Hello group,
Today, I received the following message from pali-intro-l, one of the two
other Pali lists I'm subscribed to. pali-intro-l had been dormant without
any messages posted for months until just this past week. Below is one of
the best messages I've ever seen posted to the list which has well over 100
mostly silent subscribers. If you're interested in subscribing send an email
to: majordomo@... and in the body just type: subscribe
pali-intro-l (L not 1).
Best wishes,
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Thiele Everett <Thiele.Everett@...>
To: pali-intro-l@... <pali-intro-l@...>
Date: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 2:20 PM
Subject: Re: translation
>
>: Which Pali grammars do you have? Until now I just have some texts I've
>: got from the web, like Venerable Narada's pali course and A Practical
>: Grammar of the Paali Language, by Charles Duroiselle. Yesterday I've
>: reread a little from Ven. Narada's guide but I think I have to be
>: somewhat systematic in my studies to be able to grasp well the
>: possible declensions, let alone verbal tenses.
>
>Did you have Latin in school? That would make it a lot easier to work
>straight out of a grammar book and dictionary. Lacking that background
>I found it very helpful to work through Warder, and do graded lessons.
>The drawback is that you have to buy the Digha Nikaya and a translation
>which is keyed to the PTS edition, to get the answers to the exercises.
>PTS also sells two good reference paperbacks, one by Geiger, and one by
>Perniola. Ideally, get both :-)
>
>Also, the lines you sent in seemed to be from some verses, perhaps
>uttered by a disciple after the Buddha's Parinibbaana. The language
>of poetry is much harder than that of the canonical prose, and contains
>many rare and unusual forms. I doubt that any grammar book out
>there covers it all. Perhaps it would be easier to stick to prose texts
>until you feel more at home in the language.
>
>: > The word 'awareness' in your translation comes from 'cetaso' which
>: > is a genitive singular form of ceto or citta, mind/heart.
>
>: I thought it was the translation of "cetaso", but seemed an strange
>: translation to me.
>
>I agree that the translation was strange, or at least not very literal.
>Perhaps this is very good for religious literature, but if we are
>trying to learn the language for ourselves then extremely literal
>translations are more helpful, even if they do violence to English usage.
>
>I had an interesting experience comparing IB Horner's translation of a
>sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya with Walshe's. They had very different
>interpretations of some sentences, and the consensus of the group I
>was with, after looking at the Pali, was that Horner had made some
>serious errors. Despite this, her translation was very useful because
>it models the Pali syntax within a somewhat stilted kind of English.
>This is very helpful for beginners, like myself. I can't pick
>up her translations without feeling gratitude for the work that she, and
>many others, have layed down, so that people like us even can consider
>'taking up Pali' with all the materials now at our disposal.
>
>: Note also that he/she has translated "pajjota" as "flame", instead of
>: "lamp", perhaps to bring up the definition of nibbaana as a fire
>"unbound".
>: There was some hindu practices of that time related to fire, like fire
>: worship (several times mentioned on the suttas) or the image of the
>: goddess(?) Agni. This way, for them it would make a lot of sense to
>: understand the liberation of the mind from the aggregates (khandha) as if
>it
>: was the fire freed from his sustenance - a trunk of a tree is also called
>: "khandha" in paali.
>
>Well, I enjoy that the translator is making a bold interpretation based on
>some cultural studies. It could be worth reading, even though I have to
>admit I prefer more conservative interpretations. (Agni is a god, btw;
>there are masculine nouns ending in -i)
>
>Anyhow, I've undertaken to read the 'Parable of the Saw' in the Majjhima
>Nikaya, so if you're interested we could both look at the opening
>paragraphs and hash out the grammar/vocab etc. jointly here. Now it's time
>to let my kid use the computer. Thanks for getting things rolling here
>with your questions. I wish I were more knowledgable, and hope that
>people can find time to use this forum for group reading of some
>texts.
>
>regards,
>
>--Everett
>