[Buddha-l] Pali and Asoka

[L.S. Cousins]

Jayarava,

Your post raised a lot of issues and I didn't have time to respond 
earlier. Here are one or two comments as regards Asoka and dialects.


1. In Pakistan and Afghanistan Asoka's inscriptions are found in various 
languages and scripts, both of local origin and imported from elsewhere. 
This is probably because these areas had been under the rule or cultural 
influence of the Persian Empire. They are a different case from India 
proper.


2. In the area we now call India, only one form of written language is 
generally known. It is clearly under the influence of the spoken 
language of Eastern India, presumably the area around Patna. Spelling is 
not standardized and there is some variation in the degree of 
'Easternization'. This is used even in southern areas where Dravidian of 
some kind might have been the local spoken language. The one major 
exception to this is at Girnar. (There are some minor fragments which 
are similar to Girnar.)


3. So we have to account for the anomaly at Girnar. I know three 
possible explanations:

a) It represents the influence of a local 'western' dialect. But then it 
is difficult to account for its spread over the following centuries to 
become something like the norm.

b) The local scribe was more learned and has Sanskritized the text a 
little. The spread of this kind of spelling in the subsequent centuries 
is then due to an early phase of Sanskritization. The Pali language will 
then be partly a descendant of that and partly a result of an 
independant process of Sanskritization. K.R. Norman in particular has 
argued that we should see what we have at Girnar as the result of 
Sanskritization.

c) The Girnar inscription might have been inscribed at a later date than 
the other versions e.g. late in the reign of Asoka or even after. This 
would be some kind of prestige act. As far as I know, the detailed 
palaeographic studies that would test that have never been done.

As it stands, b) seems the best option.


4. The proper name of the Pali language is the Maagadha language. That's 
the name that has been used for the last 1,500 years and probably quite 
a lot longer. This is a straightforward descendant of the written 
language of India mentioned above. The language spoken in Maagadha 
proper is called Maagadhii by Indian grammarians in the first millennium 
A.D. Originally, this would have been a spoken dialect, but there 
probably were texts written in this by the time of the Prakrit grammarians.


Lance Cousins