Barua Ankur. Pali for Beginners

Hong Kong: MBAIT, MBuddStud, 2009. — 95 p.Баруа Анкур. Язык пали для начинающих (на англ. яз.)The orgin of the Pāli language is rooted in the Prakrits, the vernacular languages, used in northern India during the Middle period of Indian linguistic evolution. Though Pāli is closely related to Sanskrit, but its grammar and structure are simpler. The Traditional Theravadins regard Pāli as the language in which the Buddha (historical – Sakyamuni Buddha) had given his discourses. However, in the opinion of leading linguistic scholars, Pāli was probably a synthetic language created from several vernaculars to make the Buddhist texts comprehensible to Buddhist monks living in different parts of northern India. Pāli language was also used to preserve the Buddhist canon of the Theravada Buddhist tradition, which is regarded as the oldest complete collection of Buddhist texts surviving in an Indian language. As Theravada Buddhism spread to other parts of southern Asia, Pāli as the language of the Buddhist texts spread along with it. Thus, Pāli became a sacred language in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Pāli has been used almost exclusively for Buddhist teachings, although many other religious and literary works related to Buddhism were also written in Pāli. This book is designed to provide the basics of Pāli grammar and vocabulary to enable the reader to understand the discourses of the Buddha in original form.