Resources for Learning Pali

Preamble

While there are many pages with resources for learning Pali, there is very little available on the web today to ease the transition from (reliance upon) Romanized phonetics to indigenous scripts. In order to make Pali seem easier to learn, many websites and textbooks seem to suggest that the Roman alphabet is all that you'll ever need to know. I hope I'm not the first to tell you this is not true.

The Pali language has not one script but many; the fact that there are so many scripts is hardly a pretext for learning none of them --but I have received some messages with precisely this complaint. The greatest number of books and manuscripts are found in Sinhalese, Burmese, Khmer-Muul, or closely related scripts of South-East Asia (Lao-Dhamma, Lanna, etc.). There are also some modern Indian publications that typeset Pali in Devanagari (i.e., the same script used for modern Hindi and Sanskrit), and, of course, the modern vernacular script of Thailand has been adapted to print Pali (although the classical tradition used Lanna and Khom in Thailand's North and South respectively).

Learning at least one traditional Pali system of orthography will actually make understanding the language easier, and learning several different systems of writing will open up a vast world of published materials to you --not to mention the beautiful and ancient traditions of palm-leaf manuscripts and stone epigraphy.

A "Rosetta Stone" of Four Palic Scripts

This "Rosetta Stone" file will provide a basic overview of how three Asian writing systems relate to one-another (plus Pali Romanization), along with a short quotation from a Pali sutta to be comparatively examined with the Romanized phonetics provided. While this may seem daunting at first, consider that most of what you need to know is here displayed on a single page.

There's a further table of Pali alphabets provided here, and, by making use of these files in conjunction with the samples (from the Loka Sutta) provided below, you will gain a general appreciation for the task at hand in learning to read and write Pali with these systems of orthography. This is not an exhaustive manual for the writing systems in question, however, this website as a whole provides sufficient information so as to enable you to make use of vernacular textbooks (viz., for modern Khmer, Burmese, etc.) with a degree of certainty as to how the writing systems apply to the classical language (and, e.g., an awareness of the differences between modern and classical phonetic values assigned to the glyphs). There are certainly some drawback to this method, and I recall sitting down with a copy of Learn Yourself Sinhalese [sic!] years ago, and trying to figure out how the modern ligatures compared to the classical in writing Pali (as opposed to Vernacular Sinhala).

For those who would demand more, I can only lament that to do so would require some degree of "project funding"; when this website was first published, it was the only resource even broaching the issue, but to undertake writing a really compendious treatment (gratis) would be an onerous task, likely depriving me of the ability to feed myself for several months.

Three "Renditions" of the Loka Sutta

The following set of three files will also be useful to beginners: each presents an excerpt of text from the Loka Sutta (with an English translation) in a different South East Asian script, with parallel Romanized phonetics on the right. Thus, for practise, you might want to download all three, and compare them. The translation itself is hardly literal, and perhaps more provocative than precise, just to give students something to think about.

Phonology in Praxis

Every Pali textbook opens with a description the language's phonology in theory, but few students will be aware of how huge a gap there is between those theoretical values and what they will encounter in Pali recitation, conversation, and cognates. A large part of this will makes sense (and can only make sense) if you understand the way in which the same systems of orthography will inconsistently express classical and vernacular phonetics; thus, (e.g.) while Cambodian textbooks rightly claim that the vernacular language is "entirely phonetic", and Pali textbooks claim that the classical language is "entirely phonetic", there are two different systems of interpretation applied to one system of orthography (viz., Khmer/Khom, in this instance) to yield two conflicting sets of phonetic values.

The influence of the Mon and Khmer scripts spread over a huge range of mainland South-East Asia, adapting to serve as the medium of an amazing array of (vernacular) languages; when used to write Pali, the great variety of these writing systems are revealed as stylistic variations on one and the same "system" inherited from India (with two predominant sources of inspiration in the Mon and Khmer respectively) but with very different phonetic assumptions arising from the habit of reading the same script as used for the local vernacular. Thus, e.g., in modern Thai orthography, the reader has to interpret a Pali loan-word quite differently from a word of Thai origin (or, indeed, a word of Khmer origin); to pronounce one as the other would sound absurd --nevertheless, many absurdities have crept into the pronunciation of Pali in Thailand. Generally, the modernization of orthography has exacerbated the tendency to conflate the classical and the vernacular (in Thailand); the old Lanna and Khom scripts helped to keep the pronunciation of "proper Pali" discrete from its cognates in the spoken language. Of course, many Europeans have a similar problem with Romanized Pali, e.g., mis-pronouncing the Pali digraph "th" as indicating the English eth (ð), the Greek theta (θ), or Norse thorn (Þ); but in Romanized Pali "th" always indicates a "hard t" sound of the aspirated, dental variety. I continue to meet Western PhD candidates who cannot pronounce "Theravada" correctly. I would imagine that if no-one in their PhD program has informed them that θɛrəvɑdə is wrong, their thesis examiner may owe them a refund.

This suffices to say that many of the problems of phonology (in praxis) are closely related to issues of orthography --as the latter often entails phonetic assumptions that either directly stem from the local vernacular, or are related to some prior stage of the language's development and interchange with spoken and written forms in the region.

While I've called these phonological "problems", they aren't "problems" at all if you're properly prepared for them. With practice, you can simply adapt to hear "gissami" and interpret it as "gacchāmi" (in this instance, the monk speaking would be Burmese); but the available Pali textbooks do little or nothing to help the student prepare to deal with these issues, and it is rare to find a vernacular language textbook written by someone with enough specialized knowledge to say anything useful about Pali.

Worse, many Westerners (and Westernized Asians) seem to expect that monastic orthodoxy can be expected to adapt to the aesthetic norms set out by the "Western tradition" (viz., A.K. Warder). The study of the language as it is has been perceived to be of little importance compared to the dogmatic assertion of what it "should be". What Western Buddhists imagine they know about the language, and assert as a trans-historical ideal, is certainly not informed by the Pali language's own grammatical and prosodical literature; we should look to the latter literature if we want to speak of an historical ideal, or else direct our attention to the real (in all its quizzical imperfections) as we encounter it in the extant, indigenous traditions.

Although the observations I can offer below are by no means exhaustive (and, NB, I hope to expand this part of the website over time), they may be numerous enough to seem rather discouraging (depending upon the attitude of the student). If you have "grown up" on Romanized Pali, imagining that you would hear the langauge (in Asia) the way it looks on the printed page of European editions, you may well wonder how it is possible to undertand Pali chanting at all; the answer is that it is quite easy, provided you have already memorized the passage being recited.

Burmese (Pali) Pronunciation and Phonology

We begin with the important caveat that modern Burma is comprised of many different cultures belonging to several fundamentally different language groups: what may be said (in general) about the pronunciation a "Burman" monk may not hold true for a Shan, Mon, or Arakanese monk.

The Burmese pronunciation of Pali can be summed up in two aspects: the fairly consistent consonant-substitutions, and the inconsistent, context-sensitive vowel changes.

The consonant substitutions will not present any special difficulties for the student, as they are perfectly arbitrary, and therfore make perfect sense:

• The Pali c is pronounced as "s" (& ch becomes "sh").
• The Pali j is pronounced as "z" (& jh becomes "zh").
  • I note there is a nice coincidence here, as it may well have been that 2,500 years ago the Pali j was pronounced as "z"; I believe K.R. Norman suggested this on the evidence of comparing Avestan to Vedic, with some corroboration derived from the earliest extant transliterations of Pali and Prakrit words into Greek.
• The Pali p is pronounced as "b"; there may yet be some audible distinction from the the Pali b proper, but I am oblivious to it. Geminates involving b, p and their aspirated counterparts seem to be mutually-indistinguishable.
• The Pali r is inconsistently pronounced as "y". It may be that sometimes an initial r is sounded out as "r", but a medial (especially subscript) r seems inescapably reduced to a "y" sound.
• The Pali s is normally pronounced as "t" or "d" (but, exceptionally, as "g", explained below). Most official sources seem report this as a "t" sound only, but I most often hear "d"; it may be that I am oblivious to some very fine distinction that sets this sound apart from a proper "d" to the more refined ear of a native Burmese speaker.
  • The Pali ss is often pronounced like a "g"; the Burmese seem to read this as a single, unique consonant sound, rather than a double sibilant (F. Mason remarked on this, too, but in unclear terms). This would be less confusing were the error absolute; but one can still hear this as a double "s" sound from time to time.
  • Even the (single) initial Pali s is sometimes spoken as a "g" sound, especially where it follows after a complex sound/glyph, such as a velar-n compound. In the recordings, words starting with sam- are frequently indistinguishable from gam-, and this seems almost to be a form of vernacular euphony, following on the final niggahīta (ŋ) sound of the prior word.
• It is needless to say that the Burmese rules for the simplification of a final consonant sound could be erronenously applied to a medial Pali consonant, but I have found this to be very rare in the Burmese recordings, most likely because the Burmese/Mon script so clearly shows the difference between a medial and final consonant (whereas modern Thai script does not) --and a competent Pali reader should be aware that the language has no final consonants except the niggahīta. I would expect that more errors of this kind are made where the reader relies on a text in simplified modern script that uses the "Thating" as a substitute for the classical ligatures and stacked glyphs; this sort of simplification is the exception, rather than the rule, in Burmese editions of Pali texts, I am pleased to say (this is an unflattering contrast to the increasing reliance of new Sinhalese editions on the "Hal Akuru", a mark that serves the same purpose, viz., serving as a substitute for properly joined letters).

The vowel changes are inconsistent in that they arise from the context, and follow the tendency (common to the Tibeto-Burmese family of languages) of eliding complex sequences of sounds; the logic of these simplifications is internal to the modern language, and applied inconsistently to classical texts. I observe that in several recordings made of one and the same Burmese monk chanting Pali, he will make some vowel errors consistently in some suttas, but then not make the error even once in reciting another sutta, likely reflecting that he learned the texts in question from different masters, and retains their shibboleths respectively. Initial and final vowels tend to be preserved, but the medial vowels are transformed most adventitiously; of these, the most striking are:

• The Pali short a is pronounced as an "i" especially when interpreting the implicit vowel prior to a geminate or in any syllable involving the letter c (the latter is, recall, itself mispronounced as "s"). The pronunciation of paccayo as "pissayo", and gacchāmi as "gissami" are frequent examples.
• Both the Pali short a and the short i are sometimes pronounced as a hard "e" sound; this seems to be most often the case prior to a geminate, and does not seem to be directly determined by the medial vowel's antecedent consonant.
  • The sequence yi is also very frequently spoken as a hard "ye" sound.
• A short "a" sound is sometimes inserted between compound consonants where there is none to be found in the text (e.g., tasmiŋ read aloud as "tasamiŋ"; perhaps an especially significant example given the frequency of the word, and the clarity of the Burmese orthography on the subscript sequence sm-).

Lao (Pali) Pronunciation and Phonology

The Lao pronunciation of Pali cannot be explained without reference to the orthography; it is both the case that some orthographic changes have been imposed upon the phonology, and, obversely, the phonological changes made to Pali cognates (appropriated into vernacular Lao) are now foisted onto the pronunciation of the classical language. Such confusion is both natural and inevitable in the interchange of two radically different languages. Lao is comprised of tonal monosyllables, whereas Pali is non-tonal and polysyllabic. The classical language is synthetic and grammatically complex, whereas vernacular Lao is in some measure analytic and agglutinative, with a grammatical system of protean simplicity (e.g., Lao neither distinguishes words according to gender, nor number, nor case, nor declension).

As discussed in the Thai section below, nine tenths of what you'll learn here is applicable to Thai, and you can combine what you'll learn in this section with the Burmese (above) to try to sort out Shan, Lanna, and Lao-Tham scripts.

In future, I may or may not find time to publish a more extensive article on this subject, so, for the time being, I'll provide the following observations in brief.

• The modern language has fewer consonant sounds than the classical, and so both the modern orthography and the vernacular phonetic assumptions are imperfectly mapped onto the full grid of classical consonant sounds. This yields certain, consistent misapprehensions, such as:
  • In the modern alphabetic order, a single "j" sound (by the English "j" I mean the I.P.A. phoneme "dʒ") now stands where the classical language formerly had a range of four consonants "c-ch-j-jh". The sibilants (viz., two "s" glyphs, distinguished according to tonality) have here been interposed (as if to fill in the gap left by the collapse of these four distinct sounds into one!). One direct result of this is the imposition of a vernacular "s" sound (writ ຊ, never ສ) onto words with classical "j", e.g., jāti → sāt, and jarā → salā. This can apply equally to medial j, jj, or jjh, e.g.: vijjā → visā.
  • The classical distinction between k and g has largely disappeared; the modern use of the three "k" glyphs remaining in the vernacular (viz., ກ, ຂ, & ຄ) primarily distinguishes them in respect of tonality (although some lowland speakers insist on the first "k" [ກ] being spoken as "g", as with Khmer, minor consonant-sound variations of this type may or may not distinguish them in any given local dialect; this can only be considered as part of the language a posteriori, and with inconsistency).
  • The vernacular "d" (ດ) and "plosive d" (ຕ, translit. đ, distinguished by a phonetic criterion that did not exist in the classical language) are inconsistently used to indicate the Pali t and the aspirated th respectively. Obversely, aspiration is a distinction that does not exist in the modern vernacular, with confusion ensuing. Thus we find ຕ (đ, the "plosive d") used where we might logically expect to find d (ດ) in Pali cognates, viz., representing classical dental-"t" in the initial position after monosyllabization, e.g., kataveditā → ກະຕະເວທີ; kattari → ກະໄຕ/ກະຕັດ.
    • The glyph ຕ, now used to express the "plosive d" sound is, unfortunately, the same as was used in classical times to represent one of the "k" sounds (this can still be seen, e.g., in the Lanna "k", and in some styles of Lao-Tham script), and is largely similar to certain forms of the Khmer "b" (ព) --this opens another possible avenue for confusion, albeit arising rarely outside of the study of epigraphy.
  • The two vernacular "t" glyphs (ຖ & ທ) are a complementary source of confusion, being associated with classical d and dh, and also serving as inconsistent substitutes for the retroflex sounds (ḍ/ḍh) that exist in the classical language, not the modern. While the the second (low tone-class) "t" ("ທໍ-ທຸງ") would be theoretically equivalent to Pāli dh (and as a substitute for Pāli ḍh), we find in fact that it is often used to represent the classical (unaspirated) dental "d" in cognates, e.g., dāna → tān (ທານ) --this invites further confusion.
  • Similarly, the paired "b" and "abrupt/plosive b" (ບ & ປ, translit. b & ƀ) are now used to represent the classical "p" and "aspirated p" sounds in an uncertain and inconsistent manner (e.g., pandita becomes ປັນດິດ with the "plosive b", but pañha becomes ບັນຫາ with "b"); even the name of the language itself (Pāli) is sometimes written in Lao with one, sometimes with the other character (ປາລີ vs. ບາລີ).
    • Confusion on this point will also arise with loan-words and cognates from modern languages. Despite the fact that Laotians are quite capable of distinguishing "b" from "p", the two cities of Paris (France) and Bali (Indonesia) are both transliterated into Lao with precisely the same spelling (ປາລິ), using the "Plosive b" for both (and, following Phumi Vorachit's system, reducing "r" to "l" in phonetically rendering "Paris").
  • There is ever the possibility of confusion between ñ and y in the contact between the classical and the vernacular, with the proximate causes being:
    • The graphical similarity between the two in Lao (ຍ vs. ຢ).
    • Confusion over which glyph to use due to rules (internal to Lao) concerning the representation of the y sound in initial vs. final position.
    • Confusion due to similar looking characters in Thai (ย) and "Tai-Noi" scripts, that do not follow the same logic (viz., ย = ຢ, but ย ≠ ຍ).
    • Confusion in the transcription of classical "subscript-y" forms into vernacular scripts that either lack such forms entirely, or may employ the equivalent symbols for them with a logic differing from the method used in writing Pali (as in the use subscripts of Lao-Tham for old vernacular Lao, or Lanna script for vernacular Northern Tai; the subscripts are graphically the same as those used for Pali, but their signification is different, especially so far as implied vowels are concerned). The common concomitant of an alteration arising from this cause would be the insertion of spurious medial vowels in-between (classical) compound consonants where a formerly-subscript y was misinterpreted.
  • As an example (of historical confusion of ñ vs. y) Prapandvidya proposes that the Sanskrit word kriyā entered Thai as krayā (กระยา) from krañā, with the unusual vowel change explained by reference to the medium of a (supposed) Khmer pronunciaton of the Sanskrit as kreya; thus, Prapandvidya's semantic claim is that the modern Thai meanings "Mode, thing, edible," derive from the ancient (Sanskrit) meaning "rite/offering". [Chirapat Prapandvidya, 1996, "The Indic Origin of Some Obscure Thai Words", Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of Thai Studies, Theme IV, Vol. I, p. 415-426] It seems more likely to me that the implicit vowel "a" (in-between the first two letters) has been lost in appopriating one of the various Pali words starting with kara- and (semantically) indicating the means of action, mode, or grammatical instrumentality; thus, any number of Pali words (or compound words) related to karaṇa would provide a semanitcally appropriate origin for a sequence of substitutions along the lines of karaṇā → karañā → krañā → krayā. Whereas the latter sequence does not make sense if we assume the source must be Sanskrit transmitted via Khmer, it makes perfect sense for a Pali loan word transmitted via Lao (or one of various "Laoesque" pre-modern scripts of Thailand, then transliterated into modern Thai). The classical retroflex "ṇ" is commonly enough supplanted with Lao "ñ" (e.g., the realted Pali term karaṇā → ກຣິຍາ, kariñā), and the latter could then be mis-read as "y" due to Thai confusion when reading a Lao (or "Laoesque") "ñ" (ຍ) as if it functioned as modern/central Thai's graphically identical "y" (ย).
• Although the modern and vernacular alphabets have maintained the pattern of ending each row with a nasal, the dental "n" (ນ) that concludes the third row must also serve to represent the classical retroflex ṇ, as the vernacular affords no closer equivalent. Generally, the (classical) retroflex sounds have (modern) dental substitutes, but the nasal sounds are especially prone to being simplified, especially where a modern reader would interpret them as being in the final position of a monosyllable, dropping the final vowel thereafter.
• Confusion between b and v has both ancient and proximate causes. The similarity between the figures used for these glyphs in Fa-Kham script may be a proximate cause (Fa-Kham is a script adapted from Cambodian and used extensively in inscriptions in central Thailand from the Sukhothai period, or earlier); confusion about the separate existence of the classical v seems to have prevailed in all Khmer/Khom-related scripts from a very early period, and may derive in part from the South-Indian pronounciation of b & v in transmitting Sanskrit to mainland South East Asia [see: Michel Ferlus, 1997 ,"The origin of the Graph b in the Thai script", in South East Asian Linguisitc Studies in Honour of Vichin Panupong, Arthur S. Abramson [ed.], Chulalongkorn University Press, p. 79-82]. While Ferlus's article on this subject is very useful, it overlooks the fact that substituion rules and variant spellings within Pali already indicate some mutability between v and b before undertaking the passage to Cambodia, and (as Ferlus notes) no similar confusion can be seen in the Monic scripts (he posits that the solution was finally to derive a new b-glyph in the Khmer group from a Mon source/inspiration, replacing the pre-11th century square/blob b-glyph that, up to that time, still resembled the form used by Aśoka). Ferlus's article also omits to mention the source of confusion in the use of vernacular "v/w" as both a consonant and a semi-vowel in Tai-Kadai langauges, and that this was sometimes an impetus for orthographic changes (note, e.g., that in Lanna script this entails an orthographic distinction between two subscript forms of v & w respectively).
• The classical language has no "f" sound whatsoever (so the two vernacular "f" glyphs do not enter into the confusion), but either of the (tonally distinct) vernacular "p" sounds may now be found representing the classical b sounds, or, less often, will be found where we should expect a v in Pāli (for the reasons outlined above).
• The labial row of the alphabet presents a relatively simple instance of the "inversion" of of the sequence of sounds (viz., the order of classical "p" and "b" are exchanged, reading the vernacular equivalents from left to right) more uncertainty will be found in praxis, as the moderns have had to resolve many complex geminates and consonant clusters (involving classical "p", "ph", "b", "bh", or occasionally "v") into simple monosyllables with these mutually-confusing symbols. Thus, so far as initial consonants are concerned, we observe the general transformation of classical b/bh into the two (tonally distinguished) vernacular "p" sounds, and, vice-versa, classical p becomes modern "b" or "the plosive b", but with less consistency than the inversions of former rows (as discussed above). Thus, e.g.,
  • bhāsā → pāsā (ພາສາ)
  • pañha → banhā (ບັນຫາ)
  • padesa → ƀatet (ປະເທດ), though one might instead expect to find the latter as ບະເທດ (as per the pattern of the preceding examples).
• One of the two Lao "h" glyphs is derived from (and often graphically identical to) the Khmer "v" (ຮ vs. វ), and closely resembles "r" in either script (Lao: ຣ, Khmer: រ, Thai: ร). This allows the conflation of a range of Pali words both in the transcription from Khmer-script Pali sources, and in pronunciation, the spelling of Pali loan-words and so on. Thus, one has to watch for the interchange of "h", "v" and "r" (with "r" sometimes reduced to "l" thereafter), with no consistent direction or pattern to the permutation. Vernacular Lao frequently has "h" where Thai preserves"r" (perhaps in imitation of old Khmer cognates?), but this does not consistently reflect confusion between classical v and h; I am left to suppose that there is an unrelated source of ambivalence in the interchange between "h" and "r"/"l" in the vernacular dialects (i.e., perhaps unrelated to the Thai preference for preserving pseudosanskrit spellings?).
  • In Filliozat's catalogue of the Wat Po collection of manuscripts (viz., poorly copied from Sinhalese sources, into Khom script, in the second quarter of the 19th century, in Bangkok), she comments on the confusion of r vs. h as the most peculiar of the numerous transliteration errors made by the scribes, such as a scribe reading hemāyavatthu and writing out romāyavatthu. In sum, the abysmal quality of the MS demonstrates "…that the scribes had no real understanding of Pāli language or were not paying attention to the meaning…", but she remarks that confusion of r & h is especially inexplicable as they "cannot be confused in any script". This only seems true if the scripts under consideration Khom and Sinhalese only; however, the confusion is easier to understand if we keep in mind that the Bangkok court was (at that time) brim-full of educated slave labour brought back as captives from the total depopulation, sacking, and incineration of Vientiane in 1828. (This may also give some context to the lack of zeal on the part of the scribes!) Even if they were put to the task of copying Sinhalese into Khom, "r" in the latter would have resembled "h" in the script they were most familair with --viz., Lao. [See: The Pāli Manuscript Collection Kept in the Vat Phra Jetuphon Vimol Mangklaram (Vat Po) the Oldest Royal Monastery of Bangkok, Jacqueline Filliozat, École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 2002-2003].

Tertiary patterns of simplification of geminate morphemes, and substitution of dental sounds for retroflexes, etc., are pretty well self-evident, and are not much worse than the attempts of Europeans to pronounce Sanskrit.

Thai (Pali) Pronunciation and Phonology

Much that applies to Thai has already been explained in the section on Lao (above). The problems that are unique to the Thai recitation of Pali can be most easily (although not with great certainty) explained by orthographic developments that were ancient in their causes, but modern in their effects.

From about the 13th century until the modern period, central Thai vernacular languages were written in a tradition of "Fa-kham" scripts that were derived from classical Cambodian, but were modified in response to the phonetic (and tonal) needs of Tai-Kadai languages, developing in a separate line of succession (as it were) from the scripts used to write Pali (viz., Khom [classical Khmer] script in the south, and the Lanna/Tham/Monic scripts in the north of what is now Thailand). There are now many monstrous problems of interpretation that Thai speakers encounter both when reading Pali (or Sanskrit) cognates in their own language, and also when attempting to learn or recite Pali (or Sanskrit), precisely because the vernacular modifications that the Fa-Kham orthographic tradition underwent have now been foisted back onto the classical language.

While Lao orthography has been modernized to be almost perfectly phonetic, Thai has moved somewhat in the opposite direction: official spellings are heavily Sanskritized, as if to draw special attention to both the Indic and classical Cambodian origins of much of its vocabulary. This only makes it more difficult for native Thai speakers to pronounce Pali (or Sanskrit) correctly, as they are accustomed to eliding so many Sanskritic elements that appear in their written language, but are not now (and likely never were) part of the spoken-vernacular form. For example, "…confusion may arise because there is no indication if two consonants are a compound or not, such as: candra may be pronounced can-tha-ra, can-thra, or even can-thom." ["Changes of Pali-Sanskrit Loan-words in Thai", Prof. Visudh Busyakul, in Sanskrit in Southeast Asia, 2003, Sanskrit Studies Centre, Silpakorn University, Bangkok, pg. 522]

The example just given also shows that Thais are burdened with an inherently confusing system of implicit vowels, and, when faced with Pali text (or cognates) in their own script, will frequently misapprehend where the implied vowel is "a", "o", or none at all. A native Thai reader will be accustomed to guessing where to reduce a consonant to a nasal sound, or where to treat it as non-final and assign an implicit vowel sound following it (note, above, "can-tha-ra", vs. "can-thom"). On the whole, this entails that Thais are highly inclined to omit/elide morphemes from Pali words, ranging from the simplification of initial compound consonants, to the reduction of medial geminates to terminal consonants, or, very often, the omission of the entire terminations of polysyllabic words, i.e., making it impossible to determine the grammtical significance of any/all words in a sentence.

So far as Pali is concerned, it may be complained that these problems are not endemic to the Thai orthography (per se), but merely arise from the inappropriate (vernacular) assumptions of native speakers in reading it. Naturally, the overlap of the modern and the ancient in the form of cognates used in everyday language has a powerful influence over the interpretation of the classical language (as the script used for both is now one and the same, at least in the Royal editions, and the government-controlled monastic education system). In reading classical cognates (etc.) the reader has no clear direction or consistent rule to follow (in modern Thai script), and so inevitably develops a habit of anticipating what is left indeterminate by the script. Needless to say, these "anticipations" (that serve to fill in the unwritten portion of the phonics of ancient words) are subject to variations of dialect and locality, and project social status and ethnicity within Thai society.

I have already made reference to a very short article on this subject (fewer than four pages) titled "Changes of Pali-Sanskrit Loan-words in Thai", by Prof. Visudh Busyakul [Op. cit. supra]. One of the peculiarities of the article is that it describes the changes in the Thai pronunciation of Sanskrit (and, thus, by extension, Pali) as if they were part of a quite intentional plan carried out by king Ram Khamheng (who may well be fictional, N.B., as according to Michael Vickery's articles in The Ramkhamheng Controversy, published by the Siam Society). Busyakul thus regrets that no phonological distinction was assigned to first four consonants of the classical alphabet by the latter king, as the Khmer system of distinguishing the consonants by means of vowel changes was lost, and nothing to replace it was devised. Thus, the sequence that was originally k, kh, g, gh, now appears to the Thai reader as a nearly undifferentiated sequence of four "k" sounds; this would indeed be an astounding error if we beleived that any such change was actually devised by a single man's conscious intention, and we can even less believe that this was the grand plan of a mythic king.

Ferlus instead presumes that at a remote date (both unspecified and unknown) ancient spoken Thai distinguished "a non-voiced dorsal fricative" and also a "voiced dorsal fricative", and that these have since dropped out of the spoken language, leaving their fossils (so to speak) in the odd array of "k" glyphs that were modified from Khmer to make up the first row of the Fa-Kham alphabet. [Op. cit. supra, p. 79-80] This is certainly a more plausible explanation, but relies to an uncomfortable extent on speculation.

Busyakul's account of Thai phonological simplifications (of classical, Indic phonemes) provides another detail of significance in contrast to Lao: "As a rule," he writes, "the unaspirated sonant and aspirated sonant of all five series [i.e., rows of the alphabet] are pronounced as the aspirated surd of the corresponding series". [Op cit., pg. 521] Thus, e.g., he would define the Thai pronunciation of the second line of the (pseudo-pali) alphabet as "ca-cha-cha-cha-ña". This is a significant difference from the Lao interpretation of the equivalent row of glyphs (see above), and my experience would tend to affirm that the central Thais do apply a hard "cha" sound to many Pali/Sanskrit loan-words where a Laotian would read "s" (both being equally incorrect, as the classical spelling of the words in question is j or jh).

Another example in the history of Thai phonetic and orthographic shifts is examined at some length by Michel Ferlus, op. cit. supra. Ferlus provides some interesting illustrations as to how the Fa-Kham scripts (that were later reduced to modern Thai) both initially diverged from Cambodian (to suit Thai phonetic requirements) and then changed over time with the vernacular.

The interchange of classical "t" for modern "d", and "p" for "b" (described at length for Lao, above) is very simply accounted for by Busyakul as follows: "...these words have been imported into Thai not directly, but through the Khmer medium." [Op cit., pg. 522] Although there is some small measure of truth to this, I honestly do not see how the Cambodians can be blamed any more than Ram Khamheng for the change; this seems to merely defer the question (petitio principii). Briefly, the Khmer system provides vowel-sound distinctions as substitutes for classical consonant distinctions (i.e., the listener can distinguish one classical consonant from another by hearing a difference in the associated vowel sound). More likely by accident than by design, the Thais dispensed with this system and (as mentioned briefly above) have instead created new grounds for confusion as to which vowels are associated with which consonants (both for cognates and classical texts rendered in modern script); but even so, the particular problem discussed would not have existed before the mid-19th century, when vernacular Thai script was suddenly foisted onto the ancient language, and a combination of Western model schools (created by Christian missionaries) and Thai state education (following the former "model") replaced the monastic transmission of literacy, with predictable results for the Pali tradition.

So far as listening comprehension of Pali chanting, the issues in Thailand are largely similar to those with modern Lao in the "Buddhist heartland" of Thailand, viz., the upper Issan plateau in the North-East, where the predominant language remains lowland-Lao (but state education is entirely in central-Thai). Although the Issan country is among the regions least often visited by tourists in Thailand, all the quantitative measures of Buddhist education and religious activity seem to affirm what many would report anecdotely, i.e., that the Issan remain (disproportionately) the staunchest supporters of Buddhist monasticism in Thailand. Thus, while some students who are new to the field may find it odd that so much attention is given to Lao on this web-site, the fact is that the language spoken in the environs of the monasteries (in modern Thailand) where so many Westerners ordain is not Thai, but Lao (e.g., Wat Nanachat outside of Ubon Ratchathani, or the famous Dhutanga monasteries along the Mekong, both to the west and east of Nong Khai; the renowned Ajan Chah spoke Lao as his first language, and, for the sake of Thai nationalism, editions of his work tend to euphemistically mention that they were translated from lectures given in "a north-eastern dialect"). Thus, the Lao section will be of more utility for those intending to ordain in Thailand than they might expect.

Although I have more enthusiasm for adapting my ear to dialectical changes of this kind than most, it must be complained that the paucity of (mutually-distinguishable) consonant sounds in the vernacular (without the Khmer remedy of systematically-associated vowel changes) when combined with the tendency toward "monosyllabization" (e.g., omitting final sounds, and so depriving the classical language of its marks of declensions and conjugations) has resulted in the real incomprehensibility of Pali as it is recited in most of Thailand today.

This reduction of the languge to un-grammatical, mutually-indistinguishable, and genuinely incomprehensible monosyllables in the context of ritual performance has encouraged the tendency of religious followership to presume to take the source texts as tabula rasa, attributing to them both pre-Buddhist myths that are wildly at variance with the explicit meaning of the texts in question, or, with equal ease, taking the texts as a corroboration for relatively recent innovations in the popular faith. Obversely, I must imagine that it is discouraging to a native Thai reader to have to figure out the obtuse way in which the familiar (vernacular) script is made to express the classical sounds, with an unfamiliar system of both implicit vowels and explicit consonant values --although it is a very small minority of monks in Thailand who learn even this much about the ancient language. The tradition of Thai word-for-word glosses (which is the one part of the Pali tradition that is indispensible for sermons and rituals) effectively severs the study of lexis from grammar or even pronunciation, and, in modern Thailand, it is primarily the ability to gloss Pali words in isolation that is cultivated among the clergy.

Cambodian (Pali) Pronunciation and Phonology

The Organization of the Pali Canon and its Commentaries

Introductory note & recommended reading

Considered as a text, the Pali canon is unwieldy; there is more than one system of organization to be found within it, and all of them aim at ease of memorization --not ease of reference.

One of my first experiences in grappling with the canon arose when a Sinhalese monk (who briefly tutored me) asked me to find and photocopy a particular passage in the monastic library. I was told only the name of the Sutta (and of the Nikaya) and proceeded to sit down in front of the (Sinhalese-script) B.J.E. Tipitaka, to leaf through the lengthy tables of contents, searching for the correct volume, correct chapter, sub-chapter, and, eventually, the correct page. I found the sutta, but, more, I gained a direct appreciation of how difficult it is for someone without a very rigorous introduction to the organization of the texts to find anything in them whatsoever. Although I was still pre-occupied with very elementary questions of the language, I began to study the structure of the canon as a separate matter. With the advent of computer indexing, many will eschew such an introduction to the difficulty of searching the canon on paper; to search through stacks of palm leaves is an even more visceral demonstration of how puny a single scholar is against the mass of text that we would presume to study.

The single most useful resource (if you can only have one) is Oskar von Hinüber's A Handbook of Pali Literature; however, this work was planned as a chapter in a larger volume, and so (as its foreword explains) it has certain explicit limitations. The survey of Pali literature in Sri Lanka by G.P. Malalasekera approaches much of the same material from a different perspective, and works within a different set of limitations (e.g., Malalasekera's work includes a brief history of Pali grammatical literature, but, as its title suggests, does not treat Thai sources). I have not yet found a copy of M. Bode's survey of Pali Literature in Burma; although the book is a century old, it has not yet been superseded, except for the usual tide of academic articles. It was suggested to me that Bode's work will soon be reprinted by the B.P.S. in Kandy. I do not recommend Bhante H. Saddhatissa's articles in this genre, such as his survey of the history of Pali literature in Thailand, and so on. In this wise, I also do not recommend the Guide to the Tipitaka authored by an anonymous council of monks in Burma (and reprinted by White Lotus), although the latter is instructive as a kind of cross-section of Burmese monastic opinion on some of the more renowned passages.

A Simple (Romanized) Map of the Canon

The map here provided shows the sub-divisions of the Tipitaka as simply as possible. By far the most confusing part of the Theravada canon is the Vinaya, which was re-organized after its arrival in Sri Lanka (now providing a striking contrast to the organization of the Mahasanghika, Mulasarvastivadin, and Dharmaguptaka recensions).

The map makes use of bracket to indicate optional aspects of titles and, in some cases, the relationship between volumes:

• Square brackets mark inconsistencies in titles, such as alternate spellings, prefixes and suffixes that are sometimes omitted. For example:
  • [Sutta-]Vibhaṅga
  • Parivāra[-pātha/-pāli]
• So-called "curly brackets" are employed to indicate an embedded text, i.e., a text that appears distributed within a larger work, but may (or may not) sometimes be extracted and presented as a separate chapter, or even as a wholly separate text. The presentation of these will vary considerably from one edition to the next (thus, they are well worth drawing attention to in this fashion), e.g., while Kammavācā texts have grown into a broad genre of books and manuscripts independent from the Vinaya, any particular edition of the Vinaya may not list "Kammavāca" as a separate section in its table of contents or index (as it is "embedded" in the flow of the text). This is a recurrent feature of Pali literature, most often discussed in terms of the Mātika ("Matrix") system of organization found in the Abhidhamma Pitaka; however, similar embedded texts (with similarly confusing patterns of being extracted and presented as stand-alone works, sometimes as a preface to their source) are found in the Vinaya, grammatical and paracanonical literature. Debatably, e.g., the last two suttas of the Digha Nikaya could also be considered part of the Mātika tradition.
  • In just a few cases, the embedded texts marked with these brackets were formerly independent texts that are now subsumed within other units of organization (and so should not be described as a Mātika), e.g., the {Bhikkhuniikkhandhaka}.
• A few works are marked with an asterisk, to indicate that their inclusion in the canon is disputed, e.g., the Jātaka may (or may not) be considered paracanonical.
• In just a few cases I have provided further information such as the chapter number or total number of chapters in parenthesis.