梵文法華経の偈文における韻律の特徴――初期仏典等との類似偈文句の対照を通じて――

抄録

The text of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka （SP） is written in a mixture of Middle Indo-Āryan （MIA）, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, and Classical Sanskrit （Skt.）. For this reason, the early version of SP has been thought to have been compiled in MIA and then Sanskritized as it was handed down through time. However, there are many objections, and a unified view has not been arrived at yet.

One suggestion is that some verses in SP are unmetrical. In general, in Skt. prosody, short vowels before prefixes pr°, jñ°, st°, etc. are considered as long, but if this wouold be followed strictly, some verses in SP would be considered unmetrical. Many scholars claim that if those prefixes are regarded as a single consonant, they would then accord with meterical requirements. For this linguistic phenomenon, scholars also claim that the early SP was rewritten from MIA prefixes p°, ñ°, etc. to Skt. prefixes pr°, jñ°, etc., due to Sanskritization. However, there are also some verses that require the Skt. prefixes to be understood to cause lengthening to be metrically correct. Therefore, the suggestion is debatable.

In this paper, I present parallel and similar verses from several early Buddhist texts （Suttanipāta, Dhammapada, Theragāthā, Therīgāthā, Jātaka）, Mahāvastu, Lalitavistara and SP, focusing on the verses containing the prefix pr°. I will also discuss the possibility of Sanskritization in SP verses.