ternational Seminar on Tibetan Studies,ed. Michael Aris and
Aung San Suu Kyi. Warminster, UK: Aris and Phillips, 1980.Tseten Zhabdrung. “Research on the Nomenclature of the Bud-
dhist Schools in Tibet,” tr. Tenzin Dorjee. Tibet Journal11,
no. 3 (1986): 40–50.
ALEXANDERGARDNERLANGUAGE, BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY OF
The earliest Buddhist discussions of language are
found in the canonical literature, where the principal
focus is on the correct use of speech. In Majjhimanik-
aya(Middle Length Discourses) 58, for example, the
Buddha advises his followers to consider before they
speak whether what they are about to say is factual,
true, beneficial, endearing, and agreeable to others. If
what one was thinking of saying is false or harmful,
then one should not say it at all. If it is true and ben-
eficial but is likely to be unpleasant to the hearer, then
one should wait for a suitable occasion to say it. Even
if what one has an urge to say meets all those criteria,
one should still wait for the correct time to say it. Be-
ing mindful of one’s speech is said in that canonical
text to be a natural manifestation of kindness and sym-
pathy for others.
As Buddhist scholasticism developed in India,
scholastics became increasingly occupied with criticiz-
ing non-Buddhist schools and defending Buddhism
against criticisms made by non-Buddhists. Among the
many topics that were debated by scholastics, one of
the most important was the issue of the authority of
scriptures. It was in the context of discussing this is-
sue that most of the Buddhist reflections on the nature
of language occurred.
In such Pali canonical sources as the Suttanipata,
the Buddha is portrayed as telling his followers that the
Vedas had been composed by unscrupulous Brahman
priests who were intent on duping people into hiring
them to perform expensive religious rituals. In de-
fending the authority of the Vedas against Buddhists
and other critics, scholastics within the Brahmanical
tradition devised two different and mutually incom-
patible strategies. The first strategy consisted in at-
tributing the Vedic texts to God. The argument was
that God, being omniscient and benevolent, could nei-
ther deceive nor be deceived, and therefore every text
composed by him is necessarily reliable. The second
strategy consisted in claiming that the Vedic texts had
never been composed by anyone and were therefore
eternal. The argument here was that errors occur in
texts only because of the limited knowledge and in-
tegrity of imperfect authors. But if a text has no au-
thor at all, then it has no author whose limitations are
liable to introduce errors into the text. An authorless
text is therefore error-free and hence perfectly reli-
able. Both of these Brahmanical strategies involved
claiming that the language of the Vedic texts was dif-
ferent from any ordinary human language. Various
features of the Vedic form of Sanskrit were adduced
as evidence that Vedic Sanskrit was eternal and un-
evolving and that it was the ultimate source of all hu-
man languages, which could therefore all be seen as
corrupted versions of the pristine Sanskrit language.
Moreover, it was claimed that the relationship be-
tween a Sanskrit word and the object that it denotes
is eternally fixed. The Sanskrit name for any object is
the object’s true name; its name in any other language
was merely a matter of human convention and con-
venience. The Brahmanical writer Bhartrhari (fifth
century), against whose views several Buddhist
scholastics articulated their views on language, argued
that knowledge from the Veda surpassed both per-
sonal experience and reasoning, since both empirical
investigation and logic are limited to the particular
limitations of the individual, while the Veda has none
of these human limitations.
Disagreeing with the Brahmanical view that Sanskrit
has a privileged place among all languages and is the
only legitimate language for rituals, the Buddha
strongly advised that dharma teachers should com-
municate in the vernacular language of their audience.
No language is intrinsically more pure or expressive
than any other; a language is expressive only if it is un-
derstood by both the speaker and the hearer.
Among the first of the Buddhist scholastics to
argue extensively against the Brahmanical tradition
on issues of language was DIGNAGA(fl. ca. 500 C.E.).
Dignaga’s principal claim was that all language is
nothing more than a system of signs governed by
conventional rules that are established by the con-
sensus of the language-using community. Since lan-
guage consists of signs, the interpretation of language
is nothing but a special application of inference. In
much the same way that the observation of a column
of smoke could be taken as a sign that fire is burn-
ing somewhere, the spoken or written word firecan
be seen as a sign that the person who uses it is think-
ing something about fire.LANGUAGE, BUDDHISTPHILOSOPHY OF