The tongue like a sharp knife… Kills without drawing blood. ByBuddha
— become a vampire (@tobeavampire) August 12, 2012
This is one I initially had almost no suspicions about. It seemed quite likely that the Buddha might have said something like this. But, as it turns out, he didn’t. Or at least it’s not been recorded.
Southern Folklore Quarterly, Volume 13, 1949, page 127, gives as the source of quote a book called “Seven Hundred Chinese Proverbs, by Henry H. Hart (Stanford University Press, c. 1937), and indeed many books refer to it as a Chinese saying. The Buddha was not Chinese, so this is, to say the least, unlikely to be a canonical Buddha quote. It’s more likely that someone, as so often seems to happen, decided to add the Buddha’s name to this quote at some point.
It’s a common enough image, though, and it’s possible that the Buddha said something like this. In Portuguese they have the saying, “A lingua não é de aço, mas corta,” and in Spanish they say, “La lengua del mal amigo más corta que cuchillo.”
Interestingly, I haven’t come across the the word “tongue” in Pali being used to represent speech. “Jivhā” literally means tongue, and also “taste,” as in “Jivhā indriya” (sense of taste). But it isn’t used metonymically to stand for “speech.” Or if it is, I haven’t encountered it. It’s funny how languages have different associations with something as simple as the tongue.
There are a number of suttas that talk about the ‘hatchet in the mouth’ (can also be axe or knife presumably)
I seem to recall other examples, but this one is from si 149 [188 Eng.version]
In sooth to every man that’s born
A hatchet grows within his mouth
Wherewith the fool, whene’er he speaks
And speaks amiss, doth cut himself
He who the blameworthy doth praise,
or who the praiseworthy doth blame
builds by his mouth his evil doom
and by that doom he finds no weal.
No mention of blood though.
Ah, good find! I don’t have my copy of the Sutta Nipata to hand, but I found another version of your verse on Google Books:
It’s a close parallel to out Fake Buddha Quote. It’s possible that the “Chinese Proverb” is a translation of this verse. That would be interesting.
There’s also MN 48: “If a monk is given to arguing and quarreling and disputing, stabbing others with weapons of the mouth, then his mind is enthralled.”
And MN 59: “When I have taught the Dhamma by means of exposition, it can be expected that when there are those who do not consent to, assent to, or accept what is well-said and well-stated by one another, there will be arguing, quarreling, & disputing, and they will dwell wounding one another with the sword of the tongue.”
I’ll make some changes to the article above…