The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
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The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
Came across this: http://goo.gl/MR27Bi" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; a few minutes ago , not really my area of investigation, but interesting.
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Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
Mhm. The author of this article seems not to be aware of Lüders (and Waldschmidt, Edgerton and some more) who published on this question more than half a century ago. So I have to admit that I find his claims to be not so convincing.
Extensive work on this topic has been done before, see Lüders "Beobachtungen über die Sprache des buddhistischen Urkanons." 1954, published by Ernst Waldschmidt. I assume that today, some 60 years later, this is still about the closest we can get about the question on 'which language the Buddha really spoke'.
What this language really was remains a mystery, but so much can be said: It was neither Pāli nor was it (buddhist) Sanskrit.
Additionally to that, our Professor used to raise the idea that the Buddha propably travelled with a bigger group of (local) translators who assisted him during his speeches. So in this way it was possible for him to explain his teaching to a larger audience. This would explain the highly repititive and redundat style of many of the preserved suttas. So if the listener didn't get the message with this word, the Buddha would repeat the same story using a slightly different example/slightly different words and maybe this time the listener could get it. Happens also many times that translators don't get right what they have to translate, so as a speaker with a larger group of translators you automaticly slow down and revert to a kind of baby language that is understandable for almost everybody. And I have the impression that this is reflected in the Pāli canon. One might argue that repetitive style and simple language might be the result of the oral tradition of the canon, but that's a weak argument when we compare this canon against the vedic canon, which preserved a much more complex and variated language over an even broader timeframe using the same system of oral transmission.
Extensive work on this topic has been done before, see Lüders "Beobachtungen über die Sprache des buddhistischen Urkanons." 1954, published by Ernst Waldschmidt. I assume that today, some 60 years later, this is still about the closest we can get about the question on 'which language the Buddha really spoke'.
What this language really was remains a mystery, but so much can be said: It was neither Pāli nor was it (buddhist) Sanskrit.
Additionally to that, our Professor used to raise the idea that the Buddha propably travelled with a bigger group of (local) translators who assisted him during his speeches. So in this way it was possible for him to explain his teaching to a larger audience. This would explain the highly repititive and redundat style of many of the preserved suttas. So if the listener didn't get the message with this word, the Buddha would repeat the same story using a slightly different example/slightly different words and maybe this time the listener could get it. Happens also many times that translators don't get right what they have to translate, so as a speaker with a larger group of translators you automaticly slow down and revert to a kind of baby language that is understandable for almost everybody. And I have the impression that this is reflected in the Pāli canon. One might argue that repetitive style and simple language might be the result of the oral tradition of the canon, but that's a weak argument when we compare this canon against the vedic canon, which preserved a much more complex and variated language over an even broader timeframe using the same system of oral transmission.
My blog on buddhism, languages and programming.
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
Most of the leading academic Pali scholars today (such as Gombrich, Norman, Cone, Gethin, Schopen, von Hinüber) have explicitly stated in their books with several compelling reasons that the Buddha definitely did not speak Pāli.
It would be more proper to say that Pāli, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Gāndhāri - which are the three main languages of the Buddhist texts apart from grammatical (i.e. classical) sanskrit, were all language-forms essentially derived from the original language in use in the Buddha`s time and location (which is about a half-century to a century before the earliest buddhist texts were composed in an early form of Gāndhāri & Pāli). The earliest (or should I say most archaic) form of Pāli is the one found in parts of the Sutta Nipāta i.e. the Aṭṭhakavagga, the Pārāyaṇavagga and the Khaggavisāṇa sutta.
It would be more proper to say that Pāli, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Gāndhāri - which are the three main languages of the Buddhist texts apart from grammatical (i.e. classical) sanskrit, were all language-forms essentially derived from the original language in use in the Buddha`s time and location (which is about a half-century to a century before the earliest buddhist texts were composed in an early form of Gāndhāri & Pāli). The earliest (or should I say most archaic) form of Pāli is the one found in parts of the Sutta Nipāta i.e. the Aṭṭhakavagga, the Pārāyaṇavagga and the Khaggavisāṇa sutta.
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Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
Pali is probably not "essentially derived from the original language" the Buddha spoke as a native speaker, but rather probably closely related to it and (I would think) developed as a distinct language some time after Buddha and into the form it was used to for the suttas farther after. Sanskrit would be more distantly related. Of course, they then begin to influence each other making family relationships much harder to trace. None of this affects the truth, falsity, or usefulness of what is taught in Pali or any other language.
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Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
Interestingly Pāli didn't develop out of Sanskrit either. It has it's roots in the vedic language. One might say that classical Sanskrit and Pāli developed parallel from the Vedic language, and Buddhist Sanskrit had it's own route as well. Over time, the very archaic middle-indic-sounding Sanskrit of the early Mahāsaṃghikas grew into the polished and technically well-developed language of Vasubandhu and the Mūlasarvāstivādins.
I assume that Pāli was propably a regional Prakrit that appealed for some reason (whatever they may have been) to the compilers of the Pāli Canon.
Maybe the Buddha had contact with it, maybe not. I certainly didn't use this language for teaching.
It is possible that there was a buddhist canon in a different middle indic language already compiled, wich was just transferred Pāli. So this is what some scholars tend to call the 'Urkanon', the hypothetical earliest buddhist canon.
I personally believe that there have been various fragments transmitted orally by students of the Buddha over 100 or 200 years, maybe in different dialects (I do not trust the first council legend in all it's details), and at some point these have been collected and formed into what we today have as the Pāli canon. The legend of the first council is beautiful and the core might be true, yet many of the details (like Anandas perfect memory and the 500 enlightened monks) are to be doubted in my oppinion.
But by the way. Mahāyāna-guys in my eyes have an even more magical explanation for the language of the Buddha: To them it was Sanskrit all the way down to the first sermon. Quite fantastic!
I assume that Pāli was propably a regional Prakrit that appealed for some reason (whatever they may have been) to the compilers of the Pāli Canon.
Maybe the Buddha had contact with it, maybe not. I certainly didn't use this language for teaching.
It is possible that there was a buddhist canon in a different middle indic language already compiled, wich was just transferred Pāli. So this is what some scholars tend to call the 'Urkanon', the hypothetical earliest buddhist canon.
I personally believe that there have been various fragments transmitted orally by students of the Buddha over 100 or 200 years, maybe in different dialects (I do not trust the first council legend in all it's details), and at some point these have been collected and formed into what we today have as the Pāli canon. The legend of the first council is beautiful and the core might be true, yet many of the details (like Anandas perfect memory and the 500 enlightened monks) are to be doubted in my oppinion.
But by the way. Mahāyāna-guys in my eyes have an even more magical explanation for the language of the Buddha: To them it was Sanskrit all the way down to the first sermon. Quite fantastic!
My blog on buddhism, languages and programming.
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
"It cannot be emphasized too much that all the versions of canonical Hīnayāna Buddhists texts which we possess are translations, and even the earliest we possess are translations of some still earlier version, now lost." (Pali Philology and the Study of Buddhism - K.R. Norman, 1990).
What Norman calls translation is not really a translation, but mostly a transliteration (using the same morphemes/word-roots).
For example, see the comparative Dhammapada which represents all the major Buddhist languages in which these texts are found: http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/B ... Yamaka.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
One is forced to conclude that this is not the same type of 'translation' as for example, translating Pāli to English. The words are all identical, only the spellings are different.
What Norman calls translation is not really a translation, but mostly a transliteration (using the same morphemes/word-roots).
For example, see the comparative Dhammapada which represents all the major Buddhist languages in which these texts are found: http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/B ... Yamaka.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
One is forced to conclude that this is not the same type of 'translation' as for example, translating Pāli to English. The words are all identical, only the spellings are different.
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
In continuation of discussion https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=28943 , I'd like to contribute relevant quotes from relatively recent discussions:
The language of early Buddhism
Bryan Levman
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jsall.2 ... format=INT
Linguistic Ambiguities, the Transmission al Process, and the Earliest Recoverable Language of Buddhism
by Bryan Geoffrey Levman
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bits ... thesis.pdf
The problem with discussions of the language the Buddha spoke is that people do not define their terms.
It is perfectly possible that the native language of the Buddha was a non-IndoEuropean language, but, if he preached in Kosala and Magadha, he certainly gave his teachings in either Sanskrit or an early Prakrit. The former would only be plausible if we date the Buddha very early. Otherwise it is clear that he taught in an early Prakrit and his teachings were preserved in one or more Prakrit dialects.
We can then speculate that there were eventually multiple dialects in which the teachings were preserved. If that is the case, then it is important to understand that these were probably not languages as we usually understand them. Rather they were dialects which would have been mutually comprehensible.
At some point the texts were written down, some probably already in the reign of Asoka. But the oral collections as a whole were put into writing somewhat later. At this point we are talking about a written language, which is an entirely different matter. At present we know of only one such language — the 'standard Epigraphic Prakrit' used for almost all inscriptions in the second century B.C. until the first century A.D. and continuing in use in some areas for a number of centuries. Pali is a somewhat developed and slightly Sanskritized form of that. There were other such descendants, but they were probably not that different. I would not call them distinct languages. Rather they too are dialects.
Whether Buddhist scriptures were ever put into the later developed Prakrit languages such as Mahārāṣṭrī is unknown. I exclude Gāndhārī from consideration here as that was far from the homelands of Buddhism and writing there may go back to the time of Persian rule.
Lance Cousins.
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/pali ... sages/3931
The use of the Anglicised form Pali for the Pāḷibhāsā dates back to the early nineteenth century and so considerably predates Rhys Davids and the Pali Text Society. It is the correct form to use when writing in English, just as Sanskrit or Prakrit are the correct forms, rather than Saṃskṛta or Prākṛta.
It's use as a name for the language properly known as Māgadhabhāsā certainly dates back to the seventeenth century. Kate Crosby has argued that it is already used in texts from around the twelfth and thirteenth century. She may be right about this, but I am not completely convinced by her examples and need to go through them carefully when I have time.
We should not confuse the Māgadha language now known as Pali with the Māgadhī dialect. The latter is a spoken dialect of a core locality in the eventual enlarged kingdom of Māgadha, a dialect which eventually became a written language described by the Prakrit grammarians. The language we call Pali was referred to as the language of Māgadha because that was the only written language in general use across most of North India in the Maurya and Suṅga periods at a time when the King of Māgadha ruled large parts of that area.
Lance Cousins
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/pali ... sages/3944
See also:We probably don't have a good word for the transmission process in English. When going from Gāndhārī to Chinese, I would call that a translation (as does Boucher in his article), but from one Prakrit to another, is not properly a translation, but a transformation. Normalization might work, but that suggests that there is a standard somewhere, which really doesn't exist. Just because Pāli survived (probably because it was exported to Sri Lanksa), doesn't mean it was the only (or even the principal) dialect in which the Buddha's teachings were transmitted - in fact, we know it wasn't, but the other dialects by and large didn't survive. The same goes for any non Indo-European languages (like Dravidian or Munda) that the teachings may have been translated into, during or shortly after the Buddha's ministry.
Derivation would be a good word (which Lamotte uses, see below) or transformation as Bechert uses.
My use of the word "translation" basically follows Norman who uses the word, while others, as you have noted, eschew the term; Bechert calls it "transference of text from one linguistic form to another, either in the form of a deliberate translation or a gradual transformation in the oral tradition" (eine Übertragung der Texte aus einer sprachlichen Form in eine andere mit oder ohne Zwischenstufen, in Form einer bewußt vorgenommenen Übersetzung oder aber durch eine allmähliche Umsetzung in mündliche Überlieferung). I give some quotes below from these scholars, if you are interested in pursuing it.
Best wishes,
Bryan
K. R. Norman, in Tadeusz Skorupski, ed., The Buddhist Forum, Volume I (London, 1990), 34. Also found in Collected Papers 4 (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1993), 84. ) :
“It cannot be emphasized too much that all the versions of canonical Hīnayāna Buddhist texts which we possess are translations, and even the earliest we possess are translations of some still earlier version, now lost.”
H. Bechert, 1980. "Allgemeine Bemerkungen zum Thema "Die Sprache der ältesten buddhistischen Überlieferung." In Die Sprache der ältesten buddhistischen Überlieferung, H. Bechert ed., Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, Dritte Folge, Nr. 117: 24-34.English version in Buddhist Studies Review, 8 1-2 (1991):3-19.:
“Wir können davon ausgehen, daß kein uns erhaltener kanonischer Text die Sprache des Buddha oder auch nur der ältesten buddhistischen Überlieferung genau repräsentiert und daß dementsprechend die uns vorliegenden Textfassungen in irgendeiner Weise auf ältere Überlierferungsstufen in einer abweichenden sprachlichen Form beruhen, so daß wir annehmen müssen, daß eine Übertragung der Texte aus einer sprachlichen Form in eine andere - mit oder ohne Zwischenstufen, in Form einer bewußt vorgenommenen Übersetzung oder aber durch eine allmähliche Umsetzung in mündliche Überlieferung - stattgefunden hat.”
Translated in Buddhist Studies Review, 8 1-2 (1991), 6, as
“We can proceed from the above on the assumption that none of the canonical texts exactly reflects the language of the Buddha or even of the earliest Buddhist tradition and that accordingly, the various textual versions are based in one way or another on earlier stages of the tradition couched in a different linguistic form. Thus we must further assume that there has been a transference of the texts from one linguistic form to another, with or without intermediate stages, either in the form of a deliberate translation or a gradual transformation in the oral tradition.”
Lamotte uses more neutral terminology: “Both [the S and P canons] were derived from prototypes in a Magadhan dialect.”
(History of Indian Buddhism from the origins to the Śaka Era, translated from the French by Sara Webb-Boin
(Louvain-la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain Institut Orientaliste, 1958, 1988, 587)
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/pal ... sages/4566
The language of early Buddhism
Bryan Levman
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jsall.2 ... format=INT
Linguistic Ambiguities, the Transmission al Process, and the Earliest Recoverable Language of Buddhism
by Bryan Geoffrey Levman
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bits ... thesis.pdf
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
Dhamma_Basti wrote:Interestingly Pāli didn't develop out of Sanskrit either. It has it's roots in the vedic language.
"Pāli as a MIA language is different from Sanskrit not so much with regard to the time of its origin than as to its dialectal base, since a number of its morphological and lexical features betray the fact that it is not a direct continuation of Ṛgvedic Sanskrit; rather it descends from a dialect (or a number of dialects) which was (/were), despite many similarities, different from Ṛgvedic.[1] Some examples may help to illustrate this point [2]:..."
Pāli: A Grammar of the Language of the Theravāda Tipiṭaka
By Thomas Oberlies
page 6
http://books.google.com/books?id=zFc5_SU_uwwC&pg=PA6
Thomas Oberlies, 'Aśokan Prakrit and Pali', page 163:
1.1 The Middle Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages are commonly assigned to three major groups - Old, Middle and New Indo-Aryan -, a linguistic and not strictly chronological classification as the MIA languages ar not younger than ('Classical') Sanskrit. And a number of their morphophonological and lexical features betray the fact that they are not direct continuations of Ṛgvedic Sanskrit, the main base of 'Classical' Sanskrit; rather they descend from dialects which, despite many similarities, were different from Ṛgvedic and in some regards even more archaic.
MIA languages, though individually distinct, share features of phonology and morphology which characterize them as parallel descendants of Old Indo-Aryan. Various sound changes are typical of the MIA phonology:
(1) The vocalic liquids 'ṛ' and 'ḷ' are replaced by 'a', 'i' or 'u';
(2) the diptongs 'ai' and 'au' are monophthongized to 'e' and 'o';
(3) long vowels before two or more consonants are shortened;
(4) the three sibilants of OIA are reduced to one, either 'ś' or 's';
(5) the often complex consonant clusters of OIA are reduced to more readily pronounceable forms, either by assimilation or by splitting;
(6) single intervocalic stops are progressively weakened;
(7) dentals are palatalized by a following '-y-';
( 8 ) all final consonants except '-ṃ' are dropped unless they are retained in 'sandhi' junctions.
The most conspicious features of the morphological system of these languages are: loss of the dual; thematicization of consonantal stems; merger of the f. 'i-/u-' and 'ī-/ū-' in one 'ī-/ū-' inflexion, elimination of the dative, whose functions are taken over by the genitive, simultaneous use of different case-endings in one paradigm; employment of 'mahyaṃ' and 'tubhyaṃ' as genitives and 'me' and 'te' as instrumentals; gradual disappearance of the middle voice; coexistence of historical and new verbal forms based on the present stem; and use of active endings for the passive. In the vocabulary, the MIA languages are mostly dependent on Old Indo-Aryan, with addition of a few so-called 'deśī' words of (often) uncertain origin.
The most archaic of the MIA languages are the inscriptional Aśokan Prakrit on the one hand and Pāli and Ardhamāgadhī on the other, both literary languages.Two other stages of MIA may be distinguished, that of the Prakrits proper (excluding Ardhamāgadhī) and that of the Apabhraṃśa languages.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jPR2OlbTbdkC&pg=PA161
Indeed fantastic, since Sanskrit didn't yet exist at that time:Dhamma_Basti wrote:But by the way. Mahāyāna-guys in my eyes have an even more magical explanation for the language of the Buddha: To them it was Sanskrit all the way down to the first sermon. Quite fantastic!
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=28943
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
I've never heard of this particular claim, but I have heard it claimed that the Buddha himself did not speak any language in particular, because when he expounded the Dharma everyone heard it in their native tongue!Dhamma_Basti wrote:But by the way. Mahāyāna-guys in my eyes have an even more magical explanation for the language of the Buddha: To them it was Sanskrit all the way down to the first sermon. Quite fantastic!
It would be interesting if this belief was a "mytho-historical" preservation of the fact that the Buddha might have had a retinue of translators.
What is the Uncreated?
Sublime & free, what is that obscured Eternity?
It is the Undying, the Bright, the Isle.
It is an Ocean, a Secret: Reality.
Both life and oblivion, it is Nirvāṇa.
Sublime & free, what is that obscured Eternity?
It is the Undying, the Bright, the Isle.
It is an Ocean, a Secret: Reality.
Both life and oblivion, it is Nirvāṇa.
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
Bryan Levman wrote:
Standard Epigraphic Prakrit is not that much different from standard Pāli, as Norman has pointed out. The Oldest Pali manuscript is Pali and dates to around the 9th century AD, approx. 1000 years older than the earliest epigraphic records. There are words we don’t quite understand, but most of it if fairly standard, as one would have expected at his time, centuries after the standardization of the commentaries by Buddhaghosa.
Pali as a language is fairly phonologically advanced (most conjuncts have been retained or restored, lost or weakened intervocalic consonants have been replaced, absolutive has been Sanskritized to –tvā, instead of Prk. –ttā, some consonant clusters, like brāhmaṇa, br- have been restored, etc., ). It is a mixed language and often contains both eastern, western and Sanskritized forms, like ayya and ariya for Skt. ārya (“noble”).
In my research I argue that Pali is an adaptation/translation of an earlier language which I identify as a koine, that is a trade or administrative language common to north India, an inter-dialect language which reduced linguistic variability by dialect levelling and simplification, through elimination of interdialect phonological differences which impede understanding, and harmonization of the different dialects to a common language intelligible across all dialects. This dialect can be discovered by comparing different recensions with cognate forms that have come down to us, and reconstructing the underlying form. A synopsis of the main points of my theis may be found in the journal article “The language of early Buddhism” which may be found here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... y_Buddhism
The earliest manuscripts that we have of Buddhism are from Gāndhāri (around the first century BCE to the first century CE, and almost a millennium older than the Nepalese Vinaya ms). Gāndhāri is an earlier language than Pali in phonological terms as it drops or weakens a lot of intervocalic consonants, changes aspirates to stops, etc., and is probably the language closest to this Middle Indic koine which I argue was the earliest recoverable language of Buddhism.
The language of the earliest Buddhist radition and by extension the language(s) that the Buddha spoke is a very complex problem, because of the complicated dialect geography in north India at the time the Buddha lived, and because of the presence of several other non-Indic languages (proto-Dravidian, proto-Munda, and proto Tibetan to name only three) whose different phonology influenced the Indo Aryan Prakrits. I discuss some of the issues in the paper above
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/pal ... sages/4883
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
It is very interesting to read these discussions of the language of the Buddha. The more I read of these, the more I am reminded of the language situation in Norway. We have a great variety of dialects throughout the country. The dialects are are spoken, and sometimes also written, and with a few exeptions (some words and expressions here and there), they are mutually understandable. In addition to the spoken dialects there are two normalized written versions of the language, Bokmål and Nynorsk, each of them very flexible and allowing many variants. If a guy from another part of the country tells me a story in his dialect, I can understand him, and I will retell the story in my own dialect without ever thinking I am doing any translation. Even though many words and expressions and some syntax may differ, we do not call the dialects different languages. Now this can even be extended to Danish and Swedish. They are officially separate languages, different from Norwegians, but most often we understand each other, and some linguists say that although from a political view Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are separate languages, from a linguistic view they are just dialects.
This situation seems to very similar to the situation in Northern India at the time of the Buddha. If that is the case, it would not matter much what language, or dialect, the Buddha spoke. He could speak whatever dialect that was native to him. People from other dialect areas would understand him, but they would retell his words in their own dialects without ever thinking they were translating anything.
Or am I totally wrong?
This situation seems to very similar to the situation in Northern India at the time of the Buddha. If that is the case, it would not matter much what language, or dialect, the Buddha spoke. He could speak whatever dialect that was native to him. People from other dialect areas would understand him, but they would retell his words in their own dialects without ever thinking they were translating anything.
Or am I totally wrong?
Mettāya,
Kåre
Kåre
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
it sounds very well. And also the imposition of a new language for some task was a common trick to preserve the exactitude among people with linguistic variations.Kare wrote: This situation seems to very similar to the situation in Northern India at the time of the Buddha. If that is the case, it would not matter much what language, or dialect, the Buddha spoke. He could speak whatever dialect that was native to him. People from other dialect areas would understand him, but they would retell his words in their own dialects without ever thinking they were translating anything.
Or am I totally wrong?
It was the case of the Latin language in the Roman Empire. It was imposed mainly for administrative purposes while in the Roman provincies the people preserved their own languages for the common use. Today still we have many words which are very close in English, German, Spanish or French by sharing the same root. However, that same word in Latin is absolutely different of all them. Because the Latin was just a new linguistic device.
Depending of the distance among the different peoples and tribes, the differences were bigger although it was a common trunk in all the present Europe. Today some linguists claim that this common trunk was enough for a basic understanding among all them, even from distant origin. In the 7th century BCE, most of Italians (from the present Italy) they did not spoke Latin and it was the situation later in the Roman Empire. They spoke sabelic languages from osco-umbric origin and a few more (osco-umbric, picenomerid, falsic, venetic, galum, mesapius, greek, etrusc, retic...). Latin language in origin was the language of a little tribe named the Getas.
I ignore about India, although probably it was something similar regarding the many variations from one or a few common trunks. Just to say, in that ancient world, the imposition of a new language for everybody and for specific tasks was a clever invention to preserve the exactitude for the transmission of information. At least in the European case. Although maybe the ancients Buddhists knew that strategy and they did too.
However, in the case of the Roman Empire they chose the language of Getas which was a little tribe. I wonder if Pali was a new invention or perhaps in origin also it was the language of some real people.
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
I have heard that in some remote parts of Norway near the Swedish border, they speak Norwegian with a heavy accent. Hop across the border, and they speak Swedish with a heavy accent. Yet the groups on either side of the border are actually speaking in exactly the same way! Is this true?Kare wrote:We have a great variety of dialects throughout the country.
Last edited by Derek on Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
In Pāli, the vocative plural of bhikkhu (monk) should be bhikkavo (O monks). However, the form most commonly given in the texts is bhikkhave (O monks). The bhikkhave in the texts is said to be preserved from the Māgadhī form of the word, i.e. the form that would actually have been spoken by the Buddha, with the identification of bhikkhave with the Māgadha area being made on the basis of the dialects used for Aśoka's inscriptions. So the Buddha spoke Māgadhī; Māgadhī was close to Pāli; but Māgadhī was not identical to Pāli.
Re: The Buddha spoke pali by Stefan Karpik
This is what Oskar von Hinüber says:
The Theravādins assume as a matter of course that their canon has come down in the language used by the Buddha, which they consequently call Māgadhī as well as Pāli. However, once the linguistic study of Pāli began in Europe by the end of the 19th century, it soon became clear that the Theravāda canon is much later than the Buddha. Further, Pāli has never been a spoken language neither in Magadha nor elsewhere. For it is possible to infer from linguistic peculiarities of this language that it has been created as some kind of lingua franca presumably used in a large area at a time considerably later than the Buddha. The evidence, on which these conclusions are based, are the inscriptions of Aśoka (3rd century BC), which allow to draw a very rough linguistic map of northern India. This map shows that Pāli is rooted in a language spoken in western India far away from the home land of Buddhism. At the same time certain eastern features embedded in Pāli point to the fact that the texts have been recast from an earlier eastern version into their present western linguistic shape. Therefore, it is evident that the texts as found in the Theravāda canon, though the oldest Buddhist texts surviving, are the result of a lengthy and complicated development.