But I wonder if the Sanskrit that the Buddha spoke, if
he did, must not have been closer to a still very
"Vedic" dialect (Ardha Magadhi?) rather than classical
Sanskrit as Panini who definitely stabilized Sanskrit
is posterior to the Buddha by about 2 centuries.

Yours with Metta,

Jacques Huynen

--- Stefan Detrez <stefan.detrez@...> wrote:

> 2006/3/14, keren_arbel <keren_arbel@...>:
> >
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I read a post of Dmytro on Sanskrit and Pali in
> the Pali forum of
> > Esangha, and I wanted to ask few questions:
> > 1. It is correct to say, that Pali (as I
> understood it, is a mixture
> > of dialects that are now known as Pali, the
> language of the Theravada
> > canon) is actually a descendent of the Vedic
> language and not of
> > Sanskrit as a lot of scholars used to say?
>
>
> Pali is a Middle-Indo-Aryan dialect. This means it's
> progressed out of Old
> Indo-Aryan and that it's has changed on a number of
> fronts with regard to
> the older stratum of Indo-Aryan. 'Pali' is in itself
> not a language, as it
> means 'text'.Pali cannot logically be derived of
> Sanskrit, because at the
> time the Buddha started preaching Sanskrit was the
> standard (elite) language
> of the brahmin caste and there would be no time OR
> necessity to develop a
> dialect as 'Pali'. Probably Sanskrit and dialects
> leading to the emergence
> of 'Pali' were both spoken, but 'Pali' was the Vedic
> in a linguistically
> more evolved phase. Maybe the Buddha spoke 'Pali' as
> a way to create a
> separate identity from the brahmin language, or just
> as a vernacular. I'm
> pretty sure the Buddha spoke Sanskrit, or at least
> understood it: several
> suttas mention him being versed in the 3 Vedas.
> There are big differences between Vedic and
> Sanskrit: euphony or sandhi is
> different, the subjunctive is lost in Sanskrit, many
> Vedic words have been
> lost in Sanskrit, and so on.
>
>
> 2. Does Ardha-Magadhi is a dialect of Vedic?
>
>
> Of course. And then still, there was no standard
> Vedic, but 'Vedics'
> characterized by standard features. Magadhi is a
> dialect which has had its
> influence on Pali texts, but Pali is not Magadhi.
> Some scholars find
> 'magadhisms' in the Pali texts.
>
> 3. What than is the connection between Pali and
> Sanskrit, and is
> > Sanskrit a systematic Vedic?
>
>
> Sanskrit (= 'correct, polished'; sam+kr: 'put
> together') is a highly
> technical language which has a large degree of
> artificiality in this sense
> that it has not undergone the linguistic changes
> that most other languages
> undergo. Pali (= a 'PrAkrit', vernacular) and
> Sanskrit are related in that
> they have common roots in Vedic. Whether Sanskrit is
> a systematic Vedic I
> cannot answer.
>
> For a table with relations between the
> aforementioned languages you might
> want to have a look at
>
> http://www.webster.com/mw/table/indoeuro.htm
>
> Cheers,
>
> Stefan
> Leuven, Belgium
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
>
>
>
>
>

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