A Study of Buddhist Literature in Burma (3rd Century BC to 13th Century A.D)

Prologue
History and culture are interdependent. They cannot exist and prosper isolated. Metaphorically speaking they are two essential parts of a tree - history is the root and culture is the fruit. Culture without history has no root; whereas history without culture bears no fruit. A nation is like a tree. If it has no history it will never survive and grow, and if it has no culture it will never develop and progress. A nation with history and culture alone is a long living and flourishing tree that can weather any storm and withstand any climate. Literature is one element of culture and to study literature historical background is necessary.
It is practically impossible to survey in this Paper the whole range of Burma or (Myanmar) literature of monarchic times, which claim the time-span of nearly a thousand years. For the convenience of our study, we shall trace the origin and development of Burma or (Myanmar) literature according to the period of Burma or (Myanmar) history. Although there are historic periods predating the Pagan or Bagan Period such as the Pyu Period, early Rakhine Period and early Mon Period and Tagaung Period, scholars of Burma or (Myanmar) literature are happy to start with the Pagan or Bagan Period. This is not because that the pre-Pagan or Bagan Periods were literature. Archaeologycal finds with epigraphs and lithic inscription in Sanscrit, Pali, Old Pyu, Old Mon and Old Rakhine have been unearthed proving that literature had already existed in Burma or Myanmar since the early century of the Christian era. But they are fragmentary and most have not been deciphered yet. So the Pagan or Bagan Period is taken as the starting point as it was literally prolific and there is an abundance of literary evidences at and around the site of ancient capital Pagan or Bagan.
Literature of the Pagan or Bagan Period
The Pagan or Bagan Period extended nearly three centuries – from the late 10th century A.D to the late 13th century A.D. but literary evidences become plentiful about the time of King Anawratha (A.D.1044-77) who was the unifier of the first Burma or Myanmar Union, and promoter of Theravada Buddhism.
The literature of Burma or (Myanmar) spans over a millennium. Burmese literature was historically influenced by Indian and Thai cultures, as seen in many works, such as the Ramayana. The Burmese language, unlike other Southeast Asian languages (e.g. Thai, Khmer), adopted words primarily from Pāli rather than from Sanskrit. In addition, Burmese literature has the tendency to reflect local folklore and culture.
Burmese literature has historically been a very important aspect of Burmese life steeped in the Pali Canon of Buddhism. Traditionally, Burmese children were educated by monks in monasteries in towns and villages.


Characteristics of Pāli Language

Pāli is a middle Indo-Aryan language of north Indian origin. It is also known as Magadhi, although it was spoken, or at least well understood in almost the whole of northern India in the Buddha’s time.
Middle Indo-Aryan is comprised of five classes namely;
1. Pāli language,
2. Inscription,
3. External Prakrit,
4. Prakrit and
5. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.

Of them, Pāli language is the language of Theravada tradition of Buddhism and has also been the language of the Tipitaka, the cannon. Its first span continues 300 B.C to 500 A.D. The second stage of Pāli when lots of commentaries were written by scholars like Buddhadatta, Buddhaghosa, Dhammapala of Podaratitha etc…. from 500-1100 A.D after that from 12th century to modern time. The term Pāli language is a comparatively modern coinage, whether the credit of this misleading coinage is due to the European Orientalist or to latter day.
Theravada Buddhism of Ceylon, Burma and Siam are still a matter of dispute. It is certain, however, that even up to the sixth or seventh century A.D, the term Pāli does not appear to have gained currency as a nomenclature for any kind of language. Even if we look into the Culavamsa forming a latter supplement to the Mahavamsa, we find that the term Pāli is used in it clearly in the sense of original Buddhist texts, the texts of the canon as distinguished from commentaries.
As a master of fact, the earliest issue of the Pāli can be traced in the commentaries of Buddhaghosa and not in any earlier Buddhist writings. It is again in the commentaries that the term Pāli came to be regarded as a synonym for Buddhavacana Tipitaka, Tantri and Pariyatti.

Canon
The Tripitaka [Sanskrit] [Pali: Tipitaka] is the Canon of the Buddhists, both Theravada and Mahayana. Thus it is possible to speak of several Canons such as the Sthaviravada, Sarvastivada and Mahayana as well as in term of languages like Pali, Chinese and Tibetan. The word is used basically to refer to the literature, the authorship of which is directly or indirectly ascribed to the Buddha himself.
It is generally believed that whatever was the teaching of the Buddha, conceived under Dhamma and Vinaya, it was rehearsed soon after his death by a fairly representative body of disciples.The later systematised threefold division, into Sutta, Vinaya and Abhidhamma is based on this collection. Sharing a common body of Dhamma and Vinaya, the early Buddhist disciples appear to have remained united for about a century.
The Council of Vesali or the second Buddhist Council saw the breakup of this original body and as many as eighteen separate schools were known to exist by about the first century B.C. It is reasonable to assume that each of these schools would have opted to possess a Tripitaka of their own or rather their own recession of the Tripitaka, perhaps with a considerably large common core.
It has long been claimed that the Buddha, as he went about teaching in the Gangetic valley in India during the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.E., used Magadhi or the language of Magadha as his medium of communication. Attempts have been made to identify this Magadhan dialect with Pali, the language in which the texts of the Sthaviravada School are recorded. Hence we speak of a Pali Canon, i.e., the literature of the Sthaviravadins which is believed to be the original word of the Buddha.
At any rate, this is the only complete recession we possess and the Pali texts seem to preserve an older tradition much more than most of the extant Buddhist works in other languages. Further, the Sthaviravadins admit two other major divisions of Pali Buddhist literature which are non-Canonical. They are:
1. Post-Canonical Pali literature including works like Petakopadesa and Milindapanha, the authorship of which is ascribed to one or more disciples.
2. Pali Commentarial literature which includes:
(a) Atthakatha or Commentaries, the original version of which is believed to have been taken over to Sri Lanka by Thera Mahinda, the missionary sent by Asoka and
(b) the different strata of Tika or Sub-Commentaries, contributions to which were made by Buddhist monks of Sri Lanka, India and Burma.
Besides this Pali recession of the Sthaviravada school there are fragmentary texts of the Sarvastivada or of the Mulasarvastivada which are preserved in Sanskrit. A large portion of their Vinaya texts in Sanskrit is preserved in the Gilgit manuscripts. But a more complete collection of the Sarvastivada recension (perhaps also of the Dharmapuptaka and Kasyapiya), i.e., a Sanskrit Canon, must have possibly existed as is evident from the Chinese translations preserved to us. These include complete translations of the four agamas (the equivalent of the Pali nikayas). Of the Ksudraka (Pali: Khuddaka), only some texts are preserved in Chinese. In addition to these, the Chinese translations seem to preserve, to the credit of the Sarvastivadins, a vast Vinaya literature and an independent collection of seven Abhidhamma treatises. Thus what could be referred to as a Sarvastivada Canon ranges between fragments of texts preserved in Sanskrit and the more representative collection of the Tripitaka preserved in Chinese. It may be mentioned here that a version of the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya consisting of seven parts, even more faithful than the Chinese version, is preserved in Tibetan. Of the Abhidharma collection only the Prajnaptisastra appears to have been translated into Tibetan.
Speaking further of the Tripitaka in terms of language we have in Chinese different recessions of the Canon (preserved in part) belonging to different schools. These recessions are primarily based on the Tripitaka of Indian origin. In addition to the ancient texts which these recessions preserve they also contain independent expositions of the early doctrines or commentarial literature on them. The Chinese Canon preserves the Vinaya texts of as many as seven different schools. In place of the division into ‘canonical groups’ of Sutra, Abhidharma and Vinaya, this new arrangement seems to reckon with a live and continuous tradition in accepting as authoritative both the Sutra (or words of Buddha) and Sutra (or commentaries, treatises, etc. of disciples of a later date).
It becomes clear from the foregoing analysis that in speaking of a Buddhist Canon one has to admit that it is both vast in extent and complex in character. While the earlier and more orthodox schools of Buddhism reserved the term Canonical to refer to the Body of literature, the greater part of which could be reasonably ascribed to the Buddha himself, other traditions which developed further away from the centre of activity of the Buddha and at a relatively later date choose to lay under the term Canon the entire mosaic of Buddhist literature in their possession, which is of varied authorship and is at times extremely heterogeneous in character.




kosuka(Minhla)