Re: About: Sanskrit & Pāḷi

From: KHANH TRONG HUYNH
Message: 4237
Date: 2015-03-13

Dear Bryan,

Very thankful for your enthusiasm.  So, learn so much :D.  If I told my Dhamma master about my learning, he would respond like this "the Nibbana does not have enough space to store your wisdom" :D.  Just kidding. 

I acknowlege the importance of Pāḷi text and role of researchers at all.  I respect the Buddha and Dhamma by all my heart, for me, the first task of life is practising the Buddha's teaching to be free.  Only with that gratitude, I have enough motivation to study Pāḷi which is super difficult for me at first time.  My study is nothing than inspiration for my practising and understading the Buddha as well as the Dhamma.  So, as far as my practising is ok, I still keep studying.  I'm also learning Latin to discover the history and culture 

About the Chinese language, as I know, what you mentioned is not exactly the "Middle Chinese" - cause it does not represent for a whole age in history, but only for Buddhist text itself.  The Chinese pioneer monks mixed the Classical [Ancient] Chinese grammar with the Mordern Chinese grammar [and also some words meaning], the fruit is a combination that you approach in the Agamas [and Mahayana texts as well].  The reason why they did that is to meet 2 criterias:  [1]  The Buddhist texts must be intellectual, so it certainly contains the Classical style which is the written language of quintessential class, [2]  they're also necessary near the commoners, hence must present the Modern grammar spoken daily.  That style's principles are kept fixed too, like the Sanskrit.  So, you will not meet it at nowhere beside the Chinese Buddhist texts 

Sincerely yours,

Huynh Trong Khanh

From: "Bryan Levman bryan.levman@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: "palistudy@yahoogroups.com" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2015 8:43 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] About: Sanskrit & Pāḷi

 

Dear Huynh Trong Khanh,

Studying Middle Chinese (the language of the āgamas) is a great idea. I have studied it a little myself and always look up the Chinese translation when there is a word in Pāli or one of the Prakrits I don't understand. Studying Tibetan is also very valuable as the Tibetans tend to translate the Middle Indic or Sanskrit very literally, so often if you can't figure out the  source word, you can look up the Tibetan (where there are parallel, cognate versions), and a Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary (the most comprehensive being Negi's 16 volume Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary) which will give you a clue to the meaning of the OI or MI word in question.

The web site which gives you these correspondences between Indic-Tibetan-Chinese and other languages is sutacentral. net.

It is a very valuable resource for comparative philology


Good luck on your studies,

Best Wishes,

Bryan






From: "KHANH TRONG HUYNH testsuda@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: "palistudy@yahoogroups.com" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2015 6:30 PM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] About: Sanskrit & Pāḷi

 
Dear Bryan,

Thanks so much for your help.  I agree with you at all.  The work of comparison between languages to discover the meaning behind is fascinating.  I already began to start Sanskrit learning, cause its grammar is very near with Pāḷi, so not so much difficult, but I think that when I learn the skill of comparison, I will continue to ask for advices

***  A little bit beside the main topic:  I'm also studying the Classical Chinese - or the Old Chinese, it's very far from the Modern Chinese on both word and grammar, but very near with my native language - Vietnamese.  The reason for that is the Chinese has conquered us for many times during nearly 1000 years.  Finally, they already left but their influences including language still stay with us until now.  The Chinese has continued to change their voice and grammar until now, but the old form of their language - over 1000 years ago, is still preserved in Vietnamese.  I know some Chinese people admit that if a Vietnamese and a Chine read a old chinese poem, the Vietnamese voice is more interesting - cause it's near the Old Chinese voice   
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 11:42 PM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] About: Sanskrit & Pāḷi

 
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















Previous in thread: 4236
Next in thread: 4238
Previous message: 4236
Next message: 4238

Contemporaneous posts     Posts in thread     all posts