The Gāndhārī Dharmapada by John BroughReview by: M. B. EmeneauJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1962), pp. 400-402Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/597662 .

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400 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 82.3 (1962)

Judaism in the Avesta is not less evident than the influence of neo-Platonism " in spite of the im- mediately following cautious restriction that the former " appears not in the doctrine of the Avesta but in the general views and the form of the same " (III, p. lvii). A still fiercely burning fire, indeed, this matter of the religious relationships between Iran and Israel to which the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls has recently added more controversial fuel.'

These and other passages which have lost their actuality through the normal process of antiqua- tion are, however, far offset in number by those parts which remain a most valuable and indis- pensable instrument de travail. There is first the translation itself which in many cases offers the

' See, for instance, J. Duchesne Guillemin, The western response to Zoroaster, 1958, pp. 86 ff.; G. Widengren, Iranisch-semitische Kulturbegegnung in parthischer Zeit, 1960, pp. 51 ff.; W. Hinz, Zarathustra, 1961, pp. 161 ff.

best rendering as yet produced. Then, there are the commentarial notes which testify to Darme- steter's admirable control of and insight in his materials. Next should be mentioned his precise and well documented description of that neglected aspect of the Zoroastrian religion, its ceremonies, rites, liturgy and cult (I, pp. xlix-xcvi and notes throughout the whole work). It is in this respect that his visit to Bombay, Surat and Navsari an(d the information given him by Parsi dasturs and scholars paid a particularly handsome return.

Copies of "Darmesteter" having become rarissime there is every reason to be grateful to those who initiated the photographic reproduction of this truly extraordinary product of brilliant scholarship. Iranianists, present and future, ought to benefit from it in no small measure.

M. J. DRESDE N UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

The Gdndhari Dharmapada. Edited with an in- troduction and commentary by JOHN BROUGH.

(London Oriental Series, volume 7.) Pp. xxv + 319, 24 plates. London: OXFORD UNI-

VERSITY PRESS, 1962.

The discovery in Khotan in 1892 of large por- tions of a birchbark manuscript of a Buddhist Dharmapada text in Prakrit was an event of quite extraordinary importance, for various reasons. It is thought to be the oldest extant manuscript of any Indian text. As Brough says (p. 1), it is the only literary text surviving in this Northwestern Indian Prakrit of Gdndhdra, which became so im- portant as a language of government and religion in Central Asia (Chinese Turkestan) in the early centuries of the Christian era; this Prakrit has been called Gdndhdri by H. WV. Bailey, and the name deserves to be used in future, as Brough does. This text joined the Niya documents of Central Asian officialdom and the many inscrip- tions of the northwestern area of the Indian sub- continent (including two by Asoka) as our evi- dence for this type of Middle Indo-Aryan. More- over, it is the only early Buddhist text so far known in any language other than Pali and Bud- dhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS). It joined the Pali

Dhammapada and the BHiS Uddnavarga (which is still not definitively published, though publica- tion is promised by Dr. Franz Bernhard; cf. p. xv, n. 2), as a third school representative of a type of text, a collection of scriptural verses, which had much canonical or potentially canonical value for apparently all Buddhist schools and sects. Com- parison between the three versions of this canoni- cal element has not failed to be instructive in broadening and deepening our understanding of Buddhism. Brough's treatment of this matter in part I. III of his Introduction (pp. 23-34) is sug- gestive and magisterial. His literary judgment on these collections in his Preface (pp. xvii-xviii), though modestly phrased, deflates incisively the hyperbole of those who have rated the Dhamma- pada 'among the masterpieces of Indian litera- ture'; his judgment may well arouse controversy, but seems salutary.

Publication of the fragments, which were (le- posited in Paris and what is now Leningrad, began in 1897 and 1898, but has not achieved completion until the appearance of this volume. In part 1. I (pp. 2-8) Brough deals analytically and critically with the discovery and the various phases of the publication.' He outlines the reasons for S. F.

'He is certainly fair, perhaps even over-generous, in

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Reviews of Books 401

Oldenburg's unhappy failure to complete the pub- lication of the Leningrad fragments; we would have welcomed a statement somewhere (merely to fill out the record for the history of scholarship) of the circumstances which led to permission being given to Brough to use all the Leningrad materials for this edition. Whatever the past history of all the fragments, we now have in this work (p. xiv) 'an edition of the Prakrit text, where [the] princi- pal concern has been to establish the reading of the text, the arrangement of the various parts, and the location of the fragments.' An important sec- tion of the Introduction, I. II (pp. 8-23), deals with the relations of the extant fragments. It is marked by convincing ingenuity, and leads to, among other conclusions, the surprising and excit- ing one that the three-eighths of the manuscript now missing (there are available about 350 out of roughly 540-560 verses) was cut from the manu- script at the time of the discovery and may possi- bly still be in the hands of an heir of a purchaser of seventy years ago (pp. xiv, 16-7). Brough is not hopeful of its recovery, but makes a plea for possible information.

Superior modern photographs of all the frag- ments, including the surviving debris resulting from the division of the manuscript seventy years ago, have allowed better readings than those that resulted from earlier study. The state of the text is not likely to be much bettered in the future, even though palaeographical problems of interpre- tation still remain. One such is that treated on pp. 75-7, 104 f., as to whether the character usually transcribed th should be transliterated st. Another is the problem of the phonetic nature of the characters used to represent reflexes of some of the uasal plus stop combinations of Sanskrit (pp. 98-100).

Numerous problems of interpretation remain. One of the exasperating characteristics of the manuscript is the fact that the language of the text does not represent an unmixed dialect. There are historical spellings (borrowings, that is, from Sanskrit), and there are also instances where the source-dialect of the text verses, i. e. the dialect in which the verses were transmitted to speakers of the Gandhdra dialect, shows through. A good example (p. 102) is Sanskrit jtman-, which is

his evaluation of the 1921 publications by Barua and Mitra.

represented numerous times by atva-, which is therefore presumably the spelling for the Gdn- dhdr! form. Once the form atrnawa appears, a spelling for a Sanskritic form; once there is a form apana-, a form from another Prakrit, pre- sumably the source-dialect. The scribe seems to have taken pleasure in airing his knowledge of spelling alternatives (so Brough, p. 65). But, when a form is isolated in the text, this character- istic of the manuscript and the dialect often makes solution of difficulties only tentative.

Constant reference to the Pali Dhammapada and the Uddnavarga assisted in the editing, as well as reference to parallel verses elsewhere in Bud- dhist literature and in such Hindu works as the Mahdbhhrata. In the text section each verse is, in fact, accompanied by the parallel Pali verse, when this exists, or when it does not, by any existing parallel, from UdAnavarga (BHS or Ti- betan), Jdtaka, MahAvastu, or other source. Uddnavarga references are always given, though the verses are unfortunately usually not quoted if the Pali is available. Such comparison and the many difficulties of interpretation have led to very lengthy, wide-ranging, and profound discussions of many problems of exegesis. The text covers pp. 119-75, the commentary (in 8-point) pp. 177- 282 and additional notes on pp. xx-xxv. For this extensive commentary all students of this text, of the Dhammapada, and of the Udanavarga, will be extremely grateful.

The Introduction consists of part I The manu- script and the text: I Discovery and publication (pp. 1-8), II Extant parts and their arrangement (pp. 8-23), III General relationships with the Pali Dhammapada and the Uddnavarga (pp. 23- 34), IV Other Dharmapada texts (pp. 34-41), V Affiliation of the GdndhdrT text (pp. 41-8), VI The Gdndhdr! language (pp. 48-54); part II Palaeographical and grammatical (pp. 55-118). Following the text and commentary there are Con- cordance I of manuscript lines to verses (pp. 283-6), Concordance II of Dharmapada verses to Pali Dhammapada (pp. 287-90), Concordance III of Dharmapada verses to the lUddnavarga (pp. 291-3), indices to words of the Dharmapada (with Sanskrit equivalences; pp. 294-312) and other words cited from various languages (pp. 312-5), and an index of Pali verses cited (pp. 316-9). The plates are superb collotypes of the fragments. Among the terminal aids one misses a combined

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402 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 82.8 (1962)

concordance of verses found in all three principal texts, and an index of references to or a concor- dance of verses quoted from other sources than these three.

Moreover, in spite of all the help given in han- dling the Dharmapada, the section on the palae- ography would be more instructive if the author had constructed or reproduced a table or tables of Kharosth! characters. It may be assumed that students and scholars interested in the subject all have access to the requisite books and journals, but it cannot be assumed that more than one copy will be accessible, a distinct drawback if it is a question of a seminar on this text. Moreover, some may want to work on this text but not have access

to an adequate library. Brough's own studies too might well have led him to modify previous tables. This edition is so nearly self-sufficient for study of the Dharmapada that this little extra seems not too much to ask.

Whatever minor criticisms we may have voiced, Professor Brough must be congratulated on a magnificent edition of an important work. We must also be deeply grateful to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of Lon- don, for the publication, and to the Oxford Uni- versity Press for the expert and elegant appearance of the volume.

M. B. EA-ENEAU UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

The Formation of the Maithili Language by SUDHADRA JHn. Pp. xvi + 638. London: Luzac and Company, Ltd., 1958.

When, some eighty years after John Beames finished his Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India, founding thereby Indian Linguistics with reference to the last phase of Indo-Aryan, we draw the balance of the achieve- ments in this field of Indian linguistic research, we must admit that the progress made cannot be called considerable. Jules Bloch, as is well-known, started most brilliantly with La Formation de la langue marathe (1920), soon followed by Suniti Kumar Chatterji's Origin and Development of the Bengali Language (1926). In the footsteps of the latter were successively treated Avadhi by Saksena (1937), Aksdm1 by Kakati (1941), Kon- kan! by Katre (1942), and more recently Bhojpur! by Tiwari (1954-1960). Leaving aside some minor publications, this is virtually all that we have at our disposal as far as the NIA languages are concerned. Any further historical work in whichsoever of the remaining NIA languages is consequently to be highly welcomed. In the case of the Maithill language this is the more so, as this Biharx speech shows special features which are wanting in any other NIA language. Moreover, in contradistinction to most of the cognate lan- guages, Maithill has a literature of its own going back to an early period, which enables the student to trace the lines of development more faithfully

than can be done elsewhere. Again, as will be seen, Maithil! has undergone many an influence from neighbouring non-Aryan speeches. All this makes the study of Maithil! not only an interest- ing subject of research, but to some extent also shows how a historical analysis of any NIA lan- guage has to be tackled and what elements have to be taken into account in carrying out that investigation.

In the book under review Dr. Subhadra Jhd, librarian of the Government Sanskrit Library at Benares and well-known by his translation into English of Pischel's Grammatik der Prakrit- sprachen (1957), has undertaken this far from easy task to which he, a Maithill by birth and equipped with a vast knowledge of Sanskrit and Prakrit, may be considered to be pre-eminently qualified. Already from a superficial glance it becomes clear, that the author has endeavoured to make his work as complete as he could. An ex- tensive introduction precedes the linguistic treat- ment, in which several interesting topics relative to the Maithil! language and literature are dis- cussed, such as the name of Maithill, the area and boundaries of the language, the number of dialects and the area where they are spoken, the character- istics of these dialects, the position of Maithil! among the NIA languages, the early Maithill literature, and other points of interest connected with the Maithill language, the whole concluded by two appendixes, one containing specimens of the different Maithil! dialects, and another in

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