Tagged: Standard language
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Karpik - Light on Epigraphic Pali - More on the Buddha Teaching in Pali (2023)
1Stefan 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)
2This 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.