Dhamma written in ten different scripts

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zavk
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by zavk »

Hmmmm..... it never occurred to me that Dhamma in Chinese is 正 法. That's very interesting. I've only known of Buddhism in Chinese as 佛 教 --- the first character signifies 'Buddha' or 'Bodhi' whilst the second character signifies 'teaching' or 'religion'. So 佛 教 really connotes something like 'Bodhi teaching' or the 'Buddha religion'. Read in this manner, 佛 教 has a certain specificity--and some might say, an institutionalism--about it.

正 法 on the other hand is much broader, like the word Dhamma (as opposed to Buddhism). The first character signifies: 'just (right); main; upright; straight; correct; principle'.

The Chinese script is pictorial in nature, and uses ideograms. So unlike English and other alphabet-based languages, ideograms are often combinations of different characters and can convey multiple meanings, often in poetic ways.

So looking at the character we can speculate on why it signifies 'just, upright, principle,' and so forth. It is is composed of five straight lines, each at a right angle to one another. There is a certain symmetry to the character. It reminds me of mandala patterns.

The second character signifies: 'law; method; way'.

is made up of two components. On the left are three strokes. These three strokes do not stand alone as a character themselves. But they are usually added to other characters as a kind of 'modification' to shift the meaning. The three strokes signify an association with water (although the three strokes themselves do not form the character for 'water'). When added to characters they suggest connotations of fluidity or smoothness.

To the right of the three strokes is which signifies: 'to go; to leave; to remove'. I'm trying to speculate on why this character signifies 'to go' and so forth. It occurred to me that it looks like the outline of a boat: it has a broad base and with a vertical line at the top that resembles a mast. So might connote a sense of being 'ferried across water' or 'that which moves fluidly'.

But this character when combined with other characters signify things as diverse as 'sleeve opening', 'to exercise', 'a pen (that which surrounds)'. So my reading of it as symbolizing a boat could be totally wrong.

Therefore we could say that 正 法 means something like 'the upright/principled/correct way (or law or method)'. And following my speculations about the character as connoting 'fluid ferrying', 正 法 then coincides with the Buddha's simile of the raft, which describes the Dhamma as the 'right teaching that takes one across the river, and which removes one from the shore of suffering and brings them to the shore of awakening.'

India and China are both ancient civilizations. It is likely that the word Dhamma and the Chinese characters that are later used to express Dhamma developed separately. If so, it is fascinating how when the Buddha's teaching eventually reached China, the languages (and thus modes of thinking) so readily support one another.

(BTW, I'm not an expert with the Chinese language. I am, in fact, pretty bad at it. But it is my cultural ancestry and I do have a decent grasp of these basic words. I am NOT trained in Chinese linguistics; these are just speculations on what little I know. Because of my interest in Chan/Zen, I've been curious about how Chinese characters can uniquely express the Dhamma in ways that the English language is unable to. Hopefully, you find this interesting too. :smile: )

EDIT: Just realised this is the Pali forum. This is not quite Pali... sorry.
Last edited by zavk on Sun Oct 11, 2009 12:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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zavk
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Jechbi
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by Jechbi »

Don't forget "hammaday."

translation from here
Rain soddens what is kept wrapped up,
But never soddens what is open;
Uncover, then, what is concealed,
Lest it be soddened by the rain.
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by DNS »

zavk wrote: (BTW, I'm not an expert with the Chinese language. I am, in fact, pretty bad at it. But it is my cultural ancestry and I do have a decent grasp of these basic words. I am NOT trained in Chinese linguistics; these are just speculations on what little I know. Because of my interest in Chan/Zen, I've been curious about how Chinese characters can uniquely express the Dhamma in ways that the English language is unable to. Hopefully, you find this interesting too. :smile: )
Yes, very interesting! I'm not a linguistics expert either, but it does fascinate me. :ugeek: Maybe because I lived in the Middle East for a few years and had to learn the languages.

Good comments and food for thought.
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by DNS »

Jechbi wrote:Don't forget "hammaday."
I think I'll skip that one for my list. It sounds like eating a ham a day. :D
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by Jechbi »

Just for fun, from here:
TOP.gif
TOP.gif (12.76 KiB) Viewed 7425 times
Rain soddens what is kept wrapped up,
But never soddens what is open;
Uncover, then, what is concealed,
Lest it be soddened by the rain.
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by DNS »

:thumbsup:

I like the 'H' with what almost looks like an eternal knot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_knot" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by DNS »

I updated the image in the OP for the corrections for the Sinhala and Cyrillic. Let me know if you see any other corrections needed. :thanks:
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by vinodh »

The Sinhala Text is wrong.

The Virama should ligate with Ma.

Also, when Pali is written in Sinhala, special conjuncts are used used. i.e in Dhamma - both ma ma touch each other to show they are a single consonant cluster.

Though, the Virama forms are acceptable.

The Brahmi Text is also wrong..

It must have a small ma below the Big ma
http://www.virtualvinodh.com

Buddhists Texts in Brahmi Script : http://www.virtualvinodh.com/brahmi-lipitva

yo dharmaṁ paśyati, sa buddhaṁ paśyati
One who sees the Dharma, sees the Buddha

na pudgalo na ca skandhā buddho jñānamanāsravam
sadāśāntiṁ vibhāvitvā gacchāmi śaraṇaṁ hyaham

Neither a person nor the aggregates, the Buddha, is knowledge free from [evil] outflows
Clearly perceiving [him] to be eternally serene, I go for refuge [in him]
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by Chula »

The Sinhala script should be:
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by DNS »

vinodh wrote: The Brahmi Text is also wrong..

It must have a small ma below the Big ma
Okay, thanks.

The second character after the D should be the same, but a smaller version?
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by DNS »

Chula wrote:The Sinhala script should be:
Okay, thanks. I have been having a hard time getting the Sinhala script right, even after consulting with Sri Lankans! It is best just to receive the correct script from a Sinhala writer in an image form, like you have done.
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Dhamma written in Sinhala (conjoined consonants)

Post by jsv »

vinodh wrote: Also, when Pali is written in Sinhala, special conjuncts are used used. i.e in Dhamma - both ma ma touch each other to show they are a single consonant cluster.
That's the closest I can get to the correct rendering:
Image
David N. Snyder wrote:I have been having a hard time getting the Sinhala script right, even after consulting with Sri Lankans!
It takes some very strong magic. :) Support for such "exotic" languages in modern OSes is still far from perfect.
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by Chula »

Yes this is the more historically accurate rendering of Pāḷi in Sinhala script. Letters are not conjoined in this fashion in Sinhala anymore, and there is no loss if one were to switch to a modern Sinhala rendering for convenience (especially since Unicode doesn't support this as far as I know).
Bankei
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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by Bankei »

David N. Snyder wrote:Dhamma is a Pali word but Pali does not have a script of its own. It uses the script of various languages where the Dhamma is being taught. The Tipitaka was an oral tradition and written down in the first century BCE in Pali. But several hundred years before that, King Ashoka had many edicts written in Pali using the Brahmi script. Listed below is the word Dhamma written in ten major scripts. Notice that the Brahmi script has the first character which makes the "Dha" sound and is almost identical to our letter "D."

Image
Hi David

Thanks for this list. Interesting. I just have 2 brief comments.

The Chinese, would be pronounced Zhenfa (Zhen means true and Fa means dhamma) in modern Mandarin, so I would say it is probably a translation rather than a transliteration into another script. On the hand it could have been a transliteration as the pronunciation of Chinese characters varies considerably from region to region and dialect to dialect. Da -ma could be the prounciation of the 2 characters in the western regions in 400AD.

The Japanese is just a transliteration though, Daruma.

And you write the language of the Asokan inscriptions was Pali (and in another post in reply to another question of mine). I have never heard this before. Asoka write a large number of edicts in a variety of languages - some even bilingual and one of 2 in Greek I believe, but I have never heard of any being in Pali. Prof K.R. Norman writes that he thinks the scribes wrote in, and translated into, the local dialect of the region. Do you have a source for Pali edicts?

It is also interesting to note that new Asokan edicts or fragments are still being discovered, with one as recent as 1989 at Sannati.

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Re: Dhamma written in ten different scripts

Post by DNS »

Hi Bankei,
Bankei wrote: The Chinese, would be pronounced Zhenfa (Zhen means true and Fa means dhamma) in modern Mandarin, so I would say it is probably a translation rather than a transliteration into another script. On the hand it could have been a transliteration as the pronunciation of Chinese characters varies considerably from region to region and dialect to dialect. Da -ma could be the prounciation of the 2 characters in the western regions in 400AD.

The Japanese is just a transliteration though, Daruma.
Thanks!
And you write the language of the Asokan inscriptions was Pali (and in another post in reply to another question of mine). I have never heard this before. Asoka write a large number of edicts in a variety of languages - some even bilingual and one of 2 in Greek I believe, but I have never heard of any being in Pali. Prof K.R. Norman writes that he thinks the scribes wrote in, and translated into, the local dialect of the region. Do you have a source for Pali edicts?

It is also interesting to note that new Asokan edicts or fragments are still being discovered, with one as recent as 1989 at Sannati.
Yes, you are correct. Apparently the edicts were written in several languages including Prakrit and Magadhi and one even in Greek and another in Aramaic!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edicts_of_Ashoka" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Prakrit and Magadhi are pretty close to Pali, as Kare noted in another thread, but not the same.
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