We had a long break from Tipitaka and Pali study, and now taking up again. The goal is to learn Pali using Latin alphabet, and to be able to read the Tipitaka, our Buddhist Bible passed down to us from 2600 years ago.
There are at least two versions of Ven. Narada’s pali textbook floating around, and I’ll link to both of them. I like the old format, as opposed to the updated format. The content seems the same, but the formatting is different, and you can use which ever is more appealing to you.
Chapter 1 is an introduction to the basic pronunciation of Pali sounds using Latin characters, and introduces basic sentence structure. Please start reading chapter 1 and do the exercises before checking with the chapter 1 answer key. The original textbook didn’t come with an answer key, and this is one I produced. Please offer corrections where the answer can be improved upon.
Why study Pali? Study Pali for the pure pleasure, as it is a beautiful language, and because “Pali” was the language used by the historical Buddha in ancient Magadhi for instruction of Dhamma to the common people.
Today, Pali has become an elite language, known only by the priestly class, the monastics, and some highly learned lay people. However, it used to be that Pali was the common language, like English is in most parts of the world.
Spoken Pali sounds different depending on country of origin of the speaker, whether that person learned Pali in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, or our country of origin Cambodia. So which dialect do we learn? There’s no right or wrong answer, and I hope people do not form a strong opinion on this.
One consideration is to move towards unification, instead of continuing to fragment our small Buddhist communities, and it may mean that we adopt the standard that has the most speakers, or that can be learned more easily.
Personally I don’t have much choice, limited in the learning materials, so I advocate by default for us to learn the dialect in Narada’s elementary Pali pronunciation guide, which is derived from Myanmar sources. Our Cambodian Theravadin Buddhist tradition can be traced from the Mon people, the Mon who preserved the pure form of Buddha’s teachings, what we now call Theravadin Buddhism. Read this article for the historical background. The Mon are brothers of Khmer people, and historically we were once a single people but became fragmented through invasions.
So to end, we’ll meet once a week to study a chapter out of Narada’s Elementary Pali, and answers will be posted on this website. We’ll consider posting Pali pronunciation sound files at a later time, when we can get more skillful speakers to contribute.
Hello Sir,I am a Cambodian monk after I read the introduction,I feel that very interesting. I would like to study Tipitaka and Pali there,how can I know the more detail information about there?
Reply me , Please.