Dhammapada original script?

Fenyletylamin

Hii:)
Here i am agin.. comfuced as always. First i heard The Pali Dhammapada way originally written in Kharosthi (in india), and now.. i've heard that it was written in pali, but in sri lanka. So.. which is it, and if in sri lanka - what language script was used - sinhala, tamil etc..?

grateful for any help

Linn:cool:

lalavajra

The Buddha taught the Dhammapada in Pali for the sake of all the monks to attain arhatship. It was written down in Pali in the various councils in the years follow the final nirvana of the Tathagata. Also, the Dhammapada gained currency in the Sanskrit literature as well, and a complete Sanskrit version was compiled at some point. Also, the Udana is in Sanskrit a very close match to the Pali Dhammapada and is a teaching uttered by the Buddha. And in the Mahayana sutra literature there is reference made to the Dharmapada.
These are the general origins of the Dhammapada.

Jason

Fenyletylamin wrote: »

Hii:)
Here i am agin.. comfuced as always. First i heard The Pali Dhammapada way originally written in Kharosthi (in india), and now.. i've heard that it was written in pali, but in sri lanka. So.. which is it, and if in sri lanka - what language script was used - sinhala, tamil etc..?

grateful for any help

Linn:cool:

The Dhammapada is a basically a short anthology, a collection of verses attributed to the Buddha. There are many versions (e.g., Buddhist Hybrid-Sanskrit, Chinese, Gandhari, Pali, etc.), all of them similar but not quite identical. The exact language the Buddha taught in is unknown, but many scholars believe it was a form of Magadhi Prakrit, which the Theravada tradition holds to be synonymous with Pali.

Pali itself doesn't have its own script as it was originally a spoken language. It's said that the Buddha's teachings themselves were passed down orally for hundreds of years before they were written down phonetically in various Indic scripts such as Brahmi, Devanagari, Kharosthi, etc.

Some of the oldest fragments of Buddhist texts ever found are written in the Kharosthi script and in Gandhari, an Indic language similar to Pali, Sanskrit, etc. What we know today as the Pali Canon of Theravada, however, was passed down orally for the first five hundred years after the Buddha's death and, according to the Sinhalese chronicles, written down in the reign of King Vattagamini (last century B.C.E.) in Sri Lanka at the fourth Buddhist council, most likely in Sinhala.

Brigid

Wow!

Jason, that was a great summary. Short, to the point, succinct.

Thanks!

almond

One of the things I found interesting in looking into the history of Buddhist scripture is the use of number, it seems that this is due to it's oral beginnings, using numbers aided in the memorization of teachings.

There is a great page here http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Miscellaneous/Buddhism_by_Numbers.html that lists all the significant numbers.

RenGalskap

Jason wrote: »

The exact language the Buddha taught in is unknown, but most scholars believe it was a form of Magadhi Prakrit, which the Theravada tradition holds to be synonymous with Pali.

Aside from Theravada tradition, what's the scholarly view on this? My understanding was that Pali wasn't spoken where the Buddha lived and taught.

Jason

RenGalskap wrote: »

Aside from Theravada tradition, what's the scholarly view on this? My understanding was that Pali wasn't spoken where the Buddha lived and taught.

Scholarly opinion is mixed. Pali and Magadhi are generally regarded to be the same language (e.g., Robert Caesar Childers supports this view in his book A Dictionary of the Pali Language), but there's simply not enough evidence for a definitive answer one way or the other.

RenGalskap

Jason wrote: »

Scholarly opinion is mixed. Pali and Magadhi are generally regarded to be the same language (e.g., Robert Caesar Childers supports this view in his book A Dictionary of the Pali Language), but there's simply not enough evidence for a definitive answer one way or the other.

A quick search turns up no recent scholar other than Childers who supports this view. On the other hand, a quick search fails to turn up two recent scholars who agree on how Pali originated. So Childers' opinion gets as much support from scholars as any other opinion. :-)

At any rate, the source I was relying on for info about Pali's origins was clearly wrong.

Jason

RenGalskap wrote: »

A quick search turns up no recent scholar other than Childers who supports this view. On the other hand, a quick search fails to turn up two recent scholars who agree on how Pali originated. So Childers' opinion gets as much support from scholars as any other opinion. :-)

Like I said, scholarly opinion is mixed. For all we know Childers could've been wrong.

For example, from T. W. Rhys Davids:

It is somewhat hard to realize, seeing how important and valuable the work has been, that when ROBERT CAESAR CHILDERS published, in 1872, the first volume of his Pali Dictionary, he only had at his command a few pages of the canonical Pali books. Since then, owing mainly to the persistent labours of the Pali Text Society, practically the whole of these books, amounting to between ten and twelve thousand pages, have been made available to scholars. These books had no authors. They are anthologies which gradually grew up in the community. Their composition, as to the Vinaya and the four Nikayas (with the possible exception of the supplements) was complete within about a century of the Buddha's death; and the rest belong to the following century. When scholars have leisure to collect and study the data to be found in this pre- Sanskrit literature, it will necessarily throw as much light on the history of ideas and language as the study of such names and places as are mentioned in it (quite inci- dentally) has already thrown upon the political divisions, social customs, and economic conditions of ancient India.

Some of these latter facts I have endeavoured to collect in my 'Buddhist India' and perhaps the most salient discovery is the quite unexpected conclusion that, for about two centuries (both before the Buddha's birth and after his death), the para- mount power in India was Kosala -- a kingdom stretching from Nepal on the North to the Ganges on the South, and from the Ganges on the West to the territories of the Vajjian confederacy on the East. In this, the most powerful kingdom in India; there had naturally arisen a standard vernacular differing from the local forms of speech just as standard English differs from the local (usually county) dialects. The Pali of the canonical books is based on that standard Kosala vernacular as spoken in the 6thand 7th centuries B. C. It cannot be called the 'literary' form of that vernacular, for it was not written at all till long afterwards. That vernacular was the mother tongue of the Buddha. He was born in what is now Nepal, but was then a district under the suzer- ainty of Kosala and in one of the earliest Pali documents he is represented as calling himself a Kosalan.

And:

According to the traditions handed down among the Sinhalese, Pali, that is, the language used in the texts, could also be called Magadhi. What exactly did they mean by that? They could not be referring to the Magadhi of the Prakrit grammarians, for the latter wrote some centuries afterwards. Could they have meant the dialect spoken in Magadha at the date when they used the phrase, say, the sixth century A. D.? That could only be if they had any exact knowledge of the different vernaculars of North India at the time. For that there is no evidence, and it is in itself very improbable. What they did mean is probably simply the language used by Asoka, the king of Magadha. For their traditions also stated that the texts had been brought to them officially by Asoka's son Mahinda; and not in writing, but in the memory of Mahinda and his companions. Now we know something of the language of Asoka. We have his edicts engraved in different parts of India, differing slightly in com- pliance with local varieties of speech. Disregarding these local differences, what is left may be considered the language of head--quarters where these edicts were cer- tainly drafted. This 'Magadhi' contains none of the peculiar characteristics we associate with the Magadhi dialect. It is in fact a younger form of that standard Kosalan lingua franca mentioned above.

Unfortunately, it's mostly educated speculation and we'll never know for sure.

At any rate, the source I was relying on for info about Pali's origins was clearly wrong.

What source were you relying on?

RenGalskap

Jason wrote: »

In this, the most powerful kingdom in India; there had naturally arisen a standard vernacular differing from the local forms of speech just as standard English differs from the local (usually county) dialects... That vernacular was the mother tongue of the Buddha. He was born in what is now Nepal, but was then a district under the suzer- ainty of Kosala and in one of the earliest Pali documents he is represented as calling himself a Kosalan.

According to Gombrich, the Sakyas were culturally distinct from the late Vedic society of Magadha. He speculates that the Buddha's native tongue may not have been Indo-European.

Bhikkhu Bodhi (In the Buddha's Words) says

While the language [Pali] is not identical with any the Buddha himself would have spoken...

I'll stop now. As you say, it's all speculation.

What source were you relying on?

I don't remember, and I no longer have access to the library. :-(

I recall a collection of papers on early Buddhism, but I can't remember author, editor, or title. How's that for useless?