Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a classical Indian language, and the one Indian Buddhist philosophers shared with the schools they argued against. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stephen Phillips and Anand Vaidya describe classical Indian philosophy as “an unbroken tradition of reflection expressed in the pan-Subcontinent intellectual language of Sanskrit”, made up of “distinct schools, all nevertheless using Sanskrit and engaging with other schools” — Buddhists among them, since “every one of the dozen or so major schools from early in its history takes a position on knowledge and justification, if only, as with the Buddhist skeptic (Prasaṅgika), to attack the theories of others”.

For most English readers, though, Sanskrit is simply where the familiar words come from. Access to Insight’s glossary of “Pali words and technical terms” prints the Sanskrit equivalent in brackets after each Pali headword: dhamma [Skt. dharma], kamma [Skt. karma], nibbāna [Skt. nirvāna], sutta [Skt. sūtra], tipiṭaka [Skt. tripiṭaka]. Dharma and dhamma are not two teachings but one word in two languages, and the same holds for karma and kamma, nirvana and nibbana, sutra and sutta.

Neither language is likely to be the one the Buddha himself spoke. In the same encyclopedia’s entry on the Buddha, Mark Siderits writes that our knowledge of his teachings “comes by way of texts that were not written down until several centuries after his death, are in languages (Pāli, and Chinese translations of Sanskrit) other than the one he is likely to have spoken, and disagree in important respects”. That is a reason to name the text and the language behind a term rather than to say flatly that “Buddhism” uses it. For the wider library, see Buddhist scriptures.