The Buddhism and the Sanskrit of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit

Abstract

IN THE DECADE SINCE the publication of Franklin Edgerton's Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary and Hybrid Sanskrit Reader (New Haven, 1953) scholars have certainly profited by this monumental accomplishment. The present writer, for one, made much use of the Dictionary in a work Analysis of the 6rivakabhiimi Manuscript (Berkeley, 1961) and was rewarded by Edgerton's review (Language, 38: 3, 1962, 307-10), in the course of which he replied to one critic by name and generally replied to all the critics of his Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS) thesis. In his last years Edgerton gave generously of his time to such reviewing, sometimes carried on in personal correspondence. He considered the adverse positions of Nobel and Waldschmidt in an article, On Editing Hybrid Sanskrit, JAOS, 77:33, 1957, 184, ff. I concede inability to defend his thesis with the vigor and erudition which he displayed, but a different approach may be helpful; and I shall restrict myself to consider the AngloIndian criticism in John Brough's The Language of the Sanskrit Texts, BSOAS, 1954, xvi/2, 351-75; and in Raghavan's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, Suniti Kumar Chatterji Jubilee Volume, 1955, 313-22. Briefly speaking, Brough feels the BHS Dictionary to be of more use than the BHS Grammar to a future editor of a text. Indeed, the Grammar- a systematic collection of anomalies -does not completely describe the grammar of texts. He claims that Edgerton frequently takes as genuine forms what are merely scribal corruptions. Sanskrit is not hybrid, but merely possesses different degrees of bad fluctuation from correct Sanskrit. Above all, Brough rejects Edgerton's thesis of a single Prakrit dialect as the 'original' language of Buddhism. Brough provides valuable data on Nepalese manuscripts; but since he limits himself to considerations of text transmission, his advice reduces trivially to a warning that text editors should use Edgerton's Grammar with caution! Paghav an criticises more gently than does Brough. His observations are more suggestive of the true state of affairs because he recognizes that Sanskrit is Buddhistic just as the Rdmdyana is Brahmanical. Thus, he asserts (op. cit., p. 314), we can see that the base of this mixed language is the spoken form and that it is not exclusively Buddhistic but common to the class of Brahmanical literature called the Epics. In support of this statement he cites twenty-seven expressions from the BHS Dictionary to show that they are also found in the Vedic or Epic vocabulary or in strictly classical Sanskrit. However, Edgerton's policy statement (Grammar, p. 9) makes it clear that his inclusion of an expression from a BHS text is independent of its appearance or non-appearance in non-Buddhistic sources, only stipulating that it not be 'standard Sanskrit.' So only those items of Raghavan's that were 'standard Sanskrit '-and of course the mere fact of being in the Epic does not prove this condition-indicate mistaken inclusion in the BHS Dictionary. Also Raghavan points out that a certain construction which Edgerton claims to be known only in PAli and Sanskrit Buddhism, i. e. the special usage of yena . . . tena, is in fact found also a number of times in the Rdmayana Epic. Both Brough's and Raghavan's positions are consistent with the usual practice of modern Indian writers as well as a number of European scholars to depict the Buddha as a product of the Brahmanical system and Mahayana Buddhism as a compromise with the Hindu bhalcti systems.' Likewise, the words in the Sanskrit books are Indic words: there is nothing exclusively 'Buddhist' about the vocabulary outside of a relatively few terms used in a special sectarian sense and a group of words which they have caused to look slightly different from the standard form by means of addition of a prefix or a -ka suffix. By like reasoning, there cannot be a 'Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar,' because the Buddhists did not