Re: compounding - Re: [Pali] dhammavicaya- Stefan Karpik article

Hi Stefan,

Thanks - I found the (shorter version) of your article and will read it.

The language the Buddha spoke is a very difficult subject and I am certainly not an expert. Probably the two foremost authorities on the field are Kenneth Norman and Oscar von Hinueber. They have written extensively on the subject. A short summary of the scholarly data available before them can be found in Lamotte's History of Indian Buddhism (pages 549-593 in the English edition; 697 to 657 in the original French edition. Keep in mind that Lamotte was first published in 1958 and is therefore out of date; it must be supplemented with later work.

Generally scholars believe that Pali is a composite, scholarly language that incorporates elements from Maagadhii and/or Ardhmagadhi and western features (similar to the forms found in Asoka's rock-edict at Girnar in western India). See Lamotte page 563/623. This was Geiger's view (Pali Literatur & Sprache, p. 3-4), whom I believe you cite from glancing through your article. R. O. Franke believed it was an actual dialect from the area of Ujjayinii in India (Paali und Sanskrit, 1902), but I don't think his view holds sway today. Oscar von Hinueber probably represents the majority opinion today when he says that Pali is a western language underlaid by an older linguistic layer and various Sanskritisms (conversions of Prakrit back into Sanskrit). See "The Oldest Literary Language of Buddhism" by Hinueber in his Selected Papers on Pali Studies.

Buddha lived in the 6th or 5th century B.C. and his words were not written down until the 1st century B. C. in Sri Lanka. During that time his teachings were memorized by his followers and transmitted to future generations. There was a special class of monk (bhaa.naka or reciter) who each memorized a Niikaaya. Buddha spoke in Prakrit (colloquial) and not in Sanskrit, and wanted his words memorized as he spoke them. However, as Buddhism spread to other parts of India, it is only natural that various colloquialisms would be introduced by prosoletyzing monks (like the change of Maagadhii -e to western -o or the change of the different eastern sibilants - the dental, palatal and retroflex - into a single western sibilant, etc. ) to make his words more understandable. We know this because of the different forms preserved in the Pali writings. Plus there is the simple phenomenon of language change. Like everything else, language is also anicca, and changes
over time, unless it is consciously preserved. Not many people can understand Chaucer today (or even Shakespeare without help) and no one can understand Old English without specialized training. One could of course argue that the Indians had a tradition of memorizing things exactly (as in the Veda), but that's not apparently what happened with the Buddha's words. The corpus of teachings and the number of people invovled and the locations to which it spread were just too large to preserve it in one form.

We also know, because there are variant editions of Buddha's teachings (the Paali and parallel Sanksrit versions) that the words do not always correspond and we can reconstruct, when there are conflicts, what the word underlying both versions must have been. von Hinueber calls this language "Buddhist Middle Indic" which is closer to "what the Buddha actually said", but not necessarily his exact words.

For example, in the Brahmaayaatana Sutra , the story of the Buddha's hesitation to teach after his enlightenment and Brahma's entreaty(SN I, 138) we have the Paali
pamu~ncantu saddha.m which means "let them put forth faith".
In the Catu.spari.satsuutra we have pramodantu sadda.m ("let them rejoice in their faith") and in the Sa`nghbhedavastu we have pra.nudantu "let them abolish their doubts (the word "doubt" has been substituted for "faith" to rationalize the sentence).
In the Mahaavastu we have pramu.mcantu sadda.m ("let the rid themselves of faith), but now an adj. has been added vih.ethasa.mj~naa.m ("that has the notion of harming"). The verb pra + muc can either mean "put forth" "release" (as in the Paali) or "rid oneself" (as in the Mahaavastu).
The only way to rationalize all these forms is to posit a proto-form paNuYantu, where N represents a Nasal and Y represents the dropping out of an intervocalic consonant. So it is likely that the Buddha spoke something like paNuYantu and, when it came time to writing down his words, different scribes interpreted in different ways which resulted in four separate textual traditions. We know that pr- at the beginning of a word changes to p- in Prakrit and that there is often confusion of nasals -m- and -n- and that an intervocalic cons. was often either dropped, or changed to a weak intervocalic glide represented by Y above. So phonologically that would explain all these changes.

To take a simpler example. In the same sutta, Buddha is described as pannabhara which in Pali is translated as "whose load has been laid down". In the Mahaavastu we find puur.nabharo which means the exact opposite ("who carries a full load"). One can postulate that the underlying word that was the source of this confusion was *pannahara (the * means reconstructed), which Paali interpreted as above (assuming the -h- was at one time a -bh-) and the Sanskrit took as above (assuming that the -nn- had developed from -r.n- which is a perfectly normal phonological change and the -a- changing to -u- (labialization) under the influence of the p-). In other words, when it came down to writing the form, no one was certain what *pannahara meant. Pali interpreted it in one way and the Mahaavastu in another. I would add that the Lalitavistara interpreted in a third way as praj~nakaaraa ("wisdom-bearer"), but is less obvious to see how they arrived at that form,
although the two are clearly related.

In any case, you can see how complicated this can get. I would suggest, if you are interested in pursuing the subject, you read the article from von Hinuber, the Lamotte section and Norman's recent articles on the subject (Chapters 3 and 4 in A Philological Approach to Buddhism, published by the PTS in 2006).

Hope that helps. If you find it confusing, that's because it is hard to reconstruct exactly what happened.

Mettaa, Bryan






________________________________
From: stefan_karpik <stefankarpik@...>
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, January 26, 2010 11:18:47 PM
Subject: compounding - Re: [Pali] dhammavicaya- Stefan Karpik article




Dear Bryan,

Thanks for your interest in my article. A short version is at

www.insightmeditati on.org/.. ./DharmaENewsApr il2006.doc

(If this link does not work, put "Stefan Karpik Pali" in a seach engine and you will find it).

I have a longer version that I could email to you.

I want to improve my article, "The Buddha spoke Pali" Are there any
linguistics experts seeing this who can help? I don't think I have emphasised enough two big problems with the notion that the Buddha did not speak Pali:

1: Translation of an oral tradition of what the Buddha spoke into an oral tradition of Pali would presuppose an event unique in world history:oral to oral translation. No culture has achieved this to my knowledge, certainly not on a corpus as large as the suttas and vinaya. But, fellow linguists, how can this be demonstrated?

2. Why would translation be needed? English speakers still read Chaucer and Shakespeare in the original We are talking about translation from effectively one dialect into another, as the candidates for the Buddha's native language have to be Old Ardha Magadhi, Sanskrit or the precursor of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, none of which are massively different. How does one disprove that the dialects were so divergent as to require translation?

Any comments are appreciated.

--- In Pali@... com, Bryan Levman <bryan.levman@ ...> wrote:
>
> Hi James,
>
> Thanks for your excellent explanation. The current thinking that I am aware of is that Paali was derived from Vedic (von Hinueber. 2001.. Das Aeltere Mittelindisch im Ueberblick. Section 7- page 39- following).
>
> I am not familiar with Stefan Karpik's article. Could you please tell me where I can find it?
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
> Metta!
>
> Bryan
>
>
>
>
> ____________ _________ _________ __
> From: James Whelan <james..whelan5@ ...>
> To: Pali@... com
> Sent: Mon, January 25, 2010 5:30:13 PM
> Subject: RE: compounding - Re: [Pali] dhammavicaya
>
>
> Dear Frank,
>
> Perhaps I could help a little bit.
>
> Pali does indeed predate classical Sanskrit, but is probably roughly
> contemporaneous, or at least for a time ran a parallel course, with Vedic,
> which is an earlier and far less regularised form of what later became
> Sanskrit. Both Pali and Vedic almost certainly come from an earlier - now
> lost - common stock. The extreme value of making comparisons between Pali
> and Sanskrit is that Sanskit has preserved many of the forms that have been
> lost in Pali. The most important for the purposes of the present discussion
> is compound consonants.
>
> In Sanskrit: dharati = hold, from which is derived dharma.
>
> In Pali: dharati = hold, identical to Sanskrit. But with the addition of
> -ma, the compound consonant /rm/ becomes /mm/, whence dhamma.
>
> Where there is a compound consonant at the beginning of a word, Pali almost
> always reduces it to a single consonant:
>
> Sanskrit: smriti
>
> Pali: sati.
>
> Although Pali reduces the initial compound consonant to a single consonant,
> the language retained the 'shadow' of the missing element. So, although the
> speakers could not start a word with a double consonant, the doubling crept
> back in when it could, i.e. when it was supported by a vowel at the end of
> the preceding word in the compound. Thus: sati becomes anapana-ssati.
>
> Another example is:
>
> Sanskrit: pravartana (turning, as in turning the wheel of the law).
>
> Pali: pavattana. Here, the /pr/ reduces (as an initial) to /p/, and the
> intervocalic /rt/ reduces to /tt/.
>
> Now, when pavattana follows a preceding vowel in a compound, the doubled
> /pp/ takes the opportunity to come back: whence
> dhamma-cakka- ppavattana- sutta.
>
> So, the phenomenon of a double consonant at the beginning of word when it is
> the second or later element in a compound is simply the reappearance of
> another consonant that was there in an earlier form of the language. By the
> way if you look in the vocabularies in Warder's Introduction to Pali, you
> will see many words beginning with an initial letter in brackets, e.g.
> (p)pa-yaa. This simply means that on its own the own it begins with a
> single /p/, but it will double when it 'gets the chance'.
>
> If we trace Pali back to an earlier form, now lost but reconstructible with
> a reasonable degree of certainty for the present purposes, we will almost
> certainly find the unreduced forms of the compound consonants.
>
> Although it is not strictly historically accurate to say that Pali actually
> derives from Sanskrit, nevertheless it is very often perfectly accurate to
> say that Sanskrit preserves many forms that Pali has lost, and the Pali
> derives from those exact same forms that still exist in Sanskrit. So, from
> that point of view, when we say for example that dhamma 'comes from' or is
> derived from the Sanskrit dharma, this is just a convenient shorthand way of
> saying that dhamma comes from an older form of the word that has been
> preserved unaltered in Sanskrit as dharma.
>
> It is a moot point whether the Buddha actually spoke the same language that
> is preserved in the Pali Canon. This is a big subject, for which I can do
> no better at present than to refer you to Stefan Karpik's excellent article
> on the subject. He concludes, with very cogent reasons, that it was the
> same. Anyway, even if it wasn't exactly the same as the spoken language of
> Magadha at the time, then it must have been near enough to have made no real
> difference. However, the point is that at that time the language was not
> written, and when in due course it did come to be written is was written in
> scripts originally devised for other languages. These scripts had their
> own conventions. In one of them, the Devanagari script, used for Sanskrit,
> the convention was to run compounded words together into one long string.
> Scripts deriving from Devanagari (or from a common stock) tended to do the
> same. The string could be made even longer when separate words were written
> together under the rules of sandhi, i.e. when the last sound of the
> preceding word merged with the first sound of the following one. A simple
> example is the opening words of the Story of Nala: aasiit raajaa 'there was
> a king'. By sandhi, the final /t/ of aasiit becomes /d/. So it is aasiid
> raajaa. Now, by a convention of the Devanagari script, the syllables are
> divided thus: aa-sii-draa- jaa. We thus get the written syllable /draa/
> which is the last consonant of the preceding word, with the first syllable
> of the following one. ( /dr/ is written as a compound ligature in
> Devanagari.) For that reason, with a combination of compounding and sandhi,
> sometimes entire sentences are written without a break between the words.
> Awfully difficult for beginners.
>
> The bottom line is that we write dhammavicayabojjhan ga because it was
> written all as one word a long time ago under the conventions of one or more
> scripts that were never designed for Pali in the first place. There is no
> reason we have to maintain those conventions, and I entirely support those
> who would hyphenate for clarity. Since Pali, like Vedic, is primarily an
> oral tradition (by total contrast to e.g. Chinese, which is primarily a
> written tradition), there is nothing 'unPali' or fake about writing it in
> any way we choose. (By the way, contemporary websites in Sanskrit written
> in Devanagari mostly ignore sandhi and write the words separately. That
> tends to show that even traditionally minded Hindus blogging in Sanskrit
> regard themselves as being free to accommodate the script to modern tastes
> and requirements, rather than vice versa.)
>
> Regrettably, however, whether we hyphenate or not, or just leave gaps
> between the words, we cannot avoid having to accommodate, for the sake of
> linguistic accuracy, the reappearance of the doubled consonant at the
> beginning of a word in compound, or the merging or vowels. If we ignore
> these phenomena, we lose something of the carefully preserved oral
> tradition. Alas, the Ven. Pandita is absolutely right when he says: 'If
> you choose to write "anapana-sati" instead, it won't be real Pali'.
>
> Having seen your post on the subject, I might have to ask you for help in
> getting the DPR to work. I find Sanskrit more manageable than computers!
>
> With metta,
>
> James Whelan
>
> From: Pali@... com [mailto:Pali@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of frank
> Sent: 25 January 2010 20:22
> To: Pali@... com
> Subject: Re: compounding - Re: [Pali] dhammavicaya
>
> Hello Ven. Pandita,
> Thank you for the explanation, however it confuses me more than it
> clarifies. I thought pali predated sanskrit, and that the written pali
> language was predated by a spoken Maggada(?). So in the Buddha's time,
> there was no "real pali". AnapanaSSati did not exist as a written word.
> Only phonetic sounds and syllables sounding something like,
> "uh-nuh-punnuh- sa-tee" existed in the language, transmitted by speaking
> from monk to monk, village to village. I'm not trying to say there are
> no legitimate grammatical reasons for what you explained, I'm just
> trying to understand why compounding has to be represented in writing
> the way it is today.
> If I were to represent sounds of compound dhamma words in written
> form like this:
> anapana-sati,
> dhamma-vicaya- sambojjanga,
> samadhi-indriya,
> sadda-indriya,
> panna-indriya,
> etc., is there any ambiguity or grammatical reason where the receiver of
> my written communication could misinterpret what I wrote?
> Whereas I see "pannindriya" in the romanized pali text it looks like a
> complete and new stranger to me even though I'm completely familiar with
> panna and indriya.
> I don't really see hyphens as an eye sore either, if that's the only
> objection of why compounding is not represented with hyphens. I was just
> reading a dual pali/english line by line sutta where the author
> translated ekayano as "one-way-path" . Is that "real" english? I don't
> know the answer to that, but I do know as a native English speaker that
> the hyphens did not introduce any ambiguity or alter the intended
> meaning from the sender. In fact, it improved the clarity.
> Ultimately the Buddha was most interested in teaching about dukkha
> and its cessation, using whatever the most popular language and simple
> words that could communicate meaning the most clearly to as many people
> of as many cultures and backgrounds, for as long as possible. If he
> thought that hyphens in written transmissions of suttas would reduce
> the steep pali learning curve for buddhists from the future, I bet he
> would approve.
>
> -Frank
>
> On 1/25/2010 9:48 AM, ashinpan wrote:
> >
> >
> > Frank,
> >
> > You wrote:
> >
> > > Since the pali suttas were an oral tradition originally, not written,
> > > and the fact that it exists now in thai script, roman script, and
> > > whatever other localized script, I wonder if there is some reason
> > why we
> > > can not adopt a convention of compounding that allows the exploitation
> > > and ease in digital processing/searchin g. For example, if compound
> > words
> > > were written as anapana-sati instead of anapanaSSati,
> > > dhamma-vicaya- sambojjhanga, etc, wouldn't that lend clarity, structure,
> > > ease in understanding and communicating as well as instant dictionary
> > > lookup capability? Am I missing something? Is there a good reason for
> > > "anapanaSSati" instead of "anapana-sati" ?
> >
> > In the example that you give, i.e., "anapanaSSati" , the cons. "s" is
> > doubled because "sati" is derived from the Skt. form "sm.rti" and the
> > conjunct "sm" of the original "sm.rti" is assimilated into "ss" when
> > "sati" is a non-initial compound member.
> >
> > If you choose to write "anapana-sati" instead, it won't be real Pali.
> > Rather it will only be your interpretation of that particular compound.
> >
> > with metta
> >
> > Ven. Pandita
> >
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>
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