Tagged: Sanskrit
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Drewes - Toward Blue Skies Ahead - Reply To Von Hinüber's Second Response (2023)
1In this reply, David Drewes defends his thesis on the lack of evidence for the historical Buddha against critiques from Prof. Dr. von Hinüber, clarifying that his original paper targeted the scholarly inconsistency of affirming historicity without proof. Drewes explains that his focus on secondary sources is due to the absence of any primary texts being presented as evidence, and he posits that the origins of Buddhism before the mid-third century BCE are unknowable, cautioning against projecting modern concepts like "mystical experience" onto its prehistory. He systematically refutes von Hinüber's specific counterarguments by employing detailed linguistic and manuscript evidence to defend his textual emendations in the Dīrghāgama and Sañghabhedavastu, and he substantiates his mythological analysis by showing that numerous Indian myths, including the Sītā story, feature a ritualistic golden plow, thereby connecting a Pali story about the Buddha's youth to this broader narrative tradition.
Norman - The origin of Pāli and its position among the Indo-European languages (1988)
2Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan language that originated not as a specific regional tongue but as a composite literary dialect used for the Buddhist canon. Descending from the Indo-European language family, it developed from the various Prakrits spoken in North India following the migration of Indo-Aryan peoples and their interaction with indigenous Dravidian and Munda populations. The Buddha and his followers preached in these local vernaculars, and Pāli emerged from the subsequent effort to standardize these diverse teachings into a single language for the Theravādin tradition. While primarily based on a Western Prakrit, Pāli retains features from other dialects, such as Māgadhī, reflecting its mixed origins and the process of translation and compilation. The language was largely fixed when the canon was committed to writing in the first century B.C., after which it underwent further editorial standardization, including significant Sanskritization and, in later periods, minor influences from Sinhalese and the work of medieval Pāli grammarians.
Norman - Pāli Literature - A History Of Indian Literature (1983)
3K.R. Norman's *Pāli Literature* provides a comprehensive overview of the literary tradition of Theravāda Buddhism, also encompassing the canonical works of other Hīnayāna schools in Prakrit and Sanskrit. The literature is centered on the Pāli Canon or Tipiṭaka, which is divided into the Vinaya-piṭaka (monastic rules), the Sutta-piṭaka (discourses of the Buddha, organized into five nikāyas), and the Abhidhamma-piṭaka (systematic philosophical analysis). The text details the history of the Pāli language as a standardized Middle Indo-Aryan dialect, its transmission through oral reciters (bhānakas) and councils, and its eventual commitment to writing in Ceylon in the first century B.C. Beyond the canon, a vast post-canonical literature developed, including foundational commentaries (aṭṭhakathās) by figures like Buddhaghosa, sub-commentaries (ṭīkās), historical chronicles (vaṃsas) like the Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa, hermeneutical guides, poetry (kāvya), and grammatical works, which flourished not only in India and Ceylon but also in Burma and Thailand.