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Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

People actually did it in ancient India, and they still do it today.

Here are some passages from the Wikipedia article about the Amarakosha, the most celebrated and most often memorized Indian thesaurus.

Introduction

The Amarakosha (Devanagari: अमरकोशः, IAST: Amarakośa) is the popular name for Namalinganushasanam (Devanagari: नामलिङ्गानुशासनम्, IAST: Nāmaliṅgānuśāsanam) a thesaurus in Sanskrit written by the ancient Indian scholar Amarasimha. It may be the oldest extant kosha. The author himself mentions 18 prior works, but they have all been lost. There have been more than 40 commentaries on the Amarakosha.

Etymology

The word "Amarakosha" derives from the Sanskrit words amara ("immortal") and kosha ("treasure, casket, pail, collection, dictionary"). The actual name of the book "Namalinganushasanam" means "instruction concerning nouns and gender".

Author

Amarasimha is said to have been one of the Navaratnas ("nine gems") at the court of Vikramaditya, the legendary king inspired by Chandragupta II, a Gupta king who reigned around AD 400. Some sources indicate that he belonged to the period of Vikramaditya of 7th century

Textual organization

The Amarakosha consists of verses that can be easily memorized. It is divided into three khāṇḍas or chapters. The first, svargādi-khāṇḍa ("heaven and others") has words pertaining to gods and heavens. The second, bhūvargādi-khāṇḍa ("earth and others") deals with words about earth, towns, animals and humans. The third, sāmānyādi-khāṇḍa ("common") has words related to grammar and other miscellaneous words.

Svargadhikhaanda, the first Khaanda of the Amarakosha begins with the verse 'Svaravyam swarganakathridivatrishalaya..' describing various names of Heaven viz. Sva, Avya, swarga, Naka, Tridiva, Tridasalaya etc. The second verse 'Amara, nirjara, deva,’ describes various words that are used for gods and demigods. The fifth and sixth verses give various names of Buddha and Shakyamuni (i.e. Gautama Buddha). The following verses give the different names of Brahma, Vishnu, Vasudeva, Balarama, Kamadeva, Lakshmi, Krishna, Shiva, Indra etc. All these names are treated with great reverence. While Amara Simha is regarded to have been a Buddhist, Amarakosha reflects the period before the rise of sectarianism. Commentaries on Amarakosha have been written by Brahmanical, Jain and well as Buddhist scholars.

The second Kanda, Bhuvargadhikanda, of the Amarakosha is divided into ten Vargas or parts. The ten Vargas are Bhuvarga (Earth), Puravarga (Towns or Cities), Shailavarga (Mountains), Vanoshadivarga (Forests and medicines), Simhadivarga (Lions and other animals), Manushyavarga (Mankind), Bramhavarga (Brahmin), Kshatriyavarga (Kshatriyas), Vysyavarga (Vysyas) and Sudravarga (Sudras).

The Third Kanda, Samanyadhikanda contains Adjectives, Verbs, words related to prayer and business etc. The first verse Kshemankaroristatathi Shivathathi Shivamkara gives the Nanarthas of the word Shubakara or propitious as Kshemankara, Aristathathi, Shivathathi and Shivamkara.

Commentaries

• • Amarakoshodghātana by Kṣīrasvāmin (11th century CE, the earliest commentary)
  • Tīkāsarvasvam by Vandhyaghatīya Sarvānanda (12th century)
  • Rāmāsramī (Vyākhyāsudha) by Bhānuji Dīkshita
  • Padachandrikā by Rāyamukuta
  • Kāshikavivaranapanjikha by Jinendra Bhudhi
  • Pārameśwari by Parameswaran Mōsad in Malayalam
  • A Telugu commentary by Linga Bhatta (12th century)

Most fascinating to me is that "Gunaratha" of Ujjain is said to have translated the Amarakosha into Chinese in the 7th century.  If true, it would be of extraordinary significance, but I have never heard of such a translation, and I am puzzled by how i have been unaware of it for the past half century of my Sinological and Buddhological studies.  I will explore this question further in the remainder of this post.

According to Sanskrit eBooks:

It is of great interest to note that, though the production of a Buddhist, it has been universally accepted as an authority by the Brahmans and the Jainas alike. The fact that it has been commented upon by Buddhists like Subhutichandra, by Jainas like Asadharapandita and Nachiraja, and by Brahmans like Kshirasvamin, Mallinatha and Appayyadikshita testifies to its usefulness to every class of Sanskrit students.  It is a well-known fact that translations of the Amarakosha into Chinese and Thibetan have been recently discovered.

I'm cautious about the veracity of every statement in that paragraph, especially the last sentence, about which I am innately suspicious.  If there is a Tibetan version, I believe that it would not be a recent discovery, and, if there is a Chinese version, in all likelihood I would already have encountered it by now, but I yet to come across a Chinese version of the Amarakosha.

Here's a more professional, scholarly entry on the Amarakosha from the Cambridge University Digital Library:

Amarakoṣa (MS Add.1650)

The Amarakoṣa by Amarasiṃha, probably a Buddhist author, is the most renowned Sanskrit lexicographical work, seemingly composed around the middle of the first millennium CE. "The bulk of the Amarakoṣa is a synonymic dictionary whose articles are grouped subjectwise" (Vogel 1979: 311). The fame of the "Immortal Lexicon" goes far beyond the boundaries of the Indian Subcontinent, as testified by its renderings in Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian, Sinhalese and Burmese, among others. A further proof of its importance and popularity is the number of commentaries dedicated to it: at least eighty, of which many still remain unpublished. This heavily annotated Nepalese palm-leaf manuscript is probably to be dated to the 14th or the 15th century.

Ramanathan, A. A., Amarakośa of Amarasiṃha, with the unpublished South Indian commentaries, Adyar Library series 101 (Madras: Adyar Library and Research Centre,, 1971) vol. 101.

This extensive article from the Wisdom Library draws on numerous sources and includes many curious facts about the Amarakosha.

Here is the entry on Amarakosha from "A Chronology of Major Events in the History of Lexicography (Oxford Handbooks Online)" which puts it in the overall framework of the development of Indian lexicographical works.

6th cent.?

Amarasiṃha compiles the thematically arranged metrical dictionary known as Amarakoṣa, the most famous of the early lexica of Sanskrit. More than eighty commentaries would be written on it, the earliest around 1000; it would be translated into Burmese, Nevārī, Tibetan, and Mongolian; and it would be mentioned as a forerunner by P. M. Roget in the introduction to his Thesaurus of 1852.

By chance, I came upon this remarkable article that is highly relevant to our current inquiry:

Jens Braarvig, "The Imprint of Buddhist Sanskrit on Chinese and Tibetan: Some Lexical Ontologies and Translation Strategies in the Tang Dynasty", Ch. 16, in: Jens Braarvig and Markham J. Geller: Studies in Multilingualism, Lingua Franca and Lingua Sacra Online version, pp. 427-451.  (pdf)  Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge Studies 10 (2018). 

It provides abundant evidence of a tradition of Sanskritic style synonymicons in Tibetan and to a lesser extent in Chinese, but no evidence of Tibetan and Chinese translations of the Amarakosha per se.

The Amarakosha does exist in Tibetan.  It is titled ‘Chi med mdzod, which literally means "Immortal Treasury," being an abbreviation of Amarasiṃha's name ("Immortal Lion") and the standard Tibetan translation for kośa ("storeroom; treasury; repository").  It was translated into Tibetan by mahapandita Kirticandra and Yar lungs lo tsā ba Grags pa rgyal mtshan.  The text was translated into Tibetan during the second dissemination of the dharma, probably in the late thirteenth century.  It is included in editions of the Tenjur / Tengyur section of the Tibetan canon (e.g., D. 4299), along with Subhūticandra’s commentary (D. 4300), and was widely cited.

The closest we get to an alleged Chinese version of the Amarakosha in Chinese may be had in these remarks of Fabio Rambelli:

The presumed translator of this dictionary was Gunaratha, that is, Paramārtha (Ch. Zhendi 真諦; 499–569 CE), to whom can be attributed a dictionary, the "Translation of Foreign Words (Fan waiguo yu 翻外國語), in seven fascicles (also known as Za shi 雜事 or the Jushe lun yinyuan shi 倶舍論因縁事, T49, 88a). This treatise is listed in the Lidai sanbaoji and the Neidian lu as the last one in the list of Paramārtha’s works […] We know from its name that it was probably not a translation but a composition by Paramārtha." (from Funayama Tōru, (2010). The Work of Paramārtha: An Example of Sino-Indian Cross-cultural Exchange, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 31, 1/2, 141 – 183, (cit. pp. 149-150)). I am not familiar with this work though.

The fact that the alternative title of  Paramārtha's work begins with jùshě 倶舍, the standard Chinese transcription of Sanskrit kośa, may have led some to confuse it with the Amarakosha.

These remarks of Max Deeg support my contention about kośa and add important information concerning the Tibetan translation of the Amarakosha and its Sinitic analogs:

I would advise to consult Vogel’s small volume in Gonda’s History of Indian Buddhism on Sanskrit dictionaries, including the Namalinganusasana aka Amarakosa. It is still quite valuable and also contains a footnote on the so-called Chinese translation p.313, note 41 to which I would add a reference in the Lidai sanbao ji (T.2034.88a.22ff.). I agree with Vogel that nothing – except for the kosa in the alternative title 俱舍論 – in the catalogue entries indicates that this Fan waiguoyu is a translation of the Amarakosa (the literally translated Chinese name of which would be something like 無死藏, 不死藏 or 甘露藏). The seven juan given in the Chinese catalogues also does not fit the three chapters of the Skt. text. On the Tibetan translation see Sherab Gyaltsen, Amarakoṣa and its Tibetan translation, ʼChi med mdzod: a metrical dictionary of the Sanskrit language by Amarasiṃha with its Tibetan translation made by Mahāpaṇḍita Kīrticandra and Yar-luṅs Lo-tsā-ba Grags-pa-rgyal-mtshan, Gangtok 1984.

These observations by Robert Goldman are also valuable for getting a sense of the general impact of the Amarakosha in India:

The AK has been widely commented upon by scholars of all three religious traditions. Including the ones you mention, I believe.  It also has comms. by  other authors such as the Jain Jinendra Budhi, Rāyamukuta, and Bhānuji Dīkṣita, as well as others in regional languages like Malayalam and Telugu. I have not looked at any of these works so I can’t say too much about them.  But it is not unusual for commentators to use  the works of others from other traditions. In any case the AK, along with other koshas is widely quoted by many scholiasts.

These penetrating insights by Deven Patel provide additional context for understanding why the Amarakosha was such a vital text for Indian scholars and why many of them would have been tempted to memorize it:

I read the Amarakosha with Dr. Ram Karan Sharma (who was a visiting professor of Sanskrit at Penn about six years ago), along with a commentary.  I recorded those sessions because studying this work with a pandit really opens up the lexicon for you.  Professor Sharma would quote numerous sources where a particular word from the Amarakosha occurs since he had thousands of memorized verses at the tip of his tongue.  A student like me could, therefore, not only study (and memorize) the individual verses of the Amarakosha, which is set up like a thesaurus, but also have access to a diversity of references from poems, philosophical works, scientific texts, etc. Sadly, I didn't memorize the Amarakosha.  Most traditionally trained scholars have that work memorized from start to finish.

That the Amarakosha transcends any particular religious orientation is borne out by these perceptive comments by Varun Khanna:

It is true that the Amarakośa is of extreme value to every class of Sanskrit student, and that members of every Sanskritic tradition have commented on it. However, that Amara Simha was a Buddhist is a dubious claim. I'm not sure that we have compelling evidence one way or another. In any case, I would steer clear of any claims about his religious persuasion, and you'll be good.

To sum up, the Amarakośa had broad authority apart from any particular religious tradition. I doubt that it was ever directly translated into Chinese in any recognizable form. Yijing (635-713) discusses Sanskrit grammar studies in his travel account, yet he does not mention this work while mentioning others.  Whether there ever was a direct translation of the Amarakośa into Chinese does not matter so much as that, through the thoughts and works of Chinese pilgrim-monks such as Faxian (337 – c. 422), Xuanzang (fl. 602 – 664), and Yijing, who were learned in Sanskrit, it would have had an impact on Sinitic lexicography and rhetoric.

 

Selected readings

• "The stupendous powers of memorization in the Indian tradition" (10/23/20)
• "What happened to the spelling bee this year?" (10/21/20)
• "Spelling Bee 2019" (5/31/10)
• "The worldly sport of spelling" (6/2/18)
• “Spelling bee champs” (6/1/14)
• “Spelling bees and character amnesia” (8/7/13)
• “Brain imaging and spelling champions” (8/7/15)
• “Spoken Sanskrit” (1/9/16)
• "Once more on the mystery of the national spelling bee" (5/27/16)
• "Spelling bees in the 1940s" (7/10/16)
• "Yet again on the mystery of the national spelling bee" (6/5/17)
• Pieter C. Verhagen, A History of Sanskrit Grammatical Literature in Tibet, 2 vols. (Leiden:  Brill, 1994, 2001).
• Claus Vogel, "Indian Lexicography", in the author's A History of Indian Literature, Volume 5, Part 4 (Wiesbaden:  Otto Harrassowitz, 1979).
• Lokesh Chandra, The Amarakośa in Tibet:  being a New Tibetan Version by the Great Grammarian Si-tu; Śata-Piṭaka Series 38. New Delhi:  International Academy of Indian Culture, 1965.

 

[Thanks to Donald Lopez, Daniel Boucher, Leonard van der Kuijp, Jonathan Silk, Janet Gyatso, Douglas Duckworth, and Nathan Hill]

October 28, 2020 @ 11:33 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Dictionaries, Lexicon and lexicography, Memorization

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