Pali

Pali (Pāli) is a Prakrit language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of much of the earliest extant literature of Buddhism as collected in the Pāli Canon or Tipiṭaka and is the sacred language of Theravāda Buddhism.

Etymology

The word Pali is used as a name for the language of the Theravada canon. According to the Pali Text Society's Dictionary, the word seems to have its origins in commentarial traditions, wherein the Pāli (in the sense of the line of original text quoted) was distinguished from the commentary or vernacular translation that followed it in the manuscript. As such, the name of the language has caused some debate among scholars of all ages; the spelling of the name also varies, being found with both long "ā" [ɑː] and short "a" [a], and also with either a retroflex [ɭ] or non-retroflex [l] "l" sound. Both the long ā and retroflex ḷ are seen in the ISO 15919/ALA-LC rendering, Pāḷi; however, to this day there is no single, standard spelling of the term, and all four possible spellings can be found in textbooks. R. C. Childers translates the word as "series" and states that the language "bears the epithet in consequence of the perfection of its grammatical structure".

In the 19th century, the British Orientalist Robert Cæsar Childers argued that the true or geographical name of the Pali language was Magadhi Prakrit, and that because pāli means "line, row, series", the early Buddhists extended the meaning of the term to mean "a series of books", so Palibhasa means "language of the texts". However, modern scholarship has regarded Pali as a mix of several Prakrit languages from around the 3rd century BCE, combined together and partially Sanskritized. The closest artifacts to Pali that have been found in India are Edicts of Ashoka found at Gujarat, in the west of India, leading some scholars to associate Pali with this region of western India.

Classification

There is persistent confusion as to the relation of Pāḷi to the vernacular spoken in the ancient kingdom of Magadha, which was located around modern-day Bihār.

Pali, as a Middle Indo-Aryan language, is different from Sanskrit more with regard to its dialectal base than the time of its origin. A number of its morphological and lexical features show that it is not a direct continuation of Ṛgvedic Vedic Sanskrit. Instead it descends from one or more dialects that were, despite many similarities, different from Ṛgvedic.

However, this view is not shared by all scholars. Some, like A.C. Woolner, believe that Pali is derived from Vedic Sanskrit, but not necessarily from Classical Sanskrit.

Early history

Pāli and Paiśācī

Paiśācī is a largely unattested literary language of classical India that is mentioned in Prakrit and Sanskrit grammars of antiquity. It is found grouped with the Prakrit languages, with which it shares some linguistic similarities, but was not considered a spoken language by the early grammarians because it was understood to have been purely a literary language.

In works of Sanskrit poetics such as Daṇḍin's Kavyadarsha, it is also known by the name of Bhūtabhāṣa, an epithet which can be interpreted as 'dead language' (i.e., with no surviving speakers), or bhuta means past and bhasha means language i.e. 'a language spoken in past. Evidence which lends support to this interpretation is that literature in Paiśācī is fragmentary and extremely rare but may once have been common. There is no known complete work in this language; however, several scholars specializing in Indology such as Sten Konow, Felix Lacôte and Alfred Master, have argued that Paiśācī was the ancient name for Pāli.

Theravada Buddhism

Many Theravada sources refer to the Pali language as "Magadhan" or the "language of Magadha". This identification first appears in the commentaries, and may have been an attempt by Buddhists to associate themselves more closely with the Maurya Empire. The Buddha taught in Magadha, but the four most important places in his life are all outside of it. It is likely that he taught in several closely related dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan, which had a high degree of mutual intelligibility. There is no attested dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan with all the features of Pali. Pali has some commonalities with both the western Ashokan Edicts at Girnar in Saurashtra, and the Central-Western Prakrit found in the eastern Hathigumpha inscription. The similarities of the Saurashtran inscriptions to the Hathigumpha inscription may be misleading because the latter suggests the Ashokan scribe may not have translated the material he received from Magadha into the vernacular.

Whatever the relationship of the Buddha's speech to Pali, the Canon was eventually transcribed and preserved entirely in it, while the commentarial tradition that accompanied it (according to the information provided by Buddhaghosa) was translated into Sinhalese and preserved in local languages for several generations. In Sri Lanka, Pali is thought to have entered into a period of decline ending around the 4th or 5th century (as Sanskrit rose in prominence, and simultaneously, as Buddhism's adherents became a smaller portion of the subcontinent), but ultimately survived. The work of Buddhaghosa was largely responsible for its reemergence as an important scholarly language in Buddhist thought. The Visuddhimagga, and the other commentaries that Buddhaghosa compiled, codified and condensed the Sinhalese commentarial tradition that had been preserved and expanded in Sri Lanka since the 3rd century BCE.

Early western views

T. W. Rhys Davids in his book Buddhist India, and Wilhelm Geiger in his book Pāli Literature and Language, suggested that Pali may have originated as a lingua franca or common language of culture among people who used differing dialects in North India, used at the time of the Buddha and employed by him. Another scholar states that at that time it was "a refined and elegant vernacular of all Aryan-speaking people". Modern scholarship has not arrived at a consensus on the issue; there are a variety of conflicting theories with supporters and detractors. After the death of the Buddha, Pali may have evolved among Buddhists out of the language of the Buddha as a new artificial language. R. C. Childers, who held to the theory that Pali was Old Magadhi, wrote: "Had Gautama never preached, it is unlikely that Magadhese would have been distinguished from the many other vernaculars of Hindustan, except perhaps by an inherent grace and strength which make it a sort of Tuscan among the Prakrits."

According to K. R. Norman, it is likely that the viharas in North India had separate collections of material, preserved in the local dialect. In the early period it is likely that no degree of translation was necessary in communicating this material to other areas. Around the time of Ashoka there had been more linguistic divergence, and an attempt was made to assemble all the material. It is possible that a language quite close to the Pali of the canon emerged as a result of this process as a compromise of the various dialects in which the earliest material had been preserved, and this language functioned as a lingua franca among Eastern Buddhists in India from then on. Following this period, the language underwent a small degree of Sanskritisation (i.e., MIA bamhana > brahmana, tta > tva in some cases).

Modern scholarship

Bhikkhu Bodhi, summarizing the current state of scholarship, states that the language is "closely related to the language (or, more likely, the various regional dialects) that the Buddha himself spoke". He goes on to write:

Scholars regard this language as a hybrid showing features of several Prakrit dialects used around the third century BCE, subjected to a partial process of Sanskritization. While the language is not identical to what Buddha himself would have spoken, it belongs to the same broad language family as those he might have used and originates from the same conceptual matrix. This language thus reflects the thought-world that the Buddha inherited from the wider Indian culture into which he was born, so that its words capture the subtle nuances of that thought-world.

— Bhikkhu Bodhi

According to A. K. Warder, the Pali language is a Prakrit language used in a region of Western India. Warder associates Pali with the Indian realm (janapada) of Avanti, where the Sthavira nikāya was centered. Following the initial split in the Buddhist community, the Sthavira nikāya became influential in Western and South India while the Mahāsāṃghika branch became influential in Central and East India. Akira Hirakawa and Paul Groner also associate Pali with Western India and the Sthavira nikāya, citing the Saurashtran inscriptions, which are linguistically closest to the Pali language.

Pali today

Pali died out as a literary language in mainland India in the fourteenth century but survived elsewhere until the eighteenth. Today Pali is studied mainly to gain access to Buddhist scriptures, and is frequently chanted in a ritual context. The secular literature of Pali historical chronicles, medical texts, and inscriptions is also of great historical importance. The great centers of Pali learning remain in the Theravada nations of Southeast Asia: Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Since the 19th century, various societies for the revival of Pali studies in India have promoted awareness of the language and its literature, including the Maha Bodhi Society founded by Anagarika Dhammapala.

In Europe, the Pali Text Society has been a major force in promoting the study of Pali by Western scholars since its founding in 1881. Based in the United Kingdom, the society publishes romanized Pali editions, along with many English translations of these sources. In 1869, the first Pali Dictionary was published using the research of Robert Caesar Childers, one of the founding members of the Pali Text Society. It was the first Pali translated text in English and was published in 1872. Childers' dictionary later received the Volney Prize in 1876.

The Pali Text Society was founded in part to compensate for the very low level of funds allocated to Indology in late 19th-century England and the rest of the UK; incongruously, the citizens of the UK were not nearly so robust in Sanskrit and Prakrit language studies as Germany, Russia, and even Denmark. Even without the inspiration of colonial holdings such as the former British occupation of Sri Lanka and Burma, institutions such as the Danish Royal Library have built up major collections of Pali manuscripts, and major traditions of Pali studies.

Virtually every word in Pāḷi has cognates in the other Middle Indo-Aryan languages, the Prakrits. The relationship to Vedic Sanskrit is less direct and more complicated; the Prakrits were descended from Old Indo-Aryan vernaculars. Historically, influence between Pali and Sanskrit has been felt in both directions. The Pali language's resemblance to Sanskrit is often exaggerated by comparing it to later Sanskrit compositions – which were written centuries after Sanskrit ceased to be a living language, and are influenced by developments in Middle Indic, including the direct borrowing of a portion of the Middle Indic lexicon; whereas, a good deal of later Pali technical terminology has been borrowed from the vocabulary of equivalent disciplines in Sanskrit, either directly or with certain phonological adaptations.

Post-canonical Pali also possesses a few loan-words from local languages where Pali was used (e.g. Sri Lankans adding Sinhalese words to Pali). These usages differentiate the Pali found in the Suttapiṭaka from later compositions such as the Pali commentaries on the canon and folklore (e.g., commentaries on the Jataka tales), and comparative study (and dating) of texts on the basis of such loan-words is now a specialized field unto itself.

Pali was not exclusively used to convey the teachings of the Buddha, as can be deduced from the existence of a number of secular texts, such as books of medical science/instruction, in Pali. However, scholarly interest in the language has been focused upon religious and philosophical literature, because of the unique window it opens on one phase in the development of Buddhism.

Although Sanskrit was said in the Brahmanical tradition to be the unchanging language spoken by the gods, in which each word had an inherent significance, this view of language was not shared in the early Buddhist tradition, in which words were only conventional and mutable signs. This view of language naturally extended to Pali, and may have contributed to its usage (as an approximation or standardization of local Middle Indic dialects) in place of Sanskrit. However, by the time of the compilation of the Pali commentaries (4th or 5th century), Pali was regarded as the natural language, the root language of all beings.

Comparable to Ancient Egyptian, Latin or Hebrew in the mystic traditions of the West, Pali recitations were often thought to have a supernatural power (which could be attributed to their meaning, the character of the reciter, or the qualities of the language itself), and in the early strata of Buddhist literature we can already see Pali dhāraṇīs used as charms, as, for example, against the bite of snakes. Many people in Theravada cultures still believe that taking a vow in Pali has a special significance, and, as one example of the supernatural power assigned to chanting in the language, the recitation of the vows of Aṅgulimāla are believed to alleviate the pain of childbirth in Sri Lanka. In Thailand, the chanting of a portion of the Abhidhammapiṭaka is believed to be beneficial to the recently departed, and this ceremony routinely occupies as much as seven working days. Interestingly, there is nothing in the latter text that relates to this subject, and the origins of the custom are unclear.

Vowels

Long and short vowels are only contrastive in open syllables; in closed syllables, all vowels are always short. Short and long e and o are in complementary distribution: the short variants occur only in closed syllables, the long variants occur only in open syllables. Short and long e and o are therefore not distinct phonemes.

A sound called anusvāra (Skt.; Pali: nigghahita), represented by the letter ṁ (ISO 15919) or ṃ (ALA-LC) in romanization, and by a raised dot in most traditional alphabets, originally marked the fact that the preceding vowel was nasalized. That is, aṁ, iṁ and uṁ represented [ã], [ĩ] and [ũ]. In many traditional pronunciations, however, the anusvāra is pronounced more strongly, like the velar nasal [ŋ], so that these sounds are pronounced instead [ãŋ], [ĩŋ] and [ũŋ]. However pronounced, ṁ never follows a long vowel; ā, ī and ū are converted to the corresponding short vowels when ṁ is added to a stem ending in a long vowel, e.g. kathā + ṁ becomes kathaṁ, not *kathāṁ, devī + ṁ becomes deviṁ, not *devīṁ.

Consonants

The table below lists the consonants of Pali. In bold is the transliteration of the letter in traditional romanization, and in square brackets its pronunciation transcribed in the IPA.

Of the sounds listed above only the three consonants in parentheses, ṅ, ḷ, and ḷh, are not distinct phonemes in Pali: ṅ only occurs before velar stops, while ḷ and ḷh are allophones of single ḍ and ḍh occurring between vowels.

Pali is a highly inflected language, in which almost every word contains, besides the root conveying the basic meaning, one or more affixes (usually suffixes) which modify the meaning in some way. Nouns are inflected for gender, number, and case; verbal inflections convey information about person, number, tense and mood.

Nominal inflection

Pali nouns inflect for three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and two numbers (singular and plural). The nouns also, in principle, display eight cases: nominative or paccatta case, vocative, accusative or upayoga case, instrumental or karaṇa case, dative or sampadāna case, ablative, genitive or sāmin case, and locative or bhumma case; however, in many instances, two or more of these cases are identical in form; this is especially true of the genitive and dative cases.

a-stems

a-stems, whose uninflected stem ends in short a (/ə/), are either masculine or neuter. The masculine and neuter forms differ only in the nominative, vocative, and accusative cases.

ā-stems

Nouns ending in ā (/aː/) are almost always feminine.

i-stems and u-stems

i-stems and u-stems are either masculine or neuter. The masculine and neuter forms differ only in the nominative and accusative cases. The vocative has the same form as the nominative.

From the opening of the Dhammapada:

Manopubbaṅgamā dhammā, manoseṭṭhā manomayā;

Manasā ce paduṭṭhena, bhāsati vā karoti vā,

Tato naṁ dukkhaṁ anveti, cakkaṁ'va vahato padaṁ.

Element for element gloss:

Mano-pubbaṅ-gam=ā dhamm=ā, mano-seṭṭh=ā mano-may=ā;

Mind-before-going=m.pl.nom. dharma=m.pl.nom., mind-foremost=m.pl.nom. mind-made=m.pl.nom.

Manas=ā ce paduṭṭh=ena, bhāsa=ti vā karo=ti vā,

Mind=n.sg.inst. if corrupted=n.sg.inst. speak=3.sg.pr. either act=3.sg.pr. or,

Ta=to naṁ dukkhaṁ anv-e=ti, cakkaṁ 'va vahat=o pad=aṁ.

That=from him suffering after-go=3.sg.pr., wheel as carrying(beast)=m.sg.gen. foot=n.sg.acc.

The three compounds in the first line literally mean:

manopubbaṅgama "whose precursor is mind", "having mind as a fore-goer or leader"

manoseṭṭha "whose foremost member is mind", "having mind as chief"

manomaya "consisting of mind" or "made by mind"

The literal meaning is therefore: "The dharmas have mind as their leader, mind as their chief, are made of/by mind. If [someone] either speaks or acts with a corrupted mind, from that [cause] suffering goes after him, as the wheel [of a cart follows] the foot of a draught animal."

A slightly freer translation by Acharya Buddharakkhita

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.

If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him

like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

The Indo-Aryan languages are commonly assigned to three major groups – Old, Middle and New Indo-Aryan. The classification reflects consecutive stages in a common linguistic development, but is not merely a matter of chronology: Classical Sanskrit, as a codified derivate of Vedic Sanskrit, remains mostly representative of the Old Indo-Aryan stage, even though it continued to flourish at the same time as the Middle Indo-Aryan languages. Conversely, a number of the morphophonological and lexical features of the Middle Indo-Aryan languages show that they are not direct continuations of Ṛvedic Sanskrit, the main base of Classical Sanskrit. Instead they descend from other dialects similar to, but in some ways more archaic than Rigvedic.

Pali and Sanskrit are very closely related and the common characteristics of Pali and Sanskrit were always easily recognized by those in India who were familiar with both. Indeed, a very large proportion 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. Because of the prevalence of these transformations, it is not always possible to tell whether a given Pali word is a part of the old Prakrit lexicon, or a transformed borrowing from Sanskrit. The existence of a Sanskrit word regularly corresponding to a Pali word is not always secure evidence of the Pali etymology, since, in some cases, artificial Sanskrit words were created by back-formation from Prakrit words.

The following phonological processes are not intended as an exhaustive description of the historical changes which produced Pali from its Old Indic ancestor, but rather are a summary of the most common phonological equations between Sanskrit and Pali, with no claim to completeness.

Vowels and diphthongs

• Sanskrit ai and au always monophthongize to Pali e and o, respectively

Examples: maitrī → mettā, auṣadha → osadha

• Sanskrit aya and ava likewise often reduce to Pali e and o

Examples: dhārayati → dhāreti, avatāra → otāra, bhavati → hoti

• Sanskrit avi becomes Pali e (i.e. avi → ai → e)

Example: sthavira → thera

• Sanskrit ṛ appears in Pali as a, i or u, often agreeing with the vowel in the following syllable. ṛ also sometimes becomes u after labial consonants.

Examples: kṛta → kata, tṛṣṇa → taṇha, smṛti → sati, ṛṣi → isi, dṛṣṭi → diṭṭhi, ṛddhi → iddhi, ṛju → uju, spṛṣṭa → phuṭṭha, vṛddha → vuddha

• Sanskrit long vowels are shortened before a sequence of two following consonants.

Examples: kṣānti → khanti, rājya → rajja, īśvara → issara, tīrṇa → tiṇṇa, pūrva → pubba

Consonants

Sound changes

• The Sanskrit sibilants ś, ṣ, and s merge as Pali s

Examples: śaraṇa → saraṇa, doṣa → dosa

• The Sanskrit stops ḍ and ḍh become ḷ and ḷh between vowels (as in Vedic)

Example: cakravāḍa → cakkavāḷa, virūḍha → virūḷha

Assimilations

General rules

• Many assimilations of one consonant to a neighboring consonant occurred in the development of Pali, producing a large number of geminate (double) consonants. Since aspiration of a geminate consonant is only phonetically detectable on the last consonant of a cluster, geminate kh, gh, ch, jh, ṭh, ḍh, th, dh, ph and bh appear as kkh, ggh, cch, jjh, ṭṭh, ḍḍh, tth, ddh, pph and bbh, not as khkh, ghgh etc.
• When assimilation would produce a geminate consonant (or a sequence of unaspirated stop+aspirated stop) at the beginning of a word, the initial geminate is simplified to a single consonant.

Examples: prāṇa → pāṇa (not ppāṇa), sthavira → thera (not tthera), dhyāna → jhāna (not jjhāna), jñāti → ñāti (not ññāti)

• When assimilation would produce a sequence of three consonants in the middle of a word, geminates are simplified until there are only two consonants in sequence.

Examples: uttrāsa → uttāsa (not utttāsa), mantra → manta (not mantta), indra → inda (not indda), vandhya → vañjha (not vañjjha)

• The sequence vv resulting from assimilation changes to bb

Example: sarva → savva → sabba, pravrajati → pavvajati → pabbajati, divya → divva → dibba, nirvāṇa → nivvāṇa → nibbāna

Total assimilation

Total assimilation, where one sound becomes identical to a neighboring sound, is of two types: progressive, where the assimilated sound becomes identical to the following sound; and regressive, where it becomes identical to the preceding sound.

Regressive assimilations

• Internal visarga assimilates to a following voiceless stop or sibilant

Examples: duḥkṛta → dukkata, duḥkha → dukkha, duḥprajña → duppañña, niḥkrodha (=niṣkrodha) → nikkodha, niḥpakva (=niṣpakva) → nippakka, niḥśoka → nissoka, niḥsattva → nissatta

• In a sequence of two dissimilar Sanskrit stops, the first stop assimilates to the second stop

Examples: vimukti → vimutti, dugdha → duddha, utpāda → uppāda, pudgala → puggala, udghoṣa → ugghosa, adbhuta → abbhuta, śabda → sadda

• In a sequence of two dissimilar nasals, the first nasal assimilates to the second nasal

Example: unmatta → ummatta, pradyumna → pajjunna

• j assimilates to a following ñ (i.e., jñ becomes ññ)

Examples: prajñā → paññā, jñāti → ñāti

• The Sanskrit liquid consonants r and l assimilate to a following stop, nasal, sibilant, or v

Examples: mārga → magga, karma → kamma, varṣa → vassa, kalpa → kappa, sarva → savva → sabba

• r assimilates to a following l

Examples: durlabha → dullabha, nirlopa → nillopa

• d sometimes assimilates to a following v, producing vv → bb

Examples: udvigna → uvvigga → ubbigga, dvādaśa → bārasa (beside dvādasa)

• t and d may assimilate to a following s or y when a morpheme boundary intervenes

Examples: ut+sava → ussava, ud+yāna → uyyāna

Progressive assimilations

• Nasals sometimes assimilate to a preceding stop (in other cases epenthesis occurs)

Examples: agni → aggi, ātman → atta, prāpnoti → pappoti, śaknoti → sakkoti

• m assimilates to an initial sibilant

Examples: smarati → sarati, smṛti → sati

• Nasals assimilate to a preceding stop+sibilant cluster, which then develops in the same way as such clusters without following nasals

Examples: tīkṣṇa → tikṣa → tikkha, lakṣmī → lakṣī →lakkhī

• The Sanskrit liquid consonants r and l assimilate to a preceding stop, nasal, sibilant, or v

Examples: prāṇa → pāṇa, grāma → gāma, śrāvaka → sāvaka, agra → agga, indra → inda, pravrajati → pavvajati → pabbajati, aśru → assu

• y assimilates to preceding non-dental/retroflex stops or nasals

Examples: cyavati → cavati, jyotiṣ → joti, rājya → rajja, matsya → macchya → maccha, lapsyate → lacchyate → lacchati, abhyāgata → abbhāgata, ākhyāti → akkhāti, saṁkhyā → saṅkhā (but also saṅkhyā), ramya → ramma

• y assimilates to preceding non-initial v, producing vv → bb

Example: divya → divva → dibba, veditavya → veditavva → veditabba, bhāvya → bhavva → bhabba

• y and v assimilate to any preceding sibilant, producing ss

Examples: paśyati → passati, śyena → sena, aśva → assa, īśvara → issara, kariṣyati → karissati, tasya → tassa, svāmin → sāmī

• v sometimes assimilates to a preceding stop

Examples: pakva → pakka, catvāri → cattāri, sattva → satta, dhvaja → dhaja

Partial and mutual assimilation

• Sanskrit sibilants before a stop assimilate to that stop, and if that stop is not already aspirated, it becomes aspirated; e.g. śc, st, ṣṭ and sp become cch, tth, ṭṭh and pph

Examples: paścāt → pacchā, asti → atthi, stava → thava, śreṣṭha → seṭṭha, aṣṭa → aṭṭha, sparśa → phassa

• In sibilant-stop-liquid sequences, the liquid is assimilated to the preceding consonant, and the cluster behaves like sibilant-stop sequences; e.g. str and ṣṭr become tth and ṭṭh

Examples: śāstra → śasta → sattha, rāṣṭra → raṣṭa → raṭṭha

• t and p become c before s, and the sibilant assimilates to the preceding sound as an aspirate (i.e., the sequences ts and ps become cch)

Examples: vatsa → vaccha, apsaras → accharā

• A sibilant assimilates to a preceding k as an aspirate (i.e., the sequence kṣ becomes kkh)

Examples: bhikṣu → bhikkhu, kṣānti → khanti

• Any dental or retroflex stop or nasal followed by y converts to the corresponding palatal sound, and the y assimilates to this new consonant, i.e. ty, thy, dy, dhy, ny become cc, cch, jj, jjh, ññ; likewise ṇy becomes ññ. Nasals preceding a stop that becomes palatal share this change.

Examples: tyajati → cyajati → cajati, satya → sacya → sacca, mithyā → michyā → micchā, vidyā → vijyā → vijjā, madhya → majhya → majjha, anya → añya → añña, puṇya → puñya → puñña, vandhya → vañjhya → vañjjha → vañjha

• The sequence mr becomes mb, via the epenthesis of a stop between the nasal and liquid, followed by assimilation of the liquid to the stop and subsequent simplification of the resulting geminate.

Examples: āmra → ambra → amba, tāmra → tamba

Epenthesis

An epenthetic vowel is sometimes inserted between certain consonant-sequences. As with ṛ, the vowel may be a, i, or u, depending on the influence of a neighboring consonant or of the vowel in the following syllable. i is often found near i, y, or palatal consonants; u is found near u, v, or labial consonants.

• Sequences of stop + nasal are sometimes separated by a or u

Example: ratna → ratana, padma → paduma (u influenced by labial m)

• The sequence sn may become sin initially

Examples: snāna → sināna, sneha → sineha

• i may be inserted between a consonant and l

Examples: kleśa → kilesa, glāna → gilāna, mlāyati → milāyati, ślāghati → silāghati

• An epenthetic vowel may be inserted between an initial sibilant and r

Example: śrī → sirī

• The sequence ry generally becomes riy (i influenced by following y), but is still treated as a two-consonant sequence for the purposes of vowel-shortening

Example: ārya → arya → ariya, sūrya → surya → suriya, vīrya → virya → viriya

• a or i is inserted between r and h

Example: arhati → arahati, garhā → garahā, barhiṣ → barihisa

• There is sporadic epenthesis between other consonant sequences

Examples: caitya → cetiya (not cecca), vajra → vajira (not vajja)

Other changes

• Any Sanskrit sibilant before a nasal becomes a sequence of nasal followed by h, i.e. ṣṇ, sn and sm become ṇh, nh, and mh

Examples: tṛṣṇa → taṇha, uṣṇīṣa → uṇhīsa, asmi → amhi

• The sequence śn becomes ñh, due to assimilation of the n to the preceding palatal sibilant

Example: praśna → praśña → pañha

• The sequences hy and hv undergo metathesis

Examples: jihvā → jivhā, gṛhya → gayha, guhya → guyha

• h undergoes metathesis with a following nasal

Example: gṛhṇāti → gaṇhāti

• y is geminated between e and a vowel

Examples: śreyas → seyya, Maitreya → Metteyya

• Voiced aspirates such as bh and gh on rare occasions become h

Examples: bhavati → hoti, -ebhiṣ → -ehi, laghu → lahu

• Dental and retroflex sounds sporadically change into one another

Examples: jñāna → ñāṇa (not ñāna), dahati → ḍahati (beside Pali dahati) nīḍa → nīla (not nīḷa), sthāna → ṭhāna (not thāna), duḥkṛta → dukkaṭa (beside Pali dukkata)

Exceptions

There are several notable exceptions to the rules above; many of them are common Prakrit words rather than borrowings from Sanskrit.

• ārya → ayya (beside ariya)
• guru → garu (adj.) (beside guru (n.))
• puruṣa → purisa (not purusa)
• vṛkṣa → rukṣa → rukkha (not vakkha)

Alphabet with diacritics

Emperor Ashoka erected a number of pillars with his edicts in at least three regional Prakrit languages in Brahmi script, all of which are quite similar to Pali. Historically, the first written record of the Pali canon is believed to have been composed in Sri Lanka, based on a prior oral tradition. As per the Mahavamsa (the chronicle of Sri Lanka), due to a major famine in the country Buddhist monks wrote down the Pali canon during the time of King Vattagamini in 100 BC. The transmission of written Pali has retained a universal system of alphabetic values, but has expressed those values in a stunning variety of actual scripts.

In Sri Lanka, Pali texts were recorded in Sinhala script. Other local scripts, most prominently Khmer, Burmese, and in modern times Thai (since 1893), Devanāgarī and Mon script (Mon State, Burma) have been used to record Pali.

Since the 19th century, Pali has also been written in the Roman script. An alternate scheme devised by Frans Velthuis, called the Velthuis scheme (see § Text in ASCII) allows for typing without diacritics using plain ASCII methods, but is arguably less readable than the standard IAST system, which uses diacritical marks.

The Pali alphabetical order is as follows:

• a ā i ī u ū e o ṃ k kh g gh ṅ c ch j jh ñ ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ t th d dh n p ph b bh m y r l ḷ v s h

ḷh, although a single sound, is written with ligature of ḷ and h.

Transliteration on computers

There are several fonts to use for Pali transliteration. However, older ASCII fonts such as Leedsbit PaliTranslit, Times_Norman, Times_CSX+, Skt Times, Vri RomanPali CN/CB etc., are not recommendable since they are not compatible with one another and technically out of date. On the contrary, fonts based on the Unicode standard are recommended because Unicode seems to be the future for all fonts and also because they are easily portable to one another.

However, not all Unicode fonts contain the necessary characters. To properly display all the diacritic marks used for romanized Pali (or for that matter, Sanskrit), a Unicode font must contain the following character ranges:

• Basic Latin: U+0000 – U+007F
• Latin-1 Supplement: U+0080 – U+00FF
• Latin Extended-A: U+0100 – U+017F
• Latin Extended-B: U+0180 – U+024F
• Latin Extended Additional: U+1E00 – U+1EFF

Some Unicode fonts freely available for typesetting Romanized Pali are as follows:

• The Pali Text Society recommends VU-Times and Gandhari Unicode for Windows and Linux Computers.
• The Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library recommends Times Ext Roman, and provides links to several Unicode diacritic Windows and Mac fonts usable for typing Pali together with ratings and installation instructions. It also provides macros for typing diacritics in OpenOffice and MS Office.
• SIL: International provides Charis SIL and Charis SIL Compact, Doulos SIL, Gentium, Gentium Basic, Gentium Book Basic fonts. Of them, Charis SIL, Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic have all 4 styles (regular, italic, bold, bold-italic); so can provide publication quality typesetting.
• Libertine Openfont Project provides the Linux Libertine font (4 serif styles and many Opentype features) and Linux Biolinum (4 sans-serif styles) at the Sourceforge.
• Junicode (short for Junius-Unicode) is a Unicode font for medievalists, but it provides all diacritics for typing Pali. It has 4 styles and some Opentype features such as Old Style for numerals.
• Thryomanes includes all the Roman-alphabet characters available in Unicode along with a subset of the most commonly used Greek and Cyrillic characters, and is available in normal, italic, bold, and bold italic.
• GUST (Polish TeX User Group) provides Latin Modern and TeX Gyre fonts. Each font has 4 styles, with the former finding most acceptance among the LaTeX users while the latter is a relatively new family. Of the latter, each typeface in the following families has nearly 1250 glyphs and is available in PostScript, TeX and OpenType formats.
  • The TeX Gyre Adventor family of sans serif fonts is based on the URW Gothic L family. The original font, ITC Avant Garde Gothic, was designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase in 1970.
  • The TeX Gyre Bonum family of serif fonts is based on the URW Bookman L family. The original font, Bookman or Bookman Old Style, was designed by Alexander Phemister in 1860.
  • The TeX Gyre Chorus is a font based on the URW Chancery L Medium Italic font. The original, ITC Zapf Chancery, was designed in 1979 by Hermann Zapf.
  • The TeX Gyre Cursor family of monospace serif fonts is based on the URW Nimbus Mono L family. The original font, Courier, was designed by Howard G. (Bud) Kettler in 1955.
  • The TeX Gyre Heros family of sans serif fonts is based on the URW Nimbus Sans L family. The original font, Helvetica, was designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger.
  • The TeX Gyre Pagella family of serif fonts is based on the URW Palladio L family. The original font, Palatino, was designed by Hermann Zapf in the 1940s.
  • The TeX Gyre Schola family of serif fonts is based on the URW Century Schoolbook L family. The original font, Century Schoolbook, was designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1919.
  • The TeX Gyre Termes family of serif fonts is based on the Nimbus Roman No9 L family. The original font, Times Roman, was designed by Stanley Morison together with Starling Burgess and Victor Lardent.

• John Smith provides IndUni Opentype fonts, based upon URW++ fonts. Of them:
  • IndUni-C is Courier-lookalike;
  • IndUni-H is Helvetica-lookalike;
  • IndUni-N is New Century Schoolbook-lookalike;
  • IndUni-P is Palatino-lookalike;
  • IndUni-T is Times-lookalike;
  • IndUni-CMono is Courier-lookalike but monospaced;
• An English Buddhist monk titled Bhikkhu Pesala provides some Pali OpenType fonts he has designed himself. Of them:
  • Akkhara has been discontinued.
  • Cankama is a Gothic, Black Letter script. Regular style only.
  • "Carita" is a Small Caps font with matching glyphs for Basic Greek. Regular and Bold styles.
  • Garava was designed for body text with a generous x-height and economical copyfit. It includes Petite Caps (as OpenType Features), and Heavy styles besides the usual four styles (regular, italic, bold, bold italic).
  • Guru is another font family for body text with OpenType features. Regular, italic, bold and bold italic styles.
  • Hattha is a hand-writing font. Regular, italic, and bold styles.
  • Kabala is a distinctive Sans Serif typeface designed for display text or headings. Regular, italic, bold and bold italic styles.
  • Lekhana is a Zapf Chancery clone, a flowing script that can be used for correspondence or body text. Regular, italic, bold and bold italic styles.
  • Mandala is designed for display text or headings. Regular, italic, bold and bold italic styles.
  • Pali is a clone of Hermann Zapf's Palatino. Regular, italic, bold and bold italic styles.
  • Odana is a calligraphic brush font suitable for headlines, titles, or short texts where a less formal appearance is wanted. Regular style only.
  • Talapanna and Talapatta are clones of Goudy Bertham, with decorative gothic capitals and extra ligatures in the Private Use Area. These two are different only in decorative gothic capitals in the Private Use Area. Regular and bold styles.
  • Veluvana is another brush calligraphic font but basic Greek glyphs are taken from Guru. Regular style only.
  • Verajja is derived from Bitstream Vera. Regular, italic, bold and bold italic styles.
  • VerajjaPDA is a cut-down version of Verajja without symbols. For use on PDA devices. Regular, italic, bold and bold italic styles.
  • He also provides some Pali keyboards for Windows XP.
• The font section of Alanwood's Unicode Resources have links to several general purpose fonts that can be used for Pali typing if they cover the character ranges above.

Some of the latest fonts coming with Windows 7 can also be used to type transliterated Pali: Arial, Calibri, Cambria, Courier New, Microsoft Sans Serif, Segoe UI, Segoe UI Light, Segoe UI Semibold, Tahoma, and Times New Roman. And some of them have 4 styles each hence usable in professional typesetting: Arial, Calibri and Segoe UI are sans-serif fonts, Cambria and Times New Roman are serif fonts and Courier New is a monospace font.

Text in ASCII

The Velthuis scheme was originally developed in 1991 by Frans Velthuis for use with his "devnag" Devanāgarī font, designed for the TeX typesetting system. This system of representing Pali diacritical marks has been used in some websites and discussion lists. However, as the Web itself and email software slowly evolve towards the Unicode encoding standard, this system has become almost unnecessary and obsolete.

The following table compares various conventional renderings and shortcut key assignments: