[Buddha-l] Sanskrit speaking Buddha

[L.S. Cousins]

Stephen,

>What exactly do you mean by "vernacular Sanskrit" -- something 
>midway between the Vedic language (assuming that the language of the 
>Vedas was truly vernacular, rather than a formal / ritual language) 
>and later Classical Sanskrit (which does not seem very vernacular to 
>me) ?   To avoid confusion, my feeling is that it would be better to 
>distinguish the IA language spoken in Vedic times from later 
>Sanskrit proper -- that is, "Sanskrit" in the sense that most people 
>reading this list would understand. Surely Classical Sanskrit and 
>the MIA languages both derive from this earlier IA language, one 
>branch becoming increasingly artificial and literary and the other 
>resulting in the simplications of the MIAs.

By vernacular I mean the spoken language of the day - a language 
which probably preserved some of the key features of Sanskrit as 
opposed to Prakrit. I have in mind such things as the preservation of 
intervocalic consonant groups, the distinction of three sibilants, 
the r/l distinction, etc. In some areas such a spoken language may 
have continued in use either generally or among brahmin and perhaps 
other groups.

There is of course an argument that we should give a distinct name to 
this language, but if we do, we will have to say that the Upani.sads 
are not written in Sanskrit. By this I mean, that the written form of 
the Upani.sads (only attested from much later) is rather close to any 
such language, whatever we call it.

>Are you then assuming that very early Mahayana texts (or proto-Mahayana)
>such as the Lotus Sutra or the earliest PP sutras (generally believed for a
>number of reasons to have pre-dated c2nd CE)  were written / compiled in
>some form of MIA prior to their Sanskrit, albeit a hybrid form, versions ?

Either that or they might originally have been spoken/chanted works, 
later written down in Sanskrit or some kind of Sanskritized Prakrit. 
This seems quite possible in the case of the PP works, perhaps less 
so in the case of the Lotus.

>I have no problem with this as it seems reasonable, though I would 
>backdate the
>introduction of Sanskritized versions somewhat before c2nd CE -- though no
>more than 150 years.

I used to think something like this, but nowadays I do not believe 
that we have any evidence that compels us to believe that these texts 
are older than the 2nd century. The early dating of Mahaayaana 
literature is partly dependent on the dating of the latest parts of 
the Pali Canon and that is much more controversial these days. The 
only other argument that is advanced for very early dates is some 
kind of layering. But even if it is true that we can distinguish such 
layers, there is no reason to think that such stages would take more 
than a decade each. The first century material we now have from 
Gandhaara does not include any Mahaayaana work.

It is of course likely that Mahaayaana texts contain material 
inherited from predecessors in non-Mahaayaana schools whose 
literature is not preserved today. But beyond that simple statement 
we cannot identify this. Most such claims are largely fantasy. Take, 
for example, attempts to attribute a transcendentalist view of the 
Buddha to the early Mahaasanghikas. This is mainly based upon a 
combination of a complete misreading of the Kathaavatthu with the 
(very late) notions of people like Paramaartha.

Lance