Re: Sadd: some responses to Jim's comments

Dear Jim,

It's conference season here in Oxford; so I had no time to respond to
this before.

>The Apadaana commentary (ascribed to Buddhaghosa) states that
>Mahaakaccaana expounded three treatises, including the grammar, in the
>midst of the Sangha (see Ap-a 491).

It has long been thought that Ap-a is much the latest of the extant
commentaries - no other commentary or early .tiikaa refers to it. As
far as I know, no text before the Gandhava.msa mentions a commentary
on Apadaana by Buddhaghosa. If Buddhaghosa did write such a
commentary, then it must have been a predecessor of the one still
extant. Note that the introduction and conclusion to Ap-a does not
attribute it to Buddhaghosa.

>  Later Pali grammarians also
>consider him to be the author of the grammar. I'm not sure if one
>could say that Buddhaghosa and the early commentators had no knowledge
>of Kaccaayana's grammar, although Ole Pind seems to have come to that
>conclusion in his JPTS article.

Well, he certainly not the first  to take that view. I am not in a
position to evaluate that myself at present without a very great deal
of work. So I will take that as my working hypothesis for now.

>It's clear to me, however, that the
>commentators knew a great deal about the traditional Indian
>grammatical system but it's hard to tell whether it's Kaccaayana's or
>an adaptation from Sanskrit grammar, or otherwise. I think more study
>is needed.

If someone comes up with evidence that they knew Kacc, I will have to
modify my position. But, to be honest, I don't really expect that.

>  I've come to the conclusion that a knowledge of traditional
>Indian grammar is essential for a good understanding of the
>innumerable linguistic analyses found in the commentaries.

I quite agree. And that of course is why study of Pali grammar became
so important. And Kacc is the foundation of that.

>With Buddhaghosa, I've long assumed that it was just the commentaries
>that he translated from Siiha.labhaasaa to Maagadhabhaasaa. But from
>the little reading I've done of the Buddhaghosuppatti so far, I get
>the impression that he also did the same thing for the Tipi.taka. Is
>that your understanding? It makes me wonder how Buddhaghosa came to
>know the Maagadhabhaasaa so well before his translation work had
>begun. And was this the old dialect spoken in the Buddha's time or one
>spoken in Magadha at a much later time? He is said to have been born
>in the Magadha country not far from Bodh Gaya.

I think we have to discard all the post-ninth century information
about Buddhaghosa. It is clearly legendary. Four centuries is quite
long enough for all sorts of legends to develop. (In fact, I myself
would date Buddhaghosa to the fourth century A.D.)

I can't believe that Buddhaghosa translated a Canon in Sinhalese
Prakrit to what we call Pali. The Buddhaghosuppatti is the only text
to say this but it is a very late text, perhaps 15th century. How
could Buddhaghosa speak of the paa.libhaasaa 'language of the
scriptures', if the scriptures were written in the Sinhalese dialect
of the time ?

Lance