The Language of the Buddhist Sanskrit Texts

John Brough
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 16, No. 2.
(1954), pp. 351-375.
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THE LANGUAGE OF THE BUDDHIST SANSKRIT TEXTS

By JOHN
BROUGH

HEN Buddhist works in Sanskrit were first introduced into Europe, it was
at once obvious that the language of some of them as it appears in the
manuscripts was, in comparison with Classical Sanskrit, frequently ungrammatical, and on occasion barbarously so. The immediate and natural reaction
of scholars accustomed to the regularity of Sanskrit was to stigmatize these
shortcomings, and to attempt to remove as many irregularities as possible by
forcibly emending the text. I t was, however, very soon recognized that many
of the seeming anomalies could not be abolished, and that they must be accepted
as genuine in their own context. This was especially clear in the case of the
verses of some of the older texts, where the metre often guaranteed nonPiiqinean forms ; and the language of these verses, variously called the Giithiidialect, mixed Sanskrit, or hybrid Sanskrit, was recognized as something in its
own right. The same courtesy was readily extended to the prose of the Mahivastu, which in places could only have been made to resemble Sanskrit by
completely rewriting the text. The prose of the other texts, being in many ways
virtually Sanskrit, took considerably longer to win the same recognition ; but
for many years now it has been generally admitted that here also is a language
which must be judged according to its own standards, and not exclusively by
the canons of classical Sanskrit grammar.
I t is possible, however, for an editor to accept all this in principle, and yet
to be in serious doubt when trying to establish a text ; for unless he has a
grammatical norm against which to measure his text, he is unable to apply the
diagnostic test of grammatical abnormality, which in classical Sanskrit or in
Latin would often provide the first hint that a passage is probably corrupt.
Hitherto, editors have had to make shift with the classical grammar and
dictionary, supplemented by their own memory of other Buddhist texts. But
the lack of a systematic study of Buddhist Sanskrit has frequently resulted in
over-correction by editors, and a considerable number of the published texts
really require re-editing.
I n these circumstances it is a matter of great satisfaction to all who are concerned in this field that Professor Franklin Edgerton has now published a grammar and dictionary of Buddhist Sanskrit.1 This is a major work, the fruit of many
years' careful study, and it must remain for a long time to come a vade mecum
for future editors of Buddhist texts. Indeed, it is probably not an exaggeration
to say that it may well determine for a generation the attitude of young editors
towards their texts. For this reason I should like to discuss a number of
questions arising out of the work in rather more detail than is customary in
a review. But I would ask the reader to remember that, although some of these
1 Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary ; and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Reader.
Yale University Press, 1953. See also below, p. 421.
VOL. XVI. PART 2.
25

352

J. BROUGH

matters are important, the total of my criticism concerns only a relatively

small part of the work ; and I should not wish it to be thought that I am in
any way lacking in appreciation of the great value of the work as a whole, or
in gratitude for the enormous labour bestowed by the author on his task.
Rather, most of what I have to say is in the nature of a few additional footnotes
and adjustments, together with a few suggestions to indicate a possible direction
for future work in this field.
Both Grammar and Dictionary are confined to reporting forms and words
or meanings which do not occur in Classical Sanskrit. I t follows that a reader
would get a most distorted picture of the language from reading only the
Grammar, which, being a systematic collection of anomalies, is serviceable only
to one who already knows the texts. There is of course no ground for complaint
in this. I t is in the result primarily a grammar of the ' gathl ' language, and
it cannot claim to provide a complete grammatical picture of the Buddhist
Sanskrit texts as a whole. Indeed, it is doubtful whether an editor of a Buddhist
Tantra, or a medieval verse Avadlna-text, would get very much direct help
from the Grammar, although the Dictionary u~ouldof course be valuable. The
material is arranged in the Grammar according to the categories of classical
Sanskrit, and while this procedure is satisfactory as providing a ready means
of reference, it occasionally induces explanations which seem to me unjustified.
For example, nouns ending in -a frequently occur in verses as plurals and the
direct object of verbs ; and it would doubtless be sufficient to say of these
that they are simply uninflected or stem forms (a situation which is admitted
for the singular in 8.3 ff.),l and that their plurality and their status as direct
object arise from the context. To say that they represent a metrical shortening
of -a, which is itself a nominative plural used in the sense of the accusative,
is to tie the grammar into quite unnecessary knots (8.94). In the same way it
seems unnecessarily complicated to say that in anyatra karma sukrtad the form
karma is an ablative of an a-stem for an la-stem, i.e, for *karmi(t), with metrical
shortening of -a (8.9). The alternative explanation simply as a stem-form,
admitted in 17.13, seems much to be preferred ; and it may perhaps be
suggested that in instances like this the inflexion of sukrtad was felt to belong
to the phrase as a whole.
As already remarked, many of the published texts are badly edited, and
Edgerton has supplemented them wherever possible by making full use of
manuscript variants when these are reported by editors ; and in the course of
the work he has many valuable corrections and emendations to suggest. While
the work will naturally be very useful to those who simply wish to read and
understand Buddhist Sanskrit, its chief value will undoubtedly lie in the fact
that it will assist future editors to produce better editions ; and it is chiefly
from the point of view of editors that the following is written.
As we have noted, there has always been a tendency for editors to lean too
much towards correct classical Sanskrit. Edgerton, in reaction against this,
1

References in figures with no other indication are to the sections of the Grammar.

THE LANGUAGE O F THE BUDDHIST SANSKRIT TEXTS

353

goes to the other extreme, and in the preface to the Reader he propounds a
principle for editors : ' Any non-Sanskritic form presented in the MSS. must,
in general, be regarded as closer to the original form of the text than a " correct "
Sanskrit variant '. The term ' non-Sanskritic '-which would cover all sorts of
copyists' blunders-is modified a few lines later into ' Middle Indic or semiMiddle Indic '. Even this, however, seems to me to go much too far. On some
occasions, which we shall note below, apparently middle-Indian forms can very
easily result from scribal error ; and in some contexts (in the semi-kivya style,
for example) any markedly non-Sanskrit form would be highly improbable.
We shall return to this point later. Edgerton adds that this principle is not to
be applied mechanically ; that the context, as well as variant manuscript
readings, will vary from case to case, and each must be separately studied.
My fear is that, from excessive reaction against earlier editions, editors may
not take this caveat sufficiently to heart, and that we may have a crop of bad
editions comparable to the notorious edition of the Xvayarnbhupuriqa, where
the Brahman editor, considering that Buddhists could not be expected to write
good Sanskrit, seems to have put into his text deliberately numerous copyists'
errors from the manuscripts.
It seems to me that Edgerton throughout rather underestimates the degree
of accidental transmissional corruption which our texts may have suffered,
and many of his notes seem to imply that at least the archetype of our manuscripts must be correct, except in those places where more Sanskritic forms
have been intentionally introduced. I t may be that an unreasoning confidence
in the accuracy of the scribe's hand and eye is traditional in these studies ; for
in 1916 we find Liiders writing l: ' For sragsitavin the Nepalese MSS. read
sagiritavan. The correct reading undoubtedly is sragsitavi~a,but it is difficult
to understand how this should have been replaced by sagiritavin, unless we
assume that the original reading was a Prakrit form, such as, e.g. sagsitavi.
This has been correctly Sanskritized into sragsitava?~
in the fragment, whereas
in the Nepalese version it was wrongly rendered by sagiritavin '. This is
incredible as an argument ; and indeed it does not require much experience
of Nepalese manuscripts to realize that sragsitavin could hardly fail to be read
and transcribed by some copyist or other as sagiritavin, and that a reconstruction from the Prakrit need not enter into the picture here at all. Before it
could have any force, Luders' argument would require assent to the proposition that all textual corruption is interpolation, a dogma of scribal infallibility which few editors would care to hold.
Some of Edgerton's conclusions seem to depend upon a rather similar faith
in the scribes, or at least in the scribe of the archetype. By way of illustration
I shall deal here with a few matters of orthography.
Since most of our texts depend either exclusively or chiefly upon Nepalese
manuscripts, it is desirable to consider the idiosyncrasies of Nepalese scribes in
In ~Tfanuscriptremains of Buddhist Literature found i n E. Turkestan, ed. A. I?. R. Hoernle,
p. 161.

354

J. BROUGH

general before attempting to assess the credibility of their witness in any

particular instance. The main points of spelling are well known, and a few are
mentioned almost as a matter of course in the introductions to editions, but as
they seem to have been accorded rather less weight than is their due, it may
be useful to give a brief account of them here. The following frequently interchange : i and S ; u and G, and ri (seldom ra) ; e, ya, and ye ; o, va, and vo ;
j a and ya ; j'a and gya ; la and ta ; ra and la ; i a and sa ; 8a and kha ; k8a,
cha, khya, and occasionally kha. In many of these, in particular r/l, 9/s, it would
seem that Newar scribes considered the two forms to be merely graphic options,
to be used haphazard according to the fancy of the moment, in much the same
way as the copperplate forms of s and capital T alternate at random in my own
handwriting with forms based on the printed shapes of these letters. In addition
to these options, the use of the superscript r is of interest. Since the following
consonant is regularly doubled, a bond seems to have been established between
a double consonant and a superscript r, and as a result any double consonant
may attract to itself a superscript r. The alternations of spellings with and
without the r then would seem to have led to its occasional use over other
conjuncts and even over single consonants, and to its equally frequent omission
where it is historically required ; and it is hfficult to avoid the impression that
the sign was felt to be a mere ornament of the handxmiting-perhaps playing
a similar prestige role to that of the b in doubt or the c in scissors when these
spellings were first introduced into our own orthography. Most of the following
examples, illustrating the results of some of these spelling habits and of a few
others less frequent, come from the Cambridge manuscript of the A8tamS-vratamihatmya, but similar forms are frequent in most Newari manuscripts. The list
includes only Sanskrit borrowings (though the same fluctuations in spelling
appear also in Newari words), and the standard Sanskrit spelling is almost
always equally permissible.
vake (vakya) ; arbhigyaka (abhi~eka); sarvage (sarvajpa) ; yojpakvara (yogeivara) ; jagya (yajpa) ; jvajpa (yogya) ; dyervva (deva) ; rvyara (vela, for Class.
vela) ; rmEra (mira) ; rbhikgu (bhlkpu) ; nErma (nama) ; urttama, urttarma,
uttarmma (uttama) ; burddha (buddha) ; vasirtha (vasiptha) surga (sukha) ;
nimirtti, nimisti, nimistri (nimitti) ; dullabha (durllabha) ; vEttE (virttl) ;
jalma, jarlma, jarnma, jarmma, jamma, jartma, jatma (janma) ; yarma, janma
(yama) ; nilmala, nilmara, nirlma [perhaps intended to be read as nirmla]
(nirmala) ; likhi (I@) ; ZEjakura (rljakula) ; kyd& (krida) ; dharmEtramE,
dhatmtitramti (dharmatml) ; mokga (miircha) ; bhavikga (bhavieya) ; chichirika
[monk's staff: cf. Dict. svv. khakkhara, khakhar/a(ka), khikkhira, and add to
references under khankharaka, Gilgit MSS., vol. iii, 2, p. 142, and p. x ; given
by Hodgson, Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepal and
Tibet, p. 141, as khikshari ; in the Sanskrit text of the PEpa-parimocana, 27,
as kiikgirikE, kcikgTrZ].
Now, although the above examples come from Newar scribes writing Newari
texts, almost all of these vagaries can occur when the same scribes write Sanskrit

THE LANGUAGE O F THE BUDDHIST SAXSKRIT TEXTS

355

manuscripts. I n most of the latter, however, such spellings are decidedly less
frequent than in Newari. This is an important point, since it shows that the
scribes did not learn such habits from Sanskrit manuscripts, and it is therefore
not possible to argue that some of these aberrations are due to the form in
which the Sanskrit tradition had been handed down. The scribes apparently
were quite aware that there was a norm of Sanskrit spelling and attempted for
the most part to follow it when copying a Sanskrit text. But even the best of
them are liable on occasion to introduce Newari spellings, and most Nepalese
Sanskrit manuscripts show a fair number.
In the light of these considerations, it appears that a number of manuscript
spellings quoted in Edgerton's Grammar are not in any way evidence for the
forms of the original texts. Thus, for example, he says (1.32), ' The BHS
occurrences of 1 for r are balanced by a substantial number of r for I,' and in
2.49 he gives a list of both changes : ankula, kala (for kara), Kubela, vicilana,
panjala, abhin-ira, kira (for kila), raghu, i-itara, sakara, etc. Since no doubts
are expressed, and since these forms are allowed to appear in the Dictionary,
it would seem that he accepted them as genuine. But since any initial or
intervocalic r or 1 may be written on any given occasion as 1 or r respectively
(less frequently in conjuncts, though even here it occurs from time to time),
it is clear that spellings such as the above can give us no information at all.
This is so even if at any given point all the available manuscripts agree.
A typical example is provided by the bird-name karavinka/kalavinka. Both
forms are entered in the Dictionary, and it is, of course, recognized that both
denote the same bird, since they occur in identical stereotyped contexts.
(Incidentally, it seems unlikely that the Indian cuckoo is meant, since kokila,
the common name for the latter, occurs alongside kalavinka in lists of birdnames.) Under karavinka the note is added : ' In meaning = Pali karavT,
-vika ; in form a blend of this with kalavinka, which in Skt. = sparrow '. But
Pali also has kalavinka, and it seems most probable that we have here two
dialectally different Middle Indian forms of the same word, kalavinka and
karavzka (which may, of course, have subsequently been differentiated in
meaning). In the Buddhist Sanskrit texts, however, the citations in the
Dictionary present only karavinka twice from the Lalitavistara, and kalavinka
thrice. I should, therefore, have no hesitation in attributing the variation
simply to the scribes, and restoring kalavinka everywhere in Sanskrit. If, on
the other hand, a form in -vTka were to turn up in a Buddhist Sanskrit text,
then an editor might incline towards the spelling karavika, on the basis of the
Pali evidence (whether his manuscripts had -1- or -r-) : though even here a
doubt would still be possible, in view of the normal scribal indifference concerning both the vowel-length and the employment or omission of the anusv6ra.
With regard to the sibilants, a doubt is indeed expressed (2.56) that ' corruptions in the tradition are very much to be suspected in this case '. But again,
since virtually any s may be written as S, and vice versa, the list in 2.63 cannot
tell us anything. Even the sporadic appearance of -it- for -st-, of which two

356

J. BROUGH

examples are quoted in 2.61, is not convincing, since the interchange also
appears optionally in Newari spelling, for example asti and agti (Skt. asthi),
both of which occur within a few lines of one another in the Newari version
of the Pcipaparimocana. If therefore we accept the reading agtayga (see
Dict. s.v.) for astayga in LV 390.8, it will be only because of the first of
Edgerton's arguments, namely the play upon words with actam in the following
line, though it may be felt that this is rather slender support for an isolated
anomaly. (I should like to suggest here that the entry which follows in the
Dictionary, AgtabhuginZ, the gotra of the nakeatra Revati, Divy. 641.11, may
perhaps be emended to Artabhcigini. This emendation would imply the converse of the type of misspelling noted above in Vasirtha for Basi,stha, and
would produce a well-attested gotra-name.)
In the same way, the frequent aberrations of the superscript r make it most
improbable that adhivattati (2.11) is really an example of assimilation. The
form is quoted from one manuscript in a single passage (Mv. i.269.15), and
because it coincides in spelling with the Pali form-quite accidentally, in my
view-Edgerton (Dict. s.v.) suggests that it should be introduced into the
text. But it seems unlikely that we have here an original reading which other
manuscripts have independently Sanskritized ; whereas it is quite natural to
suppose that the force of the r had resulted in a double consonant in an older
copy, and that the ' optional' superscript had afterwards been omitted.
Precisely analogous to this is a spelling of a personal name, Dharnmasiyha,
which I have seen on an 18th century Nepalese bronze figure, where Dharnmais not to be directly connected with the Pali assimilation of -rm-, but is a comparatively recent orthographic variant for -rrnm-. In the same way, there
is no reason to consider dullabha to result from an early assimilation of -rl- in
durlabha: rather, it is merely an alternative spelling for durllabha. Such
spellings may perhaps reflect Nepalese pronunciations, but they are not in
themselves sufficient evidence for the original
texts.
The converse of this situation appears in the spelling marjjay, marjay, for
Skt. majjan, in Mv. i.20.2. Senart retains in his text the form with -r-, but
Edgerton here is rightly doubtful, remarking that if the form is to be kept,
it is hyper-Skt. In view of the known propensities of the scribes in this matter,
the -r- can be banished from the text without hesitation.
A doubt likewise attaches to some of the forms in 2.34 ( jfor y, and y for j).
A single occurrence each of jakrt for yakyt (LV 208.18, where in any case a v.1.
ya- is reported), and Yarnbhaka for Jambhaka (Mv. ii.112.6) is hardly enough
to justify their acceptance. The spelling an6rjay for anaryay (Nv. ii.79.3) is
again typically Newari, and can hardly be accepted as valid on the basis of
this single appearance.
Forms such as tydhd, tyvidhay, rnyyati, are quoted as examples of ' hyperSanskrit ' formations, and the description may be accepted, provided that
it is understood that the culprit is again in all probability the scribe. Similarly,
a ' hyper-Sanskrit ' spelling such as trikcutto has very little claim on an editor,

THE LANGUAGE O F THE BUDDHIST SANSKRIT TEXTS

357

and should doubtless be interpreted as trikhutto (Skt. -kytvaJ. For the scribal
variants in this word, see Dict., s.v. krtva).
I t seems to me that the normal confusion between e, ya, and ye makes it
quite impossible to be certain whether the feminine oblique-case ending was
-6ye or -6ya, or whether both were used by the authors of the texts. Edgerton
(p. 63), taking the manuscript readings at their face value, remarks that their
distribution among the several texts is peculiar ; -aye is almost restricted to
the Mah&vastu where it is commoner than -6ya ; while the latter is common
in the verses of other texts, though -6ye also occurs. But it is doubtful whether
this really carries us beyond the spelling habits of the scribe of the archetype
of our Alahtivastu manuscripts, which, as Senart recognized, must be of
relatively recent date. The alternative in -6e is much rarer than the other two,
presumably because the scribes were aware that this sort of hiatus should not
occur in a Sanskritic text. On one occasion where it does occur, in the word
imtie, Edgerton remarks that one manuscript has imtiya : but for a Nepalese
scribe this is the same reading. There would certainly be no justification for
accepting -6e into the text, in spite of the fact that it is the normal Prakrit
form ; and the choice between -aye and -6ya can only be certain when the
quantity of the final syllable is metrically determined.
An interesting example where this alternation e:ya:ye may be applied to
the interpretation of the text can be seen in SP. 209.5 (9.65). Here the Central
Asian version has paraTpar6ya tatha anyamanyam ; but the Nepalese recension
has paranjpar6 eva tathtinyarnanyarn, where paran~par6is interpreted as an
instrumental. This is clearly intended to mend the metre, and to get
- rid of the
hiatus in tatha anya- ; but it would be strange if this were done only at the
expense of introducing a new hiatus. I would suggest that e is here written
for ye, and an editor of the Nepalese recension should, therefore, read paraypardy' eva.
Closely linked to these orthographical questions are a few where the chief
consideration is palzographical. The most striking of these is the acceptance
by Edgerton of the forms ygiti, ytiti, ylla. Of ytiti (Dict.) he says, ' But for the
repeated occurrence one might suspect a merely graphic corruption for Skt.
jhat-iti (var. jhag-iti) ' ; and under ylla, ' Senart . . . was inclined to think the
word a graphic error for jhalla, as was Burnouf ; but he kept the MSS. reading,
which seems too common to emend.' Here I think we ought to be much bolder,
and reject all these forms as monstrosities. The sequences yt-, y1- are, if I am
not mistaken, strangers to the normal phonological patterns of Sanskrit ; and
while this may be no fundamental objection for a quasi-onomatopoeia, it
would still be an extraordinary coincidence if the Sanskrit pair jhatiti, jhagiti
were matched by a Buddhist pair ytiti, ygiti, and still more surprising if jhalla,
already provided with a partner in the jingle jhalla-malla-, should have a
synonym (which also usurps its place in the compound with rnalla) distinguished
from it in most Nepalese writing only by a single short stroke. The repeated
occurrence of these forms, which has been relied upon to justify their reality,

358

J. BROUGH

means simply that jha- has repeatedly been misread as r-, either by scribes or
by editors. (The spelling rigiti in the Mah6vyutpatti, if genuine, would show that
scribes were quite capable of this misreading.)
Equally suspect, I feel, are the 3rd plural optative and aorist forms in
-itsu(b), -etsu(b), etc. These again are accepted as real by Edgerton, and indeed
it would almost seem that he gives them preference whenever they appear in
the manuscripts. Two alternative explanations are suggested (32.97, 98) :
either -ensu(b) has become *-elztsu(b),and then, with ' denasalization ', -etsu($) ;
or the singular in -et has engendered a plural -et-su, on the analogy of aorists in
-i, -i-gu. The second of these explanations would mean that this form is in
origin entirely distinct from those in -eysu(b), -ensu(b) ; but if this is so, we
are none the less forced to admit that the scribes have so completely entangled
it with them that it would be a hopeless task to recognize it now with certainty.
The other explanation implies a historical development which is admittedly
possible ; and indeed there is evidence that it did take place in one Prakrit
dia1ect.l But it would be hazardous to connect the present situation directly
with this. I t is true that the explanation permits -etsu(b) to remain historically
linked with -ensu(b) ; but it does not explain the apparently haphazard alternation in the manuscripts. Further, if -ns- had really developed historically here
to -ts-, it might seem probable that only the latter ought to have survived ; or,
if forms of different ages are to be assumed as appearing in the same text,
the intermediate form in -nts- or -rgts- might have been reasonably expected to
occur also ; and so far as I am aware, it never does. The scatter of the forms
in the manuscripts shows beyond any doubt that -ysu, -nsu, and -tsu are three
ways of writing what to the scribe was the same form ; and there is no reason
to doubt that they represent a single form for the authors of the texts also. If
this be accepted, then it seems that an editor must make a choice between the
-t- and the nasal. The choice between -rg- and -n- is a different, and less important question. But the fact that -rg- does occur, coupled with the evidence
from other Middle I n l a n sources, decides absolutely in favour of the nasal.
Thus, we shall also accept abhdrgsu rather than abhdtsu, comparing (as Edgerton
does) the ASokan ahuysu ; and we shall emend tisitsu to tisirgsu (or tisirgsu),
comparing the Pali tisirgsu.
Edgerton, however, urges strongly that we must admit that the author of
the Mahtivastu actually used the form in -etsu(b). ' As to -etsu(b) ', he writes
(32.96). ' I cannot believe that the hundreds of occurrences in Mv are all manuscript corruptions, as Senart assumes. Why should copyists introduce secondarily such a monstrous-seeming form, in such a regular and constant way ? '
See. T. Burrow, The Language of the Kharogthi Documents from Chinese Turkestan, p. 19
(e.g., maytsa for miLysa) ; also the Prakrit Dhammapada, ed. H. W . Bailey, BSOAS., xi, mhich
has satiana, satbara, ahitba for saysanna, saysdra, ahiysb respectively ; and also bhametbu
(previously read by Senart bhamerjsu), mhich is strikingly like the forms under discussion here.
The Pali version (Dhp. 371) has bhuvassu, which editors have emended to bhamassu, on the
basis of the Prakrit passage. But the whole situation here appears still to await a satisfactory
explanation.

THE LAFGUAGE O F THE BUDDHIST SANSKRIT TEXTS

359

This is a most dangerous argument, and while the task of editors would certainly
be much easier if its implications could be accepted, it attributes to the scribes
a degree of literal trustworthiness far beyond their deserts. I t is true that the
manuscripts of a given text provide our primary evidence, but none the less
they must always be read in conjunction with all the other information at our
disposal, and in particular the knowledge derived from the rest of the literature,
and the knowledge of scribal habits derived from manuscripts of other texts.
Edgerton's argument, if rigidly applied, would in some texts force us, for
example, to print nisphala for .izigphala, since the spelling with the dental -s- is,
within my experience, almost universal in Nepalese manuscripts, though it is
not mentioned by Edgerton in the grammar, and I do not remember having
met it in an edition. The same reasoning would compel the adoption in other
texts of jatma for janma, since some manuscripts know of no other writing of
the word. In practice, editors restore nigphala and janma as readily as they
differentiate b and v in their texts, although Nepalese (and many other northern)
manuscripts distinguish them not a t all.
And as for the form -nsub itself, it is possible to point to one instance where
the stenlma codicum shows beyond doubt that a whole group of manuscripts
have the spelling -tsub ' introduced secondarily ', namely Suvarqabhasottamasiitra, p. 241.6. Here the manuscripts ACF have abhistavitsub, while BDE
read -stavinsub, and G shows -stavimu, which is clearly a miscopying of
-stavi(q)su. This is one of the few texts where, thanks to the very careful
edition by Nobel, the stemma is crystal clear. Denoting lost manuscripts by
Greek letters, it is as follows :
Archetype

If the readings quoted are viewed against this stemma, it is virtually

certain that the archetypal reading was -nsu(b) or -qsu(b)-at all events, with
the nasal-and that the alteration to -tsu$ was introduced secondarily somewhere in the neighbourhood of the point /3. Any other explanation would
involve coincidences so improbable that they need not be considered.
The explanation here of the ' regular and constant way ' in which -tsu($)
is written in these forms may perhaps be sought more in graphic than in

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J. BROUGH

linguistic considerations. In some forms of the Central Asian scripts, for

example, the appearance of n and t is very similar ; and it may well be that
a t some stage in the development of Nepalese writing there was a genuine
coalescence in graphic forms of conjuncts such as -ts- and -ns-, -tm- and -nm-.
If this is so, then it may be that, in the older Nepalese manuscripts at least,
the shapes which from their appearance we transcribe as -ts-, -tm-, were actually
intended by the scribes as -ns-, -nm-. Alternatively, the confusion may simply
have started through straightforward misreading of archaic exemplars. However this may be, it is certain that some later scribes considered that they had
two alternatives for their free choice. Where the second member of the conjunct
is m (graphically close to s), this alternation has clearly been assisted by the
normal sandhi of t before a following m. In a number of places I have seen
phrases like tan me, with a tail added to the n in a second hand, thus producing
tat me. I t would seem that a reader of the manuscript, either for his own
reassurance or in teaching a pupil, has ' restored ' the basic grammatical form.
From instances of this sort, some scribes may have even derived the feeling
that the perverse writing looked more learned than the other, and for this
reason introduced it elsewhere also. The following examples illustrating the
confusion in both directions are taken from a single manuscript (K) of the
Xubhatita-ratna-karaqda of Arya-i~ra: verse 64, jatmatya-loke (for yan
martya-) ; 71, irzman sukha- (for irimat) ; 80, dnmd (for atma) ; 123, bh5tCt
samCivEsayate (for bhztan, acc. plu.) ; 129, mathat satva- (for mathan, acc. plu.) ;
167, nEnmakymena (for niitmakrameqa) ; 174, anmanam (for atmanam) ; 194,
syin kuryat (for sylt). The last example shows that the alternation of t and n
is not confined to conjuncts with -s and -m, though most frequently found with
these. Another manuscript of the same text has in verse 107 tan pratra- for
tat pitra-. This work, I should add, is in good classical Sanskrit, and no editor
could in any case dream of accepting into his text such forms as mathat or
bhztlt as accusative plurals.
In view of all this, and in spite of the frequency of -etsu(b)in the manuscripts
of the Mahivastu, I should without hesitation follow Senart in rejecting these
forms entirely. Likewise, vihatsyase (31.24) should be emended to vihansyase
(or vihavpyase).
Nepalesg manuscripts are decidedly poor witnesses for anusvfira and visarga.
These are readily dropped or inserted in the wrong places, even in texts which
are indisputably in real Sanskrit ; and it seems therefore that an accusative
singular in -a for -av need not necessarily be original, unless justified by metre.
The same doubt would be in order with regard to some of the apparent acc. pl.
masc. forms in -as, etc., since out of eleven examples cited (8.93), seven are
If the writing is careful, they ought not to be confused. In the manuscript of the Kalpamimaqiitika (ed. with selected facsimiles by Luders, Kleinere Samkrit-Texte, ii), the distinction
between tm and nm is perfectly clear, and an editor could hardly be forgiven for mistaking one
for the other. This, however, does not mean that a scribe, who did not necessarily understand
what he was writing, might not on occasion have slipped even in copying an exemplar as clear
as this.

THE LAVGUAGE OF THE BUDDHIST SAXSKRIT TEXTS

36 1

followed by c- or t-, and may equally well intend, for all the manuscripts can
s The two dots, as used for the visa~ga,are fretell us, -%pi c- and - 6 ~ t-.
quently employed in Newari manuscripts simply as a mark of punctuation,
and this usage has occasionally found its way into Sanskrit manuscripts also.
A distinction is sometimes made by writing the visarga as two small circles,
or in the shape of a figure 8 ; but a confusion is possible, and editors should
be on their guard. As an example, I may quote the apparent form Erabhyab,
a-hich occurs thrice in the Cambridge manuscript of the Pcipaparimocana
for the absolutive Crabhya. The other manuscripts, however, supply the normal
form ; and although Edgerton's principle would incline us to accept Crabhyab
(we should then doubtless explain it as a hyper-Sanskritism), I have little doubt
that it arose simply from an earlier manuscript a-hich used the two dots with
the force of a comma.
Palzeographic considerations may also perhaps be called on to help to
explain the strange form bhitatka, physician, about a-hich Edgerton is rightly
doubtful (2.38). The form occurs thrice in the edition of the SP ; but elsewhere it appears as bhitagka, which is also the form reported from the Paris
manuscript. Edgerton adds, ' One cannot help wondering where Kern and
Nanjio got their reading bhitatka, allegedly found in all their MSS.'. I suspect
the answer lies in the fact that in many hands g in the conjunct closely
resembles t and that the manuscripts did in fact read bhitagka. If it be not too
hazardous, I would tentatively suggest that this may in its turn have arisen
from a misunderstanding of a reading h ~
where
, the dot denoted not
the nasal, but the doubling of the consonant, so that the correct reading would
be bhitakka, formally identical with the Pali. This use of the dot to show a
doubled consonant is familiar in Prakrit in South Indian manuscripts,
but i t
seems to have occurred sporadically in the North also. A good example appears
in the DhvanyCloka, ad iii, 36, where the editions, with the northern as well as
the southern manuscripts, read targsa, though tassa is clearly required.
A word should be said here about the frequent use in the Grammar of the
argument : ' so the majority of the MSS.'. This is a ghost which refuses to be
laid, in spite of the efforts of generations of critics. Only if the manuscripts
are related in descent in quite specific ways is a simple majority good evidence
for the archetypal reading. An example to the contrary is provided by the
Suvarq,abhCsottama-sutra,where the six manuscripts ABCDEF are all descended
from an interpolated copy (see the stemma given above), and when they are
united in opposition to G, which is independent and relatively free from interpolation, they are as often as not wrong. On the other hand, the agreement
of G with any one of the interpolated group, even against the united testimony
of all the five others, is very weighty indeed ; and in such a case the majority
is almost certainly wrong. An example of this (unimportant in itself) may
be seen on p. 52 of Nobel's edition, where F and G read imu, and all the others
ima. Edgerton, on quoting the rare dual form imu from this passage (8.75),
appears to cast doubt on it by adding the note : ' but the majority of MSS.

362

J. BROUGH

ima '. None the less, the agreement of these two manuscripts so much outweighs the remainder that there is an extremely strong presumption that
the archetype read imu, which Nobel accordingly, quite properly, accepts
into his text. It would, of course, be perfectly in order for an editor to go on
from here, and argue that, for such and such reasons, the archetypal reading
itself was corrupt ; and (as a purely hypothetical case) he might even find
cause to believe that the correct reading was in fact ima. But if he did, the one
argument he could ?tot use is that it occurs in ABCDE, which could only show
it by several lucky scribal emendations. The twin ghost, the ' best manuscript ',
appears equally frequently ; but it would be otiose at this date to reiterate
Housman on this point, and I content myself with the single observation that
in any given place the ' best ' manuscript may be wrong, and the critic must
decide without reference to this label, which is, after all, only attached to the
manuscript by other critics.
In the foregoing paragraphs I have tried to demonstrate a number of points
on wliich the uncorroborated evidence of Nepalese manuscripts is inconclusive.
I do not, of course, mean to suggest that it is proved that all the examples
quoted of non-Sanskritic forms are necessarily wrong. But whenever these
forms can be shown to be capable of resulting from common Nepalese scribal
practice, I feel that it would be foolhardy of an editor to attribute them to his
text, unless they can be supported by evidence from sources other than
Nepalese. As Edgerton rightly stresses, his principle is not to be applied
mechanically, but the editor must use his judgment in every individual case.
This being so, however, the principle itself may well seem to be superfluous.
Now it is clear that for the bulk of the more Sanskritic part of the Buddhist
writings, the prime criterion against which to measure Nepalese manuscripts
must of necessity be classical Sanskrit itself. If in view,of Edgerton's work
this statement appears reactionary, I should qualify it in the same manner
as he : that the measure is not to be applied mechanically. But we must
always have in the centre of our consideration the fact that the authors of
a very large part of the Buddhist Sanskrit texts extant really did intend to
write Sanskrit. An editor must not, of course, if he can help it, attribute to his
author better Sanskrit than the latter wrote. But it is sometimes an equal
danger to underestimate the author's Sanskrit ability.
It must be freely admitted that in many cases there can, from the nature
of the evidence, be no absolute certainty. The great value of Edgerton's work
is that it now enables us to see at a glance those non-Sanskrit features which
occur sufficiently frequently, over a sufficient range of texts, for us to believe
that these features were accepted as part of the language by the Buddhist
authors themselves. The exceptions are those outlined above, where constantly
recurring features are much more probably to be laid at the door of the scribes.
We should thus, for example, reject jatma and -etsub, because tm and nm,
ts and ns, are so frequently confused in writing, even in word-junctures ; but
on the other hand, I feel we ought to accept the form dhEtvEvaropaqa (for

THE LANGUAGE OF THE BUDDHIST SANSKRIT TEXTS

363

dhitv-avaropaqa), though Edgerton rejects it : since the manuscripts in more

than one text are unanimous for the long vowel,' and-the important pointthe interchange of a and 6 is sufficiently infrequent to make it unlikely that
the manuscripts of different texts should have chanced upon the same mistake.
In the absence of this sort of constancy of occurrence, isolated anomalies
must always remain uncertain. This is not to say that they are necessarily
heydpeva are not logically impossible. But if a simple graphical
wrong-;rat
explanation can derive a given rarity from a normal form, an editor must give
this fact due weight. Thus, while only two examples are quoted (4.26) of the
elision of final -i, both from verses of the Lalitavistara, there seems to be no
very strong reason for doubting them. But on the other hand a form such as
y6durbhEmi, reported from only one place (p. 224 and 24.11) is immediately
suspect, in spite of the antithesis with anturdhami, since it could so easily be
a scribal misreading for -bhomi or a scribal omission of the single sign a in
-bhav6mi. Of other isolated forms, bhihi, which is quoted only twice from the
Mahivastu, seeins in itself to be a not impossible popular formation (though
Edgerton's explanation of it in 30.10 as an aorist injunctive is complicated and
improbable : if real, it could hardly have been felt as anything other than an
imperative). But since elsewhere in the same text, and also in the Lalitavistara
we find bhahi, and since the indicative bhii is known in Prakrit, an editor
might well consider the possibility that bhShi is merely a misreading for blzahi
by the scribe of the archetype. Still less credible is uvacat (33.10) which is
quoted only once, from MahEvastu iii.337.13. Edgerton
notes that a variant
uvEca is also recorded here; but he apparently accepts the weird reading and
adds, ' the aor. avocat no doubt helped to create the form '. I should be most
reluctant to accuse any ancient Indian author of this, and the monstrum
horrendum informe is without doubt the product of mere scribal corruption.
Senart prints it in his text, saying in his note that he had decided not to
suppress this hybrid form, but adding that it was in all probability a mistake.
But there is no chance at all of its being correct. Direct speech is very
frequently indeed introduced in the Mahivastu by the words e t d avocat, and
only slightly less often by etad uvEca. I t seems almost certain that the text here
originally had etad avocat, and that at some stage in the descent a scribe,
copying mechanically, misread the o and wrote etad avacat. A corrector then,
overlooking the final t, and thinking that uvEca was meant, wrote in a u under
the -d. he resulting form has then been copied mechanically by some of our
manuscripts, while others have made the obvious scribal correction to uvEca.
By far the most valuable supplement to the Nepalese information is provided
To Edgerton's references from the Kdragia-uytiha, Dict. s.v. auaropaqa, can now be added
DudviyBaty-av&na, x. Note, however, that in the SubhiLtita-ratna-karaqiaaround which the
Dud. is built, the separate manuscripts have in the colophon here dhiLtvdropaga-, and the text
has only the phrases dhiLtur dropyate, dhiLtoj sarmiropaga-, dhiLtum ciropya. We may then say that
for Buddhist kcivya in correct Sanskrit the form ciropaga only seems to be used, and that the
auadcina form with dua- results from a contamination of the other with ava-.

364

J. BROUGH

by the manuscripts of Buddhist texts found in Central Asia. Indeed, it was

largely due to them that scholars first started seriously to investigate Buddhist
Sanskrit as such. I t was on the basis of fragments of a Central Asian version
of the Saddharrna-puqdarika, differing in numerous details from the known
Nepalese recension, that Luders suggested that many of the Sanskrit Buddhist
texts started off their career in a much more Prakritic form, and that they had
subsequently been gradually Sanskritized by generations of scribes, in differing
ways in different scribal traditions. Edgerton's principle of preferring the less
Sanskrit reading was enunciated by Luders with reference to such texts ; though
from this point of view it ought to apply only to the choice between the readings of
the two recensions, andnot simpliciter to the variants in the Nepalese manuscripts
among themselves. And on many of the points of orthography which are apt to
vex an editor, the Central Asian manuscripts, where they present a correct
Sanskrit form in opposition to a Nepalese spelling, undoubtedly justify the
former ; and it would be a mistake, I feel, to hold that in these matters also
the Sanskrit form in general is a ' correction '.
I t is a great misfortune for Buddhist philology that so little of the vast
literature translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan and Chinese has survived in the
original language ; and although the considerable fragments which have been
recovered from Central Asia in the last half-century do provide us already with
a very good sample of manuscripts much earlier than the Nepalese, each
additional text which comes to light may furnish collateral evidence of great
value for the editor who has to work from Nepalese sources. The volumes so
far published of the texts from Gilgit already show much interesting material,
though unfortunately they reached Edgerton too late to enable him to utilize
them to the full. I t is to be hoped that in due course photographic facsimiles
of these manuscripts will be published, or, if this be too expensive, that at least
microfilm copies might be supplied to the principal libraries, so that their
evidence might be exploited to the best advantage.
Meanwhile Professor Ernst Waldschmidt continues the invaluable work
begun by Liiders of editing the Buddhist Sanskrit fragments from Turfan ;
and I take the opportunity here of noting a few points relevant to our present
purpose from two of the most recent of these publications, the Mah6parinirvaqasctra (MPS) and the Mah&vad&na-siitra(MAS).l The most important general
observation is that these canonical texts seem to show distinctly less Prakritic
tendencies than, for example, the contemporary fragments of the Saddharmapuqdarika. I t is true that Prakritic forms do occur, for example, devanukarnpitappotalj (for -purupzlj) &IPS,p. 13 ; vipakyisya &lAS,pp. 15, 23 (Waldschmidt
wrongly emends to vipakyinas on p. 15) ; janetrs (forjanayitri), ibid., pp. 21,33.
These however are virtually confined to the verses (though janetr5 on p. 21,
25, line 3, may perhaps be in prose) ; and metre occasionally indicates a
Prakritic pronunciation, e.g. MAS, pp. 29, 30, bhavati, several times scanned
as two syllables ; MPS, p. 13, bhavati, two syllables, kalpayati, three syllables :
See also below, p. 421.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE BUDDHIST SAXSKRIT TEXTS

365

though in the same verses pcjayati and bhojayitva must each have their full
four syllables. This last circumstance might perhaps indicate that verses of
this sort are not the result of a simple transposition of a Middle Indian original
into Sanskrit spelling. And in spite of the non-Sanskritic features the verses of
these texts are in general almost as Sanskritic as the prose. Although an
occasional metrical shortening may occur, e.g. MAS, p. 17, mEtE mahivu7ya
prabhikarasya (note also that pr- does not make position: Waldschmidt
wrongly emends to mahmayC), none the less, the most striking of the features
of the hybrid glthas of the Lalitacistara are absent, and it seems hardly likely
that we have here a Sanskritization of an earlier form in hybrid Sanskrit.
Now it is clear that the existence of these texts in relatively correct Sanskrit
already as early as the sixth century A.D. (in some cases even earlier) carries
considerable weight ; and if our Nepalese manuscripts in opposition to them
show in a given place a non-Sanskritic form, then it seems that, other things
being equal, there is a prima facie case for considering the latter to be a
corruption. To take a single example, the occurrence of the spelling Gydhrakcte
in &IPS,p. 7, will justify the restoration of this form in the majority of the texts,
even although the Nepalese manuscripts in most cases favour the (apparently)
semi-Prakritic form GyddhakQte.
I do not of course mean to suggest that the Central Asian manuscripts are in
themselves always better than the Nepalese. Indeed, they are frequently
careless in detail, and sometimes perverse in a manner comparable to the
Nepalese writing of -tsub for -nsub. For example, we find a scribe whose script
clearly distinguishes b and v writing forms such as vuddha and vodhisatva,l
~
while another writes sarvba, p i i r ~ b a ,and
~ a third ~ a t b a . Similarly
we find
occasional confusion of i and 2, though not so frequently as in Nepalese manuscripts, e.g. nyaiidat, sukhaiii (for -EL), eva~gvidha.~Visarga is frequently
dropped, particularly, it would seem, at the end of verses ; but as it also frequently appears in the correct places, its omission is in all probability due for
the most part to scribal carelessness. In one instance at least, drakiyata for
-tab, 3rd person dual, the omission could not be attributed to a Prakritic original.
In spelling conventions, we already find at this early date the typical -8rp
for i n , and ns for ~ g ;s and also 9s' for 799, e.g. viyiati, trivs'at, MAS, pp. 14, 15,
together with the normal spelling with ~ g .Of interest also is yanv aharp, MAS,
p. 22 (for yan nv ahaTg), which is very common in Nepalese manuscripts and
is adopted by some editors, though Edgerton does not mention it. Although it
is doubtless as vulgar as the spelling ' alright ' in English, its occurrence as
early as this clearly gives it as much right to be considered by editors as the
comparable simplifications in satca, etc., which are likewise common both here
and in Nepalese sources.
On the other hand, the Central Asian manuscripts do not seem to show the
typical Nepalese weakness in the confusion of r and I ; and if in individual
1
3

Kleinere Sanskrit-Tezte ii, pp. 203, 207, 208.

Hoernle, -Manuscript Remains, pp. 133 f.
MAS, pp. 13,27,39.

ibid., pp. 29,30.

MAS, p. 35.

366

J. BROUGH

words they should disagree with classical Sanskrit in these letters it is probable
that their evidence should be accepted. Thus sakara, depending only on
Nepalese sources, should be rejected (Edgerton, Dict. s.v., gives only one
reference ; but in Newari manuscripts this spelling is almost as common as
sakala) ; vichlana remains doubtful, in spite of the Ardha-MCgadhi form
viyalaqa, since the spelling could equally well have arisen in Nepal ; but
samprad6layati can safely be accepted, since, in addition to the Pali sampaddeti,
we can cite in its favour samprad6lya from a Central Asian manuscript, against
the standard Sanskrit pradtirayati. Similarly, the Middle Indian liikha, liiha
(Skt. riikta) has its initial justified by the occurrence of liiha- in MPS, p. 93.
A spelling of great interest appears in the word c a ~ p a k aand the related townname caqpE, MPS, pp. 31, 33, 57. This is most striking and not at all the sort
of thing which one would expect to arise simply from textual corruption ;
and it is therefore surprising that Waldschmidt emends both, without comment,
to the standard Sanskrit ca~npaka,campa. I t should be noted that not only
do both manuscripts which preserve the passage show caqpaka here, but that
the manuscript of the Kalpana-maqditika (early 4th century A.D.) also has the
same spelling.1 On the latter passage Liiders commented that he believed
that we might recognize this to be the earlier form, which later by assimilation
became campaka. There seems to be no room for doubt here. Burrow has
pointed out that the Tamil form of the word is caqpakam, ceqpakam ; and
although Gonda has argued for an Austro-Asiatic origin, these Buddhist
occurrences of the Tamil-like spehng seem to establish with certainty that,
whatever the ultimate derivation, it was a Dravidian language which was the
immedate source from which the Sanskrit word was borrowed.
Thus the Central Asian manuscripts, fragmentary though many of them are,
provide a most valuable supplement to our knowledge of the Buddhist Sanskrit
texts, not only in the new material which they have brought to light, but also
by helping us to assess more justly the worth of the Nepalese tradition ; and
this assistance is no less welcome to an editor where they support the latter,
as in fact they do to a considerable degree. I t is true that in a text like the
Saddhrma-puq4ar;iX.a the Nepalese recension is convicted of having to some
extent corrected non-Sanskrit forms; and the same tale is told of the
SuvarqabhGsottarna-siitra by the fortunate chance of the survival of the old
palm-leaf manuscript G. But this is only part of the picture. It is equally
important that the canonical fragments show us a t this early date a language
which is virtually the same as that presented by the Nepalese manuscripts of, for
example, the PrajnEpGramitEs, or the great Avadana collections. I t would
therefore be over-hasty, I feel, to conclude that the whole range of the old
Buddhist Sanskrit texts has been equally subjected to a continuing process of
Sanskritization. We have, indeed, direct evidence to the contrary in the
1
3

Ed. H . Liiders, Kbinere Sanskrit-Texte, ii, p. 139.

Transactions of the Philological Society, 1946, p. 17.
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, e n Volkenkunde, 105,1, pp. 137 ff.

ibid., p. 39.

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367

preservation of the MahEvastu itself; since any scribal corrector who knew
enough Sanskrit to feel that the language of the-Mahavastti required improvement would surely have been able to produce a better ' corrected ' version than
that which has i n fact come down to us. Also, as is well known, the distance of
the language of this text from Sanskrit varies considerably from one place to
another, and there is no good reason why a scribal editor should not have
produced a more uniform result. The simplest explanation would certainly
seem to be that these differences represent the styles of different authors,
possibly of different ages, but that in essentials they have been transmitted in
the form in which they were left by the original compilers who built up the
illahavastu largely out of inherited materials.
Similarly, in the case of the Sanskrit canon, it is obvious from comparing
the Pali version that it is very largely constructed out of older material in some
Prakrit dialect ; but there seems to be no reason for assuming that it is
anything other than a quite definite translation into Sanskrit, done at a specific
period, when the Sarvastiviidins decided to adopt Sanskrit as their official
language.
In direct opposition to this view Edgerton writes in the preface to his
Reader : ' All BHS texts, even the Mahavastu, have been subjected to a good
deal of Sanskritization, some of it very likely going back to the original composition of the work, but much of it, in the case of most if not all BHS works,
introduced by copyists and redactors in the course of the tradition '. I t is
impossible to deny that this is true of some texts ; but put in these terms it
seems to me very much to overstate the case, and for much of the extant
Buddhist Sanskrit, if not the major
. -part, it would be nearer the truth to reverse
the statement, and say that some degree of additional Sanskritization has
doubtless been carried out by scribes, but that a very great deal of the Sanskritic
appearance is in all probability due to the original authors or compilers.
I cannot believe that the texts as we now have them in the manuscripts would
show such clearly defined distinctions of style if scribes or late redactors had
tampered with them to the extent which Edgerton seems to envisage.
o n the basis of the degree of approximation to Sanskrit ~ d ~ e r t bclassifies
n
his material into three groups (Grammar, p. xxv), in which (1)both prose and
verse are hybridized-principally the MahEvastu ; ( 2 ) the verses are hybridized,
but the prose has relatively few signs of Middle Indian phonology or morphology,
e.g. Saddharrna-pu~larika,Lalitavistara, etc. ; (3) both prose and verse are
substantially Sanskritized, e.g. DivyEvadEna, etc. Of the third group he says,
' Non-Sanskritic forms are not common ; the vocabulary is the clearest evidence
that they belong to the BHS tradition '. This seems quite satisfactory ; but
throughout most of the work the term Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit seems to be
directly applied to the language not only of group 1 and the verse of group 2 ,
but equally to the prose of group 2 and to group 3. This is a very different
matter from saying that the latter are ' in the tradition ' of BHS. I t is true that
they share many features with the hybrid texts, particularly in vocabulary and
VOL. XVI. PART

2.

26

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J. BROUGH

syntax. But in spite of this, the language in the typical prose style of the
canonical works and the Avadinas is much further removed from the more
Prakritic portions of the Mahiivastu (see, for example, the passage quoted
below) than it is from Classical Sanskrit. And if it is misleading to call the
Avadtina-style simply Sanskrit, it seems to me all the more misleading to
group it with the Githa-language as Hybrid Sanskrit. No one would deny that
the Avadiina-style has its own idiosyncrasies which mark it off from anything
Brahmanical. But to call it ' hybrid ' for this reason seems as little justified
as it would be to call a medieval Hindu commentary ' Brahmanical Hybrid
Sanskrit ', merely on the score that a few Dravidian words or echoes of
Dravidian syntax might be traced in it. I t would surely be better to retain the
older use of the term, and confine the description Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit
to those texts or portions of texts which are, in fact, hybridized in grammar ;
and to distinguish the other texts simply as ' Buddhist Sanskrit '.
Edgerton has stressed particularly the unity of tradition running throughout
the texts, and it is indeed important that this should be clearly understood.
But it is equally important, particularly for an editor, to realize also the clear
differences between one Buddhist style and another. From one point of view the
history of Buddhist Sanskrit might almost be said to be a study of the fluctuations of the degree of badness of the Sanskrit ; but it is not all bad in the same
way, nor for the same reasons.
The main outlines of the story appear to be as follows. The earliest Buddhist
Sanskrit authors (or compilers) had inherited a considerable literature of
canonical and semi-canonical texts which, we may suppose, had been handed
down chiefly by oral tradition. I t has sometimes been said that this ' protocanonical ' material must have been in some Prakrit dialect, and that the
Sanskrit and Pali versions of the canon represent two different translations of
the early canon with, of course, certain modifications of the actual matter
according to school. But there seems to be no compelling reason for postulating
a single Prakrit dialect as the ' original ' language ; and it seems much more
likely that the texts were handed down in diverging ways in different
communities. If this is so, then the Pali might
- be held to be a local crystallization of a relatively fluid tradition, rather than a translation as we would
normally understand the term. The Sanskrit version, however, is rather
a different matter. The rendering of the traditional material into Sanskrit
would demand a much more positive intention. So far as concerns the
Sarv5stiv5din canon a t least, there is no room to doubt that the authors fully
intended to write Sanskrit, and they would have been surprised at the suggestion
that they were writing in a language essentially Prakritic in nature, since their
whole effort was to present their doctrine in the language of learning and
prestige. The same desire must surely underly Sanskritizing in the other texts
also ; and if the result in some places would have evoked the Brahman's
derision, the authors themselves were doubtless satisfied that they had
achieved something. The fact that they fell short of the classical standard in

THE LANGUAGE OF THE BUDDHIST SANSKRIT TEXTS

369

varying degrees may on occasion be attributed to a simple inability to write

correct Sanskrit, since not all the monks had had the benefit of a Brahmanical
education. But it is significant that the early Sanskrit Buddhist philosophical
and literary works-in effect, the non-canonical writings which are ascribed to
individual authors-are almost entirely in classical Sanskrit ; and it is
therefore likely that the chief reason for imperfect Sanskrit in the early days
was the resistance of the material itself. This resistance has often been
attributed largely to the exigencies of the metre ; but probably a much more
important factor was the hieratic character of the texts, which the Sanskritizers
would be concerned to alter as little as possible. I t is understandable that the
verses would in this way be more resistant than the prose ; and that in the
prose itself word-order, syntax, and vocabulary would more readily persist than
phonology and morphology. I t is important to observe, however, that Middle
Indian words and turns of phrase, when retained in a Sanskritized version of
older material, would naturally tend to be accepted by later writers as legitimate
for use also in original compositions ; and where no parallel in Pali has survived
it is usually impossible to say whether a given verse was actually composed in
Hybrid Sanskrit or was transposed from a genuine Prakrit original.
Within the hybrid texts a number of fairly distinct styles can be discerned.
I quote here specimens of two extreme and quite different varieties.
(a) tena ca yiithapatinii ye anye Bqapiyanti te pi na icchanti gantuq,
nasmiikam osaro, amukiiye mrgiye osaro, sB gacchatii ti. sii ahaq tehi
na mucyiimi osariito, vucyiimi gacchiihi tava osaro ti, tad icchiimi mrgariijena
ato anyaq mrgaq visarjamiinaq, y a q velaq ahaq prasiitii bhavigyami
tat0 gamigyiimi. so mrgarBjB mrgim a h a : tiiva mii bhiiyiihi, anyaq
visarjayigyaq. tena mrgariijena iiqapako mrgo iiqatto, ito yiithiito yasya
mrgasya osaro t a q iiqapehi, etaye mrgiye may%abhayaq dinnaq.
(iWahnvustu, i. 36%3 ; Edgerton's Reader, p. 3.)
(b)

ye jina piirvaka ye ca bhavanti

ye ca dhriyanti dadadidi loke
tepa jiniina karomi praqiiman]
te jina sari-a ahaq prastavipye
(Xuvur?~ubh~sottu~~a-sutra,
ed. Nobel, p. 45.)

The first of these is hardly to be called Sanskrit a t all. Apart from a thin veneer
of Sanskrit spelling, it is typically Prakrit, not only in many of its word-forms
and inflexions, but also in the stiff, awkward style characteristic of a good deal
of Prakrit prose. Indeed, we may reasonably surmise that it is passages of this
sort which underly the persistent tradition that the Xahiisiinghikas used
Prakrit, in contrast to the Sarviistiviidins who employed Sanskrit.l The second
example is typical of stotra-verses in the dodhuka-metre, and contrasts sharply
with the first in the feeling of ease and flow in its language. This admittedly
For a full discussion of this matter, see Lin Li-kouang, L'aide-mimoire de la craie loi, 1949,
pp. 176 ff.

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J. BROUGH

may be due largely to the metre itself. But whereas the former passage is
beyond doubt composed in Prakrit, a great deal of the stotras and similar verses
in stronglyrhythmic metres may well have been composed in what to the authors
was essentially Sanskrit, with the admission (by ' poetic licence ') of certain
well-defined abnormalities.
The less Prakritic portions of the iMahEvastu gradually tend towards the
style found commonly in the old prose Avadanas and the canonical works
generally, of which the following is a typical specimen :(c) tena khalu samayena gandhamadane parvate raudrikgo nama
brahmaqag prativasati sma, indrajalavidhijnag.
airaugid raudrikgo
brihmaqo bhadraiillyiq rijadhanyaq candraprabho nama r i j i
sarvaqdado 'smity atmanan) pratijanite. yan nv ahaq gatva iiro yaceyam
iti. tasyaitad abhavat : yadi tavat sarvaqdado bhavigyati, mama diro
dasyaty, api t u dugkaram etad asthanam anavakiiio yad evam igtaq
kantaq priyaq manipam uttamingaq parityakgyati yad uta iirgaq,
nedaq sthiinan) vidyata iti viditvi gandhamadanat parvatad avatirqag.
(DivyEvdZna, p. 320.)
This style might almost be called Buddhist Sanskrit par excellence. I t is in
general tolerably correct in grammar, though it shows the Prakritic part of its
ancestry in some frequently recurring turns of phrase, and a fair sprinkling of
Middle Indian vocabulary.
A further development in the same direction, coupled no doubt with the
benign influence of good poets such as Aivaghoga, led in some places to the use
of an ornate Sanskrit which, apart from its subject-matter, shows very few
distinctively Buddhist features. A good example of this, which might be called
the semi-klvya style, can be seen in the first version of the story of the tigress
in chapter xviii of the SuvarqabhEsottama-sBtra, which commences :-.
(d) divi bhuvi ca visytavimalavipulavividhagurlagatakiraqo'pratihatajninadardanabalapadkramo bhagavan bhikgusahasraparivytab pancalegu
janapadegu janapadacirikaq caramaqo 'nyatamavanakhaq4am anupripto
babhiiva.
sa tatra dadaria haritamydunilaildvalatatavividhakusumapratimaqditaq pythivipradedaq, dygtvi ca bhagavin Byupmantam anandam
amantrayate sma : dobhano 'yam inanda pythivipradedab.
(Suvarqabhcisottama-s4tm, p. 202.)

It must, of course, be recognized that here, as elsewhere, various gradations of

style may be found. Thus, chapter xxii of the DivycivadEna (from which example
c above is taken) presents passages of ornate semi-kivya prose mingled with,
and merging into, typical Avadina-prose ; while most of the last chapter of
the same work (the story of Maitrakanyaka) might not unfairly be describedif we discount the mediocre ability of the poet-as real Sanskrit klvya.
In the medieval period a great deal of the distinctively Prakritic inheritance
tends to fade. Most of these later texts are as yet imperfectly explored, and I can
give here only a few tentative hints concerning their language. Except for the

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371

Manjuiri-mda-kalpa, they lie outside the scope of Edgerton's grammar ; and

of the language of this text he remarks that it seems ' bizarre, even for BHS '
(10. 4). There is no doubt that the text as it appears in the edition is corrupt in
many places ; but much of it is reasonably typical of what might be called the
didactic style. This style is frequent in tantric works, though not confined to
them, and in its more extreme forms it may give the impression that the authors
were only semi-literate. The following specimens illustrate a number of the
commoner varieties of grammatical and metrical divergences from classical
Sanskrit.
(e)
tathaiva piijayet sarvailj samiidhitrayabhavanailj

ialidhanyaq ca Fat prasthaq Fagti dipaq prajviilayet.

tathaiva karayet piijiiq jiigareqa vini~kramaq

grahamiitykii(q) samabhyarcya yathoktaq grahasadhane.

daiame dviidaie vlhnau dviiviqiati dinegu va

niimakaraqaq prakartavyaq varqiinaq ca viiegatalj.

(Piipaparimocana, 17-19.)
priitar
utthiiya
iayaniit
snatvii
caiva
iuce
jale

(f)
nibpraqake jale caiva sarinmahiisarodbhave

udghygya gatraq mantrajno mydgomayaciirqitailj

mantrapWaq tat0 krtva jalaq caukpaq sunirmalam

sniiyita japi yuktiitmii niitikalaq vilanghaye.

... . . ..
sugandhapugpais tatha iastu arghaq dattvii tu japinalj
praqamya iirasa buddhanaq tad5 tu iigyasambhavaq.
(Manjuirz-mcla-kalpa, pp. 97-8.)
A very common feature of this style, which naturally has no literary pretensions,
is the frequent occurrence of ellipsis and anacoluthon, though these do not
normally obscure the sense.
Rather different from these, and in general closer to classical Sanskrit, is
the language of the medieval verse Avadanas. I n its better portions, in fact, it
is hardly to be distinguished from normal medieval narrative ilokas ; but in its
less good parts, occasional blunders appear which are not likely to be found in
Brahmanical works. The author of the following passage clearly demonstrates
by his verse-fillers and his jejune and awkward short sentences the difficulty he
experienced in composing in Sanskrit.
( g ) dadaria bhiipatir jirqa-praqaliq margake 'tha salj :

praviihitaq na piiniyaq, tad-darianena vahitaq.

' prak na praviihitaq, kena idaniq t u praviihitam ? '

aicaryeti sthite bhiipa, iikiiiiid enam iiciviin :

' puqyavaqs t v a q mahiiriija, tvat-prabhiiviit pravahitam.

bhagnabhiita praqiiliyaq, niinam abhyantare jalam.3

tvaq tu dharmatanur, evaq jlnihi kila bhiipate '.

(DvEviyiaty-avadEna, vi.)
Ed. sanirmalam.
i.e. ' (a voice) spoke to him from the sky '.
MSS. abhyantare yatab.

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J. BROUGH

A still more striking lack of ability to control the language is found in a later
chapter of the same work (though presumably by a different author), where the
benefits of offering various kinds of flowers to the Buddha is described :(h)

brahmahatyii-iataq pipaq iatajanma-krtini vai

rohaqaq mighya-pugpiiqiq iamayati na saqiayab.

kokilik~aqprarohante janaviin dhanavin bhavet

vidyiivatiiq kule jiitab sarvalokaib prapfijyate.

rohaqiic campakaq pugpaq nari ye iraddhayi kila

kirtiiabdai ca lokegu sarva-sampada labhyate.
(DvEviqSaty-avadlna, xv.)

Here again the sense is quite clear, alid the individual words for the most part
appear to be Sanskrit ; but they would defy any attempt at syntactical analysis
in orthodox terms.
The h a 1 decrepitude of Buddhist Sanskrit is reached in a text like the
Aivaghoga-nandimukhEvad~na.I have consulted four manuscripts of this work,
and I find it impossible to follow even the thread of the story without constant
assistance from the Newari translation. Xaking every allowance for scribal
corruption, which is probably considerable, it would still appear that the author
wrote in a style reminiscent of a schoolboy's Latin prose composition. The text
of the following short extract is reasonably certain, apart from the obelized
word. (The Newari version has for this ' looked around ', so that some form of
saqlak~ayatiis needed.)

(i) nandimukho aivaghogo devim iijnii iirasi nidhiya matya-maqdalaq

gatau, gatvi ca tat0 matya-maqdalaq carituq t saqrak~aritramatyamaqdale. niinivicitropakiiranaq dptii l abhiita jitau. aho matyamaqdale ramaqiyaq, kathanj caritavyaq jniitavyaq. caqdikii-sthiine
sthitvii vicitraq stri-riipaq dhirayimi. gitaq karoti cintya, surabhimanojna-gho~aqsiikgmeqa gitaq karoti sma.
The foregoing account of Buddhist Sanskrit styles is necessarily sketchy,
and makes no claim to be either final or exhaustive ; and it must be recognized
that any classification of the material in this way is a mere convenience, a framework which we construct, within which we can organize our thinking on the
subject. Further study of the texts will make possible a more detailed account.
But it is most important that anyone who undertakes to edit a Buddhist
Sanskrit text should be aware that there are such different styles, and that
features which are regular and common in one may be quite unknown in
another. A good deal of mischief can be done by an editor who is not sufficiently
conscious of these differences, the most likely pitfall being the introduction of
typical ' hybrid ' forms by way of emendation into passages which are either in
i.e. dl@tvB.

i.e. adbhuta ' astonished

'. One manuscript has, in fact, atbhata.

THE LAKGUAGE O F THE BUDDHIST S,LWSKRIT TEXTS

373

real Sanskrit or in semi-kiivya style. An example of this may be seen in the

Suvarqabhiisottama-stltra, p. 210, where Eobel prints :krpslkaruqasamudgatiiryasattvii
divi bhuvi ceha ca labhyante svadehaq :
Qataiaiha karonti nirvikiiraq
muditamansllj parajivitiirtham.

Here labhyante, karonti, and parajit~ithrtham are emendations of the editor,

who is thus willing to attribute to the author the following lapses from grace :
(1)labhyante, a passive verb used in an active sense ; (2) karonti ; (3) mzcditamanab, a singular adjective with the plural subject ; (4) an incomplete sentence
(' for the sake of the lives of others they do . . . '-what ? Unless perchance
liaronti was taken to be an intransitive verb ; or -artham thought to be its
object, which is not only impossible in itself, but is contradicted by the Tibetan
phyir upon which the emendation is based) ; and if, as seems most probable,
the metre of the stanza is puspitigrz, metrical irregularities in (5) kypii- ;
(6) labhyante ; and ( 7 ) the metre left two syllables short in parajTzlitzrtham.
Xow tllis stanza comes in the middle of a section of the text in the semi-kiivya
style, and was clearly intended by the author to be in good, correct Sanskrit.
I t is true that, in order to accommodate some of the more elaborate metres, he
allows hiinself an occasional licence, for example, p. 211 dhyhnzdibhi guqaifi
(for -bl(ir), p. 215 bhratrqii (for bhratr6)-unless, indeed, more deep-seated
corruption underlies some of these. But an accumulation of seven faults in
a single stanza, without even good sense resulting, is quite incredible. The
editor remarks in a footnote, ' Die \lTorte sind stark verderbt und unsicher ',
and his emendations might almost seem designed to ensure that they doubly
earn their obelus. The following readings (neglecting trifles) are presented by
the manuscripts : krpalcaru@- G, krp6karu~a-P l ; karota G, karoti P ;
parijiaites marair G (-s with virhma, and marair dislocated in the manuscript),
parajivite darire P. It may be observed also that the Tibetan version confirms
the plural -sattviifi (sems can dug), while rnuditamanab demands a singular in the
second half of the verse. If then we may allow that the poet might have written
lirpa- for krpii- for the sake of his metre, I would suggest the following for
consideration :-

krpakaruqasamudgatiiryasattvii,
divi bhuvi ceha ca labhyate svadeham :
Qataiaiha karotu nirvikiiraq
muditamaniib parajivitopakiiram.

' Koble beings are born of pity and compassion, and an om-n-body is obtained
either in heaven or here on earth : (therefore) here on earth, with joyful mind,
one should in a hundredfold ways unremittingly do that which is of service to
the lives of others.' This, I think, does less violence than the edition to the
1

= the

consensus of the interpolated group of manuscripts.

374

J. BROUGH

manuscript tradition and to the language,' and it is metrically satisfactory ;

and while no absolute certainty is claimed for it, it is a t least in keeping with
the generally Sanskritic nature of the story as a whole.
Equally with the editor, the interpreter and grammarian must guard against
seeing hybrid forms in styles where they are prirna facie improbable. For
example, Divyavadci?~a405, printed in the edition as :Mauryab sabhrtyab sajanab sapaurab
sulabdhaliibharthasuyaptayajna4) :
yasyedrial~siidhujane prasiidab
kale tathotsahi k r t a q ca danam.
(We may note in passing that the second pada should be emended to
sulabdhalcibhad ca suyastayajnab, and that in the third i d y b b should be corrected
to idyie, since the nominative absurdly makes the king appear to be praising
himself, whereas the whole context shows that it is the monks who are the
objects of praise.) In the fourth piida, Edgerton (8. 60) understands utsahi to
be a metrical shortening for utsahe, ' co-ordinate with kale '. This seems to me
to be entirely ruled out, not only by the difficulty of construing the verse in
this way, but also by the fact that the verses in this section are in kavya
Sanskrit, with very few lapses. In the present verse yagta for the correct ista
is much easier to accept than -i for -e. I suggest, therefore, that we should take
utsahi-kytatg as a compound. The sense of the stanza would then be that the
Maurya king (the speaker) really is a king, ' since his liberality is bestom-ed on
such holy persons, and since the gift, made by one full of religious enthusiasm,
has come so appropriately a t the right time '.
These examples, together with the specimens of styles, will suffice to
indicate the attitude which I believe editors ought to maintain towards their
material. It is now no longer possible to ' correct ' indiscriminately the language
of the Buddhist Sanskrit texts so as to bring it into as close agreement as
possible with classical Sanskrit ; and to Edgerton, more than to any other
The translation given implies a ' hyper-sandhi ' in the first pcida, for - s a m u d g a ~Bryasattocij.
(This could be avoided if we understood the whole of the pcida as a compound in the vocative
plural, ' 0 noble beings, born of pity, etc.' But such a vocative is out of keeping with the context,
and would also imply that the second ca is merely a verse-filler.) The Tibetan translation urould
seem to support the view that the ciryasattocij are not the subject of the second half of the verse,
but are merely held up as a model. This a t least seems a possible interpretation of the two small
additions to the word-for-word rendering : ' Considering that (seam ste) noble beings are produced,
etc. : in like manner (hthun par) for the sake of the lives of others (I) shall show pity '. (The
subject of course is indeterminate.) Corresponding to the conjectured karotu, upak&ram, the
Tibetan has only brtse, v. 1. rtse, of which the former is taken by the Kalmuck version (eneriku,
have pity, Altan Gerel, ed. E. Haenisch, p. 106.12), and the latter by the east Nongollan (I. J.
Schmidt, Grammatik der ,Mongolischen Sprache, p. 166, erfreuen-though the normal sense of
rtse in the dictionaries is ' play, sport ', Skt. krig-.) The Chinese versions given no ass~stance,
since Dharmak~emaomits the verse entirely, and I Ching has in its place an entirely different
passage (Taish6 Tripitaka, xvi, p. 354b, and p. 451b, c). I am grateful to my colleague Professor
W. Simon for his assistance in comparing all these versions with the Sanskrit text.
The other formal possibility, that idr8nj might be taken as agenitive with yasya, is an-kurard
and a t best yields a tame sense, and seems to me most unlikely.

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375

single scholar, is due the credit for this advance in our understanding. But it is
all too easy, as these two examples shorn-, to fly to the other extreme, and work
on the implicit assumption that ' anything is possible in Buddhist Sanskrit ' ;
and an editor must try to adopt a madhyamii pratipad. The immediate task for
the future is the closer delineation of the various forms and styles of the
Buddhist writings in Sanskrit, and a detailed grammatical analysis of each
type. Those who undertake this task will find in Edgerton's Grammar and
Dictionary an invaluable guide to a very large part of the field, and an
indispensable work of reference not likely soon to be superseded.

YOL. XVI. PART

2.