19 Facts About Pali language

1.

Pali language has some commonalities with both the western Ashokan Edicts at Girnar in Saurashtra, and the Central-Western Prakrit found in the eastern Hathigumpha inscription.

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2.

Nonetheless, Pali language does retain some eastern features that have been referred to as Magadhisms.

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3.

In Sri Lanka, Pali language is thought to have entered into a period of decline ending around the 4th or 5th century, but ultimately survived.

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4.

The earliest samples of Pali language discovered are inscriptions believed to date from 5th to 8th Century located in mainland Southeast Asia, specifically central Siam and lower Burma.

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5.

Surprisingly, the oldest surviving Pali language manuscript was discovered in Nepal dating to the 9th Century.

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6.

Pali language was first mentioned in Western literature in Simon de la Loubere's descriptions of his travels in the kingdom of Siam.

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7.

Pali language suggests it is likely that the viharas in North India had separate collections of material, preserved in the local dialect.

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8.

Bhikkhu Bodhi, summarizing the current state of scholarship, states that the Pali language is "closely related to the Pali language that the Buddha himself spoke".

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9.

However, by the time of the compilation of the Pali commentaries, Pali was described by the anonymous authors as the natural language, the root language of all beings.

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10.

Today Pali language is studied mainly to gain access to Buddhist scriptures, and is frequently chanted in a ritual context.

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11.

The great centres of Pali language learning remain in Sri Lanka and other Theravada nations of Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

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12.

In 1869, the first Pali language Dictionary was published using the research of Robert Caesar Childers, one of the founding members of the Pali language Text Society.

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13.

Pali language literature is usually divided into canonical and non-canonical or extra-canonical texts.

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14.

Magadhi Prakrit was a Middle Indic Pali language spoken in present-day Bihar, and eastern Uttar Pradesh.

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15.

However, scholarly interest in the Pali language has been focused upon religious and philosophical literature, because of the unique window it opens on one phase in the development of Buddhism.

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16.

Pali language nouns inflect for three grammatical genders and two numbers.

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17.

The existence of a Sanskrit word regularly corresponding to a Pali language word is not always secure evidence of the Pali language etymology, since, in some cases, artificial Sanskrit words were created by back-formation from Prakrit words.

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18.

Historically, the first written record of the Pali language canon is believed to have been composed in Sri Lanka, based on a prior oral tradition.

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19.

Transmission of written Pali language has retained a universal system of alphabetic values, but has expressed those values in a variety of different scripts.

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