Pāli

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{{Infobox Language 

 |name=Pāli
 |nativename=Pāli
 |pronunciation=[paːli]
 |states=India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka
 |iso1=pi
 |iso2=pli
 |iso3=pli
 |familycolor=Indo-European
 |fam2=Indo-Iranian
 |fam3=Indo-Aryan
 |script=Devanāgarī
 |extinct=No native speakers, used as a literary and liturgical language only
 |notice=Indic

}} Template:Otheruses2

Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect or prakrit. It is most famous as the Liturgical language in which the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism (also known as the Pāli Canon or in Pāli the Tipitaka) were written down in Sri Lanka in the 1st century BCE. Pāli has been written in a variety of scripts, from Brahmi, Devanagari and other Indic scripts through to a romanised (western) form devised by T. W. Rhys Davids of the Pali Text Society.

Contents

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Language origins and development

The word Pāli itself signifies "line" or "(canonical) text", and this name for the language seems to have its origins in commentarial traditions, wherein the "Pāli" (in the sense of the line of original text quoted) was distinguished from the commentary or the vernacular following after it on the Manuscript page. As such, the name of the language has caused some debate among scholars of all ages; the spelling of the name also varies, being found with both long "ā" ([ɑː]) and short "a" ([a]), and also with either a retroflex ([ɭ]) or non-retroflex ([l]) "l" sound. To this day, there is no single, standard spelling of the term; all four spellings can be found in textbooks.

Pāli is a literary language of the Prakrit language family; it is not now (and never was) an informal, spoken language, in the sense of a mother tongue. Despite excellent scholarship on this problem, there is persistent confusion as to the inter-relation of Pāli to the vernacular of ancient Magadhi.

Pāli was considered by early Buddhists to be linguistically similar to Old Magadhi or even a direct continuation of that language. Many Theravada sources refer to the Pāli language as “Magadhan” or the “language of Magadhi”. However, Magadhi is an Eastern Indian language whereas Pāli most closely resembles Western Indian inscriptions. Oskar von Hinuber has speculated that Pāli may have originated as a form of lingua franca or trade language used at the time of the Ashokan Empire. By the time of the spread of Buddhism to Sri Lanka (by missionaries sent by King Ashoka (Aśoka), according to Buddhist sources), Pāli was a significant enough literary language that it had already been used to record the complete Tipitaka. After the Pāli Canon was transmitted to Sri Lanka, it continued to be preserved entirely in Pāli, while the commentarial tradition that accompanied it (according to the information provided by Buddhaghosa) was translated into Sinhalese and preserved in local languages for several generations.

However it was ultimately supplanted by Sanskrit as a literary and religious language following the formulation of Classical Sanskrit by the scholar Panini in India. In Sri Lanka, Pāli is thought to have entered into a period of decline around the 5th Century (as Sanskrit rose in prominence), but ultimately survived. The work of Buddhaghosa was largely responsible for its reemergence as an important scholarly language in Buddhist thought. The Visuddhimagga and the other commentaries that Buddhaghosa compiled codified and condensed the Sinhalese commentarial tradition that had been preserved and expanded in Sri Lanka since the 3rd Century.

Today Pāli is studied mainly to gain access to Buddhist scriptures, and is frequently chanted in a ritual context. The secular literature of Pāli historical chronicals, medical texts, and inscriptions, is also of great historical importance. The great centers of Pāli learning remain in the Theravada nations of South-East Asia: Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Pāli scholarship in Northern India generally ended with the rise of the Sena dynasty, with an uncertain process of decline in peninsular India, perhaps lasting the longest in Orissa, i.e., eventually ending (along with Buddhist practice itself) with the fall of the last resistance to the expanding Muslim empires on the subcontinent. Since the 19th century, various societies for the revival of Pāli studies in India have promoted awareness of the language and its literature, perhaps most notably the Maha Bodhi Society founded by Anagarika Dhammapala.

In Europe, the Pali Text Society has been a major force in promoting the study of Pāli by Western scholars since its founding in 1881. Based in the United Kingdom, the society publishes romanised Pāli editions, along with many English translations of these sources. The Pali Text Society was in part founded to compensate for the very low level of funds allocated to Indology in late 19th century England; incongruously, the English were not nearly so robust in Sanskrit and Prakrit language studies as Germany, Russia and even Denmark—a situation that many would say continues to this day. Without the inspiration of colonial holdings such as the former British occupation of Sri Lanka and Burma, institutions such as the Danish Royal Library have built up major collections of Pāli manuscripts, and major traditions of Pāli studies.

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Lexicon

Pāli shares common etymologies for virtually every word in the language with the other Prakritic "Middle Indo-European Languages", e.g., the Jain Prakrits. The relationship to earlier Sanskrit (e.g., Vedic language) is less direct and more complicated; the Pāli language's resemblance to Sanskrit is often exaggerated by comparing it to more recent Sanskrit poetry --i.e., the latter being influenced by Pāli and centuries of other Middle-Indo-European language development. Historically, influence between Pāli and Sanskrit has been felt in both directions. This is demonstrably true (e.g.) in the instance of Ashvaghosa, a Pāli-educated Buddhist monk, who became the first author of the Sanskrit kavya genre of poetry, highly influential on Sanskrit poetics thereafter. Likewise, in Sanskrit philosophy, post-Buddhist schools such as Shankara's Vedanta have been directly influenced both by Buddhist Philosophy and argumentation, with concomitant effects in the use of the language itself.

Post-Canonical Pāli demonstrates some direct adoptions of technical vocabulary from Sanskrit, and a few loan-words from local languages where Pāli was used (e.g. Sri Lankans adding Sinhalese words to Pāli). These usages differentiate the Pāli found in the Suttapitaka from later compositions such as the commentaries and folklore Jataka, and comparative study (and dating) of texts on the basis of such loan-words is now a specialized trade unto itself.

The fact that Pāli was not exclusively used to convey the teachings of the Buddha is demonstrable from the existence of a number of secular texts, such as books of medical science/instruction. However, western scholarly interest in the language has been (for obvious reasons) focused upon religious and philosophical literature.

Within the context of religious writings, similar-sounding words to those found in Sanskrit can have significantly different meanings than those of Pāli. The active re-definition and re-invention of the religious meanings assigned to certain key terms (such as dharma/dhamma) was an active aspect of philosophic debate for many centuries, and the Buddhist, Jains, and various schools of Hinduism all had competitive notions of the value and significance of these terms.

The philosophy of early Mahayana Buddhism found in Sanskrit and the Buddhism recorded in Pāli are, in many respects, mutually opposed; however, historical sources indicate that these were not the only schools, nor the only languages, that participated in the debates within the Buddhist fold. There is no extant Buddhist literature of the Prakrit language Paisaci, but this and other languages were associated with particular philosophical approaches to Buddhist doctrine (and particular sectarian affiliations) in recorded history.

Needless to say, there is a still further gulf between the philosophy of early Buddhism and contemporaneous Brahmanical thought of the Middle Indic period, including beliefs about the respective sacred languages themselves. While Sanskrit words were thought to inhere as a part of the thing they described, Pāli words were thought to have only conventional significance. Sanskrit, Pāli, and the Jain Prakrits, were all represented as the language spoken by the gods in the popular literature of the respective religions, and various claims as to the supernatural origins or supernatural efficacy were assigned to these languages by their proponents. Unto this day, it is believed in many Theravada cultures that taking a vow in Pāli has a special significance, and, as one example of the supernatural power assigned to chanting in the language, the recitation of the vows of Angulimala are believed to alleviate the pain of childbirth in Sri Lanka. In Thailand, the chanting of a portion of the Abhidhammapitaka is believed to be beneficial to the recently departed, and this ceremony routinely occupies as much as seven working days. Interestingly, there is nothing in the latter text that relates to this subject, and the origins of the custom are unclear.

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Example of Pāli with English translation

Manopubbaṅgamā dhammā, manoseṭṭhā manomayā;
Manasā ce paduṭṭhena, bhāsati vā karoti vā,
Tato nam dukkhaṃ anveti, cakkaṃ'va vahato padaṃ.

Element for element gloss

Mano-pubbaṅ-gam=ā dhamm=ā, mano-seṭṭh=ā mano-may=ā;
Mind-before-going=m.pl.nom. dharma=m.pl.nom., mind-foremost=m.nom.pl. mind-made=m.nom.pl.
Manas=ā ce paduṭṭh=ena, bhāsa=ti vā karo=ti vā,
Mind=n.sg.inst. if corrupted=n.sg.inst. speak=3.sg.pr. either act=3.sg.pr. or,
Ta=to naṃ dukkhaṃ anv-e=ti, cakkaṃ 'va vahat=o pad=aṃ.
That=from him suffering after-go=3.sg.pr., wheel as carrying(beast)=m.sg.gen. foot=n.sg.acc.

The three compounds in the first line literally mean:

manopubbaṅgama "whose precursor is mind", "having mind as a fore-goer or leader"
manoseṭṭha "whose foremost member is mind", "having mind as chief"
manomaya "consisting of mind" or "made by mind"

The literal meaning is therefore: "The dharmas have mind as their leader, mind as their chief, are made of/by mind. If [someone] either speaks or acts with a corrupted mind, from that [cause] suffering goes after him, as the wheel [of a cart follows] the foot of a draught animal."

A slightly freer translation by Acharya Buddharakkhita

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.
If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him
like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
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Pāli Alphabets (Unicode)

Historically, the first written record of the Pāli canon is believed to have been composed in Sri Lanka, based on a prior oral tradition. The transmission of written Pāli has retained a universal system of alphabetic values, but has expressed those values in a stunning variety of actual scripts. This is confusing to many westerners, who tend to assume that one script is ineluctably tied to one set of phonemes.

Early Pāli inscriptions made during the reign of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka were composed in the Ashokan Brahmi script; in Sri Lanka, Pāli texts were recorded in Sinhala script. Other local scripts (most prominently Burmese and Thai) have been used to record Pāli, and a standardized system of romanization was introduced in the 19th Century to permit Westerners to study Pāli with greater ease. In modern times, Pāli texts have also been reproduced in the Devanagari and Mongolian scripts to permit wider study.

You can take in a range of seven alphabetic systems traditionally used to render Pāli here, or comprare the following grid of Romanized phonetic to the corresponding alphabetic grids of the Burmese, Sinhalese, Cambodian, and other writing systems used to express the Pāli language.

  • a ā i ī u ū e o
  • k kh g gh ṅ
  • c ch j jh ñ
  • ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ
  • t th d dh n
  • y r l v s h ḷ
  • p ph b bh m
  • ṃ
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Pāli text in ASCII

The Velthuis scheme was originally developed in 1991 by Frans Velthuis for use with his "devnag" Devanagari font, designed for the TEX typesetting system. This system of representing Pāli diacritical marks has been used in some websites and discussion lists:

  • Long vowels are doubled: aa, ii, uu .
  • Other diacritics precede the letters marked by them, so:
    • semi-vowels: .r .l
    • retroflex consonants: .t .th .d .dh .n
    • retroflex sibilant: .s
    • palatal sibilant: "s
    • palatal nasal: ~n
    • guttural nasal: "n
    • niggahita (pure nasal): .m
    • visarga: .h
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Setting up a font for Pāli transliteration in Windows

There are several fonts to use for Pāli transliteration. Of them, Unicode fonts are recommended since they are interchangeable while non-unicode fonts are not, and also because Unicode seems to be the future for all fonts. Out of many Unicode fonts providing all necessary diacritics for Pāli, Times Ext Roman (serif), Courier Ext (monotype), and Vu-arial (sans-serif) seem to have the best appearance both on screen and in print.

They can be freely downloaded from here, here, and here respectively for use on Windows; the former two are Windows installers --- one just clicks on each of them, and follows the on screen directions until they are installed in the Fonts folder. The last one is a zip file, to be unzipped and installed.

Note for Linux users: Installation files (.exe files) cannot be used on Linux. However, one can copy the font files from the Fonts folder of a Windows system into the folder /usr/share/fonts on a Linux one. In addition, some new Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu and RedHat, have packages available for Devanagari fonts and extended Latin fonts both used for Pali. Recent versions of Mac OS X also include similar font characters sets.

After the fonts have been set up, go to a wordprocessor such as Microsoft Word to set up the shortcut keys for the characters with diacritical marks in Times Ext Roman, Courier Ext or Vu-arial font.

In the case of Microsoft Word, select either font in the font combo box, then go to menu item Insert→Symbol. The Symbol dialog box pops up. Under the Symbols tab, select one out of the three in the Font combo box: under it should be a grid of characters.

For each desired character in the grid, select it by clicking on it, then click on the "Shortcut Key..." command button: the Customize Keyboard dialog box pops up. Pressing the desired shortcut key combination makes it show up in the "Press new shortcut key:" text box. Click the "Assign" command button, then click on "Close" and repeat this for each desired character. When done, close the Symbol dialog box.

Shortcut keys need be assigned only for one Unicode font. If one needs to change the font, just select the required section, go to font list, and make the change. This method will work as long as both original and target fonts are of Unicode type, and both provide certain diacritics for Pāli. This is why Unicode fonts are recommended.

The following is an example of a set of shortcut key assignments:

character Unicode number key combination HTML code
a macron 61580 Alt+A ā
n tilde 61590 Alt+Ctrl+N ñ
i macron 61620 Alt+I ī
d dot-under 61622 Alt+D ḍ
n dot-over 61626 Ctrl+N ṇ
l dot-under 61634 Alt+L ḷ
t dot-under 61642 Alt+T ṭ
m dot-over 61655 Alt+M ṁ
u macron 61672 Alt+U ū
n dot-under 61686 Alt+N &#7751
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Pāli and Sanskrit

Although Pāli cannot be considered a direct descendant of either Classical Sanskrit or of the older Vedic dialect, the languages are obviously very closely related and the common characteristics of Pāli and Sanskrit were always easily recognized by those in India who were familiar with both. Indeed, a very large proportion of Pāli and Sanskrit word-stems are absolutely identical in form, differing only in details of inflection.

The connections were sufficiently well-known that technical terms from Sanskrit were easily converted into Pāli by a set of conventional phonological transformations. These transformations mimicked a subset of the phonological developments that had occurred in Proto-Pāli. Because of the prevalence of these transformations, it is not always possible to tell whether a given Pāli word is a part of the old Prakrit lexicon, or a transformed borrowing from Sanskrit. The existence of a Sanskrit word regularly corresponding to a Pāli word is not always secure evidence of the Pāli etymology, since, in some cases, artificial Sanskrit words were created by back-formation from Prakrit words.

The following phonological processes are not intended as an exhaustive description of the historical changes which produced Pāli from its Old Indic ancestor, but rather are a summary of the most common phonological equations between Sanskrit and Pāli, with no claim to completeness.

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Vowels and diphthongs

  • Sanskrit ai and au always monophthongize to Pāli e and o, respectively
Examples: maitrī → mettā, auṣadha → osadha
  • Sanskrit aya and ava likewise often reduce to Pāli e and o
Examples: dhārayati → dhāreti, avatāra → otāra, bhavati → hoti
  • Sanskrit avi becomes Pāli e (i.e. avi → ai → e)
Example: sthavira → thera
  • Sanskrit ṛ appears in Pāli as a, i or u, often agreeing with the vowel in the following syllable. ṛ also sometimes becomes u after labial consonants.
Examples: kṛta → kata, tṛṣṇa → taṇha, smṛti → sati, ṛṣi → isi, dṛṣṭi → diṭṭhi, ṛddhi → iddhi, ṛju → uju, spṛṣṭa → phuṭṭha, vṛddha → vuddha
  • Sanskrit long vowels are shortened before a sequence of two following consonants.
Examples: kṣānti → khanti, rājya → rajja, īśvara → issara, tīrṇa → tiṇṇa, pūrva → pubba
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Consonants

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Sound changes

  • The Sanskrit sibilants ś, ṣ, and s merge together as Pāli s
Examples: śaraṇa → saraṇa, doṣa → dosa
  • The Sanskrit stops ḍ and ḍh become ḷ and ḷh between vowels (as in Vedic)
Example: cakravāḍa → cakkavāḷa, virūḍha → virūḷha
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Assimilations

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General rules
  • Many assimilations of one consonant to a neighboring consonant occurred in the development of Pāli, producing a large number of geminate (double) consonants. Since aspiration of a geminate consonant is only phonetically detectable on the last consonant of a cluster, geminate kh, gh, ch, jh, ṭh, ḍh, th, dh, ph and bh appear as kkh, ggh, cch, jjh, ṭṭh, ḍḍh, tth, ddh, pph and bbh, not as khkh, ghgh etc.
  • When assimilation would produce a geminate consonant (or a sequence of unaspirated stop+aspirated stop) at the beginning of a word, the initial geminate is simplified to a single consonant.
Examples: prāṇa → pāṇa (not ppāṇa), sthavira → thera (not tthera), dhyāna → jhāna (not jjhāna), jñāti → ñāti (not ññāti)
  • When assimilation would produce a sequence of three consonants in the middle of a word, geminates are simplified until there are only two consonants in sequence.
Examples: uttrāsa → uttāsa (not utttāsa), mantra → manta (not mantta), indra → inda (not indda), vandhya → vañjha (not vañjjha)
  • The sequence vv resulting from assimilation changes to bb
Example: sarva → savva → sabba, pravrajati → pavvajati → pabbajati, divya → divva → dibba
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Total assimilation
  • In a sequence of two dissimilar Sanskrit stops, the first stop assimilates to the second stop
Examples: vimukti → vimutti, dugdha → duddha, utpāda → uppāda, pudgala → puggala, udghoṣa → ugghosa, adbhuta → abbhuta, śabda → sadda
  • The Sanskrit liquid consonants r and l assimilate to either a preceding stop, nasal, sibilant, or v (progressive assimilation) or to a following one (regressive assimilation)
Examples, progressive: prāṇa → pāṇa, grāma → gāma, śrāvaka → sāvaka, agra → agga, indra → inda, pravrajati → pavvajati → pabbajati
Examples, regressive: mārga → magga, karma → kamma, varṣa → vassa, kalpa → kappa, sarva → savva → sabba
  • y assimilates to preceding non-alveolar/retroflex stops or nasals
Examples: cyavati → cavati, jyotiṣ → joti, rājya → rajja, matsya → macchya → maccha, abhyāgata → abbhāgata, ākhyāti → akkhāti, saṃkhyā → saṅkhā (but also saṅkhyā), ramya → ramma
  • y assimilates to preceding v, producing vv → bb
Example: divya → divva → dibba, veditavya → veditavva → veditabba, bhāvya → bhavva → bhabba
  • y and v assimilate to any preceding sibilant, producing ss
Examples: paśyati → passati, īśvara → issara, kariṣyati → karissati, tasya → tassa
  • Nasals sometimes assimilate to a preceding stop
Examples: agni → aggi, atman → atta
  • j, however, assimilates to a following ñ (i.e., jñ becomes ññ)
Examples: prajñā → paññā, jñāti → ñāti
  • m assimilates to an initial sibilant
Examples: smarati → sarati, smṛti → sati
  • In a sequence of two dissimilar nasals, the first nasal assimilates to the second nasal
Example: unmatta → ummatta, pradyumna → pajjunna
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Partial and mutual assimilation
  • Sanskrit sibilants before a stop assimilate to that stop, and if that stop is not already aspirated, it becomes aspirated; e.g. st, ṣṭ and sp become tth, ṭṭh and pph; internal visarga is also assimilated to a following stop
Examples: asti → atthi, stava → thava, śreṣṭha → seṭṭha, aṣṭa → aṭṭha, sparśa → phassa, duḥkha → dukkha
  • t and p become c before s, and the sibilant assimilates to the preceding sound as an aspirate (i.e., the sequences ts and ps become cch)
Examples: vatsa → vaccha, apsaras → accharā
  • A sibilant assimilates to a preceding k as an aspirate (i.e., the sequence kṣ becomes kkh)
Examples: bhikṣu → bhikkhu, kṣānti → khanti
  • Any alveolar or retroflex stop or nasal followed by y converts to the corresponding palatal sound, and the y assimilates to this new consonant, i.e. ty, thy, dy, dhy, ny become cc, cch, jj, jjh, ññ; likewise ṇy becomes ññ. Nasals preceding a stop that becomes palatal share this change.
Examples: tyajati → cyajati → cajati, satya → sacya → sacca, mithyā → michyā → micchā, vidyā → vijyā → vijjā, madhya → majhya → majjha, anya → añya → añña, puṇya → puñya → puñña, vandhya → vañjhya → vañjjha → vañjha
  • The sequence mr becomes mb, via the epenthesis of a stop between the nasal and liquid, followed by assimilation of the liquid to the stop and subsequent simplification of the resulting geminate.
Examples: āmra → ambra → ambba → amba, tāmra → tamba
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Epenthesis

An epenthetic vowel is sometimes inserted between certain consonant-sequences. As with ṛ, the vowel may be a, i, or u, depending on the influence of a neighboring consonant or of the vowel in the following syllable. i is often found near i, y, or palatal consonants; u is found near u, v, or labial consonants.

  • Sequences of stop + nasal are sometimes separated by a or u
Example: ratna → ratana, padma → paduma (u influenced by labial m)
  • The sequence sn may become sin initially
Examples: snāna → sināna, sneha → sineha
  • i may be inserted between a consonant and l
Examples: kleśa → kilesa, glāna → gilāna, mlāyati → milāyati, ślāghati → silāghati
  • The sequence ry generally becomes riy (i influenced by following y), but is still treated as a two-consonant sequence for the purposes of vowel-shortening
Example: ārya → arya → ariya, sūrya → surya → suriya, vīrya → virya → viriya
  • a is inserted between r and h
Example: arhati → arahati
  • There is sporadic epenthesis between other consonant sequences
Examples: caitya → cetiya (not cecca), vajra → vajira (not vajja)
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Other changes

  • Any Sanskrit sibilant before a nasal becomes a sequence of nasal followed by h, i.e. ṣṇ, sn and sm become ṇh, nh, and mh
Examples: tṛṣṇa → taṇha, uṣṇīṣa → uṇhīsa, asmi → amhi
  • The sequence śn becomes ñh, due to assimilation of the n to the preceding palatal sibilant
Example: praśna → praśña → pañha
  • The sequences hy and hv undergo metathesis
Examples: jihvā → jivhā, gṛhya → gayha
  • y is geminated between e and a vowel
Examples: śreyas → seyya, Maitreya → Metteyya
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Exceptions

There are several notable exceptions to the rules above; many of them are common Prakrit words rather than borrowings from Sanskrit.

  • ārya → ayya (beside ariya)
  • puruṣa → purisa (not purusa)
  • bh appears as h in some forms of the verb bhū, e.g. bhavati → hoti, and in the ending -ehi from -ebhiṣ

Sporadic changes from alveolar to retroflex, or vice versa, are not uncommon

  • jñāna → ñāṇa (not ñāna)
  • dahati → ḍahati (beside Pāli dahati)
  • nīḍa → nīla (not nīḷa)
  • sthāna → ṭhāna (not thāna)
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References

See entries for "Pali" (written by scholar K.R. Norman of the Pali Text Society) and "India--Buddhism" in The Concise Encyclopedia of Language and Religion, (Sawyer ed.) ISBN 0080431674

The standard text for studying Pāli in the English-speaking world remains A.K. Warder's Introduction to Pali, published by the Pali Text Society. (3rd ed. published 1991, ISBN 0860131971). Some students find Warder to be too complex for individuals with limited linguistic background. Lily de Silva's Pali Primer is often recommended as a more gentle introduction to the language (1st ed. published by Vipassana Research Institute Publications, 1994, ISBN 817414014X)

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See also

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External links

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