On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Ong Yong Peng <palismith@...> wrote:

>
>
> Btw, Mahinda, would you mind sharing with us what you think is the best
> approach in learning from the classics. What are some of the prerequisites,
> and what are the tools which are useful.
>

Dear YP,

I took some time to reflect a bit on what am I doing here? See, one doesn’t
want to make another addiction, another ‘bondage’. I would like my
involvement with Pali to be light, not too serious. I want to take it
somewhat as’fun’.

Having said that, I think there is no fast paced approach. One has to
become familiar with the ways of expression of these texts. Language of
post-canonical texts is an almost dialectal variation of the Pali of Sutta
and Vinaya texts. Most of the authors knew classical Sanskrit, even refer to
it (as “sakkate: in Sanskrit” or “sakkata-ganthesu: in Skt texts”). The
Kaccaayana grammar for example definitely follows Paanini, as James De Alwis
pointed out long ago. Many commentaries, especially those of Dhammapala,
often take recourse to the ‘debating style’ adopted by Sanskrit
commentators.

So, what can one do? One has to read these texts. Perhaps in bits, not large
chunks at a time. You are doing that. You are reading from the Suttas to
become familiar with those texts. And now this Saddaniiti, a very different
terrain. Specially for these texts, it helps to be able to break up a word
into all its constituent parts. Ex. aṭṭhivācakatte(pi) =
aṭṭhi+vāc+aka+tta+i_(api). How does one identify these elements? There is no
short cut. One has to learn the stems, roots, affixes. One who enjoys maths
might like it. That’s the other tool , a compatible frame of mind.

Good luck!

Mahinda

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