Language, Buddhist Philosophy of

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LANGUAGE, 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-āya (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 beneficial 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. Being mindful of one's speech is said in that canonical text to be a natural manifestation of kindness and sympathy for others.

As Buddhist scholasticism developed in India, scholastics became increasingly occupied with criticizing 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 issue that most of the Buddhist reflections on the nature of language occurred.

In such Pāli canonical sources as the Suttanipāta, 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 defending the authority of the Vedas against Buddhists and other critics, scholastics within the Brahmanical tradition devised two different and mutually incompatible strategies. The first strategy consisted in attributing the Vedic texts to God. The argument was that God, being omniscient and benevolent, could neither 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 integrity of imperfect authors. But if a text has no author 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 reliable. Both of these Brahmanical strategies involved claiming that the language of the Vedic texts was different from any ordinary human language. Various features of the Vedic form of Sanskrit were adduced as evidence that Vedic Sanskrit was eternal and unevolving and that it was the ultimate source of all human languages, which could therefore all be seen as corrupted versions of the pristine Sanskrit language. Moreover, it was claimed that the relationship between 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 convenience. The Brahmanical writer Bhartṛhari (fifth century), against whose views several Buddhist scholastics articulated their views on language, argued that knowledge from the Veda surpassed both personal 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 communicate 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 understood 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 DignĀga (fl. ca. 500 c.e.). Dignāga's principal claim was that all language is nothing more than a system of signs governed by conventional rules that are established by the consensus of the language-using community. Since language 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 burning somewhere, the spoken or written word fire can be seen as a sign that the person who uses it is thinking something about fire.

Two important claims about language follow from the claim that linguistic interpretation is a species of inference. First, it follows that since all inference is fallible, any knowledge communicated through any language is also fallible. Second, it follows that since the knowledge gained through inference is much more vague and imprecise than knowledge gained through direct experience, linguistically communicated knowledge is much less precise and of lower practical value than knowledge gained through direct experience. This means that any body of scripture, whether the Veda or the canonical literature of Buddhism, is of limited value. Only personal experience can be fully trusted. DharmakĪrti (ca. 600–ca. 660) and other Buddhists who followed Dignāga argued that what made Buddhist canonical literature valuable was that it contained advice that, when followed properly, would help people reduce the amount of suffering that they experience in the world. Buddhist canonical sources, in other words, were seen as valuable not because they tell the truth, as the Brahmans claimed the Vedas do, but because they suggest methods by which people may discover the truth for themselves.

Although Indian Buddhist apologists were critical of many Brahmanical views concerning language, one belief that was never questioned was that mantras had the power to heal and achieve various other results in the physical world. The Buddha forbade monks uttering mantras for material gain, but he also forbade monks the practice of medicine for profit. The warning against mantras was therefore only against the Brahmanical practice of reciting them for material reward. Philosophers such as Dharmakīrti and his followers, while being opposed to the recitation of mantras for personal rewards, expressed their conviction that mantras have the power to alter conditions in the material world and thus must be used with discretion and compassion.