The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s5: III. Avanti

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s5

Language: English

III. Avanti

v1.c19.s5.1

The king of Avanti in the Buddha's time was Pajjota the Fierce, who reigned at the capital Ujjenī. There is a legend about him which shows that he and his neighbour king Udena of Kosambī were believed to have been contemporaries, connected by marriage, and engaged in war⁵. The boundary is not given, but a commentary mentions incidentally that the two capitals were in round numbers fifty yojanas, about four hundred miles, apart. We have seen that when the Nikāyas were composed Avanti was considered to have been one of the important kingdoms of India before the Buddha's time⁶. Shortly after the Buddha's death Ajātasattu is said to have been fortifying his capital, Rājagaha, in anticipation of an attack by Pajjota of Avanti⁷. The king of the Sūrasenas, at Madhura, in the Buddha's time, was called Avantiputto; and was therefore almost certainly the son of a princess of Avanti⁸. The Lalita-vistara gives the personal name of the king of Madhura in the year of the Buddha’s birth as Subāhu¹, and this may be the same person.

v1.c19.s5.2

⁵ *Buddhist India*, 4-7.

v1.c19.s5.3

⁶ Above, p. 172. Cf. *Jāt.* IV, 390.

v1.c19.s5.4

⁷ *M.* III, 7.

v1.c19.s5.5

⁸ *M.* II, 83.

v1.c19.s5.6

¹ Ed. Rajendralal Mitra, p. 24.

v1.c19.s5.7

Avanti became from the first an important centre of the new doctrine we now call Buddhism (in India it was not so called till centuries later). Several of the most earnest and zealous adherents of the *Dhamma* were either born or resided there. Abhaya Kumāra is mentioned² and Isidāsī³ and Isidatta⁴ and Dhammapāla⁵ and Soṇa Kuṭikaṇṇa⁶, and especially Mahā-Kaccāna⁷. The last of these is stated to have been called by the Buddha the most pre-eminent of those of his disciples able to expound at length, both as to form and meaning, that which had been said in short. The last but one, Soṇa, was in a similar way declared to be the most eminent of the disciples distinguished for beauty of expression⁸. In what language were they supposed to have exercised these literary gifts? It was certainly not the religious language then current in the priestly schools of Brāhmanism. This archaic form of speech which has been preserved in the Brāhmaṇas and Upanishads was called by the grammarians *chhāndasa*, ‘the language of *chhandas* or Vedic poetry,’ to distinguish it from the *laukika* or ‘secular’ language; and the Buddha had expressly forbidden his ‘word’ to be put into *chhandas*. Each disciple was to speak the word in his own dialect⁹. It would be a mistake, however, to be misled by the ambiguities of the word dialect, and to suppose it to mean here the language as spoken by any peasantry. The higher ethics and philosophy of ‘the Word’ could not be discussed in any such dialect. Now for two or three generations before the birth of the Buddha, the so-called Wanderers¹⁰ were in the habit of passing from Avanti to Sāvatthi, from Takkasilā to Champā, discussing in the vernacular, wherever they went or stayed, precisely such questions. They had invented or adapted abstract words and philosophical or ethical terms useful for their purpose, and equally current in all the dialects; while during the same period there had been developed in the rising kingdoms, and especially in Kosala (in the very centre of the regions covered by the Wanderers, and by far the largest and most important of them all) the higher terms necessary for legal and administrative purposes. Just as the Christians adopted for their propaganda, not classical Greek but the Greek of the *Koinē*, the varying dialect understood through all the coasts and islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, which they found ready to their hands; so the Buddha and his followers adopted this common form of vernacular speech, varying no doubt slightly from district to district, which they found ready to their hands. The particular form of this common speech, the then Hindustānī, in which the Pāli Canon was composed, was almost certainly, as the present writer ventured to suggest nearly forty years ago on historical grounds¹, and as Professor Franke contends on philological grounds², the form that was current in Avanti³. If that be so, it could be said that Buddhism, born in Nepāl, received the garb in which we now know it in Avanti, in the far West of India. It is true that no such curt summary of a great movement can be sufficient. But this would be nearer to the facts than that other summary, so often put forward as convenient, that Buddhism arose in Magadha and that its original tongue was Māgadhī⁴.