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Gāndhārī

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

H. W. Bailey
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The word Gāndhārī has been chosen to head this study as a term sufficiently wide in its scope to embrace the forms of the one Middle Indian dialect of the north-west of India, centred in the old Gāndhāra region, around modern Peshawar, and which we meet in most varied sources. Under this name I propose to include those inscriptions of Aśoka which are recorded at Shahbazgaṛhi and Mansehra in the Kharoṣṭhī script, the vehicle for the remains of much of this dialect: To be included also are the following sources: the Buddhist literary text, the Dharmapada found in Khotan, written likewise in Kharoṣṭhī, of which a new reading of the text available in facsimile is given in BSOAS 11. 488–512; the Kharoṣṭhī documents on wood, leather, and silk from Caḍ'ota (the Niya site) on the border of the ancient kingdom of Khotan, which represented the official language of the capital Krorayina, K 572, 512 lou-lan <ləu-lan (lou in a series with alternation of k and l) of the Shan-shan kingdom, and of one document, no. 661, dated in the reign of the Khotana maharaya rayatiraya hinajha dheva ṿijida-siṃha. With this more copious material must be grouped the scattered traces of the same Middle Indian dialect in Khotanese, Tibetan, Agnean, Kuchean, the earlier Chinese Buddhist transliterations, as, in particular, in the Dīrghāgama of the Dharmaguptaka ṡect and the remains in Sogdian, Uigur Turkish, and in Mongol (in living use), and also in Manchu texts. The modern Dardic languages Ṣiṇā, Khowar, Phalūᵛa and others represent the same type of Middle Indian. Much material in Chinese texts, for most of us hidden and inaccessible, remains to be gathered and sifted. The preliminary studies of P. Pelliot in Les noms propres dans les traductions chinoises du Milindapañha (JA 1914. 2. 379–419), of Fr. Weller in his paper Über den Aufbau des Pāṭikasuttanta (Asia Major 5. 1928), and of E. Waldschmidt in his Bruchstücke buddhistischer Sūtras aus dem zentralasiatischen Sanskritkanon I, 1932, have hardly realized the importance of this North-Western Prakrit.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , February 1946 , pp. 764 - 797
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1946

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References

page 765 note 1 Either hamā or hamai seems a possible reading

page 765 note 2 Of the two units, one above the other, expressing the 2 the lower has been broken away.

page 766 note 1 The puṃnā is brokeṇ.

page 766 note 2 ganaṃ and drū ate uncertain.

page 766 note 3 Probably the broken akṣara is é.

page 766 note 4 On the relationship of Asi (here used for the less satisfactory word ‘Ossetic’) and Sogdian, see Asica, Philological Society's Transactions 1945, pp. 2–3. The Asi word has k' <Old Iranian k when no aspiration supervened. I would add here that Asi, Iron As0, is from and older*āsia-, or possibly*arsia-, but the Τ has left no trace here.

page 768 note 1 It should be noted that in the Niya documents ζ can be indicated by without diacritic, as shown by alternative spellings, such as asimatra, ajhimatra, asimatra ‘adhimātra’; -sena, -sena (Khota.-ysīna, Uigur -zun); bysmoyika, bujhmoyika.

page 774 note 1 Iexplain this word by an Old Iranina *naχti-čiθra- ‘originating in night’, with allusion to the epithet Zor.Pahl. tam-tōχmak (a translation of Av təmasčiθra-) ‘originating in darkhess’ applied to the wild beasts in Zoroastrian terminology (Greater Bundahišn 147.8). From -čiθra We have similarly NPers. hujīr, hužīr ‘handsome’, Zor.Pahl. MidPers., MIdParth. hwčyhr, Av. hučiθra-; and also in Zor.Pahl., NPers. anjīr ‘fig’ attested also from Sogdian in Uigur 'nčyr* ančār or * anjīr (see G. R. Rachmati, Zur Heilkunde der Uiguren ii (1932), p. 22. and facsimile, 1. 8). This represents an Old Iranian *anačiθra- in reference to the erroneous view that the fig did not flower (se B. Laufer, Sino-Iranica 411). For the explanation by čar- ‘to roam’ see C. Bartholomae, If 38.23 f.

page 776 note 1 A.-M. Boyer, JA 1911. 1. 415, where ṣ was not yet understood.

page 776 note 2 I put within quotation marks readings taken from E. Senart's study (JA 1898) for which no facsimile is available.

page 777 note 1 t'an <d'âm, not in Karlgren: fan-ts'ie K 1129, 650 t'u-nan<d'uo-nâm.

page 779 note 1 Though perhaps little probant in a proper name, the c, ć of this name indicates What developed from Old Indian śc see above p. 774. Uigur has χaričantri.

page 779 note 2 A new edition of this text has been in the hands of the printer since 1942 in Khotanese Texts II. G. Morgenstierne has some useful notes on the text in Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogbidenskap 12. 269 ff.

page 780 note 1 To represent у the Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions have k, as in Viyakamitra (Bajanr casket, Epigraphia Indica 34) = *vižay0 or, that is, k with fricative-stroke, as in bhaavaṯo, Sanskr. bhagavato (ed. Konow, no. 15, A 12) and probably also in divasaale (not kā0) in no. 83. The Niya documents have -kala, -ģala, -yala ‘time’ and the Dharmapada -'ala- in uṭ'haṇe-'alaṣa.

page 780 note 2 For tau < tâu, not in Karlgren, the fan-ts'ie is K 1187, 673 tu-lau < tuo-lâu.

page 786 note 1 Cf. also Khotanese pêma ‘image’ < pratimā, BSOAS 10. 906.

page 787 note 1 For ṣə < źīa, not in Karlgren, see BSOAS 10. 914, note 1.

page 789 note 1 I use l' for the sign in E. J. Rapson's table no. 221, which the editors read lṔ and T. Burrow has rendered by lý. In kal'ana, Sanskr. kalyāṇa-, ' occurs Where in Khotanese kadāna- Was Written.

page 790 note 1 kie < kiät, not in Karlgren: fan-ts'ie K 486, 73 kü-kie <kwo-kiät.

page 790 note 2 t'an < d'âm, not in Karlgren: fan-ts'ie K 1129, 650 t'u-nan < d'uo-nâm.

page 790 note 3 The -e'o- resembles the -eya- beside -aǵa- in Niya documents, noted above, p. 776.

page 790 note 4 ˚ < ât, not in Karlgren: fan-ts'ie K 1288, 57 u-χo < -uo-yât.

page 791 note 1 ˚ < ngâ, not in Karlgren: fan-ts'ie K 1280, 414 u-x˚ < nguo-yâ.

page 792 note 1 This recalls the r in Khotanese murkhuṭa- mursala- from Indian mukuṭ-, musala-, see above, p.784.

page 793 note 1 The interpretation of avana is hardly yet settled. F. W. Thomas has again urged its identification with Indian āpaṇa ‘market’ (BSOAS 11.531 f.). The alternative explanation from an Iranian *āvahana- ‘dwelling-place’ cannot be excluded linguistically, although one would wish to find the Iranian word in some contiguous source (its existence in Old Iranian is attested by Old Pers. āvahana-). With bhuma ‘land’ either meaning would suit ‘land of the market-town’ or ‘land of the settlement’. Of the two the more precise āpaṇa might be preferred.

page 795 note 1 trodaśa implies muli milima, as in no. 762 D 1 aśpasa muli milima 4 3 khi 10.

page 795 note 2 The replacement of j after a voiceless fricative by the fricative ś is the same that is noted from Gāndhārī in Chinese K 1212, 819 ṣï-tṣ'ï-sou < śiək-ṣie-ṣieu representing *śākśeṣu < śākyesu (E. Waldschmidt, Bruchstülcke 154). For ṣï < śiək, not in Karlgren, the fan-ts'ie is K 856, 1223 śang-ṭṣï < śiək.