The Benefits & Drawbacks of Pali

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
User avatar
PadmaPhala
Posts: 169
Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2012 5:22 am

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by PadmaPhala »

da problem is english, not paali.
User avatar
Zenainder
Posts: 147
Joined: Fri May 17, 2013 11:10 am

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by Zenainder »

Or perhaps the problem is our attachment to absolutes as likely the goal in any translation is translating and understanding it "absolutely" in its original context. We have basic instructions that are to some extent "original" to the language translated to enlgish and, in the end, truly "knowing" the dhamma doesn't dawn by reading about it, but by the opening of the dhamma eye. In the end, if pali translating inspires your practice then study. Otherwise, no worries, mon!

It seems rather irrelevant to me, even if you had a time machine and heard the discourses firsthand from the Buddha himself you would still have a culturally entangled understanding.
danieLion
Posts: 1947
Joined: Wed May 25, 2011 4:49 am

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by danieLion »

BlackBird wrote:
danieLion wrote:In which sutta(s) does the Buddha instruct us to learn Pali?

Why would someone instruct his audience to learn the language (more or less) that they ALREADY speak.
The Buddha's native tongue was a North Indian dialect called Magadhi, but there is no version of his teachings preserved to this day in that dialect. One of the reasons is that they originally were not written down at all, but merely spoken by the Buddha himself and carefully memorized by his students. When the Buddhist teachings started to spread around the Indian subcontinent (and later other parts of Asia), they were continually translated into the local dialects and languages.

When the teachings were written down, around three or four hundred years after the death of the Buddha, they already existed in several different, carefully memorized, versions - one of which, the Pali version (a South-West Indian dialect), became the scriptural canon of the Theravada school, later spreading from Sri Lanka; and several other versions of the same teachings, originally written down in Sanskrit and different North Indian colloquial versions of Sanskrit or other North Indian dialects, including Gandhari and so called "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit", were used by the Mahayana schools of Buddhism, now mainly (partially) preserved in translations to Tibetan and Chinese.

Early European scholars thought that Pali (the language of the Theravada canon) was the same language as Magadhi, the native tongue of the Buddha, but later linguistic studies have showed that's not the case.

This means, all preserved versions of the original teachings of the Buddha are translations. Nevertheless, the difference in content and style is fairly minor, which is also an indication of how exact and faithfully they were memorized and kept before they were written down in different versions. I'm not talking about the so called "Mahayana sutras", that exist only in the Mahayana traditions of Buddhism, and were originally written in Sanskrit or North Indian dialects, sometimes even in Chinese.

Since the Pali canon is the only one that is preserved in its entirety, it has retained a special place in the studies of early Buddhist doctrine. One should not forget, however, that it is a translation, and that it is a version written down after Buddhism had already split into several different sects and traditions, and that it thus only represents one of those sects (the one that later evolved into modern Theravada).

In recent years, more and more of the alternative versions of the original sutras have been retrieved through archeological finds in China and Central Asia, and/or recontructed through retranslations from extant Chinese and especially Tibetan faithfully literal translations. Through comparing these versions with the Pali versions we can get a far more nuanced and extensive understanding of early Buddhism in India.
Source:
"Buddhist Sutras - Origin, Development, Transmission" by Kogen Mizuno
danieLion
Posts: 1947
Joined: Wed May 25, 2011 4:49 am

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by danieLion »

tiltbillings wrote:
danieLion wrote:
dL wrote:Plus, this doesn't answer my question. In which sutta(s) does the Buddha instruct us to learn Pali?
Kindly,
dL
tiltbillings wrote:You know the answer to that question.
Which goes to the problematic aspect.
Why?
Diminishes the necessity justifications.
danieLion
Posts: 1947
Joined: Wed May 25, 2011 4:49 am

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by danieLion »

What standard or authority can we refer to determine if Pali's better than Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, or other languages of early Buddhist discourse?
http://suttacentral.net/
Last edited by danieLion on Sun Jun 23, 2013 4:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Kare
Posts: 767
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2009 10:58 am
Location: Norway
Contact:

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by Kare »

danieLion wrote:
BlackBird wrote:
danieLion wrote:In which sutta(s) does the Buddha instruct us to learn Pali?

Why would someone instruct his audience to learn the language (more or less) that they ALREADY speak.
The Buddha's native tongue was a North Indian dialect called Magadhi, but there is no version of his teachings preserved to this day in that dialect. One of the reasons is that they originally were not written down at all, but merely spoken by the Buddha himself and carefully memorized by his students. When the Buddhist teachings started to spread around the Indian subcontinent (and later other parts of Asia), they were continually translated into the local dialects and languages.

When the teachings were written down, around three or four hundred years after the death of the Buddha, they already existed in several different, carefully memorized, versions - one of which, the Pali version (a South-West Indian dialect), became the scriptural canon of the Theravada school, later spreading from Sri Lanka; and several other versions of the same teachings, originally written down in Sanskrit and different North Indian colloquial versions of Sanskrit or other North Indian dialects, including Gandhari and so called "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit", were used by the Mahayana schools of Buddhism, now mainly (partially) preserved in translations to Tibetan and Chinese.

Early European scholars thought that Pali (the language of the Theravada canon) was the same language as Magadhi, the native tongue of the Buddha, but later linguistic studies have showed that's not the case.

This means, all preserved versions of the original teachings of the Buddha are translations. Nevertheless, the difference in content and style is fairly minor, which is also an indication of how exact and faithfully they were memorized and kept before they were written down in different versions. I'm not talking about the so called "Mahayana sutras", that exist only in the Mahayana traditions of Buddhism, and were originally written in Sanskrit or North Indian dialects, sometimes even in Chinese.

Since the Pali canon is the only one that is preserved in its entirety, it has retained a special place in the studies of early Buddhist doctrine. One should not forget, however, that it is a translation, and that it is a version written down after Buddhism had already split into several different sects and traditions, and that it thus only represents one of those sects (the one that later evolved into modern Theravada).

In recent years, more and more of the alternative versions of the original sutras have been retrieved through archeological finds in China and Central Asia, and/or recontructed through retranslations from extant Chinese and especially Tibetan faithfully literal translations. Through comparing these versions with the Pali versions we can get a far more nuanced and extensive understanding of early Buddhism in India.
Source:
"Buddhist Sutras - Origin, Development, Transmission" by Kogen Mizuno
Ah, this persistent confusion about Pali and Magadhi!

I have written about this before: http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=9686
Mettāya,
Kåre
binocular
Posts: 8292
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2009 11:13 pm

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by binocular »

danieLion wrote:What standard or authority can we refer to determine if Pali's better than Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, or other languages of early Buddhist discourse?
That depends on what you want to accomplish.

Also, it depends on whom you wish to impress.
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
User avatar
Kare
Posts: 767
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2009 10:58 am
Location: Norway
Contact:

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by Kare »

danieLion wrote:What standard or authority can we refer to determine if Pali's better than Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, or other languages of early Buddhist discourse?
It depends on how many filters of translation you want to have between yourself and the teaching of the Buddha.
Mettāya,
Kåre
danieLion
Posts: 1947
Joined: Wed May 25, 2011 4:49 am

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by danieLion »

danieLion
Posts: 1947
Joined: Wed May 25, 2011 4:49 am

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by danieLion »

Kare wrote:
danieLion wrote:What standard or authority can we refer to determine if Pali's better than Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, or other languages of early Buddhist discourse?
It depends on how many filters of translation you want to have between yourself and the teaching of the Buddha.
According to Ven. Analayo, these are not "filters of translation" but heterogeneous parallels from the oral tradition. See, for instance, his Reflections on Comparative Āgama Studies.
Sylvester
Posts: 2204
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:57 am

Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by Sylvester »

danieLion wrote:What standard or authority can we refer to determine if Pali's better than Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, or other languages of early Buddhist discourse?
http://suttacentral.net/

Daniel

This is not such an easy issue to address.

It is true that many Chinese translations are able to have a consistent use of formal, prepositional and syntactic techniques to render the highly inflected Indic very faithfully. Even if transliteration mistakes are made, scholars such as Ven Analayo are able to identify these and point to a different Indic word as the source. Sometimes, the Pali sutta and its Chinese parallel look almost like carbon-copies, eg DN 15 and its Dharmaguptaka parallel in the Taisho's Dirgha, so there's hardly a basis to say which is better than the other.

Yet, it clear that sometimes the Chinese can furnish better readings. Missing passages from the Pali can be found in the Chinese parallels, sometimes fitting in so neatly that it can be made to fit into a putative ola leaf that was lost. Critical editing of Pali variant readings are many times resolved on the basis of Agama parallels. At the same time, we can see that Chinese parallels are translated according to Abhidharmic terminology to which a translator may ascribe to. Some critical work is needed to try to identify the original Indic, and in such cases, the Pali is unfiltered.

However, at this point in time, when scholarship is just beginning to dive into the mass of early Buddhist literatures, it will be sometime before your question can be answered definitively, if at all.
danieLion
Posts: 1947
Joined: Wed May 25, 2011 4:49 am

Re: The Benefits & Drawbacks of Pali

Post by danieLion »

Thanks Sylvester.
FWIW: I just read in Amaro's/Pasanno's The Island that Pali does not require the subject-predicate form--which makes me warm up to Pali even more because it avoids the common "is of identity" and other Aristotelian linguistic trappings.
Kindly,
Daniel
User avatar
tiltbillings
Posts: 23046
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 2008 9:25 am

Re: The Benefits & Drawbacks of Pali

Post by tiltbillings »

Note name change of thread from "The Problem With Pali: to "The Benefits & Drawbacks of Pali" per original poster's request.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
Sylvester
Posts: 2204
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:57 am

Re: The Benefits & Drawbacks of Pali

Post by Sylvester »

danieLion wrote:Thanks Sylvester.
FWIW: I just read in Amaro's/Pasanno's The Island that Pali does not require the subject-predicate form--which makes me warm up to Pali even more because it avoids the common "is of identity" and other Aristotelian linguistic trappings.
Kindly,
Daniel

Shriek!!! Have I been misled all this time about nouns and modifiers? Could you pls direct me to the page of an online edition where this was uttered?
User avatar
mikenz66
Posts: 19932
Joined: Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:37 am
Location: Aotearoa, New Zealand

Re: The Benefits & Drawbacks of Pali

Post by mikenz66 »

I think Daniel is referring to what I quoted here:
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11448
Due to the different nature of the English and Pali languages, there are
difficulties in translation that may obscure crucial aspects of the Dhamma. If we
translate the stream-entry vision literally from Pali, we have something like ‘what-
ever arising-dhamma cessation-dhamma.’ This is terrible English but beautiful
insight. English grammar requires subject and verb. Thus ‘something’ arises and
ceases. Hence ‘dhamma’ comes across as a thing, or an attribute of things. A thing
has existence in time, so whatever thing arises, or is subject to arising, subsequent-
ly ceases. This is not really news to the reflective mind. However if we consider
stream-entry as something profound, it would be useful to consider the experience
to be one in which the very process that brings ‘things’ to awareness is seen into.
That is, the mind is experiencing an ‘event-stream’ dynamic of arising and ceasing
that rules out substantiality.

Page 294 of this PDF: http://forestsanghapublications.org/ass ... Island.pdf

:anjali:
Mike
Post Reply