Pali

Pali is a Middle Indo-Aryan language best known as the language of the Theravada Buddhist canon. Its texts preserve an early body of Buddhist teachings and monastic rules.

Middle Indo-Aryan languages: A historical stage of Indo-Aryan languages between Old Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan. Pali belongs to this linguistic stage, though its exact relationship to spoken varieties remains debated.
Pali Canon: The collection of scriptures preserved in Pali by the Theravada Buddhist tradition. It is the language’s defining literary corpus and the principal source of its religious authority.
Ashoka's edicts: Inscriptions issued by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE, mostly in regional Prakrits. Their dialects illuminate the Middle Indo-Aryan world from which Pali emerged, without directly identifying Pali.
Buddhaghosa: A fifth-century Buddhist commentator associated with major Pali works, including the Visuddhimagga. His commentaries helped establish the interpretation and study of Pali canonical texts.
Origins of Pali: The historical inquiry into how Pali developed and which spoken varieties contributed to it. No single regional dialect fully accounts for Pali’s mixed linguistic features.
Prakrit: A group of Middle Indo-Aryan literary languages and vernaculars used in ancient South Asia. Pali shares features with Prakrits but is not simply identical to any one known Prakrit.
Theravada: A Buddhist tradition grounded in the Pali Canon and prevalent in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Theravada communities have preserved Pali texts and continue to use the language in ritual.
Magadhi Prakrit: An eastern Middle Indo-Aryan language associated with ancient Magadha and some Buddhist traditions. Pali was once identified straightforwardly with Magadhi, but its linguistic features do not support that equation.
Buddhadatta: A fifth-century South Indian Buddhist monk and author of Pali commentarial and grammatical works. His writings show Pali scholarship developing beyond Sri Lanka.
Pali as a literary language: The study of Pali as a standardized written language distinct from any one vernacular. Its canonical uniformity raises questions about how and when a shared literary standard formed.

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