Re: Paali

Dear Kumara Bhikkhu

<<Translating Pali words is challenging for one reason: It evolves. Pali language may be a dead language now, but it wasn't. What a word means and how it's used in the Suttas need not be the same in the Commentaries written centuries later and thousands of miles away>>

There is absolutely no doubt about what you say. That is why we talk about origin and development of a word or etymology of a word.

Commentaries are by definition attempting to explain the canonical texts.

I wish to ask you a question, hope you wouldn't mind?

You have given a list of words and their English equivalents. How did you arrive at the meanings of the words given in your list?

Kind regards

D.C.

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Kumara Bhikkhu kumara.bhikkhu@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

'Jim Anderson' jimanderson.on@... [palistudy] wrote thus at 08:18 AM 27-11-14:

<<I would translate bhāsā as speech rather than texts. >>

I think "speech" is the most literal translation of "bhāsā". Other
possibilities that come to mind are: language, dialect, vernacular, tongue.
'canonical texts' is the translation of 'pāli' and I take it that (-bhāsā)
was left untranslated by the writer of the article. I would translate
pāḷibhāsā as the language of the canonical texts rather than the Pali
language (a language called Pali). I'm follwoing Childers here.

Translating Pali words is challenging for one reason: It evolves. Pali language may be a dead language now, but it wasn't. What a word means and how it's used in the Suttas need not be the same in the Commentaries written centuries later and thousands of miles away. E.g.,

vihara: from abode/dwelling to monastery
samadhi: from composure to concentration
peta: from departed one to miserable ghost
vipassana: from special seeing to insight
samatha
jhana
nimitta
etc.

Yet, the tradition seems to "pretend" otherwise. So, it gets a bit problematic when translating a commentarial text glossing an early text.

kb

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