| The Buddha's teachings have been handed down in different Middle Indic forms (Pali and Gandhari), in Sanskritized Prakrit and in Sanskrit itself, and various non Indo-Aryan languages like Tibetan and Middle Chinese. Comparing corresponding passages in the surviving witnesses uncovers linguistic ambiguities which are phonologically cognate, but semantically unclear, pointing to an earlier, underlying linguistic form of which the witnesses are translations. Sanskritizations of earlier Prakrit transmissions are particularly revealing as they fix arbitrary meanings to a more malleable, polysemous underlying speech-form. This is describable as a simplified lingua franca or koine gangetique containing elements of all dialects, but eliminating the most obtrusive dialect differences; the result was a more homogenized communication medium which allowed for rapid dissemination of the Buddha's teachings across dialect boundaries in northern India. This lingua franca was probably derived from, or had affinities with, the existing language of trade, or the administrative language of government at the time. Whether the Buddha spoke this language or not is impossible to tell, but, if we assume that he spoke an eastern Middle Indic dialect like Magadhi or Ardhamagadhi, his teachings were translated into this koine by his disciples, either during his lifetime or shortly thereafter. By tracing tradents' interpretations of these malleable linguistic forms, we are able to reconstruct some of the lexemic content of the koine and resolve old ambiguities or at least clarify the nature of the transmissional process. Although we can not recover the actual words that the Buddha spoke, we can, in selected instances, get back to a point earlier than the existing witnesses have recorded, which represents the earliest recoverable language of Buddhism. The final section of this study investigates the diffusional effects of indigenous, non-Indo Aryan languages on the phonological, semantic and formal structure of the Buddha's teachings in Middle Indic. |
