I’ve just read Bryan Levman’s Pāli and Buddhism, and here are some thoughts.
First up, let me say it’s great to see serious work done on the roots of Pali and Buddhist culture, and especially to see the emphasis on the connection with local traditions. I learned a lot from the discussions of specific cases. Underlying his approach is the assumption that the Pali texts do indeed represent a language and culture that is deeply embedded in the India of the Buddha’s day, even if filtered through language changes. And I want to acknowledge the depth and seriousness of his intent. It takes many years of focused effort to master obscure languages, and we should treasure such learning. This work will have a lasting impact as more fashionable academic ephemera rise and fall.
A key theory is that Pali descends from an earlier, unattested koine. This is not a new idea, but Levman’s discussion helped me understand the specific process better. The idea is not just that there was a common language that was not location-specific, but rather that the common language simplified phonetic forms, as a kind of “lossy compression”, so that when the more articulated forms such as Pali were reconstituted there is some ambiguity and hence loss of meaning. Of course most cases are clear, but equally some cases are not.
An example is the word veṭha, literally a “twist”, in the compound veṭhamissa. There are a range of variants, including veṭha, veḍha, vedha, vekha, vegha. The common phonemes are veha which Levman postulates as the koine form, which in another context is attested in an old Pali manuscript. Now of course it is normal to find spelling variants in old texts. But in such cases the amount of variants and the nature of the changes are hard to explain through normal phonetic or scribal changes. Levman argues that the simplest explanation is that the koine form was veha, and different editors or scribes articulated it as best they could, resulting in a somewhat random profusion of forms.
This theory seems reasonable in the cases Levman cites, although I’m not sure to what extent we can infer from a few such cases to a wholesale imputation of an unattested language and translation process. For what it’s worth, I’m no linguist, and have no particular theory on the origins of Pali.
Incidentally, the Sanskrit veṣṭa ultimately means “twist”, while missa can have the sense “plait” (Bu Vb Ss 2:2.1.21), so the compound veṭhamissa at DN 16:2.25.11 and Thag 2.12:1.1 refers to a binding material that is a “twisted plait”, i.e. a “rope”. There is no need to accept Levman’s previously-suggested emendation of missaka to nissaya, as I formerly did in my translation.
Levman overstates his case when he says:
It has long been assumed that the roots of Buddhism lay in the Indo-Aryan culture. Now that scholars are beginning to see the extensive influence of the local culture on the founding ideas of the religion, and understand the significant lexemic, specialist content in the teachings, which reflect pre-Buddhist, native belief systems, perhaps it is time to re-evaluate an old paradigm and shift it to a more inclusive model.” (132)
Up to this point in his book he has discussed place names, botanical names, funeral customs, the well-known contrast between the autocratic kingdoms and the republics, one or two places where the Buddha encounters Jaṭilas (dreadlocked ascetics), the robes and kaṭhina, the shrines to yakkhas (native spirits), various sacred trees, and so on. This is all fascinating, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the “founding ideas of the religion”.
He says that past scholars ignored local influences. Now of course in an understudied field like ours there are always omissions and new contributions are welcome. But let’s take just one example, the classic Rhys Davids Buddhist India of 1911. His first chapter begins by contrasting the local republican form of government with the monarchies, and his second chapter describes how the Sakyans employed such a republican system. Chapter 4 speaks of how social customs were “prevalent in widely different forms among the different tribes—Aryan, Dravidian, Kolarian, and others—which made up the mixed population. We have unfortunately only Aryan records.” We’ve always been well aware that it was a mixed culture, and also aware that our knowledge is shaped by the inevitable facts of its transmission through Aryan culture and language.
The influence of the republics on Sangha organization is of course significant. What Levman does is to flesh out the general principles established in the opening to the Mahāparinibbānasutta, and exemplified throughout the Vinaya, and show further details of the influence of local cultures and customs. This gives more detail and color to our understanding, but it does not affect the general picture, which is well understood.
The argument of a special relation between early Buddhism and Dravidian and Munda speakers is undercut by the fact that loan words into Indo-European began appearing in the Rig Veda, especially its later stages, and thus had been ongoing for half a millennium before the Buddha appeared. This influence on Pali was ongoing, especially given the close connection for over two thousand years between the speakers of the Indo-European Sinhalese language and the Dravidian-speaking Tamils.
What Levman does not point out is that the vast majority of technical terms in Buddhist doctrine can be traced to Brahmanical texts. Most of the doctrinal vocabulary is Indo-European. And of course the Brahmans had been adopting local words for centuries, so even if some of these words are ultimately traced to Munda or Dravidian roots, it doesn’t matter for Buddhist history, as long as they can be encountered in Brahmanical texts. As I have noted in a series of essays on this site, with many more examples in my notes, the connection between Buddhist and Brahmanical texts is undeniable. Buddhist terminology responds to ideas of both Brahman (eg. anattā) and śramaṇa movements (eg. sakkāya), as well as making original contributions (eg. yoniso manasikāra).
While I’m not unconvinced of the koine theory, Levman’s proposal that the Sakyans spoke Dravidian seems to have no logical force. There are plenty of words associated with the Sakyans that have a Dravidian or Munda root, but that is true of all the texts of the period. We know that at some point the peoples of the area spoke non-Indo European languages, we know that at some point they adopted Indo-European, and we also know that the process, like all language change, was gradual, incomplete, and went both ways. There’s no evidence that the Buddha’s family spoke anything other than a Indo-European language with a bunch of loan words.
Moreover, if it were the case that the Sakyans spoke Dravidian, this would lead to what for Levman would be a rather unpalatable consequence. Given that Buddhist doctrines are formulated almost entirely in Indo-European, if the Buddha grew up speaking Dravidian, then we can only assume that he strenuously rejected the language and culture of his birth, adopting the Brahmanized culture under which he studied as an adult as a far more sophisticated and appropriate means of expressing his own teachings. Obviously this is unlikely, and we can continue to assume that the Buddha grew up speaking a form of Indo-European.
Apart from these major theories, there are a number of mistakes or missing context that a close reader might want to be aware of.
Levman argues that DN 14 is a late sutta, partly because of the inclusion of the Marks of a Great Man, while in the next sentence saying,“The Sutta-Nipāta is recognized by scholars as one of the earliest of Buddhist suttas.” (130). The Sutta-Nipāta is, for a start, not a sutta but a collection of suttas. And it includes suttas both early and late, and in fact covers the same period of compilation as the rest of the canon. Thus Snp 5.1 includes a clear reference to the Marks of a Great Man. The error of claiming the Sutta-Nipāta is early is repeated several times.
Levman repeats the canard that Buddhaghosa was a brahmin (128), which is based solely on a legendary account many centuries after his life, and contradicted by the many lapses of understanding of Sanskrit and Brahmanical concepts in the commentaries. He further presses the idea that as a brahmin, he would have imposed Brahmanism on Buddhism. This is just prejudice. Converts convert for a reason, usually because they dislike their old religion. As a convert from Christianity via atheism myself, I find that it helps me to see ways that modern Buddhists adopt Christian ideas into Buddhism, for example homophobia, and to effectively counter such influences.
Similarly, he alludes to the increasing influence of Brahmanism on the “pan-Indian” sphere. But Sinhalese don’t see themselves as “Indian”, and they proudly defend themselves against influence from “Hinduism”. Of course influence happens. My point is that for every point of influence there is also a reaction to that influence. You can’t generalize from the idea of growing Hindu influence to specific changes in Sinhalese Buddhism, since this is just as likely to provoke a more assertive and distinctively Buddhist identity.
Sometimes he misses connections which, when restored, establish the exact opposite conclusion. For example, Levman refers to yakkha worship, noting the extensive use of apparently non-Indo-European names for what I have translated as “native spirits”. He notes that in one place the Buddha refers to himself as a yakkha (Snp 3.4:30.5). But he doesn’t notice that the phrase here, “purity of the spirit”, recurs at Snp 4.11:15.2. There it emerges from a discussion of the Indo-European term saññā—a key crux in Yājñavalkya’s teaching—in the context of absorption meditation. The term also appears in a similar sense at AN 10.29:20.2, where the best of those who advocate the “ultimate purity of the spirit” are said to be those who teach the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, by which the Buddha is referring to the Brahmanical teacher Uddaka Rāmaputta (MN 26:16.13). The yakkha is indeed identified with the ultimate Brahman, i.e. the cosmic self, at Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 5.4.1 and Kena Upaniṣad 4.1. Thus while it is true that the yakkha cult is primarily one of local spirit worship, when the Buddha refers to himself as a yakkha, he is specifically drawing on the Upaniṣadic tradition.
The discussion of kasiṇa is undermined by reading the commentarial notion of a meditation disk into the suttas, and then arguing that the sense “entirety” is late. But the basic sutta phrase, which he omits, says “the meditation on universal earth above, below, across, undivided and limitless”, clearly establishing the sense “universal, entirety”, while the sense “disk” doesn’t appear for many centuries.
Likewise, he makes the unwarranted assumption that the passage in DN 11 on consciousness is a description of Nibbana, not noting that this is only stated in the commentary. As Ven Suñño and myself have shown at length, it is in fact a reference to the formless attainments.
The discussion of jaṭilas (dreadlocked ascetics) is similarly unconvincing (48). The word is Dravidian, and Levman says “there is nothing in the suttas that specifically associates them with Brahmins”, while later in the same paragraph he acknowledges that the sixteen ascetics of the Parayanavagga wore dreadlocks and were Brahmins. He also quotes Ud 1.9 where the Buddha sees jaṭilas engaged in sacred bathing and worship of the sacred flame, both widely recognized in the suttas as core Vedic practices, and remarks that purity doesn’t come from bathing, rather, the true brahmin is founded on truth and principle. This is a case where the need to insist of the theory overdetermines the reading: their name is Dravidian, hence it must be a local practice, hence it cannot be Brahmanical. But, as Levman notes elsewhere, Brahmanism itself had already been influenced by local Indian culture for 500 years or more before the Buddha, which means that the presence of local ideas in Buddhism comes partly from Buddhist contact with non-Vedic culture, and partly as pre-mediated through Brahmanism (and also the other, even less known, spiritual movements of the śramaṇas).
Levman conflates (4) the jaṭila who visited the Sakyans on the Buddha’s birthday, Asita (“black”), with the Kaṇha (“black”) of DN 3:1.16.2, positing them as native sages opposed to Brahmanism. But DN 3 is set in mythological time and they cannot be the same person.
Rather, both are examples of what I have called the “dark hermit” archetype. See also Asita Kaṇhasiri (or Kāladevala, Snp 3.11:1.1), Asita Devala (MN 93:18.6), Kaṇha (DN 3:1.23.6), Kaṇhadīpāyana (Cp 31:1.2), and Sāma (Cp 33:1.1). These are mysterious sages, associated with the south, with dark skin, and with magical powers, who irrupt in contention with existing norms. Doubtless it is correct to associate them with native wisdom men rather than Brahmanical rishis. But by the time of the Buddha they appear in contentious relationship with orthodoxy, rather than something outside the pale. Their stories are not just of opposing religious movements, but of the bumps and sparks that happen as different movements converge. This process too started long before the Buddha, as Asita Devala is probably meant to be the legendary seer known as Asita or Devala son of Kāśyapa who composed Rig Veda 9.5–24.
In any work of such complexity and difficulty there are bound to be some mistakes or at least things that are disputable. Good scholarship such as Levman’s work should not be judged by a few mistakes, but by the positive and meaningful contribution that it makes. And in that regard, it’s a fascinating and rewarding glimpse into the time of the Buddha, and an empathetic and informed inquiry into the process of change that characterizes the Buddhist tradition as it does all conditioned things.
