A sacred language, liturgical language, lingua sacra, or holy language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons (like church service) by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.
Some religions, or parts of them, regard the language of their sacred texts as in itself sacred. These include Ecclesiastical Latin in Roman Catholicism, Hebrew in Judaism, Arabic in Islam, Avestan in Zoroastrianism, Sanskrit and Tamil in Hinduism, and Meitei in Sanamahism. By contrast Buddhism and Christian denominations outside of Catholicism do not generally regard their sacred languages as sacred in themselves.
Concept
A sacred language is often the language which was spoken and written in the society in which a religion's sacred texts were first set down; these texts thereafter become fixed and holy, remaining frozen and immune to later linguistic developments. (An exception to this is Lucumí, a ritual lexicon of the Cuban strain of the Santería religion, with no standardized form.)
Once a language becomes associated with religious worship, its believers may ascribe virtues to the language of worship that they would not give to their native tongues. In the case of sacred texts, there is a fear of losing authenticity and accuracy by a translation or re-translation, and difficulties in achieving acceptance for a new version of a text. A sacred language is typically vested with a solemnity and dignity that the vernacular lacks. Consequently, the training of clergy in the use of a sacred language becomes an important cultural investment, and their use of the tongue is perceived to give them access to a body of knowledge that untrained laypeople cannot (or should not) access.
Because sacred languages are ascribed with virtues that the vernacular is not seen to have, these typically preserve characteristics lost in the course of language development. In some cases, the sacred language is a dead language, while in others, it may simply reflect archaic forms of a living language. For instance, 17th-century elements of the English language remain current in Protestant Christian worship through the use of the King James Bible from 1611, or older versions of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. In more extreme cases, the language has changed so much from the language of the sacred texts that the liturgy is barely comprehensible without special training. For example, the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church remained in Latin after the Council of Tours in 813 ordered preaching in local Romance or German, because Latin was no longer understood. Similarly, Old Church Slavonic is incomprehensible to speakers of modern Slavic languages, unless they study it.
Sacred languages are distinct from divine languages, which are languages ascribed to the divine (i.e. God or gods) and may not necessarily be natural languages. The concept, as expressed by the name of a script, for example in Dēvanāgarī, the name of a script that roughly means "[script] of the city of gods", and is used to write many Indian languages.
Buddhism When the Buddha's sutras were first written down, probably in Pali, there were around 20 schools, each with their own version derived from the original. The present Pāli Canon originates from the Tamrashatiya school. The Chinese and Tibetan canons mainly derive from the Sarvastivada, originally written in Sanskrit, of which fragments remain. The texts were translated into Chinese and Tibetan.
Theravada Buddhism uses Pali as its main liturgical language and prefers that scripture be studied in the original Pali. Pali is derived from Sanskrit. In Thailand Pali is transliterated into the Thai alphabet, resulting in a Thai pronunciation of the Pali language. Something similar also happened in Myanmar, where Pali is also transliterated into the Burmese alphabet, resulting in a Burmese pronunciation of Pali.
Mahayana Buddhism, now only followed by a small minority in South Asia, makes little use of its original language, Sanskrit, mostly using versions of the local language. In East Asia, Classical Chinese is mainly used. In Japan, texts are written in Chinese characters and read out or recited with the Japanese pronunciations of their constituent characters..
In Vajrayana Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism is the main surviving school, and Classical Tibetan is the main language used for study, although the Tibetan Buddhist canon was also translated into other languages, such as Mongolian and Manchu.Orzech, Charles D. (general editor), 2011. Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia. Brill, p. 540. Many items of Sanskrit Buddhist literature have been preserved because they were exported to Tibet, with copies of unknown ancient Sanskrit texts surfacing in Tibet as recently as 2003. Sanskrit was valued in Tibet as the elegant language of the gods. Although in Tibetan Buddhist deity yoga the rest of the sadhana is generally recited in Tibetan, the mantra portion of the practice is usually retained in its original Sanskrit. Whatever language is used, Judith Simmer-Brown explains that a tantric Vajrayana text is often written in an obscure twilight language so that it cannot be understood by anyone without the verbal explanation of a qualified teacher.
In Nepal, the use of Sanskrit as a sacred language survives in the Newar Buddhism, and arguably the vast majority of Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts have been preserved by this tradition.Min Bahadur Shakya, The Newar Buddhist tradition most prominently employs Sanskrit for all ritual and study purposes, and as such is the only living Buddhist Sanskrit tradition.2019, Shakya, M. (2019). The Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon Project: Problems and Possibilities. Volume 1 Digital Humanities and Buddhism (pp. 111-126). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. It is distinct for its emphasis on preserving the Sanskrit originals of many Mahayana and Vajrayana scriptures, which have otherwise been lost in India and survived only in translations in regions like Tibet and China. The Newar Buddhists have continued to copy Sanskrit manuscripts up to the present day. The Newar Buddhist form of Vajrayana is a storehouse of ancient Sanskrit Buddhist texts, many of which are now only extant in Nepal.
Old Tamil was used for Sangam epics of Buddhist and Jain philosophy.
Christianity
Christian rites, rituals, and ceremonies are not celebrated in one single sacred language. Most churches which trace their origin to the Apostles continue to use the standard languages of the first few centuries AD. Many Christian churches make a distinction between a sacred language, a liturgical language, and a vernacular language. The three most important languages in the early Christian era were Latin, Greek, and Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic).
The Gospel of John notes that the phrase "Jesus, King of the Jews" was inscribed upon the cross of Christ in three different languages, thereby sanctifying them as the first languages to proclaim his divinity. These are: Greek, the original language of the New Testament, as well as the Septuagint (a pre-Christian translation of the Hebrew Bible). This was the lingua franca of much of the contemporary Levant. Hebrew, the dominant language of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). This was the language commonly used among most Jews in the area. Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, which soon became an important language of the Christian Church, especially in the western provinces of the Roman Empire as well as being the language of the "First Among Equals", the Pope, in the Christian Pentarchy.
Liturgical languages are those which hold precedence within liturgy due to tradition and dispensation. Many of these languages have evolved from languages which were at one point vernacular, while some are intentional constructions by ecclesial authorities. These include: Ecclesiastical Latin in the Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church. (Old) Church Slavonic in several of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches and sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches Koine Greek as well as the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Greek Catholic Church. Old Georgian in the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Georgian Byzantine-Rite Catholic Church. Classical Armenian in the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian Catholic Church. Coptic in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and Coptic Catholic Church. Geʽez in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Eritrean Orthodox Church, Ethiopian Catholic Church and Eritrean Catholic Church. Syriac in Syriac Christianity represented by the Syriac Orthodox Church, Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Catholic Church, Maronite Church and Saint Thomas Christian Churches.
The extensive use of Greek in the Roman Liturgy has continued, in theory; it was used extensively on a regular basis during the Papal Mass, which has not been celebrated for some time. By the reign of Pope Damasus I, the continuous use of Greek in the Roman Liturgy had come to be replaced in part by Latin. Gradually, the Roman Liturgy took on more and more Latin until, generally, only a few words of Hebrew (e.g. Dominus Deus sabaoth) and Greek (e.g. Kyrie eleison) remained. The adoption of Latin was further fostered when the Vetus Latina (old Latin) version of the Bible was edited and parts retranslated from the original Hebrew and Greek by Saint Jerome in his Vulgate. Latin continued as the western Church's language of liturgy and communication.
In the mid-16th century the Council of Trent rejected a proposal to introduce national languages as this was seen, among other reasons, as potentially divisive to Catholic unity.
During the Reformation in England, when the Protestant reformers dissuaded against the use of Latin liturgy, various schools obtained a dispensation to continue to use Latin, for educational purposes. The Act of Uniformity in 1662 formally prohibited use of any language for church services apart from English and Welsh, but college chapels in Oxford and Cambridge Universities were exempted and permitted to use Latin, inasmuch as the highly educated members of the universities were assumed to be familiar with the language. Though the legislation has never been overturned, Latin has been reintroduced as a liturgical language in some English churches, cathedrals and collegiate chapels influenced by the Anglo-Catholic movement.
From the end of the 16th century, in coastal Croatia, the local vernacular language began to replace Church Slavonic as the liturgical language. This change occurred because Church Slavonic, which had been used in the Glagolitic liturgical books published in Rome, was becoming increasingly difficult to understand. This difficulty arose from linguistic reforms that adapted the Church Slavonic of Croatian recension used in Croatia to the norms of Church Slavonic used in Russia. For example, the vernacular was used to ask the bride and groom if they accepted their marriage vows.
Jesuit missionaries to China initially obtained permission to translate the Roman Missal into Classical Chinese, a scholarly form of the language. However, this permission was later revoked amid the Chinese Rites controversy. In contrast, among the Algonquin and Iroquois peoples, missionaries were allowed to translate certain parts of the Mass into their native languages.Salvucci, Claudio R. 2008. The Roman Rite in the Algonquian and Iroquoian Missions . Merchantville, NJ:Evolution Publishing. See also
In the 20th century, Pope Pius XII granted permission for a few vernaculars to be used in a few rites, rituals, and ceremonies. This did not include the Roman Liturgy of the Mass.