Hi DC

<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.


In fact there is all sorts of phonological evidence from the field of historical linguistics that Pali and the other Prakrits came from Vedic Sanskrit. The primary changes that took place were:

1) weakening
or loss of intervocalic consonants ( e. g. -ata- > -ada- > aya > aa)
2) loss of intervocalic aspirated stops, leaving only the
aspiration (bh, dh, ph, etc > h)
3) loss of most conjunct consonants, changed to geminates
(e. g. –kt- > -tt-)
4) change of
various glides ( -y- > -v- and –v- > -y-), liquids (-l- > -r- and –r- > -l-), labials (-v- > -m-) and sibilants (s-, ś-, ṣ- > s).

Plus there are hundreds of others. The above are simply some of the normal phonological changes that have been witnessed over time in hundreds of languages, including Skt > Pali. These are outlined in Pischel's Prakrit Grammar, Geiger's Pali Grammar, and in von Hinuber's and Norman's work on the subject, to name the most prominent. For a useful summary see Masica,
Colin P. 1991. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, page 51 ff.

Mettaa, Bryan






________________________________
From: DC Wijeratna <dcwijeratna@...>
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, January 26, 2010 1:42:58 AM
Subject: Re: compounding - Re: [Pali] dhammavicaya


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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