Pāli Language
Pāli is an ancient language primarily associated with early Buddhist literature, and while it is virtually extinct as a spoken language, it continues to hold significance in liturgical contexts, akin to Latin in Catholicism. The term "Pāli" likely refers to its original intent as a sacred language meant for the recitation of the Buddha's teachings, known as the Buddhavacana. Historically, after the death of Gautama Buddha around the 5th century BCE, Pāli was preserved through oral tradition until it was documented during the Fourth Buddhist Council in 29 BCE amid concerns for its survival. The Pāli Canon, or Tipitaka, represents a crucial collection of Buddhist scriptures and is classified into three categories: Sutta (teachings), Vinaya (rules), and Abhidhamma (commentary). While its use diminished with the rise of Sanskrit, Pāli has influenced the development of languages like early Sinhalese and retains a role in religious scholarship today. The Pāli Text Society, established in the 19th century, works to preserve Pāli literature and promote its study, ensuring that it remains an essential key to understanding the teachings and traditions of Theravadan Buddhism.
Pāli Language
Although the Pāli language is virtually extinct, it was the primary language of early Buddhist literature. Though existing today solely as liturgical (similar to the use of Latin in Catholic services), it is still broadly studied by scholars for its insight into the origins of Buddhism. The term "Pāli" is of uncertain derivation, although linguists strongly believe it is linked to the original purpose of Pāli as a sacred language and thus may have had a meaning of text or some related term since the language was intended as a recitation of the Buddha’s message—called the Buddhavacana, or literally, the word of the Buddha. In fact, religious leaders of Buddhism maintain that Pāli was the original language of Gautama (or Gotama) Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, though this claim is of debatable credibility. Instead, given its origins as a language used by scholars from across a broad region of the Indian subcontinent, many scholars view Pāli as an amalgam of several different languages of the Prakrit subfamily of Middle Indo-Aryan languages.
History and Classifi cation
The Pāli language has one of the best attested histories of any ancient language, though virtually all its surviving examples are related to Buddhism. After the death of the Buddha sometime in the fifth century BCE, his teachings were passed along through a tradition of oral recitation until the Fourth Buddhist Council of 29 BCE. Around this period, the monks of what would become Theravadan Buddhism recognized the threats to their tradition as a result of the first Buddhist schism between the Abhayagiri Vihara sect and the Theravada Buddhists. As the Abhayagiri Vihara group had recently gained the patronage of the ruler of the Anuradhapura Kingdom of Sri Lanka—a major center of Buddhist worship and study in the first century BCE—the original purveyors of Theravada Buddhism recognized that since the Pāli Canon was entirely dependent upon surviving oral memory, the words of the Buddha had the potential to be lost during periods of intense strife or disaster. This latter problem was further exposed by a devastating famine in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE that killed many of the monks tasked with remembering the Buddhavacana. As a result, they committed themselves to publishing the Buddhavacana and its related works on palm leaves.
The entirety of the Pāli Canon was culled from a number of sources, with the scribes using their own native tongues to compose each respective document. These works were in turn standardized into a single script, resulting in a language created almost exclusively for the purposes of sacramental transcription. The early Buddhist clergy may have done this deliberately, acknowledging that the creation of a new language that incorporated elements from a broad section of related tongues might be more mutually intelligible to the widely distributed Buddhist masses.
Some Buddhist sources describe Pāli as being actually derived from the Māgadhi language, which was also an ancient Prakrit language; however, some linguists argue that the two languages lack enough shared linguistic characteristics to realistically place Māgadhi as the ancestral predecessor to Pāli. Instead, controlled religious historiography may be the source of such claims. The Buddha spent much of his life in the Maurya Empire that used Māgadhi as its primary language, and the establishment of a direct line between Pāli and Māgadhi may have been the result of a desire to further link Pāli to Buddha himself.
By about the fourth century, the use of Pāli as a common language was in decline, giving way to the more prevalent Sanskrit as a written language; similarly, Pāli also declined as the proportionate influence of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent waned. It fared better in Sri Lanka and may have strongly influenced the development of early Sinhalese (the official language of modern-day Sri Lanka), particularly with regard to grammar.
It endured from this point on as primarily a language of religious scholarship, and under these auspices experienced a period of mild resurgence in the fifth century. During this era, Buddhaghosa, a Theravadan scholar, composed the Visuddhimagga (or "Path of Purification"), which is widely regarded as the most important commentary on the teachings of Theravadan Buddhism.
Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage
The Pāli Canon (called Tipitaka, or "The Three Baskets" in the Pāli language) comprises the most famous collection of Pāli literature and relates the central scriptural traditions of Theravadan Buddhism. It is believed to be the earliest known collection of Buddhist textual history, having been documented in 29 BCE after more than four centuries of being exclusively transmitted through oral recitation.
Pāli literature is generally categorized as either being canonical or noncanonical; however, all extant works have Buddhists themes. The canonical works are themselves in turn classified as one of three pitaka, or types: Sutta (teachings), Vinaya (monastic rules), and Abhidhamma (analysis/commentary of the teachings). The noncanonical works mostly use commentarial formats to examine the varied works of the Pāli Canon for meaning.
Due to its use as a sacred language, Pāli donated numerous loan words to languages throughout Southeast Asia, helping to cement its preservation as more than a liturgical language.
In 1881, T. W. Rhys Davids (1843–1922), a British civil servant in Sri Lanka and Pāli literature specialist, founded the nonprofit Pāli Text Society to help preserve Pāli literature and promote its value in the West. To that end, the society publishes Pāli texts in Roman characters, English-language translations, Pāli-to-English dictionaries, and various scholarship regarding Pāli texts.
In the contemporary era, Pāli endures as the sacred language of Theravadan Buddhism and remains a key to understanding both the sacraments of the religion and the origins of Buddhism itself.
Bibliography
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Gair, James W., and Ḍabliv Es Karuṇātilaka. A New Course in Reading Pāli: Entering the Word of the Buddha. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2009. Print.
Hazra, Kanai Lal. Pāli Language and Literature: A Systematic Survey and Historical Study. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2002. Print.
Oberlies, Thomas. Pāli: A Grammar of the Language of the Theravāda Tipitaka. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. Print.
"The Pāli Language and Literature." Pali Text Society. Pali Text Society, n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2015. <http://www.palitext.com/subpages/lan‗lite.htm#>.
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