Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s2.t2: 3.2.3 The linguistic nature of EHS

Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s2.t2

Language: English

3.2.3 The linguistic nature of EHS

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3.2.3.1 Relation to Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit

The epigraphic mixed dialects bear a clear and close linguistic relation to the idiosyncratic Sanskrit of Buddhist texts generally and particularly to the true "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit" (BHS) of texts such as the *Mahāvastu*. Although the epigraphic and literary hybrids do differ in particulars, this is at least in part due to the different character and content of the documents preserved in them. In any case, the variability of both of these unstandardized languages presents major obstacles to a detailed comparison. But despite these complications, there can be no doubt that the two represent different manifestations of the same basic linguistic phenomenon, namely, the gradual Sanskritization of MIA vernaculars. It is also certain that the hybrid language used in the first three centuries of the Christian era was neither an exclusively Buddhist nor an exclusively literary construction, as seems to be assumed by certain scholars (notably Edgerton) who did not sufficiently consider the epigraphic evidence. For among the hybrid inscriptions of this period, we have documents of not only Buddhist but also Brahmanical and Jaina content which are original compositions in the hybrid dialect.

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Thus the epigraphic evidence contradicts the notion espoused by Edgerton and others that the specimens of hybrid dialects that we have are merely incomplete or imperfect translations into Sanskrit of texts originally written in MIA dialects; in other words, that the hybrid language is merely a literary artifact and not a real language. The inscriptions prove that hybrid Sanskrit was, or at least eventually became, a living linguistic entity, and thus support the position of Lamotte (HBI 638) and others that some Buddhist texts were actually composed in BHS.

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3.2.3.2 The origins of EHS

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This still leaves unanswered the question of the historical origins of the epigraphic (and Buddhist) hybrid dialect. In general, opinions on the controversial question of the motivations and mechanics of the semi-Sanskritization of MIA fall into two camps. The first is the school which holds that the hybrid is little more than a bad imitation of Sanskrit, that is, that its incomplete and imperfect Sanskritization reflects incompetence and ignorance on the part of the composers of the documents. Thus T. Burrow says that "such a mongrel language was actually employed by those who wished to employ the superior Sanskrit language but were not able to master its grammar." K. R. Norman elaborates this view: "They [the donors] would presumably dictate in Pkt, and once it had become fashionable to write inscriptions in Skt, the scribes would 'translate', to the best of their ability, into that language. The correctness of the Skt depended, therefore, on the scribes' competence."

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³⁶ *The Sanskrit Language*, The Great Languages (London: Faber and Faber, 1955), 61.

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³⁷ Review of Damsteegt, EHS, in *Lingua* 48, 1979, 293. A similar position was maintained by Senart in his important but by now largely outdated discussion in *Les Inscriptions de Piyadassi* of "Mixed Sanskrit," which he saw as essentially an orthographic phenomenon with no real linguistic basis: "Mixed Sanskrit is only a manner of writing Prâkrit, consisting in going as near as possible to the orthography and the etymological forms known to the religious language [i.e., Sanskrit]" (*IA* 21, 1892, 275).

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The other school of thought tends to view the degree of hybridism in a given document as a matter not so much of knowledge or ability as of taste; thus Lamotte describes hybrid Sanskrit as "une langue littéraire où le dosage du prākrit et du sanskrit était laissé à leur appréciation personelle" (HBI 642; see also 638 and 645). The epigraphic evidence in particular tends to support the views of this second school. Especially worthy of note are cases such as the Morā well inscription (MI §113; see 3.3.2) where a single inscription comprises portions both in hybrid and in more or less standard Sanskrit, distributed according to function; here, as is usually the case, the prose portion is in hybrid language while the verse—which is composed for the occasion, not quoted from another source—is in good Sanskrit. Such cases indicate that Lamotte was correct in supposing that the use and degree of hybridism were essentially controlled by the taste and judgment of the composers of the texts, and that at least some of them could write in standard Sanskrit when they saw fit.

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Certain grammatical features of the epigraphic language also support this view. Particularly interesting in this regard is the sporadic application of Sanskrit sandhi rules. The "wrong" application of sandhi is one of the most characteristic features of the epigraphic hybrid, and is often what most clearly distinguishes inscriptions in highly Sanskritized hybrid from fully standard Sanskrit; a characteristic example is the label inscription on the Kaniṣka portrait statue from Māt (Mathurā; MI §97), which reads *mahārājā rājātirājā devaputro kaniṣko*. Here the MIA nominative masculine ending *-o* is used instead of Sanskrit *visarga*, not only *in pausa* (*kaniṣko*) but also before *k* (*devaputro k-*). This usage is very common in EHS, and of course actually reflects not "wrong sandhi" but the retention of the old MIA ending in the otherwise (i.e., orthographically) Sanskritized word. Contrast with this the peculiar sandhi forms found in later Mathurā inscriptions of the posthybrid era, such as *śākyabhikṣunyār jayabhaṭṭāyār yad* . . . in the Kaṭrā pedestal inscription (MI §8) and *viṣṇusyaḥ gomindrapūttrasyaḥ ha*[*ku*]*datta-p*[*au*]*ttrasyaḥ* (Mathurā Nāga statue ins., MI §161). Both of these inscriptions date from the Gupta period, when Sanskrit had become the standard epigraphic language, and in them we clearly do have incompetent attempts to write Sanskrit; the incorrect sandhi does not reflect underlying MIA forms, but simply the misapplication of Sanskrit rules improperly learned or understood by the composer.

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Thus the combined evidence of grammar and usage speaks against the assumption that the hybrid language simply represented failed attempts to write Sanskrit and supports the notion that hybrid was a coherent (though not rigidly standardized) language in and of itself, and that those who wrote it did so intentionally. This is not to say, however, that the hybrids were consciously formulated and developed. Rather, the available evidence suggests that hybrid Sanskrit arose in the course of a gradual Sanskritizing movement which had its origins in the late centuries B.C., expanded in the early centuries of the Christian era, and culminated in the final triumph of classical Sanskrit in the Gupta era. Early tendencies toward Sanskritization, in the form of sporadic semi-Sanskritized orthography, appear in some Prakrit inscriptions of the pre-Christian era. Such "Prakrit influenced by Sanskrit" is seen, for example, in the Besnagar pillar inscription (Appendix, no. 2) in such spellings as *bhāgabhadrasa trātārasa* (l. A-6; cf. n. 18), and in the Pabhosā cave inscription (SI I.96), *rājño gopālīputrasa* (l. 1). The hybrids would seem to reflect the extension and regularization of these early tendencies toward Sanskritization. In other words, it seems that the semi-Sanskritized Prakrits of the early Christian era gradually attained a de facto status of their own as semiliterary languages; in Jean Filliozat's words, it was not merely a matter of "seulement sanskritisation de textes, mais encore sanskritisation de dialectes."³⁸

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³⁸ Review of F. Edgerton, *Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar/Dictionary, T'oung Pao* 43, 1954, 147–71 (quoted 168).

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Thus it is more likely that scribes and authors wrote in such a dialect not because they were unable to write in "pure" Sanskrit (or "pure" Prakrit) but simply because this had become the prevalent and preferred style of their time and place. The linguistic borders, in other words, between "Sanskrit" and "Prakrit" were probably not as strictly fixed in practical usage as they appear to be when the matter is viewed (as it usually is) from the point of view of formal literature. From the less formal Buddhist texts, and especially from the epigraphic remains of the period in question, we instead get the impression that a variety of dialects, or perhaps rather of dialectal styles, covering a broad spectrum from pure MIA to pure standard Sanskrit were available for varying purposes and contexts. The choice of a given dialect by a given writer was, to be sure, governed to some extent by his knowledge and level of education; but to an equal, and perhaps greater, extent, it was the content and nature of the document he was writing which would determine the appropriate level of Sanskritization.

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Due to the limitations of the materials, it is not possible to specify with any precision the MIA dialect or dialects underlying the hybrid language. But both the geographical concentrations of the inscriptions in the Mathurā area and its predominant grammatical features such as the nominative masculine in *-o* indicate that the epigraphic dialect, like the Buddhist literary hybrid, reflects an underlying midland dialect (HBI 645).

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Attempts to explain the motivations and linguistic forces shaping the development of the hybrids tend to focus on two main concepts. First, there is the idea, promoted by Joseph Mansion³⁹ and Filliozat,⁴⁰ that they essentially arose as a lingua franca enabling Buddhist monks from various regions of India to converse easily at a period in history when their local MIA dialects were beginning to diverge to the point where they were no longer easily mutually intelligible. This assumes, first of all, that the hybrid remains reflect an actual spoken language,⁴¹ which would be difficult to prove. Other elements of the theory too are less than totally convincing. For one thing, it is questionable whether the MIA dialects of the time were really so different; from the available literary and inscriptional data, it would appear that they were not yet so widely divergent as to present major difficulties of communication. Moreover, while it is true that the literary remains of the hybrid language are virtually all Buddhist, the inscriptional data, as we have seen, include hybrid documents of all three major religious traditions, that is, Buddhist, Brahmanical, and Jaina; the statistical predominance of Buddhist records may simply reflect the predominance of Buddhism itself at the time in question. The development of hybrid Sanskrit may well have been influenced and promoted by the Buddhists, but the epigraphic evidence shows that hybridization was actually part of an overall linguistic trend which transcended sectarian divisions. In the words of Lamotte, “le sanskrit mixte n’est pas un phénomène strictement bouddhique, mais s’insère dans l’évolution générale de la langue indienne” (HBI 638).

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³⁹ *Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue sanscrite* (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1931), 109.

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⁴⁰ Op. cit., 164–6.

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⁴¹ Cf. Filliozat, op. cit., 166, describing the hybrid language as "un langage réellement parlé."

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The second theory of hybridization places more emphasis on the status value of Sanskrit as the traditional language of the learned elite. According to this view, the early adoption of Sanskritic spellings and the ever-increasing Sanskritization of the epigraphic language, and eventually the adoption of classical Sanskrit itself, all reflect the irresistible influence of Sanskrit as the language of learning par excellence. In this connection it has been pointed out by several authors, from Sylvain Lévi⁴² to Damsteegt (EHS 207–9), that the Sanskritizing trend was accelerated by the influence of the Scythian and Kuṣāṇa rulers of northern and western India in the period concerned. As foreigners, they were evidently inclined to patronize the elite language in an effort to legitimize their rule and emphasize their own Indianization. Thus it is no accident that the Sanskritized hybrid came into extensive use at precisely the time and place that the Kuṣāṇas and Śaka Kṣatrapas were ruling; just as it is no coincidence that the first major literary Sanskrit inscription, Rudradāman’s Junāgaḍh rock inscription (see 3.3.3), was written on behalf of a Śaka king who, like his predecessors in Mathurā, was trying to appear “more Indian than the Indians.”

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⁴² “Sur quelques termes employés dans les inscriptions des Kṣatrapas,” *JA*, ser. 9, vol. 19, 1902, 95–125 (esp. 117–9).

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All in all, the theories based on the status of Sanskrit seem to provide the strongest explanation for the gradual hybridization of the inscriptional Prakrits, and for the ultimate Sanskritization of Indian epigraphy. The status of Sanskrit was so deeply ingrained in traditional India that it slowly but surely eroded the precedent established by Aśoka (presumably for Buddhistic motivations) of using Prakrit for epigraphic purposes.

Linked texts (2)

Mahāvastu — Sanskrit
Pābhosa cave inscription (No. VIII) — Sanskrit