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Notes on the Languages Used in this Course

INTRODUCTION

It has not been fully established what language the Buddha spoke, but scholars typically state that

he spoke a form of Magadhi, although some scholars contend that he may have more likely spoke in somenow lost Middle Indo-Aryan dialects more local to the regions in which he taught. As Buddhism

developed, the teachings were translated into other languages/dialects. In terms of Indic languages, the two

main languages used for Buddhist texts were Sanskrit and Pli. The process of translation into theselanguages, while related to Magadhi, was not always a simple matter, leading to ongoing disagreements ininterpretation with respect to certain terms.

A. SANSKRIT

Sanskrit is the main liturgical language employed by Vedic traditions, Brahmanism and Hinduismand was also employed to preserve the texts of Jainism and many forms of Buddhism, including

Sarvstivda, Mahyna andTantric Buddhism. Sanskrit can be translated as refined, consecrated

and sanctified. It is currently, and has been historically, little used as an everyday spoken language.

SCRIPT: The first scripts employed for Indic languages do not appear to have been developed until ~4th3

rd

c. BCE. There were various ways of modifying the Brahmi script in order to record Sanskrit, the mostwidely used of which is the Devangar script.

TRANSLITERATION: There are a number of Romanization schemes for Sanskrit, the most commonly

encountered of which is the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST). Using an array ofdiacritical marks, this system preserves all of the nuances found in Indic scripts used to write Sanskrit.

IAST is based on a standard initially established in 1894, and has been a standard for academic work since

1912. This is the form of transliteration generally encountered in the class materials and the class

textbooks.

PRONUNCIATION: Sanskrit pronunciation includes a number of sounds not represented by the English

alphabet. The pronunciation of Sanskrit is also complicated by the fact that a number of sounds alterdepending on their context both within a word and across word boundaries. Additionally, some

pronunciations have evolved over the centuries (for instance, in classical Sanskrit is approximated by er

as in better but is also currently read as ri).A few basic notes:

is a long asound ph is a psound (not an f)

ch is a chsound (not a sh) is an rshsound

is a rdsound is a shsound is an nysound is a r tsound

See Appendix A of The Experience of Buddhismby Strong for a more detailed pronunciation guide.

You can find a number of additional basic pronunciation (and transliteration) guides online:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sanskrit.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_Sanskrithttp://www.happinessofbeing.com/Transliteration.pdf

http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sk-pron/skpro-hp.htm

Two of the required texts for the class include basic but clear and helpful glossaries of Sanskrit and Pliterms:Buddhist Thoughtby Williams et al. on page 192, and The Experience of Buddhismby Strong on

page 370.

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B. PLI

Pliis the language in which the canonical texts of TheravdaBuddhism have been preserved, and

is recited in Theravdaliturgy. Pliinitially developed in India. It appears to be a hybrid of a number of

dialects, perhaps including those originally employed by the Buddha. It may have arisen from a felt need todevelop a common language for Buddhist texts as time and geographical distribution led to greater

linguistic divergences among Buddhist communities. Pliand Sanskrit are closely related. Many terms

share the same word-stem and differ only in terms of inflections. Here are some examples of Sanskrit-Pliequivalents illustrating some of the standard assimilations (which can be summarized in about 50 principletransformations, along with a number of special cases):

Sanskrit Pli Meaning

cakrava cakkava world-sphere

dharma dhamma teaching, law, etc.

di dihi view

dukha dukkha suffering, pain

karma kamma action

knti khanti patience

maitr mett loving-kindnessnirva nibbna blown-out, release

praj pa wisdom, understanding

smti sati mindful, recollection

sthavira thera elder

vimukti vimutti liberation

For the most part, in the first half of the class (1st7

thclasses), I will try to include Pliequivalents

(in parentheses after p.) for Sanskrit terms. For the class on Theravda, I will mostly only use Pli(for

names, etc.), and for the classes on Mahyna Buddhism and Tantric Buddhism, I will mostly only use

Sanskrit.

TRANSLITERATION: IAST is also used for Pli, although with some problems. It is also common to

encounter the Hunterian system, which does not employ diacritical marks, and has been criticized for not

preserving important phonetic distinctions. Nevertheless, it is the officially adopted form of Romanizationused in India.

C. TIBETAN

We will encounter Tibetan mainly in the 13th

class for names, places, schools, and key terms.

TRANSLITERATION: For the class materials, I will use the THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription of

standard Tibetan. Created in 2003, this is a simplified form of the Tournadre Phonetic System (Strong

employs a variant of this scheme). There are other transliteration schemes you may encounter, including the

Wylie scheme developed in 1959 which uses capitals rather than diacritical marks and is aimed at preciselytranscribing written Tibetan. While it is favored by academics for this precision, it can be difficult to

discern how the word should be pronounced from this transliteration. For example, Gelug(THL, important

school of Tibetan Buddhism) is dGe-Lugsin Wylie,Ngondro(THL, pronounced Nundro,preliminarypractices) issngongroin Wylie, and Chenrezig(THL, Avalokitevara) issPyan-ras-gzigsin Wylie. I may

try to include Wylie equivalents if there is time. Another form of transliteration is Tibetan Pinyin (also

known as SASM, GNC, and SRC romanizations) which is the official scheme used by the Peoples

Republic of China. The articles inBuddhism in Practiceed. by Lopez employ various approaches followedby the Wylie in parentheses.