Re: Paali

Dear Bryan,

Thank you very much for taking the trouble to give mea well thought out reply.

The language the Buddha spoke indeed is a very difficult question. However, this is true of all statements about the past.

I do not like the word the Buddha. May I use the word Lord Buddha please? Two reasons for this: First, "the Buddha" implies that there were other Buddha's. This is debatable. However, there was a unique person called "Bhagavaa Buddho" Bhagavaa is acuattly word used in India to refer to Religious teachers, God, God men, kings or simply any boss. The word is so used even today, e.g. Bhagvan Satya Sai Baba or Sri Ramana etc.The second reason is that I consider him (Lord Buddha) to be my Teacher.

Coming to Pali, we know the following about the sound Pali: The sound (pronunciation) of Pali is Paali. According to PTSD, this sound is in the commentaries and not in the Pi.takas. I have verified this. PTSD after giving some English words as equivalents of Paali, such as line, row, speculates that Pali is the literary language of the early Buddhists (a rather ill-defined word). There is no valid reason to accept this interpretation. It is really a connotation of a sound not in the Pi.takas.

Pali as a matter of fact is the language defined in the Pali English Dictionary of the Pali Text Society. It therefore follows that Pali is not the language Lord Buddha spoke.

The language Lord Buddha will never be known. Compare the controversies surrounding the Date of the Buddha.

Sukhii hotu (may you all have health, wealth and happiness)

D.C.

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Bryan Levman bryan.levman@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear D.C.

The language that the Buddha spoke is a very difficult question.

Scholars (Sylvain Lévi, Edgerton, Lamotte, Lüders, Norman and von Hinüber to name some prominent ones) are generally agreed that Pāli is a translation (or transference, Übertragung to use the German term) from an earlier language, although we are not sure what this earlier language was. Lüders called it Old Ardhamāgadhī which he thought was the same as or similar to Aśoka's Kanzleisprache (administrative language of the court). Norman called it Old Māgadhī, Aldsdorf, Ardhamāgadhī, Rhys Davids, Kosalan.

The Buddha's Sakyans were vassals of King Pasenadi of Kosala, so indeed the Buddha must have spoken some form of this language, but we don't know if it was different from the Māgadhī of the time or the same. It is also probable that the Buddha was multi-lingual and spoke more than just one language - the clans from the eastern sub-Himalayan foothills (Sakyas, Mallas, Vajjis, etc.) were probably MISL speakers (Middle Indic as second language), as, judging from the place names and local flora/fauna names, Dravidian or Munda were probably the native language(s) before the Aryan immigrations. There is also a lot of evidence of linguistic interference from these languages on the phonological structure of Middle Indic (e.g. Dravidian lacked a voiced/unvoiced stop distinction and many words in Middle Indic show this same confusion).

Geiger and Helmut Smith argued for the existence of a "common language" — called a lingua franca or koine — which was used for trade and administrative purposes in northern India at this time, and the Buddha may have also spoken this koine, or his disciples may have translated his teachings into this koine. Because we have parallel versions of many early works (e.g. Dhammapada) we can isolate some of the lexemic content of this earlier linguistic form, but beyond that we can't go any further. So unless some new evidence comes to light, we may never know the actual language the Buddha spoke,

Best wishes,

Bryan

From: "Dc Wijeratna dcwijeratna@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, November 9, 2014 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Paali

Dear Bryan and Petra

Many thanks for your kind replies.

The word Paali (present usage) means the whole of Pali literature, I agree with that.

However, I don't think that Lord Buddha used a language different from the language used in Kosala at that time. For he spke to kings and beggars royal ladies and prositutes and of course to brahmins and niganthas and paribbajakas, philosophers and scholars.

How did he communicate with them, if he were using a language other than the language his listeners spoke.

Moreover, there is no evidence that anything was written at that time.

Sukhii hotu (May you be happy)

D.C.

On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 8:30 PM, Petra Kieffer-Pülz kiepue@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear Bryan,

yes, I think it is the Sri Lankan journal. If you wish, I can send you a scan of this article. You should provide me with your personal email address.

Best,
Petra

Am 07.11.2014 um 15:41 schrieb Bryan Levman bryan.levman@... [palistudy]:

Dear Petra,

Thanks for the correction and update on Norman's work. I'm not familiar with that journal. Is it the
Journal of the Centre for Buddhist Studies, Sri Lanka? Is it available on line? Date?

Thanks for your help,

Best wishes,

Bryan

From: "Petra Kieffer-Pülz kiepue@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, November 7, 2014 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Paali

Dear Brian, dear D.C.,

one correction. The use of Pāli as a name for the language dates back to the 13th c. CE. It is used first in the Vinayavinicchayaṭīkā which is to be dated to the second third of the 13th c. CE at the earliest. Kate Crosby has written on it (The Origin of Pāli as a Language Name in Medieval Theravāda Literature", JCBSSL Vol. II, 70–116).

Best wishes,
Petra

Am 07.11.2014 um 14:53 schrieb Bryan Levman bryan.levman@... [palistudy]:

Dear D. C.,

K. R. Norman has a discussion on the origin of the word Pāli in reference to the language on page 1-2 of his Pāli Literature:

"The word pāli is found in the chronicles and the commentaries upon the canon, but there it has the meaning of "canon" and is used in the sense of a canonical text or phrase as opposed to the commentary (aṭṭhakattha) upon it. ...
"It would seem that the name "Pāli" is based upon a misunderstanding of the compound pāli-bhāsā "language of the canon," where the word pāli was taken to stand for the name of a particular bhāsā, as a result of which the word was applied to the language of both canon and commentaries..."

The first person to use the word Pāli in this sense was Simon de la Loubère who visited Thailand in the late seventeenth century.

You can read more about it with all the references in Norman's work,

Best wishes, Bryan

From: "Dc Wijeratna dcwijeratna@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, November 6, 2014 11:03 AM
Subject: [palistudy] Paali

Pali is an English word; Paali is a Pali word
PTSD dictionary gives it the meaning language of the Theravaada canon.

It also says that paali is not found in the Canon. It is in the commentaries.

I have some doubt about the meaning of paali.

Grateful for a clarification.

D.C. Wijeratna

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Metta is being friendly to everybody

--
Metta is being friendly to everybody

Metta is being friendly to everybody