The Buddhism and the Sanskrit of Buddhist Hybrid SanskritAuthor(s): Alex WaymanSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1965), pp. 111-115Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/597713 .Accessed: 03/01/2011 17:39

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THE BUDDHISM AND THE SANSKRIT OF BUDDHIST HYBRID SANSKRIT

ALEX WAYMAN UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

IN THE DECADE SINCE the publication of Frank- lin Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Gram- mar and Dictionary and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Reader (New Haven, 1953) scholars have certainly profited by this monumental accomplishment. The present writer, for one, made much use of the Dictionary in a work Analysis of the 6rivakabhiimi Manuscript (Berkeley, 1961) and was rewarded by Edgerton's review (Language, 38: 3, 1962, 307-10), in the course of which he replied to one critic by name and generally replied to all the critics of his Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS) thesis. In his last years Edgerton gave generously of his time to such reviewing, sometimes carried on in personal correspondence. He considered the adverse posi- tions of Nobel and Waldschmidt in an article, " On Editing Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit," JAOS, 77:33, 1957, 184, ff. I concede inability to defend his thesis with the vigor and erudition which he dis- played, but a different approach may be helpful; and I shall restrict myself to consider the Anglo- Indian criticism in John Brough's " The Language of the Buddhist Sanskrit Texts," BSOAS, 1954, xvi/2, 351-75; and in Raghavan's "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit," Suniti Kumar Chatterji Jubilee Volume, 1955, 313-22.

Briefly speaking, Brough feels the BHS Dic- tionary to be of more use than the BHS Grammar to a future editor of a Buddhist text. Indeed, the Grammar-" a systematic collection of anomalies " -does not completely describe the grammar of Buddhist texts. He claims that Edgerton fre- quently takes as genuine forms what are merely scribal corruptions. Buddhist Sanskrit is not "hybrid," but merely possesses different degrees of bad fluctuation from correct Sanskrit. Above all, Brough rejects Edgerton's thesis of a single Prakrit dialect as the 'original' language of Bud- dhism. Brough provides valuable data on Nepalese manuscripts; but since he limits himself to con- siderations of text transmission, his advice reduces trivially to a warning that Buddhist text editors should use Edgerton's Grammar with caution!

Paghav an criticises more gently than does

Brough. His observations are more suggestive of the true state of affairs because he recognizes that Buddhist Sanskrit is Buddhistic just as the Rdmdyana is Brahmanical. Thus, he asserts (op. cit., p. 314), "we can see that the base of this mixed language is the spoken form and that it is not exclusively Buddhistic but common to the class of Brahmanical literature called the Epics." In support of this statement he cites twenty-seven expressions from the BHS Dictionary to show that they are also found in the Vedic or Epic vocabulary or in strictly classical Sanskrit. However, Edger- ton's policy statement (Grammar, p. 9) makes it clear that his inclusion of an expression from a BHS text is independent of its appearance or non-appearance in non-Buddhistic sources, only stipulating that it not be 'standard Sanskrit.' So only those items of Raghavan's that were 'standard Sanskrit '-and of course the mere fact of being in the Epic does not prove this condition-indicate mistaken inclusion in the BHS Dictionary. Also Raghavan points out that a certain construction which Edgerton claims to be known only in PAli and Sanskrit Buddhism, i. e. the special usage of yena . . . tena, is in fact found also a number of times in the Rdmayana Epic.

Both Brough's and Raghavan's positions are con- sistent with the usual practice of modern Indian writers as well as a number of European scholars to depict the Buddha as a product of the Brah- manical system and Mahayana Buddhism as a compromise with the Hindu bhalcti systems.' Like- wise, the words in the Sanskrit Buddhist books are Indic words: there is nothing exclusively 'Bud- dhist' about the vocabulary outside of a relatively few terms used in a special sectarian sense and a group of words which they have caused to look slightly different from the standard form by means of addition of a prefix or a -ka suffix. By like reasoning, there cannot be a 'Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar,' because the Buddhists did not

1 See, for example, Radha Kumud Mookerji, Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) (3rd ed., Delhi, 1960), pp. 386, ff.

ll.

112 WAYMAN: The Buddhism and the Sanskrit of Buddhist Ihybrid Sanskrit

exclusively own and hybridize 'their' Indic lan- guage (the "single Prakrit dialect") to generate a peculiarly 'Buddhist' grammar. In short, if their compositions in Sanskrit do not conform to stand- ard Sanskrit, they simply wrote Sanskrit badly. Such viewpoints are off the mark, and it has been Edgerton's merit to reveal the true linguistic situa- tion under the title 'Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.'

First of all, Buddhism is essentially different from Brahmanism because its destiny is different. Brahmanism and its transformation into Hinduism is the national religion of India, and is the only surviving native religion of an Indo-European- language-speaking people: all the others have adopted a foreign religion. As such, Brahmanism is of enormous interest. But Buddhism became a world religion and virtually disappeared from the land of its origin.

Next, Buddhist Sanskrit does have important elements in common with the Epic, as Raghavan suggests; but important differences as well, which he does not mention. The vocabulary agreement with the Epic I noticed while engaged in analyzing the 9ravakcabhf7mi manuscript. If a non-technical Sanskrit word in this text has a number of re- corded meanings, the meaning in point is generally the one specified for the Epic. Not having kept count, I did not write this in the published Analysis . . . Since the Mahcbhdrata is held to have been composed during the period 400 B. C.- 400 A. D., and the Rima-yana embellished in the first centuries of this inclusive period, and since the main corpus of Buddhist scriptures falls in this same inclusive period, it is reasonable that there would be an over-all consistency between these two bodies of literature (Buddhist texts in Indic lan- guages and the Epic) in the usages of common- place or secular terms. Naturally, Edgerton under- stood this as well as anyone. As a single instance, in the above-mentioned review he corrected my deletion of a na from icaccid me bho g na rajnco vdpahriyerams . ,and appealed to the 'I-hope- chapter' (kaccid-adhyaya) of the Mahabharata. Edgerton might have obviated certain criticisms if he had set forth his views on the relation of BHS to the Epic in the Introduction to the ]HS Gram- mar. But Raghavan (op. cit., p. 314) cites ap- provingly the views of Keith and Jacobi that Pdli and Epic language are two different developments; and it is a continuation of these divergent trends that makes Buddhist Sanskrit and the Epic stay at

least as far apart. It is harder to 'spell out' the difference.

The difference is stated as follows by Sukumar Sen: Epic Sanskrit (the language of the Rdm&- yana and the Mahabhjrata) is really a highly san- skritized form of spoken or conversational San- skrit; Buddhistic Sanskrit is essentially a prakri- tized form of spoken Sanskrit.2 The last state- ment is not true for 'Buddhistic Sanskrit,' but is true if we substitute 'Pdli,' because by 'spoken Sanskrit' Sen means 'Old Indic' which he calls 'Old Indo-Aryan,' and Pali is a Prakrit derived therefrom. According to Edgerton, Buddhist San- skrit is a hybrid of Buddhist Prakrit and classical Sanskrit.

Since both the Epic and Buddhist Sanskrit represent end results of a sanskritizing process, one wonders why those end products are so linguisti- cally at variance. The language of the Epic and of the Buddhist Sanskrit texts presents striking differences because in one case (the Buddhist), hieratic Middle Indic texts were sanskritized; and in another case (the Epic, non-hieratic Old or Middle Indic texts were sanskritized. It is proper for Raghavan to call the Epic 'Brahmanical' because it does contain didactic passages exemplary of that religion. However, the hieratic Brahmanical texts are well known: the Vedas and Brdhmanas are celebrated for resistance to change; they are exempt from alteration into 'standard Sanskrit.' The 'highly sanskritized' Epic contains non-Sanskritic elements simply be- cause it is not completely or thoroughly sanskrit- ized. The Buddhist Sanskrit texts have a hybrid linguistic character because they originate in a hieratic Prakrit dialect which resists the prestigi- ous sanskritizing process.

A brief comparison with the Rdmayana is perti- nent. Raghavan,3 agreeing with certain European scholars, demonstrates quite convincingly that Asvaghosa's Buddhacarita is influenced in certain poetical expressions by VYlmiki's Ramayana. The Rdmayana is important in the development of Mdvya literature, of which Abvaghosa's is an outstanding early example. Moreover, the RjmI- yana is the classical source for the 'Hindu Act of Truth,' found also in many Buddhist books. The Ramayana royal lineage is solar as

2 Sukumar Sen, History and Pre-History of Sanskrit (Mysore, 1958), pp. 36, 50.

3 V. Raghavan, " Buddhalogical Texts and the Epics," reprint from Adyar Library Bulletin, Vol. XX, parts 3-4.

WAYMAN: The Buddhism and the Sanskrit of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit 113

is the tradition of Gautama Buddha's ancestry, both contrasting with the lunar race of kings who figure in the Mahabhhrata. It may be that the 'original part' of the Rjmayana is pre-Buddhist. But for proving this, it is not a good argument to say that the Buddhists did not know the old name Ayodhy&-the setting for the Rdma-yana, but only referred to that city by the later name of Sdketa.4 For in the Buddhist siltra orimaladevisimhanhda, famous in Sino-Japanese Buddhism, the setting is also the city Ayodhya, the residence of Queen Srlmdld, the daughter of King Prasenajit of Kosala.5 Again, the mythological theme of the Ramayana is understood by modern scholars to be a reformulation of old Indra myths.6 This re- quired figuring out: the Ramaiyana does not ob- viously portray Indra concomitants. In contrast, Buddhism does not conceal its debt to the old Indra religion. Indra whether as Sakka in the Pali, Sakra in the Sanskrit texts; also Devendra, Satakratu, Kausika-is well nigh ubiquitous in Buddhist texts, and with his thunderbolt (vajra) reappears in Tantric Buddhism as Vajrapani and Vajradhara. In the Sibi-Jdtaka of the Jdtaka- mala, King Aibi does his Truth Act before De- vendra, who long before had replaced Varuna, the guardian of truth, as the chief Vedic deity. This shows that the Buddhist Sakra has descended from the Vedic Indra even if the character of this deity has undergone a transformation in Buddhist works. In Pdli Buddhism Sakka does all he can to promote the Buddhist religion,7 and the role is continued in Mahaydna Buddhism, as for instance, when in the last chapter of the ?rim&Utdevisim- hanada Kausika promises to protect the Buddhist doctrine.

The above comparisons of the Buddhist Sanskrit texts with the two Epics suggest an agreement between language and subject matter differences.

That is, in language, Buddhist Sanskrit reveals its Middle Indic origin in different degrees of frank hybridization-hence the three classes of texts in Edgerton's classification, while the Epic is fairly successful in covering up its language origins by sanskritization. In subject matter, the Buddhist Sanskrit texts present explicitly their religious tenets and symbols, whether borrowed or developed within Buddhism; while the Epic, as the Rarm- yana, certainly covers up its mythological origins, and, as the Mahabhhrata, probably hides the true reasons for the great War of which it is an Epic. The foregoing comparison seems consistent with the usual judgment that Buddhism (meaning the non-tantric form) does not have an esoteric doc- trine. Its predominant trend of popularization militates against dividing the audience into non- eligible and eligible and secreting a body of doc- trine for the latter. But it claims to be profound and that the audience divides itself up into the superficial and the profound.

Let me attempt to justify some of the previous comments by tracing out, even if only in a sketchy way, the process by which Buddhist texts came to change from their original linguistic form into the language which Edgerton has brilliantly described.

The 'original' language of Buddhism is cer- tainly a form of the Pracya or Eastern dialect, perhaps Magadhi. According to Edgerton, it is Middle Indic, and hence early Middle Indic. But since the Buddha directed that the monks should learn the doctrine in their own dialects (see BHS Grammar, pp. 1-2), the Buddhist sermons may soon have been repeated by speakers of all three main Aryan dialects, spoken in Udlcya (the North-West), Madhyadesa (the Middle Country), besides Prdcya,8 while Pracya was the only strong- hold of Buddhism in the early days. During the time of the Buddha (6th cent., B. C.) the Prdcya dialect was already Middle Indic, while North- West India, more conservative in language, was in the transition from Old to Middle Indic. About this time, Pdnini produced his remarkable Sanskrit grammar standardizing the language used for formal composition by speakers of conversational Sanskrit (the latest Old Indic), and these speakers included the Brahmans who were memorizing and transmitting to posterity, with a fidelity that in- spires our admiration, those ancient texts of

' For the argument, see Arthur A. MacDonell, A His- tory of Sanskrit Literature (Indian reprint, Delhi, 1962), p. 259.

6 Of the two extant Chinese translations of the sfitra, Taish6 No. 353 transcribes the name AyodhyR, Taish6 No. 310 translates it 'non-fighting capital ' agreeing with the Tibetan hthab med in the Kanjur. Saketa is translated into Tibetan by gnas boas ( Mahdvyutpatti No. 4133).

"Jacobi worked this out. Cf. S. N. Ghosal, er., The Ramayana; Das RAmAyan.ia of Dr. Hermann Jacobi translated from German (Baroda, 1960).

7Cf. entry Sakka in G. P. Malalasekera, Dictionary of Pdli Proper Names, II, 957, ff.

8 Cf. S. K. Chatterji, Indo-Aryan & Hindi (Calcutta, 1960), pp. 63-4. Note that Chatterjee's 'Indo-Aryan' is called 'Indic' in the present paper.

114 WAYMAN: The Buddhism and the Sanskrit of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit

Brahmanical lore-the Vedas and associated litera- ture. Possibly under the patronage of King Asoka (3rd cent., B. C.) the various dialects in which Bud- dhist sermons had been preserved were welded into a more or less homogeneous Prakrit called Pdli, which therefore is hardly the 'original' dialect spoken by the Buddha, although reasonably close. It is feasible that the dialect spoken by the Buddha had sufficient prestige by this fact, that in the form which it had attained by the 3rd cent., B. C. it served as the privileged basis for the hieratic Prakrit standardization. The pre-Buddhistic re- ligious and philosophic speculations culminated in the Hindu, and in some respects anti-the-Vedic- cult Bhagavad-gita, whose popularity led to its inclusion in the Mahabharata-or to the Epic's being built around it, according to V. S. Sukthan- kar-and which is composed in standard Sanskrit. Some Middle Indic didactic passages are publicized in the Asokan inscriptions, but the first known committing to writing of a hieratic text was the recording of the Buddhist Pdli canon done in Ceylon in the first century, B.C. 9 In the early centuries, A.D. there must have been considerable writing down of Indian texts of all kinds, while the hieratic Brahmanical texts held out a while longer. This resulted in new styles of text com- position for which the Panini Sanskrit grammar set the standard in the literary language of the educated classes. The Buddhist leaders felt that their religion would fall behind in appeal if the texts were not adapted to this new language stand- ard. These leaders for the most part were brahman converts, a number of whom had memorized one or other Veda as was traditional in the twelve-year period of student life (brahmacarya). They would have varying skill in Sanskrit. They would know that the unaltered state of the Brahmanical texts had preserved the letter while the meaning or spirit was often unintelligible. However, they could not immediately sanskritize the Buddhist texts because in many expressions the Prakrit was already suffi- ciently different from the Sanskrit that it would have been tantamount to a translation into another language, leaving them the feeling that they had lost contact with the word of the Buddha. Fur- thermore, a complete sanskritization would have forced these monk leaders to decide on the exact meanings of a considerable number of terms which

by this time must have been somewhat ambiguous; and this was a heavy responsibility. On the other hand, works were being translated into languages of Central Asia and a growing number of Chinese converts were insisting on translation of Indian Buddhist works. So in a temporary enthusiasm of success-the prosperity of the church under the Kusanas placing the mantle of destiny on their shoulders, the leaders of the Buddhist church made a compromise which amounts to Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, while new works of s'stra type were com- posed as closely as possible to standard Sanskrit. The liberal attitude of allowing a departure to some extent from the linguistic form of the earlier Buddhist texts probably went hand in hand with the creation of a whole new class of Buddhist texts-the MahayAna literature, which undoubt- edly introduced some Brahmanical doctrines held by the Brahman converts to Buddhism. Thus, modern scholars who judge the deviations from standard Sanskrit found in the Buddhist Sanskrit texts to be simply bad Sanskrit, that is to say, works by monks trying to write in Sanskrit but insufficiently educated to do so, show by such an evaluation that they cannot enter imaginatively into this period of composition, either by erudite control of data or by empathy. When Buddhism was in its heyday and could hire the best sculptors and painters, it could also hire Sanskritists.

To illustrate the above interpretation, we notice the passage in the Pdli text Samyutta-Nikdya IV (Saliyatana-Vagga), 54: Yasma ca kho 1nanda sunnam attena vd attaniyena vd // tasm4 sufiio loko ti vuccati // " Because, Ananda, it is void of self, or what belongs to self, therefore it is said, 'The world is void."' The use of the instrumental case ending in attena and attaniyena is to indicate the Middle Indic oblique case. Because it is reasonable in the context to so translate, we trans- late 'void of self ' (sufiam attena). Then we observe that the passage concerns certain para- mount problems of Buddhism, voidness and non- self. Besides, at the time when the sanskritizing was taking place, there was developing a vast literature called the Prajfidpdramitd-sfitras, in which 'voidness' is a central problem. The monks in charge of sanskritizing would feel reluctant to drastically alter the form of the words by assigning a Sanskrit case ending according to their own understanding which, after all, might not be cor- rect. Therefore, the Mahivastu, included by Edgerton in his first class of BHS texts, has a

'B. C. Law, tr., Sdsana-vammsa the History of Bud- dha's Religion (London, 1952), p. 26.

WAYMAN: The Buddhism and the Sanskrit of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit 115

passage sunya atmena va atmaniyena Vd (BHS Dictionrary, p. 92 under atmantya). Such hybridiza- tion indicates that the composers defer a decision on the meanings of the Middle Indic case endings. NdgArjuna's Madhyamalca-klcrik4 (XVIII, 2), in the third class of BHS texts, has samad dtmdt- maniyayoh, showing the style in not quite standard Sanskrit. Whatever the stage of sanskritization, the commonplace terms were subject to the same kind of hybridization; otherwise communication would break down and it would not be possible to give a pleasing form to a work. Of course, the original intention of the oblique case ending is also evaded in texts of the third class by reducing the expression to the uninflected first member of a tatpurusa compound. Perhaps a substitute for

*dtmatmaniya&ju-nyah is the expression so frequent in the Madhyamika literature, svabhdva'unyah, which is regularly translated into Tibetan by ran bHin gyis stoft pa = svabhdvena sunlyah, remi- niscent of the old sufifiam attena.

I hope by those considerations to suggest that Franklin Edgerton's impressive publications on Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit are more than reference guides for reading or editing Buddhist texts. They constitute as well precious source material for re- search in the development of Middle Indic. Be- sides, they make possible a scholarly comparison of Epic literature with the Buddhist texts. There is no good excuse for delaying the reprinting of his BHS Grammar and Dictionary.