Re: About: Sanskrit & Pāḷi

From: Bryan Levman
Message: 4233
Date: 2015-03-12

Dear Huynh Trong Khanh,

Yes the change of OI > MI has some similarities with the evolution of Proto-Romance into the Romance languages or, for that matter Indo European (IE) into its various branches; that is what Darwin called "Descent with variation" amongst genetically related entities (but the principle was discovered long before Darwin by William Jones in 1786). This principle applies to any language group whether IE or otherwise, e.g. the evolution of Hebrew, Canaanite and Phoenician from North-west Semitic, or the evolution of the various Mayan languages of Central America into their present diversity,  to name some other examples.

Old Indic is part of the Indo-Iranian language family which is the easternmost branch of Indo-European. This means that to clarify the derivation of an OI word, one may look to Iranian, which is the closest related language. See Mayrhofer's Concise Etymologyical Sanskrit Dictionary for examples or Wackernagel's Old Indic Grammar for examples. And philologists regularly compare cognate Prarkit words to ascertain what the OI word was that gave rise to them. OI and Sanskrit illuminate Pāli and vice versa, as often a Middle Indic and Pāli word like samaṇa ("recluse")  can come from more than one OI root ( < śram, to "endeavour" or śam, "to be quiet or calm"), suggesting that the word could be polysemous in origin.

The comparison of languages, whether mother-daughter or as siblings, is a fascinating study,

Best Wishes,

Bryan




From: "KHANH TRONG HUYNH testsuda@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: "palistudy@yahoogroups.com" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2015 12:48 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] About: Sanskrit & Pāḷi

 
Dear Bryan,

Wow, very amazing.  That story seems very similar to that of Latin and Romance languages.  However, I have a little bit further query.  For the case of Latin, it's relatively simple to understand.  When the whole great empire disintegrated into many independent small countries, the Latin language also changed to lots of related languages which were official languages for their people at that time

For India situation, is it somethings like that?  Why a mother-language like Vedic was developed to many vercular languages?

The second is that your explanation implies that we know the Sanskrit more clearly and deeper than Pāḷi.  So not only the Sanskrit is the mother but also we have a strong base of word and grammar of Sanskrit so that we're able to use Sanksrit to supoport Pāḷi study.  So what is the difference here between Pāḷi and Sanskrit research, because we meet difficult with Pāḷi so we use Sanskrit to enlight, so if when we meet difficult with Sanksrit, what we base on to solve?

Sincerely yours,

Huynh Trong Khanh



From: "Bryan Levman bryan.levman@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: "palistudy@yahoogroups.com" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2015 9:18 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] About: Sanskrit & Pāḷi

 
 
Dear Huynh Trong Khanh
 
Pāli is a form of Middle Indic (MI) which includes languages like Māgadhī, ArdhaMāgadhī, Gāndhārī, etc. These are all Prakrits (vernacular languages) which derived from and in some cases existed alongside of Old Indic (OI) or Vedic. Sanskrit is a form of Old Indic which was standardized by Pāṇini in perhaps the fifth century BCE, and as Lance has pointed out there are other “Sanskrits” as well which can be dated to the late first millennium BCE (Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit) and the literary Sanskrits of the first millennium CE.

Since most Pāli words have an Old Indic form, it is indeed useful to know OI and Sanskrit when trying to understand the meaning and derivation of Pali words. Like my recent posts on the Sumaṅgala Vilāsinī where the word samuṭṭhāpakā, -ikā came up. The Pāli dictionaries list the meaning as “occasioning, causing”, but in fact it has a wider range of meanings than that. If one goes back to its OI root (sam + ud + sthā = sam+ut+thā with sandhi), the following meanings are listed in Monier Williams Sanskrit-English dictionary: “to rise up together, to rise up, come forth, spring from, become visible” plus others, and Lance translated “give rise to” and “generates”. So knowing what the OI word is from whence the MI word (Pāli) is derived, can be very helpful in sorting out its meaning. Some Pāli words have a specific MI meaning which is not found in OI, but this is relatively rare, and there are some Pāli words which are not derived from OI, but borrowed from authocthonous language groups like Dravidian and Munda, esp. the names of local places, flora and fauna.
 
Best wishes,
 
Bryan
 
 
 



From: "KHANH TRONG HUYNH testsuda@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: "palistudy@yahoogroups.com" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2015 3:08 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] About: Sanskrit & Pāḷi

 
Dear Lance Cousins,

Thanks so much for your quick support.  For me, it's very interesting to know about the evidences

My purpose of studying Pāḷi is just to inspire my Dhamma practising, I do not quite try to gain comprehensiveness of the language

Sincerely yours,

Huynh Trong Khanh



From: "'L.S. Cousins' selwyn@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2015 12:37 PM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] 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









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