[Buddha-l] Re: Filtered Buddhism

[Richard Hayes]

On Friday 06 July 2007 08:49, curt wrote:

> I point
> this out only because it is such a widespread misconception that Asian
> Buddhists "chant in their own languages", which is usually not the case.

>From what I have seen, it is true that Asian Buddhists chant canonical texts 
in those three languages, but they also have texts in their own languages 
that are chanted. I have heard Buddhists in India chanting in Hindi and 
Marathi, for example, and while in Myanmar I was told that some of what I was 
hearing was Burmese, in addition to the (rather odd) Burmese pronunciation of 
Pali. In Toronto it was quite common for Buddhists to chant in English, and 
in Quebec they chant in English and French, in addition to a number of Asian 
languages. So my experience has been that Asian Buddhists, both in Asia and 
in Western countries, chant in both canonical languages and in whatev er the 
local language may be. 

> Most chanting in Asian Buddhism is done in just those three languages -
> none of which resemble any language that anyone has spoken for centuries
> - ie, none of which are comprehensible except to specialists.

It is precisely because of that incomprehensibility of ancient canonical 
languages that Asian Buddhists also chant some things in languages that they 
can understand. (In so doing, they are following the explicit and unambiguous 
instructions of the Buddha.)


-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico