Pali

Pali is an ancient Indic language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is the language of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism. Pali is closely related to the Sanskrit family of languages. Pali's grammar is simplified as compared with Sanskit, and the vocabulary is similar, in many cases varying only by a set of common phonological transformations, such as:

Sanskrit	Pali	definition
arhat	arahant	"deserving": one who sees the true nature of existence and has conquered their own negative tendencies so that they no longer take karmic actions (those with negative consequences for themselves or anyone else); similar to 'saint' in Christianity
Dharma	Dhamma	"upholding": refers, among other things, to the teachings of the Buddha about how the universe works and how a person can minimize or avoid suffering for themselves and others
karma	kamma	"action": a thought, speech or deed which results in immediate or future (negative) consequences; or, the part of one's fate which is a consequence of past karmic actions by oneself and/or others
nirvāna	nibbāna or nibbāṇa	"quenching (as of fire)": a state of peacefulness; a complete lack of suffering
śānti	santi	"peace"
sūtra	sutta	"discourse" in Buddhist literature
sangha	saṅgha or saṃgha	either monastic order or the totality of those with certain spiritual attainments

Name

Three spellings of the name are found in Pali:

• pāli: this is the preferred spelling of most Western scholars
• pāḷi: this spelling appears on the title pages of the Burmese, Khmer and Sinhalese editions of the Canon
• pāḷī: this is the spelling used in Aggavaṃsa's Pali grammar, the Saddanīti

Its fundamental meaning is "row (sequence)", but it is used more specifically in the sense of "text". It does not actually appear in the text of the Canon, strictly speaking (it appears in a summary verse). Thus pāḷibhäsä means "the language of the texts". According to Kate Crosby, it originally meant specifically the idiom of the texts, as distinct from that (or those) of commentaries and other writings, but from about the 12th century it broadened to refer to the language as a whole. The shift from the descriptive meaning "language of the texts" to the proper name meaning "Pali language" has not been established before the 17th century.

The traditional name for the language was Māgadhī, i.e. the language of Magadha. It is likely derived from some form of language used, if not in Magadha proper, then at least in the Magadhan Empire, but the name Māgadhī is used by traditional Indian grammarians to refer to a quite different dialect spoken by "low" characters in Sanskrit dramas.

History

A number of scholars (at least Professors Cousins, von Hinüber and Oberlies) give roughly the following narrative. Buddhist teachings were originally in an "Eastern" dialect of Early Middle Indo-Aryan. This term is misleading, as the area covered by it is entirely surrounded by areas of "Western" dialects. Scholars call this dialect Old Ardha-Māgadhī, Ardha-Māgadhī being the language in which the oldest Jain literature is preserved. At a later date the teachings were translated into a Western dialect, though retaining some Eastern features. Cousins considers this dialect too different from what we know today to count as Pali strictly speaking, and calls it Old Pali, following some earlier scholars. He considers the change to reflect a change in the official language of the empire ruling most of North India at the time. Oberlies locates this Western dialect somewhere in the vicinity of Quetta. This dialect was later subject to a process of Sanskritization, which Cousins dates to the early centuries of the Christian era, calling this phase of the language Buddhist Hybrid Pali (Norman, similarly, says Pali may be regarded as a form of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, the name given by Western scholars to the Sanskritized form of Middle Indo-Aryan in which most Mahayana Buddhist scriptures were composed). Cousins considers the name Pali, without qualification, to apply not long before the commentaries of the 4th or 5th century. Further Sanskritization occurred later, perhaps as late as the 12th century (scholars disagree on this date).

Professor Norman seems to disagree with the above only in holding that the teachings were originally in a variety of dialects, not a single, Eastern one.

Professor Gombrich has an apparently quite different theory: the Buddha himself created something sufficiently similar to the Pali we have now to be called by that name, by mixing together various dialects in use in the areas in which he preached.

Writing

Pali has no writing system of its own. Instead, people tend to use their own. Thus Pali manuscripts have for centuries been written in Burmese, Khmer, Sinhalese and other local scripts. These scripts are not alphabets in the strict sense, but abugidas: a vowel following a consonant is written, not as a separate letter, but as a diacritical mark attached to the consonant (except a, which is the default). From the 19th century, Western scholars, following this practice, have transliterated Pali into variants of the Latin alphabet. The Pali Text Society has largely standardized the transliteration. This Western Pali alphabet is as follows:

• a ā I ī u ū e o ṃ k kh g gh ṅ c ch j jh ñ ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ t th d dh n p ph b bh m y r l ḷ ḷh v s h

Note

1. When ṃ occurs immediately before one of the letters from k to m, it is alphabetized as if it were the corresponding nasal: ṅ, ñ, ṇ, n or m.
2. This is the Western Pali alphabet; in the East, ḷ ṃ are at the end of the alphabetical order, and ḷh is not recognized as a letter in its own right, being written like other combinations of consonants.

Pronunciation

First, here is the pronunciation as stated in the late Professor Warder's Introduction to Pali.

• most as English
• a as u in butter
• ā as in father
• i as in pit
• ī as in machine
• u ū as English oo, short and long, as in foot, fool
• e as English ay, but without the final glide to an i sound; when followed by two consonants, as in bed
• o as in bone but without the final glide to a u sound (Yorkshire o); when followed by two consonants, as in pot
• ṃ as m but without release (this must mean you stop breathing while opening the mouth after this sound)
• the h as second element in some letters represents what is known to phoneticians as aspiration, described as a puff of breath. For most English-speakers, k, say, is aspirated at the beginning of a word but not at the end or after s. The distinction has no meaning in English, so most English-speakers have difficulty with it. The Pali aspiration is stonger.
• c as English ch, but with the middle of the tongue, not just the tip, touching the roof of the mouth (this must apply to j too)
• in ṭ/t etc., the distinction is that the tip of the tongue is against the roof of the mouth in the dotted letters, the tips of the teeth in the undotted ones. Most English-speakers place the tongue in between these positions, against the top of the teeth. Again, the distinction is not clearly audible to the untrained native English-speaker.
• v as v or w

Warder doesn't explain two letters not used in English:

• ṅ as English ng
• ñ might be supposed from the symbol to be pronounced as in Spanish (French and Italian gn, Portuguese nh), a sound that sounds to English-speakers rather like ny (hence canyon from Spanish canon), though the n and y sounds are mixed together rather than successive. Professor Norman, however, pronounces this as an ng sound as above, but with the tongue in the position described above for c

Warder's wording also doesn't make clear whether he's talking about ancient or modern pronunciation. In fact, modern pronunciation is much more varied. In Burma there are some major variations:

• a before two consonants is pronounced as i
• c as s
• j as z
• r as y
• s as English th (i.e. lisped)

Oberlies says there are extensive discrepancies between standard Pali spelling and ancient pronunciation, and that the latter has not been properly studied by scholars yet.