Re: Slightly OT: Podcast Tagline in Pali

Dear Lance,

Thanks for your response.

>What we actually know is that a single 'epigraphic' language is used in
>virtually all post-Asokan inscriptions in the last centuries A.D.

You mean the last centuries B.C. I assume? By the "epigraphic" language are you referring to the Hatthigumpha inscription? That is the oldest we have post-Aśoka I think. Do you have a reference for it, besides Salomon's book (who doesn't describe it in much detail)?

>But note that much of this is just hypothesis. Evidence for the supposed
>dialects is rather weak (excluding the NW). Mostly it is constructed
>from the theories of Prakrit grammars written much later in a very
>different situation.

But what about the Aśoka inscriptions themselves? A comparison between them and Pāli (in terms of lexemic content) shows convincingly (to me anyways) that the latter has a wide variety of dialects in it. Have you seen my article on "Is Pāli closest to the western Aśokan dialect of Girnār?"  In there I compare one Asokan rock edict (RE 4) to the Pāli  word for word and find that 19% of the word-forms are similar to Girnār (west), 43% to Kālsī, Shābāzgaṛhī and Mānsehrā (taken collectively as representing the north and north west, 20% to Dhauli (east) and 18% to Eṛṛaguḍi (south).

Pāli was certainly standardized over time as it was written down (like the change of the absolutive ending from -ttā to -tvā which von Hinüber writes about), but one can still find many dialect forms in it, using the Aśokan edicts as a benchmark,

Mettā, Bryan





________________________________
  From: L.S. Cousins <selwyn@...>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2013 3:49:31 PM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Slightly OT: Podcast Tagline in Pali


 
Bryan,

You are grouping together a number of slightly different theories here.

But note that much of this is just hypothesis. Evidence for the supposed
dialects is rather weak (excluding the NW). Mostly it is constructed
from the theories of Prakrit grammars written much later in a very
different situation.

What we actually know is that a single 'epigraphic' language is used in
virtually all post-Asokan inscriptions in the last centuries A.D. That
language mixes different linguistic forms rather freely in just the same
way that the Pali texts do. We infer that it has been influenced by
local spoken languages in various ways to form a type of 'koine'. There
is no evidence that any other written language existed at this time.

So we can infer that when Buddhist texts began to be written down from
perhaps the second century they would have used the same language we
find in the 'epigraphic' language, which is in fact relatively close to
Pali. We could perfectly well call this Old Pali.

At some point the language used for the Buddhist texts underwent a
measure of standardization and Sanskritization. K.R.Norman believed this
happened when the Pali Canon was put into writing in the first century
A.D. I myself feel it is more likely that this occurred over a period of
time, culminating in a large amount of standardization at the time of
the school of Buddhaghosa. In other words a process exactly parallel to
the development from "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit" to a fairly classical
form of Sanskrit that we find evidenced in both Ms and inscriptions
mainly in North India. I think Buddhaghosa is precisely referring to
such a tidying up of the texts in his introductions.

There was probably some further standardization under the influence of
the development of the Pali grammatical tradition around the twelfth
century.

Lance Cousins
> Dear Florian,
>
> In fact Pāli itself is a constructed language as has been noted by scholars ever since Geiger (1916) who called it a Kunstsprache (man–made language). We know this because Pāli has elements of several different dialects within it  - east, west and northern. It was a language created by monks for ecclesiastical purposes - i. e. the transmission of the Buddhadharma and was a translation from an earlier, underlying language, which has been various called Buddhist Middle Indic (von Hinüber), une langue précanonique (Sylvain Lévi), Old Ardha Māgadhī ( Lüders, Alsdorf), a dialectically mixed Middle Indic vernacular (Edgerton), an überregionalDichtersprache (“transregional artistic language,” Bechert ), a Verkehrssprache ("Language of trade" Geiger), a Kanzeleisprache ("language of Aśoka's court" Lüders) just to name some of the principal labels of the pre-Pāli language/dialect.
>
> For a discussion on the constructed nature of Pāli see
>
>
> Hinüber, O. v. 1982. "Pāli as
> an Artificial Language." Indologica Taurinensia 10: 133-140. Also
> published in Kleine Schriften, Teil I, hereausgegeben von Harry Falk und Walter
> Slaje (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag), 451-458.
>
>
> and
>
>
> Hinüber, O. v. 1983. "The
> Oldest Literary Language of Buddhism." Saeculum 34 (1983): 1-9. Also published in Selected Papers on Pāli Studies (Oxford:
> The Pali Text Society, 2005), 177-94.
>
> Regarding your questions:
>
> The normal way to say "Welcome" is sāgataṃ + oblique case = sāgataṃ te (you are welcome). This comes from Skt. su-āgata (well-come), which is the past participle of āgam, āgacchati  (to come). You probably could use the optative (I don't think the benedictive survives in Pāli) of āgam, in the causative (āgameti,  "to welcome")  i. e. tvaṃ sāgameyyaṃbut I've never seen it. A verb like abhivad ("to welcome") in the indicative which is transitive might make more sense:tvam abhivadāmi or tvaṃsāgamemi, in the indicative.
>
>
> "Constructed language" in Pāli would probably be katabhāsā ("made language"). To make it an abstract noun, add -tā or-ttaṃ (Skt -tvaṃ), i. e. katabhāsātā ("the state of a made/artifical language," "condition of...").
>
>
> nigghosa might work for podcast, although it has more of the sense of "shout" in Pāli. Perhaps also  pavedana ("proclamation, announcement" < pra+vad in Skt. "proclaim, declare") or sāvana ( < causative of śru in Skt. "causing to be heard, announce, proclaim").
>
> The usual construction for "regarding" isārabbha + accuṣ or sandhāya + accus.
>
> I would have to know the rest of the sentence to advise about the relative clause - it can be done with  a compound in Pāli and with the relative-correlative structure. In this case, the second looks simpler, ye idaṃ/idāni karonti, te...  ("those who make it/them, they...")
>
> Hope this helps. I'm interested in hearing what others have to say about the above,
>
> Mettā,
>
>
> Bryan




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