PETER MASEFIELD INDO-CHINESE PALI

PETER MASEFIELD INDO-CHINESE PALI In addition to the Pali literature known in the West, and published, in the main, by the Pali Text Society, and upon whose sole basis most tend to construct their notions about Buddhism and what its teachings consist in, there is, in fact, also a vast, and independent, body of literature composed in, and indigenous to, the countries of South-East Asia. Written largely in the Kham, or Mūl, scripts, there are nonetheless other texts that would appear to have been composed in the local scripts of Myanmar and Sri Lanka.1 In addition, there is evidence to suggest that a degree of copying, and transliteration into the native script, has taken place between the various countries. One may recall, for instance, the PTS edition of the Cambodian Extended Mahāvaṃsa, which is much larger than the better-known Sri Lankan edition and seemingly an independent work bearing only partial similarities with Geiger’s editions. It is reasonably clear that the former is not simply an expanded “version” of the latter, and rather represents a separate tradition, despite the similarity of content in many places. With this may be compared Jaini’s editions of the Paññāsa Jātakas, which are again quite independent of the supposedly canonical Jātakas, not to mention the numerous other short texts found here and there in early editons of the JPTS. Despite their disparate content, all of these texts are, in the main, couched in reasonably “good Pali,” whatever this phrase might mean,2 and have been well-edited. However, such texts represent only the tip of a very large iceberg of other non-canonical Pali literature, indigenous to South-East Asia, and little known to, or at least not acknowledged by, many in the West and which, as a consequence, has not so far received the attention that it surely deserves, save by a few, most notably the French3 who have, since the commencement of their colonial period, been active in the region, and a handful of Japanese scholars also working in the field. As regards their content, such indigenous texts are mainly concerned with matters local to the region, and frequently composed for various liturgical and/or didactical purposes, or else 2 PETER MASEFIELD aimed at complementing issues in Buddhist history. As an example of the former, we might cite the (Burmese) Aṭṭhakesadhātuvaṇṇanā and, as an example of the latter, the Asokaparinibbāna, dealing with the future fate of the deceased king who has first to endure a rebirth as an animal before finally attaining parinibbāna.4 It might be deemed helpful, at this point, to give a brief summary of the Aṭṭhakesadhātuvaṇṇanā, despite the fact that it is not a mainstream Kham text.5 The Aṭṭhakesadhātuvaṇṇanā documents a visit, to India, by the two Burmese traders Tapussa and Bhallika. Their original aim is that of selling rice in India at a time of famine but, upon their arrival, are informed by a devatā, who had been a former relative, that the Buddha has just attained enlightenment and that they should abandon their plans in favour of paying him their respect. This they subsequently do, yet before they reach him we are treated to an earthy account of how the Buddha has, during the forty-nine days following his enlightenment neither cleansed his mouth nor defecated, for which reason Sakka has seen fit to intervene, supplying both a tooth-stick and a laxative, whereupon much welcome relief ensues.6 Having, as we all know from the Mahāvagga of the Vinayapiṭaka, offered the Buddha’s first, postenlightenment, almsfood,7 they request a memento of the occasion, whereupon the Buddha supplies them with eight head-hairs for them to enshrine, on their return, in Shwe Dagon, in modern Yangon, which already houses the relics of the three former Buddhas who had, of course, all been Burmese. The story then goes on to recount the tribulations encountered on their return journey, during which two hairs (which emit the six coloured rays) are stolen by a nāgaking, and a further two by a human king, and the brothers’ failure, on arrival, to locate the cetiya, long since obscured by antiquity. It therefore befalls Sakka, yet again, to intervene and help excavate the site overnight, aided by Vissakamma, and then fully restore it, so that the relics can be installed, along with golden images of all concerned participants, not to mention curious rotating robots (yantra), all accompanied by a grand pūja. To the best of my knowledge, the only real major attempt at discussing the structure of Indo-Chinese Pali is that many years ago of François Martini, in his article in the BEFEO,8 and whose INDO-CHINESE PALI 3 analysis is based on a single text.9 Martini’s article is, nonetheless, most illuminating, during the course of which he attempts to demonstrate, as a fluent speaker from birth of Khmer, the influence of the author’s mother-tongue on his subsequent composition in Pali, which embraces, not only Khmer orthography and verbal tenses, but also its syntax, which he daubs “sa syntaxe barbare”10 ! In general, there are at least two major sources of “errors” in Kham Pali manuscripts,11 if such they indeed be, one being the influence of the local pronunciation of Pali, and the other a confusion of similarly shaped graphemes, which is especially notable in the case of palm-leaf manuscripts, in which the text, which is first etched with a stylus, remains invisible until the ink has subsequently been smeared, and allowed to seep into, the scratch-marks. As regards the former, we may note the current Thai/Khmer alternation of consonsants in the pronunciation of Pali, such that: k(h) > g(h) g(h) > k(h) c(h) > j(jh) j(h) > c(h) t(h) > d(h) d(h) > t(h) p(h) > b(h) b(h) > p(h) just as one often finds: ṭ(h) > t(h) or ḍ(h) or d(h) ḍ(h) > d(h) or ṭ(h) or t(h) not to mention the frequent confusion between r/l/v, in which what appears to be “v” might very well represent “p(h)” or “b(h),” as when, in modern Thai, Skt viśeṣa becomes “phiset,” or when, in a Kham manuscript, Pali adhigamana might very well appear as atikamana. To this may be added that Kham mss almost invariably show “ññ” simply as “ñ,” solely because the second grapheme is too large to be repeated underneath its predecessor.12 4 PETER MASEFIELD As regards the latter, it may simply be noted that, in Kham manuscripts, “m” and “p” are frequently confused, as are “t” and “n” and “p” and “s” in Sinhalese manuscripts. Moreover, such confusion can often be compounded by later copyists, such that a Sinhalese transcription of a Kham original might well be subsequently re-transliterated into Kham, along with all scribal errors introduced in Sri Lanka.13 To this may be added certain grammatical “distortions,” as noted by Martini, in which a gerund may frequently replace the finite verb at the end of a sentence, such that one finds gantvā when one was expecting gacchati, or else an adjective follows the substantive that it qualifies, just as one might say, in modern Thai, “a house, [colour(ed)] red.” It would seem unnecessary to expand on these few examples, at this point at least, given the intention, as already noted, of subsequently publishing in this journal a translation of Martini’s complete article. Rather, the question I would now prefer to address is the suggestion that Indo-Chinese Pali should be considered a “corrupt” form of Pali, and thus in need of being “corrected” when publishing any transliteration of same. This is, of course, a very easy trap to fall into, as did seemingly Martini himself when accusing the language of having “sa syntaxe barbare.” Yet to be fair, it should be recalled that Martini was seemingly basing his findings on one sole text, the Dasabodhisatta-uddesa, whereas a survey of a much larger sample might have revealed a considerable degree of internal consistency, however this might deviate from the norms established by the Mahāvihāra fraternity in Anurādhapura, or the theoretical rules derived by such grammarians as Kaccāyana. For it is fair to say that living languages, however much their rules might have been “set in stone” by the grammarians, nonetheless do change over time and circumstance, and it seems difficult to see, at least as far as I am myself concerned, how one version of a language might be deemed “‘correct” and all other instances “deviant” or “corrupt.” Is there, one might ask, some eternal universal paradigm against which all variants of, say English, might be judged for their “correctness,”14 especially when it be borne in mind that grammatical rules are much more derivative of a living language than they are prescriptive. INDO-CHINESE PALI 5 It is, nonetheless, just this kind of uncritical assumptions that have led several of those few who have actually studied these manuscripts to frequently dismiss them as of little or no value, especially on the grounds that they appear to be composed in a very crude form of Pali, leading them, in turn, to infer that those who composed them had very little understanding of traditional Pali grammar. Yet as Martini has also shown, the Pali contained in the manuscripts simply demonstrates the influence of the author’s mother-tongue: very frequently, a substantive will be given in place of an adjective (pamāda for pamatta, sampatti for sampanna), or vice versa (uppanna for uppatti, samagga for sāmaggā), just as Indo-Chinese Pali syntax frequently inverts an adjective-noun phrase in which the adjective follows the noun which it qualifies. In traditional Pali, one would expect to find paduma-puppha (lotus-flower), whereas in Indo-Chinese Pali one consistently finds puppha-paduma (flowerlotus). The authors of these texts, and the subsequent local copyists, may, therefore, have been highly influenced, either consciously or subconsciously, by their mother tongue. If consciously, then they may well have done so so as to deliberately produce texts with a syntax more readily understandable to the local audience for whom they were designed. Moreover, it is clear that what have been taken by some as careless, or faulty, spellings have, instead, almost certainly come about as a result of orthographical constraints of the Kham script. For instance, the traditional Pali term rañño (genitive of rājā) is consistently written as raño, not because the author is illiterate or unaware of the traditional spelling, but simply because the Kham glyph for -ñ- is so large that it cannot be written twice. That is to say, since there is insufficient room in a palm-leaf manuscript to accommodate an instance of -ññ-, the authors have quite consciously adopted the practice of using a single -ñ- in full knowledge that this is elsewhere written, in other scripts, as -ññ-. This fact seems equally true of some other, local forms of Indian Pali, such as Kharoṣṭhī, whose orthography led to exactly the same kinds of constraint. It has therefore become increasingly obvious to me, in studying this literature, that the language in which it is composed, far from being a rather childish, if not corrupt, version of Pali, is instead a 6 PETER MASEFIELD local variant of traditional Indian Pali, and one which has evolved into a new language in its own right. It is my belief that further study will reveal that these Indo-Chinese manuscripts exhibit a variety of Pali that is internally consistent. That is to say, if Indian Pali can be seen as a Prakrit derivative of Sanskrit, and not simply a crude, childish or corrupt form of Sanskrit, then it may be equally true that the form that Indo-Chinese Pali has come to possess is similarly not a crude, childish or corrupt form of (Indian) Pali, but rather an internally consistent, local Indo-Chinese Prakrit derivative of traditional Indian Pali. As a result of these considerations, including the frequent uncertainty as to whether, say, atikamana represents, in fact, adhigamana, not to mention the fact that the manuscripts are written in an unbroken succession of graphemes, it is, I believe, incumbent upon would-be editors of these manuscripts to approach them with extreme caution, lest a text might be violated out of an overly intense desire to “restore” various Pali terms to their more “regular,” or “genuine” form, based perhaps on a quite possibly mistaken belief that they are couched in a corrupt form of Pali. I well recall, for instance, that in an initial attempt at transliterating the Aṭṭhakesadhātu, it was thought that the following string of graphemes, viz. jarāmaraṇakaṇṭāvāsokasallāsupāyasāmuñcanti might be resolved as: jarāmaraṇakaṇṭā vāsokasallā supāyasā muñcanti or: jarāmaraṇakaṇṭā vāso kosallā supāyasā muñcanti or even: jarāmaraṇakaṇṭā vā so kosallā supāyasā muñcanti whereas, later deliberations suggested that the real reading should probably be understood to represent: INDO-CHINESE PALI 7 jarāmaraṇakantārā sokasallās(s)ubhayā muñcanti or “They release one from the wilderness of old age and dying [and] from fear of the tears associated with the darts of sorrow,” though no doubt other of interpretations might equally be possible. That is to say, initial misunderstandings on the part of any would-be editor carry the danger of attributing to a manuscript a sense that it may never have had. It seems to me, therefore, that the manuscripts concerned should be transliterated with as little editorial interference as posssible, even if a seasoned Pali scholar feels somewhat uncomfortable with, or frustated by, such a methodology. Any suggested “corrections,” or misgivings felt at certain apparent readings, should, I think, be confined to footnotes, since other editors might well see in a text quite other possibilities. Indeed, one might also question whether the separation of what one takes to be individual words is not itself going too far. In this regard, it also seems worth mentioning that matters are made all the worse by the subsequent part of a compound, falling at the end of a folio, being quite often detached and written at the beginning of the next folio. This, again, raises doubts as to what methodology, in a Roman transliteration, should be adopted. I believe that all these concerns still await considerable discussion and deliberation, since there seems to be no consensus, even amongst those few scholars working on these texts, as to how to proceed. It would therefore be good if a further aim of this journal would be that of providing a forum in which all of these methodological concerns might be discussed. I must also confess that, given the complexity of the problems, I frequently find myself oscillating from one possible methodology to some other, though I am, on balance, coming to rest on the system adopted by Professor Toshiya Unebe of Nagoya,15 in which each folio is printed separated from those that precede and follow, with any split compound remaining split between folios. It is this method that I have largely imitated in the transliteration of an Indo-Chinese Petavatthu contained elsewhere in this issue,16 despite the fact that I can readily anticipate the gross displeasure that this is likely to give rise to, on the part of certain individuals. 8 PETER MASEFIELD ENDNOTES 1 One may mention, as an example, the Sumantakūṭavaṇṇanā and so on, and other Pali literature often composed for liturgical and other purposes. 2 I will return to this point later. 3 In addition to the work of François Martini and his wife, referred to later in this paper, one must refer to the incomparably extensive labours over many a long year of Jacqueline Filliozat cataloguing manuscripts too numerous to mention, and to whom I will be eternally grateful, not only for introducing me to the genre, but also for having extended me the privilege of working alongside her for the best part of eighteen months pouring over such texts. 4 With this may be compared other texts dealing with the subsequent fates of all of the aggasāvakas cited at A I 24ff. 5 Cp Pe Maung Tin, “The Shwe Dagon Pagoda,” JBRS XXIV Part I, 1934, pp 1-91, in which various Mon source materials are given for the same legend; also John S. Strong, “Les reliques des cheveux du Buddha au Shwe Dagon de Rangoon,” Aséanie, 1998, pp 79-107. 6 It will be remembered that, prior to the enlightenment, the Bodhisatta as was divided Sujāta’s alms into forty-nine balls, since he forsaw he would not be eating for the next seven weeks. 7 Vin I 4. 8 Dasabodhisatta-uddesa, BEFEO 36, 2 (1936), pp. 287-390. 9 It is hoped that a translation of the article may later be published in this journal, especially for the sake of those in the region who are unable to read French. 10 Op cit, p 369. 11 Indeed, the view that such variations in spelling might be “errors” is to overlook the fact that, according to Jacquelline Filliozat (cp next note but one), at the time that various texts were being sent from Thailand to Sri Lanka by king Boromkot, their orthography had yet to be fixed: “We should note in the list of texts sent to Laṅkā the small changes made in the spelling of the titles which proves only that the orthography of Pāli was not fixed at this era in the millieu of scribes of the court of Ayudhya. One currently finds atthakathā for aṭṭhakathā, saddhasāra° for saddasāra°, saddhabindu° for saddabindhu°, samohavinodanī for sammohavinodanī, and vinayya° for vinaya°.” Moreover, we should not forget the somewhat fluid nature of written English in bygone days. 12 I gather that this is also true in the case of Karoṣṭhī manuscripts, and for the same reason, which further draws into question whether it is a scribal “error,” or simply a convention consentually agreed upon out of force of circumstance. 13 It is worth noting, although it is not often mentioned in the West, that when, in the eighteenth century, the Sinhalese Saṅgha fell short of a quorum for the ordination of further monks, the then king of Siam sent not only a sufficient body of monks to restore the Saṅgha, such tradition subsequently being known as the “Siyam Nikāya,” but also a considerable number of texts in the Kham script. Presumably, the Sinhalese had been just as careless with their literature as they had been with their monks. As a result, what might be taken, at first glance, as texts of Sri Lankan origin, might well be, in reality, copies of Kham texts sent to INDO-CHINESE PALI 9 replace those that had become lost. See, for instance, Jacqueline Filliozat, “A new reading of the Syamasandesa of 1756 A.D. preserved in the Malvatte Viharaya of Kandy, Sri Lanka,” in Dharmaduta, Mélanges offerts au Vénérable Thich Huyên-Vi à l’occasion de son 70è anniversaire, 2003; also von Hinüber, “Remarks on a list of books sent to Ceylon from Siam in the 18th century,” JPTS XII 1988, pp 175-184. 14 I once sat on a bus next to a young lady from Jamaica for one and a half hours, yet despite the fact that she was clearly speaking to me in (her) English, I was utterly unable to comprehend even one word of what she actually said. 15 See, for instance, Toshiya Unebe, “Three Stories from the Thai Recension of the Paññāsa-jātaka: Transliteration and Preliminary Notes,” in the Journal of the School of Letters, III 2007, pp 1-23. 16 Which is quite distinct from any story or description encountered in the canonical Petavatthu and its commentary by Dhammapāla, and which exhibits the influence of the Mahāyāna—I cannot recall, for instance, any peta in either of these two works depicted as not having a head, or any feet for that matter, and certainly not as a result of playing football on a vihāra’s sīma.