Tagged: Sanskritization
Pages with this tag
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.
Levman - The language the Buddha spoke (2019)
2Bryan Levman argues that the Buddha spoke not Pāli as we know it, but an earlier, related vernacular or *koine* that differed in word form, morphology, and sometimes meaning. Evidence for this earlier linguistic layer is uncovered by applying comparative historical linguistics to the various Pāli recensions and parallel transmissions in other Prakrits, such as Gāndhārī. This method reveals that many variant readings and semantic ambiguities in the canon can be traced back to a common ancestral form in the *koine* which had undergone significant phonetic simplification, such as the weakening of intervocalic consonants into glides or the reduction of various aspirated stops to a simple aspirate. Later redactors, transmitting the teachings into their own dialects, reinterpreted these simplified sounds, resulting in the multiple cognate forms found today, a process further complicated by influences from prestigious northwestern dialects and the assimilation of non-Aryan words. Levman concludes that this linguistic evolution is consistent with the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence and supports the Buddha's historicity.
Norman - The origin of Pāli and its position among the Indo-European languages (1988)
3Pāli 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.