Scholastic Pali. The scholastic Pali used by the commentators on the Buddhist Pali canon(5th to 20th centuries)

• Applicant: Dr. Petra Kieffer-Pülz
• Subject Area: Asian Studies
• Term: from 2010 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 160201468

The Buddhist canon written in Pali, a middle Indic language, has a long reception history documented, first and foremost, in a range of commentaries supplementing the entire canon with explanations of its meaning (atthakatha) from the 5th century onward. These commentaries on their part are augmented by various subcommentaries (tika), written between the 10th to 20th centuries. This wealth of commentarial literature has been handed down to us in its entirety. Often the commentaries expound the meaning of the respective canonical text in dialectic dialogues: first a protagonist of  an opposite school of thought raises his objection against a given interpretation (not necessarily that of the Siddhantavadin), and then this objection is refuted either by the representative of the commentator's school himself, or indirectly by drawing other interlocutors into the debate by forwarding his arguments. According to this pattern, the discussion usually falls into the formalized dialectic structure consisting of 'assertion' (pubbapakkha) and 'proven teaching' (siddhanta). The pubbapakkha is often rejected beforehand by other pubbapakkhas, and only then the Siddhantavadin pronounces the final word on the matter. This makes it a difficult and time-consuming task to attribute every single point put forward in the debate to the individual parties involved. The task is complicated further by the fact that conventional words and idiomatic expressions often acquire specific meanings or functions in the passages introducing the various objections and replies. This terminology has never been systematically determined, grammatically described, or included in lexica. The project aims to determine the specific structural features and terminology of these dialogues in order to contribute to a more thorough understanding of the (still largely unexplored) commentarial literature, and thereby to deepen our knowledge of the younger Pali language (5th to 20th centuries). The investigation is intended to cover the entire corpus of commentaries to the Buddhist Pali canon (which range from the 5th to 20th centuries). Since the scholastic style of the Pali commentaries clearly reflects the so-called Bhasya-style of commentarial literature in Sanskrit, parallels to, and deviations from, scholastic Sanskrit will also be taken into consideration.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants