Sanskrit as a Sacred Language by Fabian Sanders 13th January 2021

Free Public Talk hosted by The Buddhist Society during lockdown 2021 More info about meditation classes, talks and events at About the talk The talk will briefly mention some core doctrines concerning sound as a fundamental cosmogonic factor and its repercussions on the theory of language in ancient India. Many of these concepts are also found in Buddhism, particularly in Mahāyāna and tantrism. Fabian Sanders will then use this background to illustrate the scenario with which the adopters of Buddhism outside of India were confronted and the repercussions it had on the all-important activity of translation. He will then use the Tibetan approach to these issues as an example of a ’linguistic strategy’ that allowed the custom version of Tibetan developed for the purpose - the ‘Dharma language’ - to inherit some of the sacrality intrinsic in Indian languages, in particular Sanskrit. Finally, Fabian will briefly discuss some specific problems inherent to th