What was the Actual Language Spoken by the Buddha?!

English, Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese or any of the European languages is certainly not the language/s spoken by the historic Buddha who lived in central India around five centuries before Christ. Modern Indian languages like Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Sinhalese and the like were not there in the sixth century before Christ. So, what language did Buddha speak?! Well, until as latest as the 20th century, ‘Pali’, an ancient Indian homogenous dialect, is claimed to have been the actual language spoken by the historic Buddha. This traditional orthodox belief is still very, very strong among the Theravada Buddhists of South and Southeast Asia. This is particularly much more so because their scriptural Canon was written in Pali around one century before Christ in ancient Sri Lanka (that is almost 4-5 hundred years after the death of Buddha). No one knows for certain whether Pali was a living language until that time and/or a lingua franca of the Buddhists of hinter India and Sri Lanka. It has ceased to be a living language though. Starting from the second half of the 20th century up to now, ample evidences have been produced by critical scholarship to suggest that Pali, as claimed to have been the actual language spoken by the Buddha, was not even a language at all! Scholarly debates on Pali as Buddha’s own language have seen hundreds of theories against and for it. Here the Monk would not go into A-Z of that debate, which often confuses the reader more, rather than answering his own inquisition. Putting aside the traditional belief that Buddha did actually speak Pali, let the Monk reiterate a couple of points against it.
Textually, by Pali, it was originally meant ‘written text’ as opposed to ‘spoken words’. As late as the fifth century after Christ, Pali was used to refer to the ‘written texts’ of the Buddhist Canonical Scriptures of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). It was never used to refer to the spoken language of the Buddha as such. Pali came to be reckoned as a ‘language’, for the first time, in a Sinhalese chronicle named ‘Rasavahni’, a very, very late text. Sinhalese monks as late as the fifth century after Christ started linking Pali with ‘Magadhi’, a dialect said to have been the language of Magadha, the kingdom where Buddhism arose. Keeping in mind that Buddha was originally from Kapilavatthu, a tribal territory under the sovereign of another powerful and the largest kingdom of the time – Kosala, he often introduced himself as a ‘Kosalan’ (to put it in modern terms, he was holding a Kosalan passport), not a ‘Magadhan’ as many traditionalists who claim Magadhi to be the native language of Buddha would wish him to be. This alone proves that Buddha did not speak a single ‘language’ – Magadhi (=Pali?). The traditional belief that Buddha only used Magadhi/Pali as his medium of communication is extremely thin. The traditional belief even went so far as to state that Buddha asked his followers to learn his teachings in ‘HIS OWN LANGUAGE’ (Sakaya-nirutti) (i.e. Magadhi used by Buddha as explained by later monks). The term used by Buddha to refer to a territorial dialect was ‘nirutti’ and he asked his followers to learn his teachings in ‘sakaya-nirutti’. Sakaya means ‘his/her/one’s own’. The problem here is being ‘sakaya’: is it referring to Buddha’s own language or the language of the respective learners. If it is taken as ‘Buddha’s own language’, then it should be the language of Kosala because he was a native of Kosala country! But though taken likewise, the Theravada monks insist that Buddha meant his own language which is Magadhi-nirutti/Pali (the language in which their scriptures are written). However, this is largely fabricated because in another earliest recorded source Buddha is quoted as saying that one should not stick to territorial dialects. Buddha himself reiterated that diversity of language does not change the commonly designated meanings of objects. He gave the example of a ‘bowl’ known by seven terms in seven different territories: pātī, patta (patta is Pali), vitta, sarāva, dhāropa, poņa and pisīlava. Buddha mentioning these seven different territorial dialectical words means that he was a linguist in the then known Indian world. The Indian subcontinent was and is very rich and diverse in languages and dialects. A person coming from this area most likely to know several languages and dialects like Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati and many more. So, knowing that the Buddha was going to every corner of India known that time for teaching and meeting people, who on earth can logically and convincingly argue that Buddha used only Magadhi as his medium of communication and instruction!!! Surely there is no record at all to suggest that Buddha had a personal interpreter or translator as the Dalai Lama does. It is very, very certain that Buddha himself was multi-lingual. Proof? Well, see the example of the bowl mentioned above. Now the question is: how did Buddha manage to learn so many different dialects? Well, the main reason is wherever Buddha went he stayed there for at least a couple of days interacting with the locals; and linguistically the different territorial dialects are not that very different. Knowing one dialect very well, one can at least understand many, if cannot speak fluently. So, picking up some very important words here and there to convey his essential message could not have been a difficult task for a person like the Buddha.

Still however the above discussion does not answer the question as to whether Pali, the language in which the Theravada Canon is written, was one of many of those dialects spoken by the Buddha. Part of the answer could be yes, Pali could have been one of the dialects spoken by the Buddha. The proof is the above mentioned word ‘patta’ which is a Pali word used by the Buddha to refer to a ‘bowl’. But one very cautious warning is: by this, don’t think that the kind of Pali you find or read in the written forms today is exactly the kind of Pali you might think to have existed during Buddha’s time. The Pali written texts came into existence 4-5 hundred years after the death of the Buddha. Within this long gap 4-5 hundred years, any unstable and imperfect dialect, say for instance, Pali was not beyond adaptation. King Asoka, a Buddhist king who ruled the Indian subcontinent from Magadha (the same country where Buddhism arose), lived during the 3rd century B.C., i.e. three hundred odd years after Buddha’s death. The interesting point is, Pali whose original name is said to be Magadhi, the language of Magadha, did not find predominance in all the records left by king Asoka in the forms of pillars and tombs scattered all over the Indian subcontinent. None of the forms of dialects used by Asoka in his pillars represents the exact form of Pali that is used in the written composition of the Buddhist Canonical texts, whose adherents strongly believe Pali was Magadhi, a dialect actually spoken by the Buddha in Magadha.

By and large, one of the very safe and convincing conclusions would be that though the Theravada canonical language what we now know as Pali can have some credits to have been closest to the forms and mixture of many dialects which might have been spoken by the Buddha, it is never the exact form used during the 6th century before Christ, let alone the sectarian claim that Pali alone was the very language spoken by the historic Buddha.

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