Sujato/John Kelly Pali Courses: Resources

[Gillian]

@BethL

I’ll PM you once I’ve done that.

Would you mind adding me to the PM?

Thanks.

[BethL]

@Snowbird

I can confirm that they are done in a Sri Lankan style by a Sri Lankan monk. These recordings were originally made not for beginners but for his fellow monks who might become blind in the future and would need to listen to the suttas instead of reading them.

Thank you, Ven. Snowbird! This background gives me so much more appreciation for the sammāvāyāmo which supported the recordings. My heart is warmed.

[BethL]

Another “Internet Archive” reference note for Warder students (past, present, and future!).

How to use Pali Text Society (PTS) references in Warder:

Warder uses only the dīghanikāya (DN) for translation exercises throughout the book. For Lessons 4-6, in an appendix, he provides PTS references. (Lessons 1-3 are too basic to tie to specific suttas.) What to do for Lessons 7-30?

Thankfully we use Ajahn Brahmāli’s Key to Exercises. He provides PTS references for all Warder exercises beginning with Lesson 7. Follow these steps:

1. Go to the Internet Archive link:

PTS Pali Canon : Pali Text Society : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming :...

2. There are three DN volumes listed on the left navigation pane, sandwiched in-between the other nikāya volumes. Click on Volume I, II, or III based on the PTS reference cited by Warder or Ajahn Brahmāli.

3. Find the page number associated with the PTS volume reference.

4. Ajahn Brahmāli also provides the exact sentence number to quickly find the PTS location on the page – if your brain is tired. Otherwise, practice your pāli scrolling skills to find it.

See the first image below for how the PTS looks on the Internet Archive. See the second image below for how Ajahn Brahmāli cites the PTS reference.

Example:

Lesson 7 exercise (translate into English):

iminā tvaṃ purisa dhanena jīvāhi

Ajahn Brahmāli’s Key:

You, man, make a living with this money! (D III 66)

In the second image, from the answer key PDF, you’ll see the sentence number as well.

Important: Get in the habit of ignoring the numbering on the PTS pages that I’ve circled. For our purposes they don’t mean anything.

In the third image below, notice how SuttaCentral uses the PTS references alongside the modern sutta numbering.

Why do I care?

1. I find these DN references extremely helpful for studying the exercises in context – what is the full sentence, what sentence comes before/after, etc. This helps me decipher the meaning of various Warder exercises when using the dictionary alone gets tedious. (Eventually my brain retains the meaning of the words without needing recourse to such props .)

2. I find it’s useful to learn how to track SuttaCentral’s pāli-language suttas – the Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500 version – with the Internet Archive PTS version. It cultivates familiarity and ease working with the pāli suttas directly.

3. As a lay person, this helps me develop respect and reverence for the unimaginable effort put forth by so many to make these pāli suttas available to all.

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[Snowbird]

So everyone knows, in normal times you can just type volpage:D ii 66 into the search here on SuttaCentral. As I write this now, though, the feature is broken. But we are committed to getting and keeping it working.

Also, there is this excellent web app that lets you put in the citation and then gives you a link to SuttaCentral:

PTS Reference to Sutta Number Converter

[johnk]

Thanks, Beth, for your good work on this.

In my Warder Answers document all this key lookup information is there too, and might be a little easier to access.

Picking one example totally randomly, the first Pāḷi-English sentence in Lesson 11, see:

Exercise 11 (pp. 66-7)

Pali into English

na kho ahaṃ āvuso addasaṃ

not / indeed / I / friend / saw

Indeed, friend, I did not see.

[D.I.130 – xvi.(Mahāparinibbāna).4.26]

This reference at the bottom is to be read as follows:
D.I.130 - the PTS volume and page number in their Pāli edition.
xvi - this small Roman numeral is the sutta number within the Nikāya, thus DN 16.
4.26 - is the paragraph reference number in Walshe’s translation by Wisdom Publications.

My answer Key peters out at around about Chapter 22, though.

Why do I care?

1. I find these DN references extremely helpful for studying the exercises in context – what is the full sentence, what sentence comes before/after, etc. This helps me decipher the meaning of various Warder exercises when using the dictionary alone gets tedious. (Eventually my brain retains the meaning of the words without needing recourse to such props .)

Very well said, Beth, and I’m delighted you are doing this.

[johnk]

@Snowbird

So everyone knows, in normal times you can just type volpage:D ii 66 into the search here on SuttaCentral. As I write this now, though, the feature is broken. But we are committed to getting and keeping it working.

I too, Ven @Snowbird, am very disappointed that this vol/page lookup is no longer functional in the SC lookup. It was one of the key things I designed for when I helped create the original SC database way back in 2005. I very much hope that the current SC developers can get it back up and running again soon.

[Snowbird]

It’s absolutely something everyone is committed to. I think HongDa and I never use it, so when it goes down we don’t notice.

If anyone notices that it stops working (after it starts working again, lol) please report it in the search bug thread.

[johnk]

I hardly ever use it too, but it would certainly be useful at times. When it’s not working, I just look through my hard copy PTS editions and find the reference there - which I used back in the dinosaur days when so much wasn’t available online!

[Gillian]

@johnk

In my Warder Answers document all this key lookup information is there too,

I was so delighted when you pointed this out to us.

[BethL]

@johnk

In my Warder Answers document all this key lookup information is there too, and might be a little easier to access.

John, thank you I meant to check yesterday before posting this … I got into the habit of looking at Ajahn B’s for the reference and yours for the translation decomposition. Grateful for these extra efforts regarding rhe PTS references for us students.

[Khemarato.bhikkhu]

@Snowbird

I think HongDa and I never use it, so when it goes down we don’t notice.

If anyone notices that it stops working (after it starts working again, lol) please report it in the search bug thread.

Or you could write tests

[Gillian]

Just to let everybody know, I’ve added three four pdfs to the OP (opening post, #1 post in this thread), a copy of Gair & Karunatillake, an excellent summary of all the grammar as it is covered in the book (by @Dana) and John’s answer key.

[Dana]

Thank you Gililian. You added the Exercise book, which I originally prepared for the Bhikkhu Bodhi’s course students, rather than the Grammar Summaries one.

[Gillian]

@Dana

rather than the Grammar Summaries one.

Thanks. I will update shortly.

[Sobhana]

“Complete” table for [Pāli pronoun declensions] (Pali pronoun declension - Google Sheets) I got it from the Bhavana Society long ago, but cannot locate where it comes from.

[Sobhana]

@BethL

Digital Pali Dictionary is great!

Somehow I am finding it much faster and more intuitive to access the Digital Pali Dictionary through the Tipitaka Pali Reader. This app is very fast to search, includes the DPD and other dictionaries, and has the tipataka and quite a few commentary texts in pali. The managers seem to be actively improving this app, built on Bhante Yuttadhammo’s work from years ago. Tipitaka Pali Reader | American Monk: Life with Buddha, Dhamma and Saṅgha

[Gillian]

Thank you Ayya. I’ll add the pronoun sheet to the class resources in the OP, and the others to the thread on chanting.

[Sobhana]

New Resource, A Dictionary of Pali now available in free digital format. Pasting the announcement from H-Buddhism.

A new Announcement has been posted in H-Buddhism.

RESOURCE> A Dictionary of Pāli now available online

Submitted by Rupert Gethin on 03/25/2024 - 4:45am
Announcement Type
Online Digital Resources
Date
March 25, 2024
Dear Colleagues,
The Pali Text Society is pleased to announce the availability of the first three volumes of A Dictionary of Pāli (covering a – bh) online on Gandhari.org/dop. The Dictionary is free for all to search and use.

A Dictionary of Pāli is an ongoing project of the Pali Text Society, entirely funded by the Society. The first three volumes are the work of Dr Margaret Cone and were published in hard copy in 2001, 2010, and 2020. The 4th and final volume is currently being prepared by Dr Martin Straube.

Preparing the three published volumes of the Dictionary for release online has itself been a task that has required considerable time, care, attention, and expertise. The Pali Text Society is particularly grateful to Dr Stefan Baums and Dr Andrew Glass for hosting the Dictionary on Gandhari.org. There it joins the Pali Text Society’s earlier Pali-English Dictionary as well as a collection of other dictionaries of South Asian Buddhist languages (Sanskrit, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, and Gāndhārī), all of which can be conveniently used side by side. The Society hopes that the scholarly community will find the online Dictionary useful.

Hard copies of the 3 published volumes (as well as other PTS publications) are available for purchase via the PTS website (https://palitextsociety.org/). Please visit the site and consider becoming a member and supporting the PTS.
With best wishes,
Rupert Gethin
President of the PTS