Dear Huynh Trong Khanh,
to be precise, Wilhelm Geiger wrote that Pali was a lingua franca:
"A consensus of opinion regarding the home of the dialect on which Pali
is based has therefore not been achieved. Windish therefore falls back
on the old tradition - and I am also inclined to do the same - according
to which Pali should be regarded as a form of Magadhi, the language in
which Buddha himself had preached. This language of Buddha was however
surely no purely popular dialect, but a language of the higher and
cultured classes which had been brought into being already in
pre-Buddhistic times through the needs of intercommunication in India.
Such a lingua franca naturally contained elements of all dialects, but
was surely free from the most obtrusive dialectical characteristics. It
was surely not altogether homogeneous. A man from Magadha country must
have spoken it in one way, and a man from the districts of Kosala and
Avanti in another, just as in Germany the high German of a cultured
person from Wurttemberg, Saxony or Hamburg shows in each case peculiar
characteristic features. Now, as Buddha, although he was no Magadhan
himself, displayed his activities mainly in Magadha and the neighbouring
countries, the Magadhi dialect might have imprinted on his language its
own characteristic stamp. This language could have therefore been
called Magadhi even if it avoided the grossest dialectical peculiarities
of this language. As Windish has rightly pointed out, after the death
of the master, a new artificial language must have been evolved out of
the language of the Buddha. Attempts were made to retain the teachings
of the Buddha in authentic form, and to impose this form also upon those
portions which, although derived from the monastic from the monastic
organizations in various provinces, were gradually incorporated in the
canon. In connection with the designation of the canonical language as
Magadhi, Windish also refers to Aar.sa, the language of the
Jaina-suttas. It is called Ardha-Magadhi, i.e. "half-Magadhi". Now it is
surely significant that the Ardha-Magadhi differs from Magadhi proper
on similar points as Pali. For Ardha-Magadhi too does not change the r
into l, and in the noun inflexion it shows the ending -o instead of
Magadhic -e at least in many metrical pieces. On the other hand, as I
believe to have myself observed, there are many remarkable analogies
precisely between Aar.sa and Pali in vocabulary and morphology. Pali
therefore might be regarded as a kind of Ardha-Magadhi. I am unable to
endorse the view, which has apparently gained much currency at present,
that the Pali canon is translated from some other dialect (according to
Luders, from old Ardha-Magadhi). The peculiarities of its language may
be fully explained on the hypothesis of (a) a gradual development and
integration of various elements from different parts of India, (b) a
long oral tradition extending over several centuries, and (c) the fact
that the texts were written down in a different country.
I consider it wiser not to hastily reject the tradition altogether but
rather to understand it to mean that Pali was indeed no pure Magadhi,
but was yet a form of the popular speech which was based on Magadhi and
which was used bu Buddha himself. it would appear therefore that the
Pali canon represents an effort to reflect the Buddhavacanam in its
original form. This theory would have been refuted if it could be proved
that the Pali canon must have been translated from some other dialect.
Sylvain Levi has tried to prove this. He points out a number of termini
such as ekodi, sa.mghaadisesa, etc., in which a sonant appears in the
place of a surd. From these data he infers the existence of a
pre-canonical language in which the softening of intervocalic surds was
the rule. I do not consider Levi's arguments to be convincing. Firstly,
because all these etymologies given by Levi are uncertain. Secondly,
because the softening of the surds takes place not only in the "termini"
but also in a large number of other words. Moreover, in my opinion, no
special case should be made out of this phonological phenomenon. For
they merely represent one of the various dialectical peculiarities which
are also met with in Pali. Thus, for instance, we find equally frequent
cases of the opposite process (hardening of a sonant) as well as
various other features which considered together prove the mixed
character of tha Pali language.
If Pali is the form of Magadhi used by the Buddha, then the Pali canon
would have to be regarded as the most authentic form of the
Buddhavacanam, even though the teachings of the master might have been
preached and learnt from the very beginning in the various provinces of
India in the respective local dialects. The conclusion has been drawn --
wrongly, in my opinion, -- from Culavagga V.33.1 = Vin II.139. Here it
is related, how two Bhikkhus complained to the master that the members
of the order were of various origins, and that they distorted the words
of Buddha by their own dialect (sakaaya niruttiyaa). They therefore
proposed that the words of Buddha should be translated into Sanskrit
verses (chandaso). Buddha however refused to grant the request and
added: anujaanaami bhikkhave sakaaya niruttiyaa buddhavacanam
pariyaapu.nitum. Rhys-Davids and Oldenberg translate this passage by 'I
allow you, oh brethren, to learn the words of the Buddha each in his own
dialect.' This interpretation however is not in harmony with that of
Buddhaghosa, according to whom it has to be translated by "I ordain the
words of Buddha to be learnt in _his_ own language (i.e.Magadhi, the
language used by Buddha himself)." After repeated examination of this
passage I have come to the conclusion that we have to stick to the
explanation given by Buddhaghosa. Neither the two monks or the Buddha
himself could have thought of preaching in different cases in different
dialects. Here the question is merely whether the words of Buddha migth
be translated into Sanskrit or not. This is however clearly forbidden by
the Master, at first negatively and then positively by the injunction
beginning with 'anujaanaami'. The real meaning of this injunction is, as
is also best in consonance with Indian spirit, that there can be no
other form of the words of Buddha than in which the Master himself had
preached. Thus even in the life-time of Buddha people were concerned
about the way in which the teaching might be handed down as accurately
as possible, both in form and in content. How much more must have been
the anxiety of the disciples after his death! The external form was
however Magadhi, thought according to tradition it is Pali."
Kenneth Norman wrote that:
"It has been claimed in the case of Pali that as there are resemblances
between it and the Girnar dialect of the Asokan inscriptions, and also
between it and the language of the Hathigumpha inscriptions, Pali must
have been the language of one or other of these two areas. A careful
examination of the language of these inscriptions shows that Pali is not
identical with either of them, and there is, moreover, some doubt about
the language of the Girnar version of the Asokan inscriptions, since it
is possible that it represents, in part at least, the scribe's attempt
to convert the Eastern dialect he must have received from Pataliputra
into what he thought was appropriate to the region in which the edict
was being promulgated, rather than the actual dialect of that region.
The language of the Hathigumpha inscription, although it agrees with
Pali in the retention of most intervocalic consonants and in the
nominative singular in -o, nevertheless differs in that the absolutive
ending is -(t)tā, and with two doubtful exceptions there are no
consonant groups containing -r-.
While it is not impossible that
there existed in India in the third century B. C. an unattested dialect
of Middle Indo-Aryan which had all the features of Pali, the fact that
some of the consonant clusters found in Pali are unhistoric and must
therefore represent incorrect attempts at backformation, e.g. disvā
(which cannot be from dṛṣṭva) and atraja (which cannot be from ātmaja),
makes it more likely that by the third century B.C. the dialect of the
canonical texts of the Theravadins conformed to the general pattern of
Middle Indo-Aryan dialects of that time, and all consonant clusters had
either been assimilated or resolved. It is probable that this
represented the form of the language of the Theravadin canon at the time
of the reign of Asoka, which was perhaps the lingua franca of the
Buddhists of Eastern India, and not very different from the language of
the Hathigumpha inscriptions."
Richard Salomon wrote:
"All in all, the Aśokan inscriptions give a broad view of the dialect
spectrum of MIA vernaculars in the third century B.C. But it must also
be understood that they do not provide anything like a real dialectal
map of the time. For the geographical distribution of the dialects -
especially of the eastern dialect - can hardly correspond with
linguistic reality; the eastern dialect was obviously not the mother
tongue of residents of the far north and the central south, though it
was used for inscriptions (Kālsī, Eṛṛaguḍi, etc.) in those regions.
Moreover, the languages as they are presented in the inscriptions are
surely not exact renditions of the contemporary vernaculars.
...
After the Mauryan period there is a major shift in the linguistic
features of the inscriptional Prakrits. The predominance of the eastern
dialect of the Aśokan and other inscriptions of the Mauryan period ends
abruptly; in fact, not a single inscriptional record in eastern dialect
has been found from the post-Mauryan era. The dominant role in all regions except the northwest and Sri Lanka falls hereafter to a variety of Prakrit which most resembles, among the Aśokan dialects, the western dialect of the Girnār rock edicts, and which among literary languages has the most in common with Pāli
and archaic forms of Śauraseni. In other words, this dialect partakes
of the typical characteristics of the western and central MIA languages:
nominative singular masculine in -o, retention of Sanskrit r and l, predominance of the sibilant s,
and so on. Like the Aśokan Prakrits, this central-western epigraphic
Prakrit is still relatively archaic, with only occasional intervocalic
voicing of unvoiced stops and elision of voiced stops. But unlike some
of the Aśokan inscriptions, consonant groups from Sanskrit are nearly
always assimilated.
The causes of the abrupt dialectal shift from east to west undoubtedly
lie in political and historical developments, that is, the decline of
Magadha as the center of power in northern India after the collapse of
the Mauryan empire and the movement of the center of political power in
the following centuries toward the west and northwest. Like the eastern
dialect under Aśoka, the central-western dialect of the post-Mauryan era
was used far beyond what must have been its original homeland. Thus we
find inscriptions in this standard epigraphic Prakrit as far afield as
Orissa in the east, for instance, in the Hāthīgumphā inscription (SI
1.213-21), while in the south it is abundantly attested in inscriptions
from such sites as Nāgārjunakoṇḍa and Amarāvatī. This central-western MIA dialect was, in fact, virtually the sole language in epigraphic use in the period in question, and therefore seems,
like Pāli, to have developed into something like a northern Indian
lingua franca, at least for epigraphic purposes, in the last two
centuries B.C.
This is not to say that the inscriptions in this dialect, which Senart
called "Monumental Prakrit", are totally devoid of local variations. ...
But all in all, the standard epigraphic or "Monumental" Prakrit can be
treated as essentially a single language whose use spread far beyond its
place of origin, and which should not be taken to represent the local
vernacular of every region and period where it appears."
Lance Cousins wrote:
"The standard epigraphical language used in the Gangetic plain and
beyond in the last centuries B.C. and a little after was a form of
Middle Indian rather close to Pali. We have no reason to believe that
any other written language existed in that area at that time. Like Pali
it is eclectic with word-forms originally from different dialectics and
also with no standardized spelling (as was probably originally the case
for Pali). So the first Buddhist texts written down in that area should
have been in that form. Since the enlarged kingdom of Magadha eventually
extended over nearly the whole Gangetic plain, that language was
probably called the language of Magadha, if it had a name. And that of
course is the correct name of the Pali language.
Pali is essentially a standardized and slightly Sanskritized version of
that language. Māgadhī is a language described by the Prakrit
grammarians and refers to a written dialect that developed later (early
centuries A.D. ?) from the spoken dialect in some part of 'Greater
Magadha'.
In effect, then, Pali is the closest we can get to the language spoken
by the Buddha. And it cannot have been very different — we are talking
about dialect diferences here, not radically distinct languages."
http://www.buddha-l.org/archives/2013-May/018487.html
Best wishes,
Dmytro