Twilight language

Twilight language or secret language is a rendering of the Sanskrit term sāṃdhyābhāṣā (written also sāndhyābhāṣā, sāṃdhyabhāṣā, sāndhyabhāṣā; Wylie: dgongs-pa'i skad, THL gongpé ké) or of their modern Indic equivalents (especially in Bengali, Odia, Assamese, Maithili, Hindi, Nepali, Braj Bhasha and Khariboli).

As popularized by Roderick Bucknell and Martin Stuart-Fox in The Twilight Language: Explorations in Buddhist Meditation and Symbolism in 1986, the notion of "twilight language" is a supposed polysemic language and communication system associated with tantric traditions in Vajrayana Buddhism and Hinduism. It includes visual communication, verbal communication and nonverbal communication. Tantric texts are often written in a form of the twilight language that is incomprehensible to the uninitiated reader. As part of an esoteric tradition of initiation, the texts are not to be employed by those without an experienced guide and the use of the twilight language ensures that the uninitiated do not easily gain access to the knowledge contained in these works.

The phrase "twilight language" has subsequently been adopted by some other Western writers, including Judith Simmer-Brown.

Meaning

According to Mircea Eliade (1970), in 1916 Hara Prasad Shastri proposed the translation of "twilight language". However, in 1928 Vidhushekar Shāstri disagreed with that translation, showing that the term is based on a shortened form of the word sandhāya, which can be translated as "having in view", "intending", or "with regard to". Eliade concludes that: "Hence there is no reference to the idea of a 'twilight language'." He continues by speculating on how the term came to be corrupted by scribes who read the familiar word sandhyā ("crepuscular") for the original sandhā. Eliade therefore translates the phrase as "intentional language".