Thai Edition of the Pāli Commentaries

Hi, does anyone know whether the Thai edition of the Pāli commentaries are available online. I need the Thai edition of the Dīgha Nikāya commentary. Thanks.

I don’t know if this is any help, but the VRI edition includes the commentaries, and they can be viewed in Thai script. Unless there is a spefic variant that you’re looking for, maybe this will do.

http://www.thepathofpurity.com/home/พระไตรป-ฎก-pdf/พระไตรป-ฎกบาล-สยามร-ฐ/

http://www.learntripitaka.com/Tripitaka-Pali2.html

Online script converter: http://www.theravada.su/node/1457

Thank you.

Venerable, I need the Thai edition. Thank you.

May be, Nibbanka’s links might help me.

I recently learned of another website hosting the Thai commentaries http://84000.org/tipitaka/attha/attha.php?b=14&i=617

Thank you. I forgot to mention that I need the romanised version. Luckily, a colleague has agreed to romanise the Thai script. :pray:

@Jnan I saw your other post about English translations of the Commentaries – can I ask what you are working on?

I am translating the Sampasadaniya-sutta commentary (atthakatha) into English as a part of my PhD thesis. I am using the PTS edition, but in my Introduction, I have a small section on the variations in the various editions of the text (Sinhala, Burmese and Thai).

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Not much work has been done in this area. I wonder what kind of variations you have noticed?

I agree, Venerable, that very little has been done on the Pali commentaries; translation of the texts are very much needed. Since I have to rush with time, I am just having a small section where I am making some remarks on the variations, which I point out (as footnotes) in the translation of the discourse.

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When it comes to the canonical texts, the different manuscript traditions are virtually identical in most respects, varying only in occasional readings. Normally we assume that the commentaries are similar, and differences would only be minor. In your experience, is that the case?

Yes, Venerable, there seem to be no major differences. I found many minor variations, but they do not harm the meanings. In many cases, it’s just the usage of a term declined in the same case, but in different forms. E.g., the locative case of ‘purisa’ has three singular forms and the PTS edition might have it as ‘purisamhi’ while the Burmese may be ‘purisasmiṃ’.

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Romanized version of the Royal Siam Tipiṭaka:

https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=950&p=384221#p384186

Script converter:

http://www.virtualvinodh.com/wp/aksharamukha/

Thank you so much, but the 1st link doesn’t open in my MacBook; it responds ‘File Not Found’.

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Well, hopefully Ven. Dhammanando @Dhammanando will kindly help you either on DhammaWheel forum or here.

Voilà …

Royal Siamese Tipiṭaka (romanised)

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I’m curious: are there commentaries on the Chinese agamas or Tibetan suttas? I’ve only heard of the Pali.

The legend goes that Buddhaghosa was an Indian monk who began his studies on the mainland, but reached the limit of what he could do there. He had more questions, but there were no commentaries to answer them. His teacher said that nowadays (around 400 CE) the commentaries only existed in Sri Lanka. So he made the trip to the island, where he edited and compiled the commentaries in the form we have them today, translating them from archaic Sinhalese into Pali.

Like most Buddhist figures, Buddhaghosa’s life is shrouded in legend. But leaving aside the historicity or otherwise of this story, it does seem to capture at least something of the situation.

In the Chinese and Tibetan collections, there is no systematic set of commentaries that compares with those in Pali. That is not to say they are lacking altogether in commentaries. We have, for example, Asanga’s monumental Yogacarabhumisastra, which includes extensive quotes from early suttas, as well as copious commentaries on quoted passages. But this is more comparable to, say, the Visuddhimagga (which it may indeed have inspired). It doesn’t attempt to comment on every significant word and phrase in every sutta, as does the Pali.

In addition, there are many commentaries on Abhidharma, Vinaya, and of course the Mahayana sutras.

Generally speaking, though, the tendency was to write independent treatises rather than close commentaries.

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In reading the introduction of the book The Madhyama Agama, volume I of the BDK English Tripitaka Series, I realized I had never understood the vast scope of the matrix of the sources of the suttas, the versions and the scholarly work to piece it together. I feel very fortunate to live in a time and place where I’m not constrained to a single view of the dhamma.

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