10 Oct
2012
10 Oct
'12
11:39 a.m.
From: SPC
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 11:13 PM
> C: What language is that? Buddhist?
> a) It's Portuguese, the national language of
Brazil.
> C: It's all Greek to me!
NO greek. NO spanish. Buddish language don't
exists.
I want to address that last point.
The earliest Buddhist texts are written in a Middle Indic[2] language
called P?li, which is still the liturgical language of the Ther?v?da
school of Buddhism. The texts of the other still existing school,
Mah?y?na, are written in "Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit", a form of Sanskrit
into which Middle Indic grammatical and lexical elements have been
borrowed (when Sanskrit was a learned language of scholarship, like the
Latin of 17th C. England--think Sir Isaac Newton's _Principia_).
So Buddhist languages, meaning languages used specifically by Buddhists
for religious purposes, did and do exist.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/