Брайан Левман пишет:
Standard Epigraphic Prakrit is not that much different from standard Pāli, as Norman has pointed out. The Oldest Pali manuscript is Pali and dates to around the 9th century AD, approx. 1000 years older than the earliest epigraphic records. There are words we don’t quite understand, but most of it if fairly standard, as one would have expected at his time, centuries after the standardization of the commentaries by Buddhaghosa.
Pali as a language is fairly phonologically advanced (most conjuncts have been retained or restored, lost or weakened intervocalic consonants have been replaced, absolutive has been Sanskritized to
–tvā, instead of Prk.
–ttā, some consonant clusters, like
brāhmaṇa,
br- have been restored, etc., ). It is a mixed language and often contains both eastern, western and Sanskritized forms, like
ayya and
ariya for Skt.
ārya (“noble”).
In my research I argue that Pali is an adaptation/translation of an earlier language which I identify as a
koine, that is a trade or administrative language common to north India, an inter-dialect language which reduced linguistic variability by dialect levelling and simplification, through elimination of interdialect phonological differences which impede understanding, and harmonization of the different dialects to a common language intelligible across all dialects. This dialect can be discovered by comparing different recensions with cognate forms that have come down to us, and reconstructing the underlying form. A synopsis of the main points of my theis may be found in the journal article “The language of early Buddhism” which may be found here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296633207_The_language_of_early_BuddhismThe earliest manuscripts that we have of Buddhism are from Gāndhāri (around the first century BCE to the first century CE, and almost a millennium older than the Nepalese Vinaya ms). Gāndhāri is an earlier language than Pali in phonological terms as it drops or weakens a lot of intervocalic consonants, changes aspirates to stops, etc., and is probably the language closest to this Middle Indic
koine which I argue was the earliest recoverable language of Buddhism.
The language of the earliest Buddhist radition and by extension the language(s) that the Buddha spoke is a very complex problem, because of the complicated dialect geography in north India at the time the Buddha lived, and because of the presence of several other non-Indic languages (proto-Dravidian, proto-Munda, and proto Tibetan to name only three) whose different phonology influenced the Indo Aryan Prakrits. I discuss some of the issues in the paper above
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/palistudy/conversations/messages/4883
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Тема: Пали и буддийский санскрит: история происхождения (Прочитано 28590 раз)