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Namo tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammāsambuddhassa

INDEX

INTRODUCTION 1.
 The language
 Palm-leaf manuscripts
LESSON I 20.
 Declension of Nouns Ending in -a; nominative and accusative cases
 Conjugation of Verbs - Present Tense Active Voice 3rd person
LESSON II 25.
 Declension of Nouns Ending in -a; instrumental and dative cases
 Conjugation of Verbs - Present Tense Active Voice 2nd person
LESSON III 30.
 Declension of Nouns Ending in -a; ablative and genitive cases
 Conjugation of Verbs - Present Tense Active Voice 1st person
LESSON IV 35.
 Declension of Nouns Ending in -a; locative and vocative cases
 Conjugation of Verbs - Present Tense Active Voice (full)
LESSON V 40.
 Full Declension of Nouns Ending in -a; Masculine & Neuter
LESSON VI 44.
 Declension of Nouns Ending in -ā
 Infinitive
LESSON VII 48.
 Aorist (general past tense) - Active Voice
 Special forms āha and āhu
 Personal Pronouns - Genitive (Possessive) Form
LESSON VIII 54.
 Declension of Nouns Ending in -i; Masculine & Neuter
 The Gerund with Past Participle
LESSON IX 58.
 Feminine Nouns Ending in -i
 Future Tense
 Conditional Tense
LESSON X 62.
 Nouns Ending in -ī
 The Formation of Feminines
LESSON XI 66.
 Nouns Ending in -u and -ū
 Imperative/Benedictive Tense
LESSON XII 72.
 Personal Pronouns - 1st and 2nd Person
 Optative Tense
LESSON XIII 76.
 Relative Pronouns & 3rd Person Personal Pronouns
 The Interrogative Pronoun
LESSON XIV 81.
 Participles
LESSON XV 86.
 Demonstrative Pronouns
 Adjectives
LESSON XVI 94.
 Cardinal Numerals
 Ordinal Numerals
 Counting with sataṃ
LESSON XVII 99.
 The consonantal noun declension, nouns ending in -n
 Attan as a reflexive
 The seven conjugation classes of verbs
LESSON XVIII 103.
 The consonantal noun declension - nouns ending in -r
 Causal Forms
LESSON XIX 107.
 The consonantal noun declension - nouns ending in -s
 Declension of nouns with diphthongic stem
 Imperfect Tense
 Perfect Tense
LESSON XX 111.
 Compound Words
 The Word ubho
LESSON XXI 116.
 Indeclinables
LESSON XXII 122.
 Nominal Derivatives
LESSON XXIII 127.
 Verbal Derivatives
LESSON XXIV 132.
 Rules of Sandhi (Combination)
LESSON XXV 137.
 Uses of the Cases
 The Genitive and Locative Absolutes
LESSON XXVI 148.
 Passive Voice
 Middle Voice
 The verb “to be”
Selections for Translation 151.
Answer keys 164.
Pāḷi verb lists 300.
Noun declination tables (including all possible endings for each case) 304.
Relations between Pāḷi and Sanskrit 306.
Vocabulary Pāḷi - English 312.
Vocabulary English - Pāḷi 319.
Pāḷi grammatical terms 326.
Scripts used for writing Pāḷi 329.
- Abugida Scripts 331.
- Brahmic Scripts 332.
- Brāhmī 333.
- Devanāgarī 339.
- Sinhalese 356.
- Thai 372.
- Burmese 386.
- Khmer 400.
- Tham 417.
- Lao 417.
- Ariyaka 419.
Comparative Table of the Scripts 422.
Bibliography 424.
Materials for further study - Useful websites 426.

Introduction

The Middle Indo Aryan dialect originally derived from the Sanskrit language which is found in the Pāḷi Canon of
the Theravāda Buddhists and is usually called “Pāḷi” is nowhere so called in the Theravāda Canon. The word
“Pāḷi” is found in the Sinhalese chronicles and the commentaries upon the canon which were written many
centuries after by the monk Buddhaghosa (5th century AD), but there it has the meaning “canon” and is used
in the sense of a canonical text or phrase as opposed to the commentary (atthakathā) upon it. Even up to the
6th or 7th century AD, the term Pāḷi does not appear as a name for any kind of language. Even if we look into
the Cūlavaṃsa forming a later supplement to the Mahavaṃsa (the Great Chronicle of Ceylon) we find that the
term Pāḷi is used in it clearly in the sense of original Buddhist texts, the texts of the canon as taken apart from
the commentaries, so the earliest issue of the term Pāḷi can be thus traced back to the commentaries of
Buddhaghosa and not in any earlier Buddhist writings. It is again in the commentaries that the term Pāḷi was
regarded as a synonym for Buddhavacana (word of the Buddha) and Tipiṭaka, among others. The transition
from Pāḷi meaning “canonical text” to Pāḷi as a proper name for the language took place by a natural process.

It would seem that the word “Pāḷi” being considered as the name for the language is based upon a
misunderstanding of the compound “Pāḷibhāsā” (language of the canon), where the word Pāḷi was thought to
stand for the name of a particular language, as a result of which the word was applied to the language of both
the canon and the commentaries, following the misleading assumption that the word “Pāḷibhāsā” had the
meaning of “language of Pāḷi”. There is evidence that this misunderstanding took place several centuries ago.

Benjamin Clough (1791-1853) was the first westerner to officially adopt the word “Pāḷi” when he published his
compendium of grammar in 1824. Burnouf and Lassen also used the name “Pāḷi” in their essay on Pāḷi
grammar which was published in 1826, but in the survey of Pāḷi studies up to that year included in that work
Burnouf pointed out that the first person to mention Pāḷi was Simon de la Loubière who visited Siam in 1687,
and published a description of the kingdom of Siam in 1691, which was translated into English in 1693. It is
clear from this account that in Thailand in the late 17th century the name “Pāḷi” was already being used for the
language of the Theravāda texts. La Loubière noted that in contrast to Thai, which was a monosyllabic
language, “Balie” (or “Baly”) was inflected just like the languages of Europe. He also drew attention to the fact
that the names for the days of the week were similar in Pāḷi and Sanskrit, and reported that he had been told
that there were similarities between Pāḷi and the languages spoken near Coromandel (the southeastern coast
region of the Indian Subcontinent, between the Eastern Ghats and the Bay of Bengal of the Indian Ocean). The
Sasanavaṃsa, written in Burma in 1861, uses the word Pāḷi in a context where it seems to be the name of a
language. Since the Sasanavaṃsa is based upon an earlier Burmese text, the usage of the name “Pāḷi” in
Burma is probably earlier than would appear. It seems unlikely that the usage arose independently in all three
countries, but in the present state of our knowledge it does not seem possible to determine where the
misunderstanding first occurred.

A widespread assumption states that the language spoken by the Buddha was actually Māgadhī. What we
know of Māgadhī as described by the grammarians in later times, however, enables us to say that Pāḷi is not
Māgadhī, and although we have no direct evidence about the characteristics of Māgadhī in the centuries
before Aśoka, we can deduce with some certainty that Pāḷi does not agree with that either. It would seem
likely that, because the texts tell about the Buddha frequently preaching in the kingdom of Magadha (although
none of the scenes of the great events in his life was situated within the boundaries of Magadha as we know it
in historical times), the tradition arose that all his sermons were preached in the dialect of that region of North
India. It is also possible that the prestige attaching to Magadha, and by implication to Māgadhī, during the
time of the Mauryan kings, and also the way in which the Māgadhī of the original Aśokan edicts was
everywhere in India “translated” into the local dialect or language, led to the adoption by the Buddhists, at
about the time of the council which the Theravāda tradition reports was held during the reign of Aśoka, of the
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idea that their “ruler” too employed such a language. Although there is some doubt about the interpretation
of the phrase the Buddha used when asked if it was permissible to translate his sermons, it is generally agreed
that he did not preach in Sanskrit, but employed the dialect or language of the area where he was preaching.
We must assume that his sermons and utterances were remembered by his followers and his audiences as
they heard them. In the course of time, during his lifetime and after his death, collections must have been
made of his words, and translations or redactions of these must have been made as the need arose, either
because the collections were being taken into an area where a different dialect or language was spoken, or
because as time went by his words became less intelligible as their language became more archaic.

The Theravāda tradition tells of councils being held to recite the canon, of which the third was held in the time
of Aśoka, and although the discrepancies with the Northern tradition cast doubt upon this, there must have
been gatherings of some sort where recitations took place, and the “imprimatur” of the Saṅgha was
bestowed. Such councils would inevitably have led to a normalization of the language of the canon to a
greater or less extent. Since this normalized language was an “ecclesiastical” one, being recited by monks who
probably spoke a variety of languages or dialects, there is no necessity to assume that it coincided exactly with
any one particular spoken language.

The tradition recorded in the Sinhalese chronicles states that the Theravāda canon was written down on palm
leaves during the first century BC as a result of threats to the Saṅgha from famine, war, and various political
circumstances. Like the Vedic texts, early Buddhist literature was composed during a period of pure orality in
India, before script was introduced during the reign of Aśoka. This early oral tradition went on for centuries
after the Buddha’s death, and has left obvious traces in the written literature, particularly in the numerous
formulas typical of oral composition which were used to facilitate memorization and the steady repetition of
entire paragraphs as a repetitive introduction in order to point out each detail of the idea being conveyed. The
original oral character of the teaching is the reason why the Pāḷi suttas always begin with the formula evaṃ
me sutaṃ, that is: ”thus have I heard”.

All in all, it is safe to assume that the language known as Pāḷi was created artificially, probably not on purpose,
but rather as monks and nuns from different parts of India came into contact with each other and were forced
to adapt their vernaculars to new environments in order to understand and be understood. The existence of
at least 35 works on Pāḷi grammar only in Sri Lanka shows the great attention having been paid to the
language. The antiquity of Pāḷi, its refinement, its verbal and grammatical simplicity and its relationship with
the oldest language of the Brahmins - the vedic Sanskrit - proves it to be a dialect of high class. The decline of
Pāḷi in Asia was co-existent with the decline of the religion taught through its medium. But even though Pāḷi, as
an artificial language, was never actually a natural language spoken in any part of India, it was by no means a
dead language. Changes in the phonetic shape of Pāḷi, most likely introduced by Buddhist grammarians at
various times, can be observed, although dating them is problematic. None of the changes were far-reaching,
although they seem to have continued well into the sixteenth century, if not later.

Having originally been a language for conveying ideas by listening and giving forth only by means of spoken
word, Pāḷi never had a writing system of its own, as neither had Sanskrit back then, by the way, for the Vedas
were considered too sacred to be written down, being thus transmitted only by spoken word. Later on,
however, Pāḷi began being written in many different scripts. When Buddhism spread to other parts of the
world outside India, local people used either original Indian scripts such as Brāhmī, or switched to their own
local scripts. So in Sri Lanka, Pāḷi is written in the Sinhalese script, in Myanmar in the Burmese script, in
Thailand in the Thai script (in this country in particular having originally been written in Khom and Tham
scripts), in Laos in the Tham script and in Cambodia in the Khmer script. Finally, when Western scholars
started to learn about Buddhism, they began using Latin characters to write the Pāḷi language. The following
10 pages show the first pages of Benjamin Clough’s Pāḷi grammar, the first of its kind compiled by a westerner.
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