Sanskrit Buddhist literature
[2] During the Indian Tantric Age (8th to the 14th century), numerous Buddhist Tantras were written in Sanskrit, sometimes interspersed with local languages like Apabhramśa, and often containing notable irregularities in grammar and meter.
[8][9][10] Various parallel passages in the Buddhist Vinayas state that when asked to put the sutras into chandasas the Buddha refused and instead said the teachings could be transmitted in sakāya niruttiyā (Skt.
[1] However, the Sarvāstivāda Vinaya texts state that chandasas does not refer to Sanskrit itself, but to a specific Vedic intonation used to chant the Vedas.
[12] Bryan Levman notes that the term can also mean "explanation of words," "grammatical analysis," "etymology," "pronunciation," or "way of expression" according to the Pali English Dictionary.
This was influenced by the rise of Sanskrit as a political and literary lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent, perhaps reflecting an increased need for elite patronage.
[3] According to Maurice Winternitz, numerous fragments of the Sarvāstivāda Sanskrit canon have survived, especially from archeological findings in East Turkestan, and also from quotations in other sources.
[11] According to Johannes Bronkhorst, part of the reason for the Buddhist adoption of Sanskrit was due to the cultural and political influence of Brahmanas.
Since Buddhists became reliant on the support of the royal and elite classes, "the adoption of Sanskrit became a matter of adjusting to the exigencies of the day.
states that "a bodhisattva studies the linguistic science in order to arouse confidence among those who are attached to the Sanskrit language by choosing well-formed phrases and syllables.
[11] According to Eltschinger, Yogacara sources like these "ascribe a threefold purpose to the study of (Sanskrit) grammar: authorizing a bodhisattva's speech so that he does not become the target of the sarcasms of pseudo-experts; allowing him to preach the Buddhist Law in a conceptually precise and formally irreproachable language; cause him to possess the eloquence that enables him to defeat his opponents in debate.
"[11] Another important use of knowing Sanskrit according to Eltschinger was that it allowed Buddhists to study the scriptures of non-Buddhists, with the goal of defeating them in debate.
Furthermore, Jean Filliozat argued that Sanskrit was adopted because of the need for a lingua franca:the more the prakrits evolved, the more they became differentiated and the more it became necessary to have recourse to a common language of to communicate in an increasingly vast Buddhist world as well as for active proselytism to many regions.
[11]Oskar von Hinüber meanwhile, argued that the Buddhists were just following "a general development within Indian culture" that was not restricted to Buddhism and which saw a process of Sanskritization throughout the subcontinent.
[21] The poetic works of Aśvaghoṣa and other Sanskrit poets like Mātrceta and Āryaśūra were very popular in India and they were widely recited and memorized according to Yijing.
[23][24] Various scholars have argued that many of these Prajñāpāramitā sutras may have developed among the Mahāsāṃghika tradition in the Āndhra region of South India (circa 1st century BCE).
[30] These include well known figures like Kumāralatā, Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Matrcetā, Āryasura, Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, Yaśomitra, Dignāga, Sthiramati, Dharmakīrti, Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti, Śāntideva and Śāntarakṣita.
[8][37][38] Some Sanskrit works which were written by Buddhists also cover secular topics, such as grammar (vyākaraṇa), lexicography (koṣa), poetry (kāvya), poetics (alaṁkāra), and medicine (Ayurveda).
Esoteric Buddhist works are unique in that they often contain non-standard (non-Paninian) Sanskrit, prakritic elements and also influences from regional languages like apabhramśa and Old Bengali.
[47][48] He had studied Sanskrit grammar, poetics, kavya, lexicography, and drama with Indian pandits like Sakyasribhadra (who traveled to Tibet and taught numerous Tibetan students).
[49] According to Jonathan Gold, Sakya Pandita held that Tibetan scholars needed to form an elite guard to protect the Buddha's Dharma from corruption.
"[48] Sakya Pandita wrote various works in order to remedy what he saw as a lack of knowledge of classical Indian sciences by Tibetans, such as his Gateway to Learning.
Sakya Pandita's tradition also promoted the study of the "five sciences" taught at Indian universities as a necessary part of the bodhisattva path.
[53] Pali literature in Sri Lankan Buddhism also went through a process of increasing Sanskritization which began during what is called "the reform era" of 1157-1270.
[7] In the modern era, Sanskrit Buddhist texts were discovered in numerous regions, including Nepal, India, Tibet, Gilgit (Pakistan), Sri Lanka etc.
Indeed, numerous Buddhist texts in the Taishō Tripitaka contain Siddhaṃ script, such as the Womb Matrix Sanskrit Mantra (T. 854 胎藏梵字真言).
This is closely connected to the importance of Sanskrit mantras and the influence of the Siddhaṃ script in East Asian Esoteric Buddhism.
Some of these were photographed and catalogued by Rahula Sankrityayan in the 1930s and others are being studied and published by the China Tibetology Research Center in Beijing together with the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
[8] A major milestone in the study of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Literature was Franklin Edgerton's publication of a BHS Dictionary and Grammar, along with a Reader, in 1953.
[62][10] In 2003, the Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon (DSBC) project was initiated by the University of the West (California), in cooperation with the Nagarjuna Institute of Exact Methods (NIEM, Nepal).
[7] DSBC (directed by Lewis Lancaster and Min Bahadur Shakya) seeks to collect, digitize and electronically publish Sanskrit Buddhist texts.
