Subject: RE: compounding - Re: [Pali] dhammavicaya
Message: James Whelan,  Tue, January 26, 2010 4:00:13 AM

Following statement appears in the the above message: "Both Pali and Vedic almost certainly come from an earlier - now
lost - common stock."

It is possible to give an alternative theory to the above.

What is now known as Vedic Sanskrit came to India along with the Aryan Invasion.
At that time people of India must have had a highly developed form of oral communication as is evidenced By Indus valley civilization. They could not have developed cities like Mohandajaro and Harappa without a form of highly developed speech.

As the contact between the Aryans and non-Aryans increased with the passage of time, communication between the two groups would have increased.
However, Sanskrit was the language of the rulers and th elite. Hence, it remained a literary language. On the other hand prakrits (spoken dialects) remained as spoken languges.

The original meanings of Pali was 'text' of the Buddha-word. It was most probably the prakrit used in Magdha or Kosala. There is no evidence to say that these prakrits came from Sanskrit. And most certainly not the Pali as defined above. On the other hand the interaction between the Aryans and the non-Aryans would have enriched the prakrits, possibly even Sanskrit. Much later, people started calling Pali (the Buddha word) a language, developed a grammar for it on the basis of Sanskrit grammars.


With mettaa,
 D. G. D. C. Wijeratna




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