Re: pali, pali and pali

Dear Sarah,

>Dear Jim and other Pali scholars,
>
>I have a simple question which will show up my complete
>ignorance in this area.

Your simple question turns out to be not so simple!!!

>Would you kindly explain to me, in brief, what are the differences
>between different pali systems and which is considered to be
>the most authentic?

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean by 'pali systems'. What comes to
my mind are the different spelling conventions (orthographies) used. For
example, some texts show a preference for double consonants instead of a
single one like the 'ss' in 'aanaapaanassati' instead of just a single 's'
as in 'aanaapaanasati'. I couldn't tell you which is the more authentic form
but I find myself having a preference for the first way of spelling because
such doubling helps one to determine the corresponding Sanskrit form
which can clarify the ambiguity of some Pali homonyms. Skt. 'smr.ti' with
the two initial consonants 'sm-' corresponds to '-ss-' in the Pali compound.
Also note the doubling in 'anussati' (anu + sati) whereas  'anusati' is
unusual.

>I understand that  the Singhalese pali canon, for example,
>maybe different from the Burmese or Thai pali canon, not just in
>script (of course!) but in some of the words used. Is this right?

Yes. And I think you would also find many differences among the different
editions within each country and between different palm leaf manuscripts.
And the same would apply to older and newer editions of the PTS. The
differences are, for the most part, orthographic and minor. But there are
occasionally significant differences involving different words, omissions,
and possible insertions. Sometimes a whole sentence might occur in one canon
but be absent in another which can be problematic -- one doesn't not know
for sure whether the sentence in question got lost, or was deliberately
left out or put in.

>How many different pali canons are there and which ones are
>mostly used by translators? How significant are these
>differences? Perhaps there is just an article you can refer me to -
>(I vaguely remember B.Bodhi discussing it in an intro.
>somewhere)

I couldn't tell you how many different pali canons there are. You'd have to
be specific about what you mean by 'pali canon'. Perhaps you mean complete
printed sets of the Pali Tipitaka. But this set could be a loose one like
the volumes prepared by individual editors for the PTS over the course of
decades and not printed as a unit like a set of encyclopedia. It probably
isn't necessary for a translator to have the entire pali canon in order to
translate one or two volumes of it. I think most serious translators in the
West would make use of as many different editions as they could get their
hands on and all of them would likely have a PTS ed. of the text they're
translating. You can often find out which texts the translator based his/her
work on in the preface or introduction. Eg. from a glance at the beginning
of Vol. I of Horner's MLS, the PTS ed. of the Pali text is the one she used
for her translation and no other ed. is mentioned but she also made use of
the MA commentary and two other translations to help her.

Nowadays with easier access to Pali canons online and on
cd-roms, the translator has more to work with. Personally, I think a
translator should consult at least three different versions of the text
being translated and to follow very carefully the commentaries pertaining
to it. I have access to 5 sets of the tipitaka, 3 sets of the atthakatha
commentaries, and 1 or 2 sets of the tikas plus most of the translations
published by PTS. For some of the texts being translated on psg I have
been including some readings that are significantly different. The long
commentarial passages that Nina has been translating are from the Burmese
Chatthasangayana ed. on the cd-rom disk. It is much easier for me to copy
and paste from this disk than having to manually type out every word from
the PTS ed. and it's too inconvenient and time-consuming to copy and paste
passages from the Thai Budsir disk but I can at least check for significant
differences in their readings.

I think a good place to find more information on translation work are in
the prefaces and introductions of translators' works.

I have gathered up some information on 'jhaayii' (meditator) which I will
post as soon as I get the documentation together. 'jhaayii' also includes
the one developing vipassanaa much like the way 'jhaayatha' (meditate)
includes vipassanaa practice.

Best wishes,
Jim


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