Dhamma Wheel Buddhist Forum

there are a ton of dictionaries which are useful but once a word has been conjugated and contracted it can no longer be looked up in a dictionary unless one knows what it's roots are.

is there a web site that breaks them down bit by bit? specifically by sutta quote?

a pretend example, since i don't know pali this is gibberish, but this is what it would look like roughly:

sutta quote: "abijjimsa viharatimassa metta"

translation: "one should practice loving kindness every day."

abijjimsa = a contraction of the words: abijha which means "one" and himsa which means "should".

viharatimassa = a contraction of the words: viharama which means "practice" and timassi which means "daily".

metta= loving kindness.

Kamran wrote:http://www.buddha-vacana.org/

Hi Alan,

alan... wrote:there are a ton of dictionaries which are useful but once a word has been conjugated and contracted it can no longer be looked up in a dictionary unless one knows what it's roots are.

is there a web site that breaks them down bit by bit? specifically by sutta quote?

Regarding conjugation, there's a useful table:

http://dhamma.ru/paali/tables/palisufi.htm
http://dhamma.ru/paali/tables/Pali%20endings.xls

Regarding compounds:
- it's easy to uncompound them when you know the most used words and the rules of sandhi;
- you can look up the Atthakatha (this is done by a single click in CSCD http://www.tipitaka.org/cst4 ).

There's also the wonderful Digital Pali Reader (a stand-alone app for use on Firefox) though it doesn't give you the answers, it offers you suggestions, and it does make the entire Pali canon available.