Lennart,

Well, as Dmytro pointed out to me, perhaps the answers my research dug
up aren't "consensus" afterall :). It's really good to hear all these
different viewpoints.

I understand your point in suggesting that the languages are dialects
of each other rather than separate languages. I'll push the big
debate over the difference between a dialect and a language aside and
give you that much. :)

That said, according to my understanding, if you were to take all of
those dialects and make a language/dialect tree out of them, Pali
dialect would be over by the Western Middle-Indic side of the tree.
You suggest that Mahinda's dialect was a western one. I agree.

Perhaps my statement that Pali /= Buddha's language was too strong. In
consideration of this dialect argument, I'd like to revise my argument
to say "Pali /= Buddha's dialect." :).

If I say this, am I safe from attacking the Commentaries? ;)

Adios,
Thomas (not a linguistic scholar by any means!)

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Lennart Lopin" <lenni_lop@...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Isn't the academic consensus also that Buddhas words were never
really "translated" into Pali, because the language in which the
Buddha spoke and the dialect which we call "Pali" now (and might have
been Arahant Mahindas mother tongue) are so close (being not different
languages but rather dialects?). If I remember Oskar von Hinübers
explanation correctly then "Pali" might just have been Arahant
Mahindas mother tongue or the dialect of the monasteries (region of
Ujjeni) where he put the Pali canon to heart before he set out to Sri
Lanka. If you think of it that way, the Sri Lankans were not really
wrong, calling Pali Buddhas own language. It also explains the
Magadhism very well. So Pali's relation to Buddhas Language might be
like modern German to Goethes/Schillers German or modern English to
Lord Byrons/Wordsworth English - another register perhaps, some
"unfamiliar" old words and another dialect but more or less the same
"language"
>
> mettâya,
>
> Lennart