The Benefits & Drawbacks of Pali

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
Nyana
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Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by Nyana »

Dmytro wrote:Seems like the problem with Pali has to do with the peculiarities of the modern techno-"democracy"-oriented culture. In this culture, everyone seems to be entitled to voice publicly his opinion on any subject, regardless of his knowledge and competence.
On the other hand, some subjects, like Pali, require knowledge and competence.
So there's a cultural pressure to replace Pali with English, to make way for post-Protestant-like "religion for everybody", which would require no authorities.
And everyone would happily read English texts and interpret them freely as he likes :soap:
In this depersonalized culture, any meanings must be relative, and have no sure ground.
Well, the Protestant Reformation and European Enlightenment have already happened, so that ship has sailed.

But in principle, the translation of the Pāli corpus into English and other European languages is no different than the translation of the Pāli corpus and other Indic language Buddhist texts into other Asian languages -- a process that goes back 2000+ years, and which occurred independent of European history. And it's also worth keeping in mind that even within ancient India various interpretations of the sutta literature evolved.

That said, I completely agree that it's a misguided and probably quite modern phenomenon where a person reads a few suttas (in whatever language) and thereby thinks they are in a position to disregard all traditions of exegesis, and are somehow on par with the likes of Buddhaghosa and Vasubandhu.
Last edited by Nyana on Mon Jun 17, 2013 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nyana
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Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by Nyana »

chownah wrote:For example look at English literature and the incredible variety of people who have contributed to it....then look at Pali literature and see how virtually every author was a Buddhist monk and not just any Buddhist monk but a Buddhist monk from a very restricted region when compared to the much wider dispersion of Buddhism in general......or am I wrong about this?
Well, the Pāli Abhidhamma and commentaries and treatises were compiled over many centuries, and although it's difficult to verify the exact geographical region where any particular named commentator came from, they are generally South Asian. But even within South Asia (i.e. the Indian Subcontinent), there were other informative and valuable commentarial traditions. One of the more prominent is the Sarvāstivāda (and the Sautrāntikas which evolved from them). To try to understand early Buddhism and the scholastic period without understanding something of the Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika texts can lead to source biases. Therefore, it would be good if more of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma and their post-canonical treatises were to be studied and translated.
chownah wrote:If memory serves me correctly it seems that some king long ago wanted to sponsor a translation of the Pali into some more modern language and he found Buddhagossa and asked him to translate one text to see how it went......the king liked what Buddhagossa did so he gave him the job of translating it all. Seems to me that we are at the whim of Buddhagossa to a great extent and of course who knows whether Buddhagossa had to make politically correct adjustments to please the king. I'm no scholar on this area but this does raise questions about undo influence on the part of two historic figures.
To clarify: Buddhaghosa translated the Mahāvihāra commentaries back into Pāli.
binocular
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Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by binocular »

chownah wrote:You're assessment is correct to a degree. The comment I made is one way to indicate a likely shortcoming in Pali which can be discussed without being a Pali scholar as opposed to not being able to discuss it at all unless one is well read across the entire body of Pali literature which seems to be Kare's view....and my concerns are not specifically what you describe but what you describe might be considered to be a specific case of a more general idea....to me there seems to be a very narrow body of Pali literature for many reasons (including what you have mentioned) and one of these is the narrowness of authorship. Another concern is whether one person or a small number of people exerted too much influence on the language or it's transmission...Buddhagossa comes to mind. If memory serves me correctly it seems that some king long ago wanted to sponsor a translation of the Pali into some more modern language and he found Buddhagossa and asked him to translate one text to see how it went......the king liked what Buddhagossa did so he gave him the job of translating it all. Seems to me that we are at the whim of Buddhagossa to a great extent and of course who knows whether Buddhagossa had to make politically correct adjustments to please the king. I'm no scholar on this area but this does raise questions about undo influence on the part of two historic figures.
Then it seems to me that an issue here is about what a religion (or school of practice or however one might call it) as such is, what it means to be a member of a particular religion, how conversion and membership come about, and related topics.

I think that one central point is the relationship between a teacher and a student, and what role and importance it has. For the sake of convenience, I'll talk about the "Eastern model" and the "Western model."
In general, in the Eastern model, one takes to following a particular teacher, not a particular religion. This is quite different than the way we in the West are used to thinking about religion as such, membership in a religion, and conversion. In the Western model, it seems one is expected to first pick a religion, and then a school within it, and then, perhaps, a particular teacher. While in the Eastern model, one, generally starts off with apprenticeship to a teacher, and then via the teacher, formally subscribes to a religion (although this step is not necessarily always present; it can all be limited simply to the relationship between the teacher and the student).

On principle, in the Eastern model, prospective students are interested primarily in what they can learn from a particular teacher and how this can help them in their personal spiritual quest.
The Western model, evidently influenced by fire-and-brimstone Christianity, is essentially all about picking "the right religion" and then "sticking to it," without much emphasis on developing a close, personal student-teacher relationship (and, arguably, without much emphasis on learning and developing one's mind or personal qualities).

In this way, in the Eastern model, an ordinary person would not concern themselves much with whether this or that text is authentic or properly translated or properly interpreted etc. or not. While in the Western model, these concerns are in the foreground.
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chownah
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Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by chownah »

Nyana wrote:
chownah wrote:For example look at English literature and the incredible variety of people who have contributed to it....then look at Pali literature and see how virtually every author was a Buddhist monk and not just any Buddhist monk but a Buddhist monk from a very restricted region when compared to the much wider dispersion of Buddhism in general......or am I wrong about this?
Well, the Pāli Abhidhamma and commentaries and treatises were compiled over many centuries, and although it's difficult to verify the exact geographical region where any particular named commentator came from, they are generally South Asian. But even within South Asia (i.e. the Indian Subcontinent), there were other informative and valuable commentarial traditions. One of the more prominent is the Sarvāstivāda (and the Sautrāntikas which evolved from them). To try to understand early Buddhism and the scholastic period without understanding something of the Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika texts can lead to source biases. Therefore, it would be good if more of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma and their post-canonical treatises were to be studied and translated.
chownah wrote:If memory serves me correctly it seems that some king long ago wanted to sponsor a translation of the Pali into some more modern language and he found Buddhagossa and asked him to translate one text to see how it went......the king liked what Buddhagossa did so he gave him the job of translating it all. Seems to me that we are at the whim of Buddhagossa to a great extent and of course who knows whether Buddhagossa had to make politically correct adjustments to please the king. I'm no scholar on this area but this does raise questions about undo influence on the part of two historic figures.
To clarify: Buddhaghosa translated the Mahāvihāra commentaries back into Pāli.
Nyana,
Thank you so much for the clarification. My memory did not serve me well and my post is wrong on many points. Rather than for me to try to clarify further I would direct those interested to the Wikipedia page on Buddhaghosa.

Sorry for such a bad post,
chownah
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tiltbillings
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Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by tiltbillings »

chownah wrote:
Also, rhetorical questions are a good way to dilute a discussion as well as a way to persuade the careless thinker and are often used as a way to move the focus off of an uncomfortable fact when there is no apparent way to respond to dispute.
The problem with your attempt to dismiss Kare's response is your failure to see that it was not a "rhetorical question."
>> 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.

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PadmaPhala
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Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by PadmaPhala »

da problem is english, not paali.
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Zenainder
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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Kare
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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
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binocular
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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.
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Kare
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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.
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danieLion
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Re: The Problem With Pali

Post by danieLion »

danieLion
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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.
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