"Buddha" before the Pali Canon?

[Ulrich T. Kragh]

As for the bibliographical aspect of your question regarding the language of early Buddhism and the Buddha, you may take a look at:

"Die Sprache der ältesten buddhistischen Überlieferung = The Language of the Earliest Buddhist Tradition: Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung, II)", ed. Heinz Bechert, 1980, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse : Folge 3 ; Nr. 117, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen, ISBN 3-525-82397-5

Regards,
Ulrich T. Kragh
University of Copenhagen



----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Farmer" <saf at SAFARMER.COM>
To: <INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 3:27 AM
Subject: "Buddha" before the Pali Canon?


> I have a question touching on, or rather going a step beyond, the
> Buddha redating issue.
>
> A prominent Vedicist (who does not participate on this list) sent
> out an email the other day with the following intriguing comment.
> His point arose out of a previous discussion of the links between
> Vedic and Buddhist traditions:
>
> > Pali texts are
> > certainly not the oldest of Buddhist texts, and Pali was not the
> > language of the Buddha or of the early Buddhist community. This
> > is a myth propagated in the 19th century by the Pali Text Society
> > etc. There certainly are very old documents within the Pali canon
> > -- e.g. the Suttanipata, and within it the Attakavagga (see
> > Vetter's article on this).
>
> I take it that he is referring here to Vetter's arguments (e.g.,
> in his 1988 monograph, pp. 101 ff.) concerning pre-Buddhist
> strata in the Attakavagga. But I have no information about his
> reference to Pali not being the "language of the Buddha or of the
> early Buddhist community." Can someone more knowledgeable about
> than I am about recent Buddhist studies help me out with
> bibliography in any European language?
>
> In general, I should point out that I take arguments about the
> historicity of "the Buddha" with deep skepticism, since ancient
> biographies of figures like this (cf. "Confucius," "Aristotle,"
> "Jesus," etc.) were invariably late constructs, reflecting
> scattered data in rapidly growing textual canons (collected
> syncretically to generate figures who eventually reached cosmic
> dimensions), self-serving claims by warring schools, and other
> equally dubious sources. Indeed, I think that strong
> cross-cultural models can be built for how biographies like these
> grew over time. The credence that these biographies (stripped
> only of their miraculous elements) are still given even by modern
> researchers rests on no stronger grounds than the fact that they
> have been endlessly repeated.
>
> Hence I view the redatings of early Buddhism by Bechert et
> al.(which I fully support) to be redatings of the Pali canon and
> not of "the Buddha" -- and am hence equally skeptical about
> claims about "the language of the Buddha" (not only don't pot
> speak, as the saying has it, but neither do biographical
> constructs - or if they do they are surely multilingual). I've
> been surprised to find that claims concerning the "historical
> Buddha" are still widely accepted by Buddhist scholars, even
> revisionists following in Bechert's path. (The argument is always
> about *when* "the Buddha" died, not about whether or not he is a
> syncretic construct, built around a variety of "awakened"
> religious revisionits.) Vetter too (1988: xxi ff.), despite his
> work on pre-Buddhist levels of Buddhist texts, accepts a lot of
> conventional lore about the life of "the Buddha" that no one
> could *possibly* support using well-controlled evidence.
> Interestingly, these tendencies are also common in recent
> revisionist works on early Confucian works, in which efforts to
> destratify the texts are often coupled with remarkably
> traditional accounts of Confucius's "life."
>
> In any event, does anyone have any comments about the "language
> of the Buddha," Buddhist texts antedating the Pali canon, etc?
>
> Best wishes,
> Steve Farmer
>