Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World (40 page)

But the monks did not in turn privilege the common speech of the Buddha himself and his region. Rather, they declared themselves in favour of any form of vernacular language. There are stories that this caused some unease among Brahman monks, who feared that the resulting slack grammar and pronunciation would corrupt the sayings of the Buddha. However, in time a particular Prakrit did come to predominate: it was called
Pāli
(’canonical’) and was a mixed Prakrit. Despite the claims of the Buddhist tradition (which also claimed that this language had been spoken by the Buddha and was, for good measure, the original language of all beings,
sabbasattāna
mūlabhāsa),
^*
Pali was not predominantly Magadhi, but included many distinctively Western elements, reminiscent of Śauraseni: it must have arisen as a kind of Buddhist Aryan creole, by a process of compromise among monks speaking various Prakrits.

Later on, as the faith developed, and became more heavily institutionalised, it increasingly adopted a grander style of language, in form closer to classical Sanskrit, which is known as Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. This typically involves taking the grammatical structures of Prakrit, which are much simpler and more analytic than those of Sanskrit, and reclothing the words in case markings and verb endings that are reminiscent of classical Sanskrit, but quite often misapplied from the viewpoint of classical grammar.

Overall, throughout Indian linguistic history, Sanskrit’s status has tended to rise, both in secular and sacred use; the Maurya kings’, and the Buddhists’ and Jains’, early preference for the vernacular all ultimately yielded to the respect in which Sanskrit was held. It has been recognised throughout as an artificial (
sa
sk
ta
) language; but if anything this has increased its status, and its use has come to be seen as a linguistic touchstone for the quality of a text.

It is interesting to compare briefly some external perceptions of Sanskrit, and of its role in society. There are two outsiders’ traditions which have left records of their encounters: for the last three centuries BC, we have reports from the Greeks; and for the middle of the first millennium AD, from the Chinese to the north-east.

A glance at the map shows that, in an age of overland travel on foot, emissaries of both civilisations must have had to distinguish themselves in terms of determination even before they could reach the centres of Indian culture: Greece was over 5000 miles away (though Greek had been established as a lingua franca for most of that distance), while China, though closer as the crow flies, was in practice cut off not only by the Taklamakan desert but also by the mountains stretching from the Pamirs to the far Himalayas.

The Greeks knew little about India until Alexander’s campaigns brought them to its borders in 327 BC. Thereafter there were diplomatic exchanges between some of the great Indian rulers of the north and the Greek dynasts who controlled the east of what had been the Persian empire, the Seleucids. From 302 to 288 Megasthenes served as Seleucid ambassador to King Chandragupta Maurya in Pataliputra (Patna), which he introduced to the Greek world as Palibothra. He left a discursive study of Indian ways, the
Indikā
, which, taken together with some reports of Onesicritus and Nearchus, naval officers who had written memoirs of their service with Alexander, stood as the core of Greek knowledge of India until the end of the ancient world.

The
Indikā
has not survived, but can be reconstructed substantially from the extensive quotations that figure in other authors, such as Strabo and Pliny, writing (in Italy) two centuries later. It contains little or nothing on the political or literary aspects of Indian life, but does contain an analysis of the caste system, identifying no fewer than seven distinct ‘tribes’ or ‘lineages’, which can be fairly well mapped on to the time-honoured four-way division into Brahmans (priests and philosophers), Kshatriyas (kings and warriors), Vaiśyas (merchants) and Śudras (labourers). It also appears to note the prevalence of the cults of Śiva and Krishna, but the inference is indirect: in the usual Graeco-Roman way, it gives only the names of Greek gods which the author had identified with the Indian figures; so the Indians are said to have worshipped Heracles (since like Krishna he carried a club), and Dionysus (since like Śiva he was associated with thriving vegetable life and with Mount Meru, whereas Dionysus had been born from Zeus’s thigh, in Greek
mērou
, and he was a pretty wild character, worshipped with music and dance).

Megasthenes does cope more explicitly with the more intellectual aspects of religions practised in the Maurya empire of his time, distinguishing Brahmans (
brak
^h
manai
or
bragmanai
) and Śramans (
sarmanai
) as different kinds of philosophers.
Śrama
a
is indeed a Sanskrit word sometimes used specifically for Buddhist monks, but there is no explicit mention of Buddhism, which would have been some two hundred years old at the time (having been founded in exactly the same region where Megasthenes was resident).

The commentary tends to be focused at a fairly superficial level, for example the presence of
gumnosophístai
, or naked sages, and the fact that male and female students were on a par as disciples to the Śramans. Megasthenes apparently never understood that the Brahmans are in fact one of the ‘tribes’, i.e. castes, that he had distinguished; nor that ‘forest-dwellers’ (what his hosts would have called
vanaprastha
) are not a species of Śraman, but rather those who have reached a certain period of life, whether Brahman or Śraman.

India remained the fabulous source of exotic products for the Greeks and beyond them the Romans. In fact, the truest elements of Sanskrit lore that they ever absorbed were the names of some of their favourite substances: canvas (Greek
karpasos
, ‘cotton’, from
karpāsa
), ginger (Greek
zingiber
from
ś
ngavera
, named after a town on the Ganges), pepper (Greek
peperi
from
pippali
, ‘berry’), sugar (Greek
sakkharon
from
śarkarā
, ‘grit’)— originally characterised by Alexander’s admiral Nearchus as honey coming from reeds without the aid of bees.
¹⁵

Megasthenes’ work, which came to form Europe’s knowledge of India up until the Renaissance, was in some ways lacking in understanding, and never offered any appreciation of philosophy, language or literature. In one case, a sage joked that since the conversation took place through three interpreters, they were as likely to get a clear idea of the philosophy being expounded as to purify water by running it through mud.
¹⁶

But this did not mean that the Greeks who lived closer in were similarly lacking. One Greek king of the Panjab, Menander (second century BC), in fact became immortalised for his penetrating interest in Buddhism in the form of the Pali classic
Milinda-pañha
, or ‘Questions of King Milinda’: ‘Many were the arts and sciences he knew—holy tradition and secular law; the
Sā
khya, Yoga, Nyāya
and
Vaiśe
ika
systems of philosophy; arithmetic, music; medicine; the four
Vedas
, the
Purānas
and the
Itihāsas;
astronomy, magic, causation and spells; the art of war; poetry; and property-conveyancing—in a word, the full nineteen.’
¹⁷