SV: "Buddha" before the Pali Canon?

[L.S.Cousins]

Lars Fosse writes:
>The language of the Buddha has by many been supposed to be Magadhi.

The historical context in which the Buddha is depicted appears to
predate the consolidation of Magadhan hegemony over a large area of
eastern India. So we can be fairly certain that whatever he spoke it
was not called Maagadhii at the time.

Whatever dialect he spoke would have been more related to the
dialects in use in Kosala/Benares or Videha. There is no reason to
suppose that would have been the same as the dialect spoken in
Maagadha proper.

Later of course the long period of rule from a capital in the area of
modern Patna may well have given a dialect from that area some kind
of administrative or cultural priority, but it would be quite
anachronistic to suppose that things would have been the same earlier.

>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.

The use of 'eastern' and 'western' to designate a linguistic
distinction is confusing. We know very little about the distribution
and variation, but it may well have varied considerably. In other
words, some so-called 'western' dialects were probably found in
geographically eastern areas. Moreover, there were undoubtedly
dialects with some 'eastern' features and not others.

The Asokan evidence in particular is controversial and may represent
early tendencies towards Sanskritization rather than local dialects
in the west. It is in any case quite limited.

>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.

I doubt the assumption that there was ever a single dialect in which
the Buddhist suttas were transmitted. They may have been handed down
in multiple dialects from the beginning.

Lance Cousins
--
HEADINGTON, UK

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