Pali Literature and Language c5.28

c5.28

VIII. A concensus of opinion regarding the home of the dialect on which Pāli is based has therefore not been achieved.⁵ Windisch ⁶ therefore falls back on the old tradition—and I am also inclined to do the same—according to which Pāli should be regarded as a form of Māgadhī, the language in which Buddha himself had preached. This language of Buddha was however surely no purely popular dialect, but a language of the higher and cultured classes which had been brought into being already in pre-Buddhistic times through the needs of intercommunication in India.¹ Such a *lingua franca* naturally contained elements of all the dialects, but was surely free from the most obtrusive dialectical characteristics. It was surely not altogether homogeneous. A man from the Magadha country must have spoken it in one way, and a man from the districts of Kosala and Avanti in another, just as in Germany the high German of a cultured person from Württemberg, Saxony or Hamburg shows in each case peculiar characteristic features. Now, as Buddha, although he was no Magadhan himself, displayed his activities mainly in Magadha and the neighbouring countries, the Māgadhī dialect might have imprinted on his language its own characteristic stamp. This language could have therefore been well called Māgadhī even if it avoided the grosseest dialectal peculiarities of this language. As Windisch has rightly pointed out, after the death of the master, a new artificial language must have been evolved out of the language of Buddha. Attempts were made to retain the teachings of Buddha in authentic form, and to impose this form also upon those portions which, although derived from the monastic organisations of the various provinces, were gradually incorporated into the canon. In connection with the designation of the canonical language as Māgadhī, Windisch also refers to the Ārṣa, the language of the Jaina-suttas. It is called Ardha-Māgadhī, i.e., "half-Māgadhī." Now it is surely significant that the Ardha Māgadhī differs from Māgadhī proper on similar points as Pāli.² For Ardha-Māgadhī too does not change the *r* into *l*, and in the noun inflexion it shows the ending *-o* instead of Māgadhic *-e* at least in many metrical pieces. On the other hand, as I believe to have myself observed, there are many remarkable analogies precisely between Ārṣa and Pāli in vocabulary and morphology. Pāli therefore might be regarded as a kind of Ardha-Māgadhī. I am unable to endorse the view, which has apparently gained much currency at present, that the Pāli canon is translated from some other dialect (according to Lüders, from old Ardha-Māgadhī). The peculiarities of its language may be fully explained on the hypothesis of (*a*) a gradual development and integration of various elements from different parts of India, (*b*) a long oral tradition extending over several centuries, and (*c*) the fact that the texts were written down in a different country.