The Buddha – a historical reconstruction of the spread of the designation through the examination of early Pali and Chinese texts

Abstract

Today it seems self-evident to refer to the founder and key figure of Buddhism as the Buddha. It is unequivocally the most common and widespread title of the enlightened ascetic Gotama (6–5 century BCE), regardless of whether the name appears in a Western, Eastern, religious, or academic context. However, early layers of the Pali Tipiṭaka and early Chinese translations suggest that this was not always the case. Based on the mentioned source materials, it seems that during the life of the great saint and shortly after his death, the word buddha was only one (and not even the most widespread) of the terms applied to him. The texts of the Pali canon and Sanskrit and their Chinese Buddhist translations also refer to the Buddha with a multitude of epithets. He had different addresses, titles, and permanent designations, some of which occurred in similar contexts as synonyms, while others were used in specific situations or by certain persons or groups. In this study, I examine how the word buddha appears in early Buddhist texts and what differences exist in the use and the frequency of use of the certain names for the Buddha, and I attempt to reconstruct the process, as a result of which the word buddha became the best-known name of the hermit Gotama. In my work, I argue that during his lifetime, his monastic disciples mainly referred to the Buddha with various forms of bhagavan and primarily used bhante as an address; the followers of other schools and the skeptics referred to him as Gotama/Gotama samaṇa; and his 10 permanent epithets (among them the buddha) really took on a role when the doctrine was proclaimed (i.e., at first they mainly played a role in texts and text fragments addressed to the laity). This role may have gradually changed with the death of the great saint and the geographical spread of the dhamma. This study examines the above-mentioned processes with the help of certain parts of the Majjhima-, Saṃyutta- and Khuddaka-nikāyas of the Pali Suttapiṭaka, as well as some early Chinese Buddhist translations.