Title: Sanskrit vs Pāli: Buddhaghosa’s Linguistic Turn and its Impacts on Mainland Southeast Asia

Speaker: Norihisa BABA, Professor, The University of Tokyo

Time: Thursday, December 7, 2023 at 21:00 – 22:15 (Japan Standard Time)

Talk Abstract:

This talk examines the process by which the Sri Lankan Mahāvihāra school formed Buddhist language ideology in the 5th century. At the beginning of the Sanskrit Cosmopolis, which spanned from the 4th to the 13th centuries in South and Southeast Asia, Buddhist monks such as Buddhaghosa shaped the discourse of Pāli as the best language for transmitting “the word of the Buddha” in the Mahāvihāra school as textual community. Consequently, Pāli, instead of Sanskrit, grew to become the sacred language in both Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia, especially after the 13th century. This talk shows that Buddhaghosa’s linguistic turn contributed to such a paradigm shift in sacred language.

Speaker Bio:

Norihisa Baba is a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia at the University of Tokyo. He received his Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of Tokyo. His research interests include the history and thought of Indian Buddhism, Theravāda Buddhism, and the Modern Discourse of Buddhism. His approach is comparative, using the Pāli, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese texts. He has published several English language articles and Japanese books, including The Formation of Theravāda Buddhist Thought: From the Buddha to Buddhaghosa (2008); Early Buddhism: Tracing the Buddha’s Thought (2018); and Buddhist Orthodoxy and Heresy: The Birth of the Pāli Cosmopolis (2022). He is the recipient of several academic prizes, including the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies Prize and the Japan Science Promotion Society Prize. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies.