Pali (/ˈpɑːli/) is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent.
It is a "dead language" but widely studied and spoken because it is likely the language the Buddha spoke.
In any case, it is the language of the Pāli canon, the Three Divisions of the Buddha's Teaching, or Tipiṭaka (lit. "Three Baskets"). It is therefore the sacred language of Theravāda Buddhism.
- Theravada (lit. "Teaching of the Elders," the "elders" here being the enlightened immediate-disciples of the Buddha, such as Sariputta, Khema, Maha Moggallana, Uppalavanna, Ananda, Bhaddakaccana, Rahula, Dhammadinna, and Maha Kassapa, who in a sense founded "Buddhism" as a religion by convening the First Council. Notably every other name on this list is a female, though they have been ignored and undervalued so that all we have left is their remnant existence.
The earliest archeological evidence of the existence of canonical Pali comes from Pyu city-states inscriptions found in Burma dated to the mid-5th to mid-6th centuries CE.[2]
Origin and development
Etymology
There is persistent confusion as to the relation of Pāḷi to the vernacular spoken by the Buddha who came [from ancient Scythia, Gandhara, in what is now Afghanistan, northwest of modern India (ranajitpal.com)] to live in the ancient Kingdom of Magadha, which was located around modern-day Bihār, India.
Beginning in the Theravada commentaries, Pali was identified with "Magahi," the language of the Kingdom of Magadha, and this was taken to also be the language that the Buddha used during his life.[3]
In the 19th century, the British Orientalist Robert Caesar Childers argued that the true or geographical name of the Pali language was Magadhi Prakrit, and that because pāḷi means "line, row, series," the early Buddhists extended the meaning of the term to mean "a series of books," so pāḷibhāsā means "language of the texts."[6]
However, modern scholarship has regarded Pali as a mix of several Prakrit languages from around the 3rd century BCE, combined together and partially Sanskritized.[7] There is no attested dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan with all the features of Pali.[3]:5
In the modern era, it has been possible to compare Pali with inscriptions known to be in Magadhi Prakrit, as well as other texts and grammars of that language.[3] While none of the existing sources specifically document pre-Ashokan Magadhi, the available sources suggest that Pali cannot be equated with that language.[3]
Modern scholars generally regard Pali to have originated from a northwestern dialect, rather than an eastern one.[8] Pali has some commonalities with both the western Ashokan Edicts at Girnar in Saurashtra, and the Central-Western Prakrit found in the eastern Hathigumpha inscription.[3]:5 These similarities lead scholars to associate Pali with this region of western India.[9]
Pāḷi, as a Middle Indo-Aryan language, is different from Classical Sanskrit more with regard to its dialectal base than the time of its origin. A number of its morphological and lexical features show that it is not a direct continuation of Ṛigvedic Sanskrit. Instead it descends from one or more dialects that were, despite many similarities, different from Ṛigvedic.[10]
Early history
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| Burmese kammavaca in Pali, 19th century |
At right see 19th century Burmese Kammavācā ("karma confession" or "confession of misdeeds" for Buddhist monks), written in Pali on gilded palm leaf.
The Theravada commentaries refer to the Pali language as "Magadhan" or the "language of Magadha" [3]:2
- [The Kingdom of Magadha where King Bimbisara reigned being the place where the Buddha moved to from Scythia/Shakya Land. According to tradition the king became a Buddhist and reached the first stage of enlightenment. Then his greedy son, Prince Ajatasattu, deposed, imprisoned, and had him killed so he could assume the throne early.].
This identification first appears in the commentaries, and may have been an attempt by Buddhists to associate themselves more closely with the Maurya Empire.[3]
However, only some of the Buddha's teachings were delivered in the historical territory of Magadha kingdom.[3] Scholars consider it likely that he taught in several closely related dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan, which had a high degree of mutual intelligibility.
Theravada tradition, as recorded in chronicles like the Mahavamsa, states that the Tipitaka was first committed to writing during the first century BCE.[3]:5
This move away from the previous tradition of oral preservation is described as being motivated by threats to the Sangha from famine, war, and the growing influence of the rival tradition of the Abhayagiri Vihara.[3]:5
This account is generally accepted by scholars, though there are indications that Pali had already begun to be recorded in writing by this date.[3]:5
By this point in its history, scholars consider it likely that Pali had already undergone some initial assimilation with Sanskrit, such as the conversion of the Middle-Indic bamhana to the more familiar Sanskrit brāhmana that contemporary brahmans used to identify themselves.[3]:6
In Sri Lanka, Pali is thought to have entered into a period of decline ending around the 4th or 5th century (as Sanskrit rose in prominence, and simultaneously, as Buddhism's adherents became a smaller portion of the subcontinent), but ultimately survived.
The work of Buddhaghosa was largely responsible for its reemergence as an important scholarly language in Buddhist thought.
The Visuddhimagga or Path of Purification, and the other commentaries Buddhaghosa compiled, codified, and condensed the Sinhalese (the dominant language of Sri Lanka) commentarial tradition that had been preserved and expanded in Sri Lanka since the 3rd century BCE.
With only a few possible exceptions, the entire corpus of Pali texts known today is believed to derive from the Anuradhapura Mahavihara (the Great Monastic Complex in Anuradhapura) in Sri Lanka.[8]
While literary evidence exists of Theravada Buddhists in mainland India surviving into the 13th century, no Pali texts specifically attributable to this tradition have been recovered.[8]
Some texts (such as the Milindapanha or Questions of the Greek King Menander I) may have been composed in India before being transmitted to Sri Lanka, but the surviving versions of the texts are those preserved by the Mahavihara in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and shared with monasteries in Theravada Southeast Asia.[8]
The earliest inscriptions in Pali found in mainland Southeast Asia are from the first millennium CE, some possibly dating to as early as the 4th Century.[8]
Inscriptions are found in what are now Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia and may have spread from southern India rather than Sri Lanka.[8]
By the 11th century, a so-called "Pali renaissance" began in the vicinity of Pagan (Bagan, Burma), gradually spreading to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia as royal dynasties sponsored monastic lineages derived from the Mahavihara of Anuradhapura.[8]
This era was also characterized by the adoption of Sanskrit conventions and poetic forms (such as kavya) that had not been features of earlier Pali literature.[11]
This process began as early as the 5th century, but it intensified early in the second millennium as Pali texts on poetics and composition modeled on Sanskrit forms began to grow in popularity.[11]
One milestone of this period was the publication of the Subodhalankara during the 14th century, a work attributed to Sangharakkhita Mahāsāmi and modeled on the Sanskrit Kavyadarsa.[11]
Despite an expansion of the number and influence of Mahavihara-derived monastics, this resurgence of Pali study resulted in no production of any new surviving literary works in Pali.[8]
During this era, correspondences between royal courts in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia were conducted in Pali, and grammars aimed at speakers of Sinhalese, Burmese, and other languages were produced.[4]
The emergence of the term "Pali" as the name of the language of the Theravada cannon also occurred during this era.[4] More
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