The Pali Text Society's Pali-English dictionary - Tuninst.net

On the other hand they were for the most part reproductions of older material
that had, till then, been preserved in Sinhalese. Though the Sinhalese pandits were
writing in Pali, to them, of course, a dead language, they probably did their thinking
in their own mother tongue. Now they had had then, for many generations, so close
and intimate an intercourse with their Dravidian neighbours that Dravidian habits of
speech had crept into Sinhalese. It was inevitable that some of the peculiarities of
their own tongue, and especially these Dravidanisms, should have influenced their style
when they wrote in Pali. It will be for future scholars to ascertain exactly how far
this influence can be traced in the idioms and in the order of the arrangement of the
matter of these Ceylon Pali books of the fifth and sixth centuries A. D.
There is no evidence that the Sinhalese at that time knew Sanskrit. Some centuries
afterwards a few of them learnt the elements of classical Sanskrit and very proud
they were of it. They introduced the Sanskrit forms of Sinhalese words when writing
'high' Sinhalese. And the authors of such works as the Dathavagsa, the Saddhammopayana,
and the Mahabodhivaijsa, make use of Pali words derived from Sanskrit —
that is, they turned into Pali form certain Sanskrit words they found either in the
Amara-kosa, or in the course of their very limited reading, and used them as Pali.
It would be very desirable to have a list of such Pali words thus derived from Sanskrit.
It would not be a long one.
Here we come once more to the question of memory. From the iiih cent,
onwards it became a sort of fashion to write manuals in verse, or in prose and verse,
on such subjects as it was deemed expedient for novices to know. Just as the first
book written in Pali in Ceylon was a chain of memoriter verses strung together by
very indifferent Pali verses, so at the end we have these scarcely intelligible memo-
riter verses meant to be learned by heart by the pupils.
According to the traditions handed down among the Sinhalese, Pali, that is, the
language used in the texts, could also be called Magadhi. What exactly did they
mean by that? They could not be referring to the Magadhi of the Prakrit grammarians,
for the latter wrote some centuries afterwards. Could they have meant the dialect
spoken in Magadha at the date when they used the phrase, say, the sixth century A. D. ?
That could only be if they had any exact knowledge of the different vernaculars of
North India at the time. For that there is no evidence, and it is in itself very
improbable. What they did mean is probably simply the language used by Asoka,
the king of Magadha. For their traditions also .stated that the texts had been brought
to them officially by Asoka's son Mahinda; and not in writing, but in the memory
of Mahinda and his companions. Now we know something of the language of Asoka.
We have his edicts engraved in diff'erent parts of India, diff'ering slightly in com-
pliance with local varieties of speech. Disregarding these local differences, what is
left may be considered the language of head-quarters where these edicts were cer-
tainly drafted. This 'Magadhi' contains none of the peculiar characteristics we associate
with the Magadhi dialect. It is in fact a younger form of that standard Kosalan
lingua franca mentioned above.
Now it is very suggestive that we hear nothing of how the king of Magadha
became also king of Kosala. Had this happened quietly, by succession, the event
would have scarcely altered the relation of the languages of the two kingdoms. That
of the older and larger would still have retained its supremacy. So when the Scottish
dynasty succeeded to the English throne, the two languages remained distinct, but
English became more and more the standard.