Anandajoti says in the introduction:
The rules of sandhi in Pāḷi are the effect of the spoken word and a living, spoken—not literary—language of its time. All Prakrits have similar features: unpredictability, and a confusion of mights and maybes.
This understanding is curiously in direct contradiction with the evidence presented by Childers.
Childers posits Sanskritic grammar and word-forms underlying surface-level Pali word forms, as in the following observations:
It would not only be a misapplication of labour, but positively misleading, to work out rules of internal Sandhi from, for instance, such forms as sabbhi and lacchate. Our only proper course is to trace them to their Sanskrit originals sadbhis and lapsyate, and bring them under rules, not of Sandhi, but of phonetic change.
In Sanskrit, the rules of sandhi for words and for compounds are the same; in Pāḷi, they present several points of difference. Pāḷi compound words are of two classes—first, compounds, which are phonetic corruptions of corresponding Sanskrit compounds; and, secondly, compounds in which two Pāḷi words are independently combined, without reference to Sanskrit. To the first my remarks at p. 100 on internal sandhi are applicable; they are by their nature excluded from the department of sandhi. Thus jaraggava cannot be brought under any Pāḷi rule of sandhi; all we can do is to trace it to an older Sanskrit form jaradgava, of which it is a phonetic corruption. On the other hand, kulitthi, at Par. 3, cannot be identified with a Sanskrit compound kulastrī, but is an independent combination of the Pāḷi form itthi with kula.
Kula & strī are common words (and once stri is phonetically transformed to itthi, it is impossible to then follow the same sandhi rules as in Sanskrit as the underlying phonetic form of the word has changed). So if Childers is expecting kula & itthi not to be compounded independently in Pali after the underlying members have changed phonetic form, I thiink his expectation does not make sense.
Childers also draws a hierarchy of Sandhi application in Pali. He says
In verse, word-sandhi is much less restricted and much more frequent than in prose, being in great measure governed by the question of metrical exigency. Thus in the first two pages of Dhammapada there are nine sandhis, of which only two, nādhigacchanti and nappasahati, would occur in prose. The remainder, for instance sammantīdha, vantakāsārassa, are used metri causā. Some of the bolder sandhis, as the elision of ṁ and aṁ, are confined to verse.
Sandhi is more extensively used in the early texts of the Tipiṭaka than in the late texts of the Commentaries.
So given that there are at least 4 forms of Pali based on incidence of Sandhi usage (Verses, Late Verses, Prose and late Prose), which of these does Anandajoti consider closest to his putative “living language”? Also if Pali was a living language rather than a literary register, how does Childers say that there are words which only make sense if interpreted as phonetic corruptions of Sanskrit words?
Further Childers mentions
ati and paṭi before a vowel generally become acc and pacc, standing for an older aty and paty. Ex. accuṇha=ati-uṇha, accokkaṭṭha=ati-okkaṭṭha, accodāta=ati-odāta, accagā=ati-agā, paccāroceti=paṭi-āroceti, paccaṅga=paṭi-aṅga, paccupaṭṭhita=paṭi-upaṭṭhita, paccaññāsi=paṭi-aññāsi.
The older aty & paty (sic) mentioned above are Sanskrit (paty should rather be praty).
- In one case dī followed by a vowel becomes jj, which represents an older dy: najjantara=nadī-antara.
This older dy is also Sanskrit.
- abhi and adhi before a vowel generally become abbh and ajjh, which represent older forms abhy and adhy. Ex. abbhaññāsi=abhi-aññāsi, abbhattha=abhi-attha, abbhokāsa=abhi-okāsa, ajjhabhāsi=adhi-abhāsi, ajjhāvasatha=adhi-āvasatha, ajjhokāsa=adhi-okāsa, bojjhaṅga=bodhi-aṅga.
The older abhy and adhy are Sanskrit again
In one instance, ativiya=ati-iva, we have y inserted between two is, for ativiya points to a transition form atiyiva.
Here this explains how the earlier iva (Sanskrit) becomes Pali viya
- Occasionally when a word ending in a vowel is compounded with a word beginning with a consonant, a consonant which originally belonged to the base of the first word is revived, and if necessary assimilated to the initial consonant of the second word. Thus sammā-paññā becomes sammappaññā, which probably represents the Sanskrit samyakprajñā; anto is the Sanskrit antar, but in composition we sometimes have the original r revived, e.g. antaraghara=Sanskrit antargṛha. Again, the Sanskrit base catur is catu in Pāḷi, e.g. catuvagga (catumāsaṁ), but compounds like catugguṇa, catubbagga, catummukha, point to Sanskrit forms caturguṇa, caturvarga, caturmukha retaining the final r. So also we have cha=Sansk. ṣaḍ, but chammāsa points to an original ṣaḍmāsa. And puna compounded with bhava and with puna gives punabbhava and punappuna, in Sansk. punarbhava and punaḥpunar. [120]
More examples of Pali Sandhi transformations of underlying Sanskrit vocab.
What all the above shows is that Prose Pali is a phonetically standardized register, and the Commentarial Prose is even more standardized and artificial than the prose of the Canonical Pali. The evidence also shows that natural phonetic principles do not apply to Pali sandhi (which would be expected if Pali itself were a spoken natural dialect/language), and these rules were idiosyncratically applied by the composers of the suttas. However the language that underlies Pali (rather than Pāli itself) was a natural spoken language, and that language points to Sanskrit or something very close to it.
