"Thanks Jon. I suppose it is reflected, as you say, more in the
teachings than in the language. In retrospect I may have been asking
about the language because I thought it was more on topic for this
group, though I realize that the Canon is our topic as well."

The following is figurative language:

"...fight out Mara with the sword of wisdom. Then, guarding the
conquest, remain unattached." (Dhammapada Verse 40)

The following is also figurative language:

Dhunaatha maccuno sena.m
Destroy the army of death

na.laagaara.m'va ku~njaro
like the elephant a house of reeds

(If someone uses a military metaphor, does that make them a warrior?)

The following is non-figurative **language** (therefore not off-topic)
and also far less clear in meaning (which is debated as can be seen by
the footnote in Collin's book) than the above figurative language:

ra~n~naa maagadhena ajaatasattunaa vedehiputtena yadida.m
yuddhassa, a~n~natra upalaapanaaya a~n~natra mithubhedaa.

King Ajaatasattu will not be able to conquer the vajjis, at least not
(simply) in warfare without deceit and (fomenting) internal
dissension.

Anyway, there is a fundamental disconnect between my interests and
that of this group, so I will simply listen from now on.

My interest is specifically in **how Pali words have actually influenced
people and history**, influence the actions of real people in the world,
not abstract interpretation for purposes of religious devotion. For
instance, there is specific language in the Vinaya that was used to justify
the protest by monks in Burma this year.

I can tell you for sure that this first part of the Mahaparinibana Sutta
that I cited has found its way into several 19th century Burmese political
works advising kings, advisors at court actually saw the Vajjis as a
model of proto-democracy for political reform when faced with the
threat of British colonialism, so it has had an influence on people's lives
and history, see for example:
http://burmalibrary.org/docs/THE_RAJADHAMMASANGAHA.pdf

With metta,
Jon

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "dkotschessa" <dkotschessa@...> wrote:
>
> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Fernquest" <bayinnaung@> wrote:
> >
> > Whoops. Just noticed that unicode didn't show up,
> > so I converted it to Velthius using converter:
> >
> > http://pali.sirimangalo.org/convertpad.htm
> >
> > [Isn't there an html tag that can be put around a posting to get
> the
> > browser to use unicode UTF-8 to display?]
> >
> > Dave wrote: "I guess I'm wondering how much the Pali language
was
> > influenced by Prince Siddhartha's caste. What would it have looked
> > like if he had been a Brahmin or a Vaishya?"
> >
> > I don't know about language per se but the advice given sometimes
> > seems to be very Kshatriyan. There is the famous passage in the
> > Mahaparinibbana sutta when the Buddha lays out how a state can
> survive
> > in the face of warfare, the Seven Ways to Avoid Decline or
> Aparihaniya
> > (see below), and then hints how the parricide Ajaatasattu can
> defeat
> > and put an end to the tribal republic of the Vajjians, and then
> goes
> > further and applies the same rules of survival to the long term
> > survival of the Sangha (Steven Collins, 1998, Nirvana and other
> > Buddhist Felicities, "The Vajjis Exemplary Community," pages 437-
> 448).
> > Here is the key passage:
> <trimmed>
>
> Thanks Jon. I suppose it is reflected, as you say, more in the
> teachings than in the language. In retrospect I may have been
> asking about the language because I thought it was more on topic for
> this group, though I realize that the Canon is our topic as well.
>