New Release: Māgadhabhāsā (Pāḷi) - A Compendious Grammar on the Language of Pāḷi Buddhism

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Greetings in Dhamma!
I would like to briefly introduce the grammar book I have been able to finalize lately. I believe it to be very handy, but have a look for yourself if you are interested in Pāḷi and if you are so inclined.

The aims, methods and rationales of the present Māgadhabhāsā (Pāḷi) grammar are as follows: (a) Lubricating access to the information contained in numerous modern Pāḷi grammars written in English by collating the dispersed material contained within them. People who wish to learn about grammatical rules and principles – either on a broader spectrum or at all – are compelled to track them down in the thicket of the widely scattered grammar inventories as separately given by the various available grammars. These works, mostly fine and outstanding works of scholarship in their own right, each individually often contain valuable data and perspectives not found in the other ones, and these are attempted to be distilled and presented with this Pāḷi grammar. (b) Facilitating identification of and providing explicit reference to most of the grammatical rules contained in the Kaccāyanabyākaraṇaṃ (Kaccāyana), the oldest extant Pāḷi grammar, as well as to selected ones from other traditional grammars.

Most copiously consulted grammars in English medium were:

  • Ānandamaitreya, B. (2012). Pali made easy.
  • Buddhadatta, A. P. (1997). The new Pali course (Vols. I–II).
  • Collins, S. (2006). A Pali grammar for students.
  • Dhammajoti (2018). Reading Buddhist Pāḷi texts.
  • Duroiselle, C. (1997). Practical grammar of the Pali language.
  • Frankfurter, O. (1883). Handbook of Pali.
  • Gair, J. W., & Karunatillake, W. (1998). A new course in reading Pāli.
  • Kaccāyana Pāli Vyākaraṇaṃ (Vol. 2; 2016) (Thitzana, Trans.)
  • Ñāṇadhaja (2011). Light on the pronunciation of Pāḷi.
  • Oberlies, T. (2019). Pāli grammar. The language of the canonical texts of Theravāda Buddhism – Phonology and morphology (Vol. I).
  • Perniola, V. (1997). Pali grammar.
  • Warder, A.K. (1967). Pali metre.
  • Warder, A. K. (2001). Introduction to Pali.
  • Yindee, P. P. (2018). A contrastive study of Pali and English.

Traditional grammars which were utilized (except for Kaccāyana, mainly, but not exclusively, used for the chapter on Pāḷi pronunciation):

  • Kaccāyanabyākaraṇaṃ (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
  • Moggallānavyākaraṇaṃ (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
  • Padarūpasiddhi (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
  • Saddanītippakaraṇaṃ I (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
  • Saddanītippakaraṇaṃ II (1999). Vipassana Research Institute.
  • Vidyabhusana, S & Punnananda (Eds.) (1935). Bālāvatāra – An elementary Pali grammar abridged for the undergraduate course.

Please check out these links if you are interested in obtaining a free soft copy:

Much blessings!
A. Bhikkhu

P.s. A small amount of copies will also be printed via SBS (Sāsanārakkha Buddhist Sanctuary). A notice to the people whom I promised one: I got informed that the person in charge delayed the proceedings due to Covid related issues.

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That’s a great effort and work. Thanks for sharing it and making it available for our learning and progress.
Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu :pray:

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Thank you so much, Bhante :pray:! This must have taken a lot of your time.
Thank you for sharing. This will help without any doubt a great deal.

With metta
Alex

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Thank you both for the kind feedback, much appreciated! Mettā 2u!

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Thank you, Bhante.

I tried to find this in the paper itself, but couldn’t find it: was this a personal project, or maybe a Master’s/PhD thesis?

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Incredible work, congratulations!

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It started out as a personal project, to merely assist with my own learning, but later I thought it would be nice to write something that is fit for sharing, inspired to do merit. :slight_smile:

Thank you, bhante! Appreciate the feedback from someone with you experience. :pray:

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Thank you very much Bhante! This is just what I needed.

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Well, the archive.org link is down for violation of terms and academia for downloads requires log-in, i.e. giving personal data to a corporation.

How about upolading to libgen instead?

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I’m afraid I sold my soul to academia.com before it was a corporation, so what to do but enjoy wholesome publications?

From the front material:

Soft copies are available free of charge via:

(a) https://sasanarakkha.org/teachings;

(b) Sāsanārakkha Buddhist Sanctuary - Academia.edu;

(c) https://archive.org/details/@s_san_rakkha_buddhist_sanctuary.

(d) It is, besides a number of other grammars, also available at: User Account.

& here it is:

Magadhabhasa_Pai_A_Compendious_Grammar.pdf (2.3 MB)

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Sterling work, very welcome!

Glad to see this effort at consolidation and elucidation, especially of a lot of existing material as well.

As K.R. Norman noted in A Philological Approach to Buddhism, "the enquirers all want to do something new, so the study of the fundamentals is abandoned while they go after trendy trivia which they hope will have an earthshaking effect upon the world of Pali and Buddhist studies when the result of their research appears. " :slight_smile:

Also glad to see this declaration in the preface of the book -
“People who wish to learn about grammatical rules and principles – either on a broader spectrum or at all – are compelled to track them down in the thicket of the widely scattered grammar inventories as separately given by the various available grammars.”

Thicket of grammars indeed!

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Thank you for your feedback, nice expression!

I wonder: Did he give some examples?

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Still works for me… Perhaps you’ve just been blocked?

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It may be due to the fact that I replaced the old one, potentially defunct link.

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Thank you for sharing your work.