Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/201

P A L P A L 183 hood. In 1837 he published Merchant and Friar, an imaginary history of Marco Polo and Friar Bacon. On the reconstruction of the record commission service in 1838, he was appointed to the post of deputy-keeper. Under the sanction of Government he edited Rotuli Curix Regis (2 vols., 1835) and Calendars and Inventories of the Exchequer (3 vols., 1836). He was the author of Detached ThougMs on the Polity and Ecclesiastical History of the Middle Ages, printed for private circulation, and a learned and elaborate History of Normandy and England (4 vols., 185L-64). He died at Hampstead, 6th July 1861. PALI (pronounced Bali by the Siamese) is the name of the literary language of the Buddhists in Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, and Cambodia. Laloubere (Rel. de Siam) is the first European writer who mentions the name, towards the end of the 17th century. Various opinions have been advanced as to the etymology from path, to read (Mason, Minayeff), or pdli=pra + dli (J. D Ahvis, E. Kuhn) and original meaning of the word. The latter, given as " row," " range," " line," is applied by Trenckner (Pali Misc., i. 69) to the "series" of teachers by whom the text of the sacred tradition was handed down, and, according to the Burmese conception of the word (see Forchhammer s Report for 1879-80, p. 6), to the sacred texts simply, irrespectively of the language or dialect in which they are written ; whereas Pali scholars generally use the word less in the sense of sacred canon than in that of the language in which the canon is written (Childers, D Ahvis, Fausboll, Oldenberg). The same applies to the synonymous term Tanti. When and where that lan guage was formed is still a matter of controversy. We quote here only the opinions of the two principal writers on the subject, Professors E. Kuhn and H. Oldenberg. The former, following Westergaard, holds that Pali was the Sanskritic vernacular spoken at Ujjain, the capital of Malava, at the time when Mahendra, the son and successor of the great Asoka, took the sacred canon with him to Ceylon in the form in which it had two years previously received the sanction of the third general council (Beitr. zur Pdli-Gramm,, Berlin, 1875). On the other hand, Professor Oldenberg, rejecting that tradi tion, considers the naturalization of the Pali language in Ceylon to have been the fruit of a period of long and continued intercourse between that island and the adjacent parts of India, more especially the Kalinga country. Though he does not state within what limits of time that gradual naturalization took place, he records his opinion that at least one portion of the Buddhist canon, the Vinaya, in its present form existed in the Pali language about a hundred and fifty years before Mahendra, that is, about 400 B.C. This is in all probability the earliest period that may be assigned to Pali as a literary language (The Vinayapitakam, edited by Oldenberg, vol. i., 1879, Introduction). Both scholars have discussed the question as to the Pali being identical with the Magadhi dialect, and have satisfactorily disposed of it. There can be no doubt that some considerable time must have elapsed before the Pali recension of the canon was completed, and that, as regards the locality of the language, through the contiguity of cognate vernaculars a palpable number of words and word-forms found their way into Pali, enriching alike its vocabulary and its grammatical resources ; or how else could we account for the occurrence of such doublets and triplets as adda, alia (Sanskrit, ardra), avata, avuta (S. avrita), isa, issa, ikka, accha (S. riksha), kiccha, kasira (S. kricchra), gaddha, giddha, gijjha (S. gridhra), kila, khela, khidda (S. Krida), tanha, tasina (trishna ), tikkhina, tikkha, tinha (S. tikshna), dosina, jimha (S. jyotsna), rukkha, vaccha (S. vriksha), sita, mihita (S. smita), sinana, nahana (S. snana), sunisa, suriha, husa (S. snusha), and for the many alternative forms in the declensions, some of which will presently be specified 1 It is also certain that the very belief in the sacred character of the canon must have tended to preserve the text unchanged in form and substance from the time that it was received in Ceylon till the present day. There is, however, a voluminous literature which has grown around and out of the sacred texts, such as Buddhaghosa s great commentary on them (beginning of the 5th century), and several historical works and their commentaries. In this secondary stage many new words and hybrid grammatical forms, due to what Childers appropriately calls false analogy, have found admission into the language (see Fausboll s Dhammapada, Introduction) ; and the grammarians who at this period appear to have treated of language after the Sanskrit models enrol them in their scheme as correct and legitimate. Though tradition (Mahdvansa, xii. 6 ; Buddhavansa, xxii.) makes the introduction of Buddhism into Burmah contemporaneous with the conversion of Ceylon, there is j every probability that the event took place at a much later period. It must, however, have taken firm root in Burmah at the time that in consequence of religious persecutions Buddhist priests from Ceylon went to Burmah to obtain a copy of the sacred canon and Buddhaghosa s commentary thereon (5th century of our era). Thence an uninterrupted religious intercourse has been kept up between the two countries up to the present, notwith standing which certain discrepancies between the Pali texts of Burmah and those of Ceylon point to the fact that the latter retain older forms and expressions, whereas the former replace these by more modern, more common, or more regular ones (Fausboll, Ten Jdtakas, Introd.). This fact, however, can only be established on a scientific basis when good old copies of grammatical works, both in the Sinhalese and Burmese character, shall have been carefully examined and compared ad hoc. It is certainly true that in Ceylon, where the study of Sanskrit flourishes, and where the people have spoken for upwards of two thousand years an Indo- Aryan idiom, Pali learning has obtained a far firmer and more favourable footing than in Burmah, where the nature of the vernacular places considerable difficulties in the path of the student of the sacred language. As regards the status of Pali in Siam, no trustworthy information is available. It would appear, however, that Pali MSS. from that country invariably written in the Cambodian character are more remarkable for caligraphy than for correctness. Both in Burmah and Ceylon Pali is written in the character of the vernacular. The well- known Manual used at the admission of a novice into the monastic order is almost the only book in which the so-called square character is customary (see Burnouf and Lassen, Essai sur le Pali, Paris, 1826). Since the days of Prinsep the name of Pali has also been given to the various local dialects, and the name of Pali character to the monumental alphabet, or rather alphabets, in which the so-called Asoka inscriptions are written. The language of these records, it is true, comes nearer to the Pali than to any other early Sanskritic idiom ; still it is sufficiently distinct from the language .of Buddhist literature to be treated by itself (see E. Senart, Les Inscriptions de Piyadasi, vol. i., Paris, 1881 ; and G. Biihler, in Z. D. M. G., vol. xxxvii.). Pali has aptly been said to stand phonetically in the same position to Sanskrit as Italian does to Latin. There is the same tendency to smooth down all sounds difficult of utterance, to assimilate or otherwise simplify compound consonants, and to substitute vocalic or nasal for consonantal word-terminations. More especially, Pali lacks the ri and li vowels and the diphthongs ai and au. The Sanskrit vowel ri generally passes in Piili into a,