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A large part of Pali and Sanskrit word-stems are identical in form, differing only in details of inflection. Technical terms from Sanskrit were converted into Pali by a set of conventional phonological transformations. These transformations mimicked a subset of the phonological developments that had occurred in Proto-Pali.
Pali is believed by the Theravada tradition to be the same language as Magadhi, but modern scholars believe this to be unlikely. [citation needed] Pali shows signs of development from several underlying Prakrits as well as some Sanskritisation. The Prakrit of the North-western area of India known as Gāndhāra has come to be called Gāndhārī.
The following criteria were set during the time Sanskrit was given the classical language status by the government of India: [3] I. High antiquity of its early texts/recorded history over a period of 1500-2000 years. II. A body of ancient literature/texts, which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers. III.
The Chinese and Tibetan canons mainly derive from the Sarvastivada, originally written in Sanskrit, of which fragments remain. The texts were translated into Chinese and Tibetan. [5] Theravada Buddhism uses Pali as its main liturgical language and prefers that scripture be studied in the original Pali. [citation needed] Pali is derived from ...
The early history of writing Sanskrit and other languages in ancient India is a problematic topic despite a century of scholarship, states Richard Salomon – an epigraphist and Indologist specializing in Sanskrit and Pali literature. [249]
Mirza Khan's Tuhfat al-hind (1676) names Prakrit among the three kinds of literary languages native to India, the other two being Sanskrit and the vernacular languages. It describes Prakrit as a mixture of Sanskrit and vernacular languages, and adds that Prakrit was "mostly employed in the praise of kings, ministers, and chiefs". [25]
They were, however, written down in various Prakrits other than Pali as well as Sanskrit. Some of those were later translated into Chinese (earliest dating to the late 4th century AD). The surviving Sri Lankan version is the most complete, [9] but was extensively redacted about 1,000 years after Buddha's death, in the 5th or 6th-century CE. [10]
The Pali language is a composite language which draws on various Middle Indo-Aryan languages. [1] Much of the extant Pali literature is from Sri Lanka, which became the headquarters of Theravada for centuries. Most extant Pali literature was written and composed there, though some was also produced in outposts in South India. [2]