Re: History

Dear Yong Peng

Thanks

This is a good start - there are a good number of sites with this type of
table and many are full of mistakes (this one which I think you took from
Encarta is not as bad as some).

One suggestion I would make with yours is to look at the way you have
structured the lineage to Pali. It implies that OIA (=old Indo-Aryan), MIA
and NIA are parallel developments from proto-IA and seem to be happening at
the same time. But this is not the case, since one stage followed from the
other (very roughly speaking). You also imply that Sanskrit is older than
Pali - true of Rgvedic Sanskrit, but you need to be careful since much of
the Sanskrit used in literature is contemporary to or later than Pali. We
also know that Pali was not exactly a vernacular.

One quite useful reference site for language information is
www.sil.org/ethnologue/ This is good on modern languages and reasonably
reliable, but less useful for old (i.e. quasi-dead) literary languages

Keep up the good work

Robert

>From: "Ong Yong Peng" <ypong001@...>
>Reply-To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
>To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [Pali] Re: History
>Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 02:12:54 -0000
>
>Dear Zeb and friends,
>
>I've put up a new page under Pali Companion:
>http://www.tipitaka.net/pali/companion/010002.htm
>
>Not much of history yet, but I hope to have unfold the language tree
>'mystery'. I am no language expert, so there may be some mistakes. If
>so, please let me know. I will also add pointers to this page as and
>when I have more information. Comments are welcomed to improve the
>page.
>
>Thank you,
>YP.
>
>--- zeb1001@... wrote:
>I am trying to find out a little about the history of the Pali
>language, ie. the origins.There seems to be confliting views on the
>roll of sankrit as pertaining to the prakrit languages. Did the
>prakrits evolve from sanskrit, or is sanskrit a "polished" prakrit.
>
>Does this look right> Indo-european>Indo-ariyan>Prakrit>Magadhi>Pali.?
>
>Any info on this topic would be much appreciated.
>
> Metta zeb
>

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