SV: "Buddha" before the Pali Canon?

[Lars Martin Fosse]

Steve Farmer [SMTP:saf at SAFARMER.COM] skrev 19. september 2000 03:27:
> In any event, does anyone have any comments about the "language
> of the Buddha," Buddhist texts antedating the Pali canon, etc?

The language of the Buddha has by many been supposed to be Magadhi.
According to Ulrich Schneider (Einfuerung in den Buddhismus,
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1980), Pali cannot be an
eastern dialect, and the Buddha was supposed to have lived in the east. (A
comparison of Pali and the Ashokan inscriptions shows that Pali was a
western dialect.) Consequently:
1. If the Buddha lived in the East, which noone doubts, and if Pali is a
western dialect, then Pali cannot be the language of the Buddha.
Consquently, to the extent that Pali texts are old, they must have been
translated from an Eastern dialect.
2. The canonical Pali texts are mostly not a source for the other parallell
versions of the other schools, they rather go back to a common source. This
would seem to make it probable that this source was in a different
language.
S. Levi and H. Lueders have in fact demonstrated remains of an easterly
dialect in the Pali texts. Levi talks about a precanonical language.
Schneider suggests that this was a form of Ardhamagadhi that was slightly
younger than Ashoka's language. Which means that there may have been even
older versions. If you like: before the "urkanon" there was an "ururkanon".

Schneider, by the way, tries to reconstruct the wanderings of the
historical Buddha on the basis of the texts. It would perhaps be an
advantage to agree upon what the term "historical" actually means, or
rather what should be the necessary criteria for regarding something as
historical. Studies of oral histories in comparison with parallel
documented histories show that oral histories as a matter of principle
should be doubted, but that they sometimes do contain correct (or
reasonably correct) historical information. (I need hardly say that written
documents are not always trustworthy either). Given the modern
preoccupation in South Asia with early history, a basic discussion of
method might perhaps be useful.

Best regards,

Lars Martin

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
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