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136-467: The Ekottara Āgama ( Sanskrit ; traditional Chinese : 增壹阿含經 ; ; pinyin : zēngyī-ahánjīng ) is an early Indian Buddhist text , of which currently only a Chinese translation is extant ( Taishō Tripiṭaka 125). The title Ekottara Āgama literally means "Numbered Discourses," referring to its organizational principle. It is one of the four Āgamas of the Sūtra Piṭaka located in

272-399: A dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead." Tiantai The name of the school is derived from the fact that Zhiyi lived on Tiantai Mountain , which then became a major center for

408-433: A focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship; for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts. According to Renou, Sanskrit had

544-513: A kind of idealism influenced by Zongmi, emphasizing what he called the "one pure formless mind". This situation led to the famous debate within the Tiantai school known as the "home mountain" ( shanjia ) vs. "off mountain" ( shanwai ) debate. "Off mountain" supporters, as they were later polemically termed, supported these new doctrines (such as the "one pure mind") claiming they were originally Tiantai doctrines, while "home mountain" supporters saw

680-591: A language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages ( prākṛta - ). The term prakrta literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth . The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to

816-658: A limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature. Sanskrit

952-454: A natural part of the earliest Vedic language, and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters. The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other. This

1088-479: A negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder, On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be

1224-546: A pan-Indo-Aryan accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally. It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent. As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language. It connected scholars from distant parts of South Asia such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given

1360-578: A refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini . The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa , wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and

1496-538: A relative sense. Ultimately, the Lotus Sutra's Subtle Dharma is "not established in comparison to anything else, for there is nothing outside it to which it might be compared." From this absolute perspective, the Lotus Sutra's One Vehicle is "open and integrated" according to Zhiyi, and includes all other Buddhist teachings and skillful means. From the ultimate point of view, all distinctions of "true" and "provisional" are dissolved since all teachings are expressions of

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1632-538: A restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded". The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond

1768-439: A similar phonetic structure to Tamil. Hock et al. quoting George Hart state that there was influence of Old Tamil on Sanskrit. Hart compared Old Tamil and Classical Sanskrit to arrive at a conclusion that there was a common language from which these features both derived – "that both Tamil and Sanskrit derived their shared conventions, metres, and techniques from a common source, for it is clear that neither borrowed directly from

1904-446: A single integrated reality. Swanson also notes that various scholars have criticized Zhiyi for adding a third "truth", when no Indian author explains Madhyamaka this way. However, according to Swanson, the major point of Zhiyi's analysis is that reality is a single integrated truth (which may be explained with two or three aspects). As such, it is not a deviation from classical Madhyamaka according to Swanson. Swanson thinks that one of

2040-542: A student of Miaofeng, was also another important figure who wrote a work entitled "On Nature Including Good and Evil" which presents his ideas on doctrinal classification, the principle of nature-inclusion, and the practice of the Dharma-gate of inherent evil attempting to harmonize these with Confucianism and the thought of the Śūraṃgama Sūtra. Chuandeng was also instrumental in rebuilding Gaoming monastery which had been abandoned by this time. Tianxi Shoudeng (1607–1675)

2176-711: Is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in

2312-516: Is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent , particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century. This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of South Asia to create, and thereafter expand

2448-434: Is also a key text. Tiantai is often termed the ‘Four Sutras One Treatise School’ (四経一論) because of the strong influence of these texts on the tradition. Apart from these, other classic Mahayana sutras are also important in Tiantai. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra is also very highly regarded in Tiantai and it is seen as one of the subtlest and deepest sutras and to belong to the class of "complete" teachings. The Vimalakīrti Sūtra

2584-502: Is also an influential tradition which branched off from Tiantai during the 9th century, and played a major role in the development of Japanese Buddhism . A Korean offshoot , the Cheontae school , was also established during the 12th century. Furthermore, Tiantai (and its offshoots) were very influential in the development of other forms of East Asian Buddhism, such as Chan and Pure Land . Unlike earlier schools of Chinese Buddhism ,

2720-479: Is also called "the truth of one reality", as well as "emptiness" (空 kong ), " Buddha-nature " (佛性 fóxìng ), Thusness (Skt. tathātā, 如如 ruru), tathāgatagarbha (如来藏 rulaizang), and the Dharmadhatu (法界 fajie). According to Paul Swanson, this doctrine arose from the need to make explicit the relationship between the first and second truths of classical Indian Mahayana (an issue which also may have led to

2856-549: Is also seen as an important sutra in Tiantai. Zhiyi wrote a commentary on this sutra, the Wuimo yiji ( 維摩義記 T1776). Indeed, the Tiantai school's study makes use of numerous sources. As noted by Donner and Stevenson: When we examine the early [Tiantai] exegetical and textual record, we find that [Zhiyi] and his successors compiled treatises…for any number of sūtras other than the Lotus, including such long-standing Chinese favorites as

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2992-509: Is because Sakyamuni Buddha and any other Buddha's meritorious qualities in their practice leading to enlightenment and in the resultant realization do not reject anything, instead embracing all. In the Tiantai terminology, the Buddha and all beings mutually include, inter-pervade, and are identical to each other. Zhanran writes: "Every blade of grass, tree, pebble, and particle of dust is perfectly endowed with buddha nature ...The practitioner of

3128-452: Is found in the writing of Bharata Muni , the author of the ancient Natya Shastra text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the pūrvam ('came before, origin') and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar". Sanskrit belongs to

3264-532: Is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Ṛg-vedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different. The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous compared to the Classical Sanskrit as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in

3400-479: Is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases. The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest. Yet,

3536-512: Is the 'locus classicus' of the doctrine of "the Buddha-nature of Insentient Beings." According to Shuman Chen, Zhanran: provides his rationale primarily from the perspective of the all-pervasive quality of Buddha-nature, which he considers synonymous with suchness. This rationale indicates that external tangible objects like water, buildings, and flora, formless sounds and smells, and internal thoughts or ideas all possess Buddha-nature. This

3672-589: Is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh) . Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism. The structure and capabilities of

3808-520: Is traditionally taken to be the first patriarch of the Tiantai school. Madhyamaka works associated with Nāgārjuna like the Chung lun (" Madhyamakaśāstra "; Taishō 1564) and the Dà zhìdù lùn (T. no. 1509) are important sources for the Tiantai school. The sixth century dhyāna master Huiwen ( Chinese : 慧文 ) is traditionally considered to be the second patriarch of the Tiantai school. Huiwen studied

3944-540: The Bhagavata Purana , the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language. The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages. Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside

4080-817: The Lotus Sūtra ( Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra ) as the main basis, the Mahāprajñāpāramitāupadeśa of Nāgārjuna as the guide, the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra as the support, and the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (The Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra in 25,000 Lines) for methods of contemplation. The “Book of the Original Acts that Adorn the Bodhisattva,” ( Pusa yingluo benye jing T. 24, No. 1485)

4216-672: The Lotus Sūtra in its teachings. During the Sui dynasty , the Tiantai school became one of the leading schools of Chinese Buddhism , with numerous large temples supported by emperors and wealthy patrons. The school's influence waned and was revived again through the Tang dynasty and also rose again during the Song dynasty . Chinese Tiantai remains a living tradition to this day, being particularly strong in Hong Kong . The Japanese Tendai school

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4352-760: The Chinese Buddhist Canon . According to Tse Fu Kuan, "in 385 AD Zhu Fonian (竺佛念) completed a Chinese translation of the Ekottarika-āgama recited by Dharmanandin (曇摩難提), a monk from Tukhāra. This first translation, in forty-one fascicles, was later revised and expanded by Zhu Fonian into the Ekottarika-āgama in fifty-one fascicles that has since come down to us. Zhu Fonian probably added new material to his first translation and even replaced some passages of his first translation with new material." Scholars such as Yin Shun , Zhihua Yao and Tse Fu Kuan consider

4488-580: The Dalai Lama , the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet. The Sanskrit language created

4624-555: The Faxiang school and the Tiantai school concerning the notion of universal Buddhahood were particularly heated, with the Faxiang school asserting that different beings had different natures and therefore would reach different states of enlightenment, while the Tiantai school argued in favor of the Lotus Sutra teaching of Buddhahood for all beings. Zhanran's view of Buddha nature was expanded in his Jingangpi or "Diamond Scalpel," which

4760-640: The Heze school ). Daosui ( Chinese : 道邃; pinyin : Dàosuì ), is important because he was the primary teacher of Saichō , the founder of the Japanese Tiantai tradition (known in Japanese as Tendai ). Other Tiantai syncretists include Deshao (881–972) who was associated with the Fayen branch of Chan and his student Yongming Yenshou (954–974) who attempted to unify Tiantai, Huayen and Yogacara teachings under

4896-613: The Indo-European family of languages . It is one of the three earliest ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European : Other Indo-European languages distantly related to Sanskrit include archaic and Classical Latin ( c. 600 BCE–100 CE, Italic languages ), Gothic (archaic Germanic language , c.  350 CE ), Old Norse ( c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan ( c.  late 2nd millennium BCE ) and Younger Avestan ( c. 900 BCE). The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in

5032-753: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became

5168-532: The Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax. Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit ,

5304-531: The Rāmāyaṇa , however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language. The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to

5440-406: The sandhi rules, both internal and external. Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature. Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of

5576-500: The verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sáṃ ('together, good, well, perfected') and kṛta - ('made, formed, work'). It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined

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5712-523: The "Lotus Samādhi ", indicating enlightenment and Buddhahood . He authored the Ta Ch'eng Chih Kuan ( Mahāyāna-śamatha-vipaśyanā ). Huisi then transmitted his teachings to Zhiyi ( Chinese : 智顗 , 538-597), traditionally figured as the fourth patriarch of Tiantai, who is said to have practiced the Lotus Samādhi and to have become enlightened quickly. He authored many treatises such as explanations of

5848-414: The 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared, perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Pollock. The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century. As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and

5984-532: The 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong. By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia, parts of the East Asia and the Central Asia. It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions. According to

6120-613: The Buddha as an arhat , giving a full report of his practice, his experiences in meditation, and the realizations that he has had. This discourse corresponds to the Theravadin Maha-Rahulovada Sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya (MN 62). In lectures, renowned Buddhist master Nan Huaijin frequently cited the Ekottara Āgama for its discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing, and lectures on Rāhula's report to

6256-638: The Buddha's Mind-seal as an effort to defend the Tiantai tradition against Chan critiques. The Ming Dynasty saw further religious revivals among the major Chinese Buddhist schools, including Tiantai, particularly under the reign of the Buddhist friendly Wanli Emperor. One of the main figures of the Ming Tiantai Buddhist revival is Miaofeng Zhenjue (1537–1589), who lectured widely and whose students revived ancestral Tiantai monasteries such as Gaoming and Ayuwang. Youxi Chuandeng (1554–1628),

6392-632: The Buddha. He detailed the fine points of practice and the relationships that exist between the mind, body, and breath, including related exoteric and esoteric phenomena. Also discussed were the dissemination of this practice into various forms in the Mahāyāna schools of Buddhism in East Asia such as Zen and Tiantai , and into Daoist meditative practices. Sanskrit Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )

6528-418: The Buddhist texts, and especially systematic manuals of various lengths which explain and enumerate methods of Buddhist practice and meditation. The above lineage was proposed by Buddhists of later times and do not reflect the popularity of the monks at that time. Scholars such as Paul L. Swanson consider Zhiyi ( Chinese : 智顗, 538–597 CE) to have been the major founder of the Tiantai school as well as one of

6664-425: The Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language? They speculated on

6800-532: The Dravidian languages borrowed from Sanskrit vocabulary, but they have also affected Sanskrit on deeper levels of structure, "for instance in the domain of phonology where Indo-Aryan retroflexes have been attributed to Dravidian influence". Similarly, Ferenc Ruzca states that all the major shifts in Indo-Aryan phonetics over two millennia can be attributed to the constant influence of a Dravidian language with

6936-521: The Dravidian words and forms, without modifying the word order; but the same thing is not possible in rendering a Persian or English sentence into a non-Indo-Aryan language. Shulman mentions that "Dravidian nonfinite verbal forms (called vinaiyeccam in Tamil) shaped the usage of the Sanskrit nonfinite verbs (originally derived from inflected forms of action nouns in Vedic). This particularly salient case of

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7072-431: The Ekottara Āgama is a discourse that includes meditative instructions on Mindfulness of Breathing given by the Buddha to his son Rāhula . In it, the Buddha gives Rāhula instructions on how he can practice this form of meditation to enter into samādhi . After an unknown length of time, Rāhula enters samādhi, passes through the four stages of dhyāna , and attains complete perfection and liberation. Rāhula then returns to

7208-687: The Ekottara Āgama to belong to the Mahāsāṃghika school. According to A.K. Warder , the Ekottara Āgama references 250 Prātimokṣa rules for monks, which agrees only with the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, which is also located in the Chinese Buddhist canon. He also views some of the doctrine as contradicting tenets of the Mahāsāṃghika school, and states that they agree with Dharmaguptaka views currently known. He therefore concludes that

7344-476: The Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit . The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda , a Hindu scripture from the mid- to late-second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if any ever existed, but scholars are generally confident that

7480-519: The Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian – both are Iranian languages . Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages. Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of

7616-792: The Mahāyāna Tripiṭaka (Ch. 大乘三藏). According to Venerable Sheng Yen , the Ekottara Āgama includes teachings of the Six Pāramitās , a central concept in the bodhisattva path, and in the Mahāyāna teachings. The Ekottara Āgama generally corresponds to the Theravādin Aṅguttara Nikāya , but of the four Āgamas of the Sanskritic Sūtra Piṭaka in the Chinese Buddhist Canon, it is the one which differs most from

7752-532: The Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire . Sheldon Pollock characterises the decline of Sanskrit as a long-term "cultural, social, and political change". He dismisses the idea that Sanskrit declined due to "struggle with barbarous invaders", and emphasises factors such as the increasing attractiveness of vernacular language for literary expression. With the fall of Kashmir around

7888-496: The Muslim rulers. Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire , reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity. After Islamic rule disintegrated in South Asia and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support

8024-474: The One Vehicle or ekayāna (traditional Chinese: 一乘; pinyin: yīchéng ). This doctrine provided a unifying and inclusive framework which could be used to understand all Buddhist teachings. According to Jacqueline Stone , Zhiyi's view of the One Vehicle of the Lotus Sutra is that conventionally, it is "subtle" and "wonderful" in comparison with lesser teachings which are coarse. However this is only true in

8160-499: The Saṃskṛta language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe. In The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World , Mallory and Adams illustrate the resemblance with the following examples of cognate forms (with the addition of Old English for further comparison): The correspondences suggest some common root, and historical links between some of

8296-638: The South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire , so did Sanskrit. There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar . Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with

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8432-682: The Tang into the Five Dynasties and Northern Song, an age marked internally by the deterioration of distinctive Tiantai ideas and marked externally by the loss of crucial texts and monastic institutions, especially after the persecution of 845 (a period that saw the increased influence of Chan)." During this period, Huayan and Chan influences made strong inroads into Tiantai thought. Zhanran's disciple and seventh patriarch Daosui, and syncretic figures such as Zhi Yuan (768–844) and Daochang Ningfen all combined Tiantai with Chan ideas (particularly of

8568-659: The Theravādin version. The Ekottara Āgama even contains variants on such standard teachings as the Noble Eightfold Path . According to Keown, "there is considerable disparity between the Pāli and the [Chinese] versions, with more than two-thirds of the sūtras found in one but not the other compilation, which suggests that much of this portion of the Sūtra Piṭaka was not formed until a fairly late date." A notable inclusion in

8704-640: The Tiantai lineage into the PRC era. During the Chinese Civil War, various dharma heirs of Dixian moved to Hong Kong , including Tanxu and Baojing. They helped establish the Tiantai tradition in Hong Kong, where it remains a strong living tradition today, being preserved by their dharma heirs. Baojing's dharma heir, Jueguang, helped establish the Guanzong Temple in Hong Kong and transmitted

8840-450: The Tiantai school also created its own meditation texts which emphasize the principles of śamatha and vipaśyanā. Of the Tiantai meditation treatises, Zhiyi's Concise Śamatha-vipaśyanā (小止観), Mahā-śamatha-vipaśyanā (摩訶止観), and Six Subtle Dharma Gates (六妙法門) are the most widely read in China. Rujun Wu identifies the work Mohe Zhiguan of Zhiyi as the seminal meditation text of the Tiantai school. The Major Tiantai treatises studied in

8976-536: The Tiantai school was entirely of Chinese origin. The schools of Buddhism that had existed in China prior to the emergence of the Tiantai are generally believed to represent direct transplantations from India , with little modification to their basic doctrines and methods. However, Tiantai grew and flourished as a native Chinese Buddhist school under the 4th patriarch, Zhiyi , who developed an original and extensive Chinese Buddhist system of doctrine and practice through his many treatises and commentaries. The main center of

9112-447: The Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Ṛg-veda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou – an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Ṛg-veda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Beyond the Ṛg-veda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into

9248-451: The Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language. The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, as discerned from the current state of the surviving literature, are negligible when compared to

9384-406: The Vimalakīrti, Nirvāṇa, Suvarṇaprabhāsa, and various Pure Land sūtras. Not only is there no evidence that one particular scripture was consistently promoted over others, but [Tang]-period sources indicate that the spiritual descendants of [Zhiyi] realigned [Taintai] doctrine freely in order to accommodate whatever sūtra caught their fancy. In addition to its doctrinal basis in Indian Buddhist texts,

9520-407: The alphabet, the structure of words, and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold" as an integral language they called Saṃskṛta . From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound

9656-412: The beginning of the Tang and thus suffered because of its close relationship with the house of Sui. After Zhiyi, Tiantai was eclipsed for a time by newer schools such as the East Asian Yogācāra ( Fǎxiàng-zōng ), and Huayan schools , until the 6th patriarch Jingxi Zhanran (711–782) revived the school and defended its doctrine against rival schools such as the Huayan and Faxiang. The debates between

9792-440: The capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi . A section of European scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language. However, evidences shows that Sanskrit was a spoken language, essential for oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. The textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini, and Patanajali affirms that Classical Sanskrit in their era

9928-527: The close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages , vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages , and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna. The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on

10064-614: The context of a speech or language, is found in verses 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana . Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects ( Prakrits ) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these Apabhramsa , literally 'spoiled'. The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in

10200-653: The crystallization of Classical Sanskrit. As in this period the Indo-Aryan tribes had not yet made contact with the inhabitants of the South of the subcontinent, this suggests a significant presence of Dravidian speakers in North India (the central Gangetic plain and the classical Madhyadeśa) who were instrumental in this substratal influence on Sanskrit. Extant manuscripts in Sanskrit number over 30 million, one hundred times those in Greek and Latin combined, constituting

10336-467: The detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as Lipi ('script') and lipikara ('scribe') in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī . The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and

10472-405: The development of Yogacara's "three natures"). Zhiyi developed his theory of a threefold truth by drawing on Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā , which explains the two truths as: "We state that whatever is dependent arising, that is emptiness. That is dependent upon convention. That itself is the middle path" (MMK, XXIV.18). Swanson states that this doctrine is a way of expressing three aspects of

10608-471: The differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir. The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in

10744-460: The distant major ancient languages of the world. The Indo-Aryan migrations theory explains the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages by proposing that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in South Asia from a region of common origin, somewhere north-west of the Indus region , during the early 2nd millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes

10880-490: The early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in

11016-609: The extant Ekottara Āgama is that of the Dharmaguptaka school. According to Étienne Lamotte , the Ekottara Āgama was translated from a manuscript that came from northwest India, and contains a great deal of Mahāyāna influence. This may agree with the 5th century Dharmaguptaka monk Buddhayaśas, the translator of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya and Dīrgha Āgama, who wrote that the Dharmaguptakas had assimilated

11152-548: The first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indo-Aryan speaking people together, particularly its elite scholars. Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to

11288-574: The following: While the threefold truth can be explained conceptually in this way, for Zhiyi, the highest and most subtle meaning of the threefold truth is ultimately indescribably and beyond words. It is also fully integrated and inclusive of all the Buddhadharma and of all mundane and ultimate truths as well. According to Zhiyi, "the supreme truth of the middle path" is "the reality of non-duality ", as well as "the enlightened perception of all Buddhas and bodhisattvas." Zhiyi also states that it

11424-412: The foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedānga . The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition that Fortson says, is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world". Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as

11560-537: The gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra, and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature. O Bṛhaspati, when in giving names they first set forth the beginning of Language, Their most excellent and spotless secret was laid bare through love, When the wise ones formed Language with their mind, purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan, Then friends knew friendships – an auspicious mark placed on their language. — Rigveda 10.71.1–4 Translated by Roger Woodard The Vedic Sanskrit found in

11696-409: The greatest Chinese Buddhist philosophers. He was the first to systematize and popularize the complex synthesis of Tiantai doctrine as an original Chinese tradition. Zhiyi analyzed and organized all the Āgamas and Mahayana sutras into a system of five periods and eight types of teachings. For example, many elementary doctrines and bridging concepts had been taught early in the Buddha's advent when

11832-431: The historic Sanskrit literary culture and the failure of new Sanskrit literature to assimilate into the changing cultural and political environment. Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead ". After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with

11968-486: The intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between the Proto-Indo-Aryan language and Vedic Sanskrit. The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax. There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as

12104-432: The largest cultural heritage that any civilization has produced prior to the invention of the printing press. — Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama , scientific , technical and others. It

12240-584: The lineage to numerous monks from Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan and mainland China. Tanxuan's heir, Yongxing, founded Xifang Temple in Hong Kong as well as various temples in Malaysia and the United States (as well as the Texas Buddhist association and its Jade Buddha Temple). Furthermore, other monks from this lineage have helped to reintroduce the Tiantai tradition from Hong Kong back to

12376-412: The linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language. Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced. Despite differences in the analysis from that of modern linguistics, Pāṇini's work has been found valuable and

12512-514: The literary works. The Indian tradition, states Winternitz , has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana , the Mahabharata ,

12648-503: The main reasons for this development is that it was a useful device for undoing Chinese misunderstandings of the two truths (such as seeing them as referring to being and non-being, to two separate levels of reality or to an essential reality and its functions ). The Threefold Truth may be contemplated independently as the "three contemplations", an important theme in Zhiyi's Mo ho chi kuan . The threefold contemplation, also described as

12784-510: The mind. The school is largely based on the teachings of Zhiyi, Zhanran , and Zhili , who lived between the 6th and 11th centuries in China. These teachers took an approach called "classification of teachings" ( panjiao 判教) in an attempt to harmonize the numerous and often contradictory Buddhist texts that had come into China. This was achieved through a particular interpretation of the Lotus Sūtra . The Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna

12920-511: The modern age include the Samaveda , Yajurveda , Atharvaveda , along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and the early Upanishads . These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern, and eastern Indian subcontinent. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of

13056-429: The more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as namah . Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini , around the fourth century BCE. Its position in the cultures of Greater India

13192-401: The most advanced analysis of linguistics until the twentieth century. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia. It is unclear whether Pāṇini himself wrote his treatise or he orally created

13328-602: The most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and Iliad of Homer . As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity, as a single text without variant readings, its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European . Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around

13464-597: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,

13600-403: The oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they are ceremonial literature, where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition. However some scholars have suggested that the original Ṛg-veda differed in some fundamental ways in phonology compared to the sole surviving version available to us. In particular that retroflex consonants did not exist as

13736-404: The original Tiantai view as different and superior to this new view influenced by Chan and Huayan doctrines (especially by Zongmi 's works). The most eminent figure during this debate was Patriarch Siming Zhili (960–1028), who wrote various commentaries on Zhiyi's works and defended the "Home mountain" view. Zhili's major criticisms included attacking Chan's failure to understand the necessity of

13872-536: The orthodox Tiantai canon during the Song dynasty . Ciyun Zunshi (964–1032) was another important figure in this second Tiantai revival. His work focused on the promotion of rituals for lay Buddhists and worked on converting the populace away from using blood, meat and alcohol for funerary and ancestral rites. Ciyi also promoted the practice of adopting local Chinese deities and spirits into the Buddhist religion as "vassals" or "retainers" and strongly promoted repentance rituals. These two figures were also associated with

14008-431: The other." Reinöhl further states that there is a symmetric relationship between Dravidian languages like Kannada or Tamil, with Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali or Hindi, whereas the same relationship is not found for non-Indo-Aryan languages, for example, Persian or English: A sentence in a Dravidian language like Tamil or Kannada becomes ordinarily good Bengali or Hindi by substituting Bengali or Hindi equivalents for

14144-408: The perfect teaching, from beginning to end, knows that ultimate principle is nondual and that there are no objects apart from mind. Who then is sentient? What then is insentient? Within the assembly of the Lotus, there is no discrimination." After Zhanran, Tiantai declined once again. Brook Ziporyn writes that this period has been seen as the second dark age of Tiantai, a state of crisis "extending from

14280-546: The philosophical 'crutches' introduced earlier. Zhiyi's classification culminated with the Lotus Sutra , which he held to be the supreme synthesis of Buddhist doctrine. The difference on Zhiyi's explanation to the Golden Light Sutra caused a debate during the Song dynasty . Zhiyi's Tiantai school received much imperial support during the Sui dynasty , because of this, it was the largest Buddhist school at

14416-431: The popularization of Pure Land practices through the foundation of lay societies (lotus societies, lianshe ). Tiantai monk Mao Ziyuan (1096?-1166) took this one step further by establishing what became known as the " White Lotus Society " which allowed both men and women to attend together and even to preach and be in charge of society repentance halls as married clergy. Due to the efforts of these major Tiantai figures,

14552-414: The possible influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is only one of many items of syntactic assimilation, not least among them the large repertoire of morphological modality and aspect that, once one knows to look for it, can be found everywhere in classical and postclassical Sanskrit". The main influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is found to have been concentrated in the timespan between the late Vedic period and

14688-439: The previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock. Scholars maintain that the Sanskrit language did not die, but rather only declined. Jurgen Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes

14824-480: The problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involves "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view

14960-609: The regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism , the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times. However, states Paul Dundas , these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly

15096-497: The relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia. The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into South Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India,

15232-429: The rest of mainland China, aiding in the reconstruction of Chinese Buddhism after the reform and opening up period . The ancient Guoqing Temple at mount Tiantai , which had suffered from neglect and destruction, was renovated at the behest of Zhou Enlai . Guoqing Temple is now a major center of Chinese Tiantai Buddhism as well as remains a place of pilgrimage for Japanese Tendai Buddhists. The Tiantai school takes

15368-562: The role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other. These speculations became particularly important to the Mīmāṃsā and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal —a scholar of Linguistics with

15504-496: The same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin". The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had

15640-573: The school became one of the dominant forms of Buddhism during the Song, alongside of Chan. The defeat of the Song dynasty was a serious blow to Tiantai which suffered another setback during the Yuan dynasty which supported Tibetan Buddhism, while Chan Buddhism continued to grow in popularity while attacking the legitimacy of other schools. This period saw the Tiantai figure Huxi Huaize (fl. 1310) write his polemical treatise Record of Tiantai's Transmission of

15776-513: The school was located in Zhejiang province's Tiantai Mountain , which also gives the school its name. Over time, the Tiantai school became doctrinally broad, able to absorb and give rise to other movements within Buddhism, though without any formal structure. The tradition emphasized both scriptural study and meditative practice, and taught the rapid attainment of Buddhahood through observing

15912-556: The semi-nomadic Aryans . The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the " Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of Syria and Turkey. Parts of this treaty, such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes

16048-514: The service of ideals and metaphysical conclusions that are rooted deeply in the indigenous philosophical traditions ." The Tiantai school's main philosophical principle is The Threefold Truth (emptiness, existence, and the middle; 空假中 kong, jia, zhong ). According to Paul Swanson, this is the "central insight" around which the Tiantai system revolves. This view was developed by Zhiyi's reading of Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka philosophy, especially its doctrine of two truths . The Threefold Truth comprises

16184-615: The social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations, and some of the poetic metres. While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Ṛg-veda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it

16320-466: The threefold cessation and insight, consists of what Zhiyi calls a "graded contemplation": There are different levels of subtlety of this threefold contemplation, the deepest of which is when all three aspects are contemplated as a simultaneously non-dual unity which according to Zhiyi is when all three aspects are "present in one thought" (一心) which is "beyond conceptual understanding". According to Chappell: The first contemplation involves moving from

16456-551: The tradition are the following works of Zhiyi: The Three Great Tiantai Treatises: The Five Lesser Tiantai Treatises: David Chappell lists the most important Tiantai teachings as being The Threefold Truth and the corresponding Threefold Contemplation, The Fourfold Teachings, The Subtle Dharma, and The Non-conceivable Discernment (or the "Inconceivable Mind"). Brook Ziporyn writes that Tiantai's "rigorous theoretical edifice" uses "modes of argumentation and praxis that are derived squarely from Indian Buddhism " but applies these "in

16592-414: The tradition. Tiantai in modern simplified Chinese means "platform of the sky"; however, according to traditional Chinese sources such as Zhanran , the 'tai' refers to stars previously worshipped on the mountain (i.e. Santai .) Zhiyi is also regarded as the first major figure to form an indigenous Chinese Buddhist system. Tiantai is sometimes also called " The Lotus School ", after the central role of

16728-705: The turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts , and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari . Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India 's Eighth Schedule languages . However, despite attempts at revival, there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, but

16864-433: The use of words and scriptural study as part of practice as well as criticizing Zongmi's view of a pure mind as the buddha-nature, arguing instead that the "three truths" as taught by Zhiyi are the ultimate reality. For Zhili, mind or consciousness has no special status relative to other types of dharmas, such as physical matter. Over time, Zhili's "home mountain" view turned out to be victorious, and his works became part of

17000-408: The variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India. The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, Kaśyapa , Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja , Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana. In the Aṣṭādhyāyī , language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, is a classic that defines

17136-409: The vast majority of the people during his time were not yet ready to grasp the 'ultimate truth'. These Āgamas were an upaya , or skillful means - an example of the Buddha employing his boundless wisdom to lead those people towards the truth. Subsequent teachings delivered to more advanced followers thus represent a more complete and accurate picture of the Buddha's teachings, and did away with some of

17272-564: The vernacular Prakrits. Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. The cities of Varanasi , Paithan , Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era. According to Lamotte , Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas, and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied, so did its spread and influence. Sanskrit

17408-409: The works of Nāgārjuna, and is said to have awakened to the profound meaning of Nāgārjuna's words: "All conditioned phenomena I speak of as empty, and are but false names which also indicate the mean." Huiwen later transmitted his teachings to Chan master Nanyue Huisi ( Chinese : 南嶽慧思 , 515-577), who is traditionally figured as the third patriarch. During meditation, he is said to have realized

17544-586: The world of provisionality to seeing its emptiness, which is a different process from the second contemplation in which we move beyond emptiness and back into an acceptance of the role of provisional existence. Only in the third contemplation do we find the balance involving the previous two insights based on the Middle Path of the One Mind. A central doctrine of Tiantai is the Lotus Sutra ' s doctrine of

17680-502: The Ṛg-veda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton – Indologists known for their translation of the Ṛg-veda – the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times

17816-408: Was a spoken language ( bhasha ) used by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit. Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region. According to Sanskrit linguist professor Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit

17952-427: Was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit. This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in

18088-472: Was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms a "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE. Today, it is believed that Kashmiri is the closest language to Sanskrit. Reinöhl mentions that not only have

18224-686: Was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati . The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE. Xuanzang , another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in

18360-667: Was one of the most influential teachers and exegetes of Tiantai during the Qing Dynasty . The most influential figure in modern Tiantai, who carried the Tiantai lineage (specifically the Lingfeng lineage) from the late Qing into the 20th century was Dixian. His student, the monk Tanxu (1875 – 1963), is known for having rebuilt various temples during the Republican era (such as Zhanshan temple in Qingdao ) and for preserving

18496-442: Was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that wove all ideas and inspirations together became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit. Sanskrit as

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