Pāli (; IAST: ) is a Middle Indo-Aryan language that is widely studied as the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism and the language of the Tipiṭaka. Pali was designated a classical language of India by the Government of India on 3 October 2024.
Origin and development
Etymology
The word 'Pali' is used as a name for the language of the Theravada canon. The word seems to have its origins in commentarial traditions, wherein the (in the sense of the line of original text quoted) was distinguished from the commentary or vernacular translation that followed it in the manuscript. K. R. Norman suggests that its emergence was based on a misunderstanding of the compound , with being interpreted as the name of a particular language.
Geographic origin
There is persistent confusion regarding the relationship of to the vernacular spoken in the ancient kingdom of Magadha, which was located in what is now Bihar. Beginning in the Theravada commentaries, Pali was identified with 'Magadhi', the language of the kingdom of Magadha, and this was taken to also be the language that the Buddha used during his life.
However, modern scholarship has regarded Pali as a mix of several Prakrits from around the 3rd century BCE, combined and partially Sanskritized. There is no attested dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan with all the features of Pali. Pali has some commonalities with both the Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman in Kathiawar and the Central-Western Prakrit found in the eastern Hathigumpha inscription. Nonetheless, Pali does retain some eastern features that have been referred to as Māgadhisms.
Pāḷi, as a Middle Indo-Aryan language, differs from Sanskrit more in terms of its dialectal base than in the time of its origin. A number of its morphological and lexical features show that it is not a direct continuation of Rigveda| Sanskrit. Instead it descends from one or more dialects that were, despite many similarities, different from .
Early history
thumb|right|19th century Burmese Kammavācā (confession for Buddhist monks), written in Pali on gilded palm leaf
Theravada commentaries refer to Pali as "Magadhi Prakrit" or the "language of Magadha".
With only a few possible exceptions, the entire corpus of Pali texts known today is believed to derive from the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya in Sri Lanka. This process began as early as the 5th century, but intensified early in the second millennium as Pali texts on poetics and composition modeled on Sanskrit forms began to grow in popularity.
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. The emergence of the term 'Pali' as the name of the language of the Theravada canon also occurred during this era. These inscriptions typically consist of short excerpts from the Pali Canon and non-canonical texts, and include several examples of the protective Pratītyasamutpāda gāthā. The oldest known manuscripts from Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia date to the 13th–15th century, with few surviving examples. Very few manuscripts older than 400 years have survived, and complete manuscripts of the four Nikāyas are only available in examples from the 17th century and later. Following the foundation of the Pali Text Society, English Pali studies grew rapidly and Childers's dictionary became outdated. and Wilhelm Geiger in his book Pāli Literature and Language, suggested that Pali may have originated as a lingua franca or common language of culture among people who used differing dialects in North India, used at the time of the Buddha and employed by him. Another scholar states that at that time it was "a refined and elegant vernacular of all Aryan-speaking people". Modern scholarship has not arrived at a consensus on the issue; there are a variety of conflicting theories with supporters and detractors. After the death of the Buddha, Pali may have evolved among Buddhists out of the language of the Buddha as a new artificial language. R. C. Childers, who held to the theory that Pali was Old Magadhi, wrote: "Had Gautama never preached, it is unlikely that Magadhese would have been distinguished from the many other vernaculars of Hindustan, except perhaps by an inherent grace and strength which make it a sort of Tuscan among the Prakrits."
Modern scholarship
According to K. R. Norman, differences between different texts within the canon suggest that it contains material from more than a single dialect.
Bhikkhu Bodhi, summarizing the current state of scholarship, states that the language is "closely related to the language (or, more likely, the various regional dialects) that the Buddha himself spoke". He goes on to write: