High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
International Conference on
“Sanskrit in Asia”
to celebratethe Golden Jubilee of Her Royal Highness Princess Mahachakri Sirindhorn
Inaugural Session,
Bangkok, June 23, 2005
THE SOUND PATTERN
of
SANSKRIT IN ASIA
An Unheralded Contribution by Indian Brahmans and Buddhist Monks*
Frits Staal
Berkeley/Chiang Mai
C o n t e n t s1. A Vedic Discovery,
p.2
2. Indic Scripts of Asia,
p.6
3. South, Southeast and Central Asia,
p.7
4. East Asia,
p.9
5. Arabic,
p.10
6. Siddham,
p.12
7. Conclusions,
p.14
Acknowledgements,
p.14
Select Bibliography,
p. 17
____________
*
Subsequently published in
Sanskrit Studies Central Journal. Journal of the Sanskrit Studies Centre
, Silpakorn University, 2 (2006) 193-2007.
2
Your Royal Highness, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen
1. A Vedic Discovery
It is a great privilege for me to be present here and discuss Sanskrit in Asia on this specialoccasion. I am sure I speak for all of us who participate in this conference and othervisitors, when I say that we are grateful to Your Royal Highness who is not only takingtime from more pressing duties, but who is also concerned with many languages otherthan Sanskrit. I believe they include in alphabetic order Chinese, English, French,German, Khmer, Latin and Pali, not to mention Thai, which comes modestly at the end of this list because I have followed the order of letters of the English ABC. I shall begin myown inquiry with late Vedic, which is close to Classical Sanskrit and comes even laterthan S
anskrit and Thai because “V” comes after “S” an
d “T” in all the Near Eastern and
European alphabets that I shall oppose to the sound pattern of Sanskrit. For I believe withPlato that if we look at two opposites, side by side, and rub them against each
other, “wemay cause justice to blaze out as from the two kindling sticks”
(
Republic
IV 435 a 1-2)
–
the Greek equivalent of
agnimanthana
in the Vedic fire ritual.Classical Indian linguists adopted a synchronistic perspective because they did not regardlanguage as subject to change. We now know that language evolves in a manner that isnot altogether different from the evolution of the species. Roughly speaking, Old-Khmerevolved into Cambodian, Latin into Italian and French and Sanskrit into Hindi andMarathi. The Vedic language went through three stages which are known as Early,Middle and Late Vedic. Throughout the long period of their evolution, from about 1700to 500 BCE, Vedic Indians spoke Vedic by definition, composed Vedic verse and prose,and transmitted these compositions to future generations through recitation. It was anexclusively oral tradition.Toward the end of the Vedic period and at the western extremity of Vedic India, inKo
å
ala or Videha,
–
not far in time and place from the Buddha
‟s birth –
reciters of the
3Veda made a major discovery (
Figure 1)
. They found that the consonants of a languageare produced by constricting the vocal tract at a particular point along its stationaryportion -- the palate or upper lip. If we move from the larynx or throat to the lips, wepronounce
ka, ca,
ø
a, ta, pa
. Each of these syllables may be unvoiced or voiced, providedwith more or less breath, which may be made to pass through the nasal cavity as well.Thus we produce, in the case of
ka
, the sequence
ka
,
kha
,
ga, gha,
ò
a
; and similarly forthe other four consonantal stops. The two directions are combined in the two-dimensionalsquare or
varga
that is depicted here. In order to complete the picture, a few othersyllables have to be added along with semi-vowels and vowels.The Vedic system of the sounds of language exhibits and embodies what is nowadayscalled phonetics, but is close to phonology which studies features of those same soundsas parts of a system. The system exhibits what I refer to as the sound pattern of Vedic,Sanskrit or language. I do not imply that it is the same for all languages, but most of thesounds of human speech may be accommodated in some such scheme. During the LateFigure 1. The Vedic System of the Sounds of Language
Add a Comment