in multiple dialects like Māgadhī, a theory known as the Multiple Oral Transmission Theory (MOTT). Instead, it argues for a Single Oral Transmission Theory (SOTT), proposing that the Buddha used a single standard language, which is the language we now call Pali. The author contends that oral translation of the vast canon was impractical, unnecessary due to the mutual intelligibility of Indo-Aryan dialects, and explicitly discouraged by the suttas' emphasis on word-for-word transmission. The traditional identification of the Buddha's language as Māgadhī is based on a misreading of the term *Māgadhabhāsā* in the commentaries, which actually defined it as *Ariyaka* (Indo-Aryan), a pan-regional term. The paper posits that Pali was a natural, pre-existing standard language based on a western dialect, a precursor to the widespread Epigraphic Prakrit, and that the Buddha adopted this sociolect of the educated to ensure a fixed, albeit phonetically fluid, transmission of his teachings across different regions. This working hypothesis refutes the MOTT by explaining dialectal variants in Pali as natural artifacts of a single transmission rather than remnants of a translation, thereby aligning with the Theravada tradition's claim.
Bronkhorst, Johannes - Greater Magadha, Brill (2007)
4In *Greater Magadha*, Johannes Bronkhorst posits the existence of a distinct cultural sphere in early India, located east of the traditional Brahmanical heartland, which was the cradle of religious movements such as Buddhism, Jainism, and Ājīvikism. This culture was defined by a unique spiritual ideology centered on the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution, as well as by features like round funerary mounds (stūpas), a distinct medical tradition, and a cyclical conception of time. Bronkhorst argues that these concepts were foreign to the Vedic-Brahmanical culture to its west, which only gradually absorbed them over a long period of cultural interaction. This process is traced through Brahmanical texts that reveal varied reactions - hesitant acceptance and adaptation in the Upaniṣads and the Mahābhārata, long-term disregard by the Mīmāṃsā school, and outright rejection by the Cārvākas, whom he identifies as a Brahmanical school. A central part of the thesis involves a chronological re-evaluation of late-Vedic literature, which Bronkhorst, using evidence from grammarians like Pāṇini, argues is much later than traditionally held and was composed contemporaneously with this cultural amalgamation.