Re: About: Sanskrit & Pāḷi

Dear Huynh Trong Khanh,

The problem is that 'Sanskrit' means several different things:
1. A language (late Vedic) that precedes Pali; Pali has developed from
that or something similar.
2. A language from the centuries before or after the Christian Era which
has developed from the same roots as Pali and often contains evidence
relevant to understanding older Pali.
3. The classical Sanskrit mostly from later in the first millennium.

1 and 2 can be used (together with Prakrit material) as evidence for
understanding Pali words and grammar. It is a kind of shorthand, if we
say that such Pali words or grammar 'come from Sanskrit'.

3. is a direct influence on later Pali. This is not in question. Many
Pali works from this time refer to Sanskrit authors and some are a kind
of reworking of older Sanskrit texts. They do not conceal this, although
they do not always emphasize it. So, yes. There is clear evidence of
this link.

Do you need to learn Sanskrit to study Pali ? It depends on what you
want to do.

Lance Cousins

On 10/03/2015 23:12, KHANH TRONG HUYNH testsuda@... [palistudy] wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> As I knew, the Sanskrit language is considered as the influence one of
> Pāḷi.  I have 2 questions:
>
> 1.  What do we base on to define the relation as "Sanskrit affects
> Pāḷi" not "Pāḷi affects Sanskrit"?  Cause I always when people try to
> explain some difficult Pāḷi words compounds, they all extract from
> Sanskrit.  Furthermore, is it a must to learn Sanskrit for studying Pāḷi?
>
> 2.  I knew that in history, there were some encounters between the
> community of Sanskrit using and that of Pāḷi.  So, that's logical
> possibility that Pāḷi gained some importing factors from Sanskrit. 
> But what makes me curious is that:  is there any "clearly evidence"
> for that.  For example:  is there any historical document showing a
> Bhikkhu namely X declaring "I have learnt Sanskrit from the master Y,
> I feel interesting in it and I tried to apply it to Pāḷi using"...  At
> least in scientific principle, if we do not have evidence for that
> link, it's still just a hypothesis - although a very possible hypothesis
>
> Sincerely yours,
>
> Huynh Trong Khanh