Re: SV: [Pali] most common words?

Hi Piya and group.

I don't have an firm opinion on the topic of Magadhisms since I used to just assume everything in Geiger was true, but now I see some of it has been called into question. But I can perhaps respond to a few parts of your question.

>The impression I get is that Hajime Nakamura in his Gotama Buddha vol 2 (page 263 n59) says that it is bhikkhavo that is the Magadhism.

That's interesting. Geiger/Norman §82.3 identify the /-e/ ending form as a Magadhism. Final /e/ where we would expect /o/ is typical of the words considered Magadhisms.

>What is the significance of "Magadhism"? Does this mean that the passage or section was added during the Asokan period?

As I understand it, no. Magadhisms would be forms dating already from the period when the Buddha was teaching. The idea is that the Pali as we know it is a different, probably later, dialect than the one in which the Buddha taught, but that certain old forms were retained for various reasons.

The usual Anglo/German explanation of bhikkhave is that since the Buddha addressed his followers in exactly that way, and everyone had heard the word pronounced that way, it was retained even when the canon was recited in the dialect now called Pali.

In the samaññaphalasutta in the dighanikaya one of the samanas expounds his doctrine using nominative singulars ending in -e, which is considered a typical Magadhism. This could perhaps be a way of portraying his character (since dialects can be associated with certain stereotyped figures). Maybe it makes him sound like a country-bumpkin or something. It's hard to say.

best regards,

/Rett

>Sukhi,
>
>Piya
>
>--- Ole Holten Pind <oleholtenpind@...> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> There is certainly a lot of important statistical information that
>> might be
>> interesting to pull out of the canon. To give one example of many.
>> Take, for
>> instance, the assumption that the Pali canon contains Magadhisms.
>> Philologists believe that the vocative bhikkhave, for instance, is
>> a
>> Magadhism as opposed to that of bhikkhavo. However, there are well
>> over
>> 26.000 examples of the use of bhikkhave in the canon, but only about
>> 160
>> quotable instances of bhikkhavo. Any linguistically inclined
>> philologist
>> would find that statistically significant. The distribution of the
>> two
>> vocatives show that bhikkhavo only occurs in verse and in initial
>> position
>> in prose, whereas bhikkhave never occurs in such environments. This
>> indicates that the interpretation of bhikkhave as a Magadhism is
>> dubious to
>> say the very least.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Ole Pind
>>
>> _____
>>
>> Fra: Pali@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Pali@yahoogroups.com] På vegne af
>> Clay
>> Collier
>> Sendt: 2. november 2005 23:41
>> Til: Pali@yahoogroups.com
>> Emne: Re: [Pali] most common words?
>>
>>
>> Hi Stephen-
>> I'd thought of the same question earlier, but a little searching
>> over the
>> years hasn't turned up any leads to anyone having carried out such
>> a
>> project. I initially was drawn to the idea by looking at some work
>> on
>> classical cryptography, and its applications to deciphering
>> incomplete
>> texts, or untranslated scripts. As a result, tables of
>> character/letter
>> frequency were the first thing that I thought of, but I think that
>> there is
>> a lot of other statistical information that might be interesting to
>> pull out
>> of the canon. I imagine that if you have a statistical 'picture' of
>> what a
>> particular body of text looks like in terms of the relative use of
>> compounds, vocabulary, archaic or under-used declentions, etc., you
>> have an
>> additional piece of information to use in trying to assess if a
>> given text
>> is in the same style. I would imagine that philologists would have
>> given
>> some thought to this sort of method- not sure if it is considered
>> useful or
>> not, or to what extent the approach has been tried with other
>> languages. Any
>> linguists have any insight to offer?
>>
>> Clay Collier
>>
>> On 11/2/05, Stephen Hodge <s.hodge@...>
> > wrote:
>> >
>> > Dear Friends,
>> >
>> > To add to the request of James Miner fior the 100 most common Pali
>> words,
>> > I
>> > had been thinking recently of asking a somewhat similar question:
>> Has a
>> > statistical count been carried out for Pali ? I have a useful
>> word
>> > frequency program (Hermetic Word Frequency Counter 3.07) but the
>> > difficulty
>> > to use it for Pali / Sanskrit is the large number of compounds and
>> the
>> > words
>> > coalesced through sandhi. Given these problems, I can't see how it
>> could
>> > be
>> > done -- so in the end I didn't bother to ask, though such a word
>> frequency
>> >
>> > list would be useful for pedagogical purposes.
>> >
>> > Best wishes,
>> > Stephen Hodge
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
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