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Pāli
Pāli (, IAST: pāl̤i) is a classical Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of '' Theravāda'' Buddhism. Pali was designated as a classical language by the Government of India on 3 October 2024. Origin and development Etymology The word 'Pali' is used as a name for the language of the Theravada canon. The word seems to have its origins in commentarial traditions, wherein the (in the sense of the line of original text quoted) was distinguished from the commentary or vernacular translation that followed it in the manuscript. K. R. Norman suggests that its emergence was based on a misunderstanding of the compound , with being interpreted as the name of a particular language. The name Pali does not appear in the canonical literature, and in commentary literature is sometimes substituted with , meaning a string or lineage. Thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theravada
''Theravāda'' (; 'School of the Elders'; ) is Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school's adherents, termed ''Theravādins'' (anglicized from Pali ''theravādī''), have preserved their version of the Buddha's teaching or ''Dharma (Buddhism), Dhamma'' in the Pāli Canon for over two millennia. The Pāli Canon is the most complete Buddhist canon surviving in a Indo-Aryan languages, classical Indian language, Pāli, which serves as the school's sacred language and ''lingua franca''.Crosby, Kate (2013), ''Theravada Buddhism: Continuity, Diversity, and Identity'', p. 2. In contrast to Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna, Theravāda tends to be conservative in matters of doctrine (''pariyatti'') and monastic discipline (''vinaya''). One element of this Religious conservatism, conservatism is the fact that Theravāda rejects the authenticity of the Mahayana sutras (which appeared onwards). Consequently, Theravāda generally does not recognize the existence of many Buddhas and bodhisattva ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddhism
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or 5th century Before the Common Era, BCE. It is the Major religious groups, world's fourth-largest religion, with about 500 million followers, known as Buddhists, who comprise four percent of the global population. It arose in the eastern Gangetic plain as a movement in the 5th century BCE, and gradually spread throughout much of Asia. Buddhism has subsequently played a major role in Asian culture and spirituality, eventually spreading to Western world, the West in the 20th century. According to tradition, the Buddha instructed his followers in a path of bhavana, development which leads to Enlightenment in Buddhism, awakening and moksha, full liberation from ''Duḥkha, dukkha'' (). He regarded this path as a Middle Way between extremes su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pali Canon
The Pāḷi Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhism, Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. It is the most complete extant Early Buddhist texts, early Buddhist canon. It derives mainly from the Tamrashatiya school. According to Buddhist tradition, during the First Buddhist Council, three months after the parinibbana of Gautama Buddha in Rajgir, Ananda recited the Sutta Piṭaka, Sutta Pitaka, and Upali recited the Vinaya Piṭaka, Vinaya Pitaka. The Arhats present accepted the recitations, and henceforth, the teachings were preserved orally by the Sangha. The Tipitaka that was transmitted to Sri Lanka during the reign of King Asoka was initially preserved orally and later written down on palm leaves during the Fourth Buddhist Council in 29 BC, approximately 454 years after the death of Gautama Buddha. The claim that the texts were "spoken by the Buddha" is meant in this non-literal sense. The existence of the Bhāṇaka tradi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tripiṭaka
There are several Buddhist canons, which refers to the various scriptural collections of Buddhist sacred scriptures or the various Buddhist scriptural canons. Tipitaka Encyclopædia Britannica (2015) Some of these collections are also called ''Tipiṭaka'' () or ''Tripiṭaka'' () , meaning "Triple Basket", a traditional term for the three main divisions of some ancient canons. In ancient India, there were several Buddhist scriptural canons that were organized into three main textual divisions: Vinaya (monastic rule), (which contains teachings of the Buddha) and [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Indo-Aryan Languages
The Middle Indo-Aryan languages (or Middle Indic languages, sometimes conflated with the Prakrits, which are a stage of Middle Indic) are a historical group of languages of the Indo-Aryan family. They are the descendants of Old Indo-Aryan (OIA; attested through Vedic Sanskrit) and the predecessors of the modern Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Bengali and Punjabi. The Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) stage is thought to have spanned more than a millennium between 600 BCE and 1000 CE, and is often divided into three major subdivisions. * The early stage is represented by the Ardhamagadhi of the Edicts of Ashoka (c. 250 BCE) and Jain Agamas, and by the Pali of the Tripitakas. * The middle stage is represented by the various literary Prakrits, especially the Shauraseni language and the Maharashtri and Magadhi Prakrits. The term Prakrit is also often applied to Middle Indo-Aryan languages (''prākṛta'' literally means 'natural' as opposed to ''saṃskṛt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magadha (Mahajanapada)
Magadha was a region and kingdom in ancient India, based in the eastern Ganges Plain. It was one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas during the Second Urbanization period. The region was ruled by several dynasties, which overshadowed, conquered, and incorporated the other Mahajanapadas. Magadha played an important role in the development of Jainism and Buddhism and formed the core of the Maurya Empire (ca. 320–185 BCE). Geography The territory of the Magadha kingdom proper before its expansion was bounded to the north, west, and east respectively by the Gaṅgā, Son, and Campā rivers, and the eastern spurs of the Vindhya mountains formed its southern border. The territory of the initial Magadha kingdom thus corresponded to the modern-day Patna and Gaya districts of the Indian state of Bihar. The region of Greater Magadha also included neighbouring regions in the eastern Gangetic plains and had a distinct culture and belief. History Vedic period (semi-legendary) (ca. 170 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, Indian peninsula by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. It shares a maritime border with the Maldives in the southwest and India in the northwest. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is the legislative capital of Sri Lanka, while the largest city, Colombo, is the administrative and judicial capital which is the nation's political, financial and cultural centre. Kandy is the second-largest urban area and also the capital of the last native kingdom of Sri Lanka. The most spoken language Sinhala language, Sinhala, is spoken by the majority of the population (approximately 17 million). Tamil language, Tamil is also spoken by approximately five million people, making it the second most-spoken language in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has a population of appr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magadh
Magadha was a region and kingdom in ancient India, based in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, eastern Ganges Plain. It was one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas during the Second Urbanization period. The region was ruled by several dynasties, which overshadowed, conquered, and incorporated the other Mahajanapadas. Magadha played an important role in the development of Jainism and Buddhism and formed the core of the Maurya Empire (ca. 320–185 BCE). Geography The territory of the Magadha kingdom proper before its expansion was bounded to the north, west, and east respectively by the Ganges, Gaṅgā, Son River, Son, and Chandan River, Campā rivers, and the eastern spurs of the Vindhya Range, Vindhya mountains formed its southern border. The territory of the initial Magadha kingdom thus corresponded to the modern-day Patna district, Patna and Gaya district, Gaya districts of the Indian state of Bihar. The region of Greater Magadha also included neighbouring regions in the eastern Gangetic pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brahmi Script
Brahmi ( ; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' or 'Lat', 'Southern Aśokan', 'Indian Pali', 'Mauryan', and so on. The application to it of the name Brahmi [''sc. lipi''], which stands at the head of the Buddhist and Jaina script lists, was first suggested by T[errien] de Lacouperie, who noted that in the Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia ''Fa yiian chu lin'' the scripts whose names corresponded to the Brahmi and Kharosthi of the ''Lalitavistara'' are described as written from left to right and from right to left, respectively. He therefore suggested that the name Brahmi should refer to the left-to-right 'Indo-Pali' script of the Aśokan pillar inscriptions, and Kharosthi to the right-to-left 'Bactro-Pali' script of the rock inscriptions from the northwest." that appeared as a fully ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sacred Language
A sacred language, liturgical language or holy language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons (like church service) by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives. Some religions, or parts of them, regard the language of their sacred texts as in itself sacred. These include Ecclesiastical Latin in Roman Catholicism, Hebrew in Judaism, Arabic in Islam, Avestan in Zoroastrianism, Sanskrit in Hinduism, and Punjabi in Sikhism. By contrast Buddhism and Christian denominations outside of Catholicism do not generally regard their sacred languages as sacred in themselves. Concept A sacred language is often the language which was spoken and written in the society in which a religion's sacred texts were first set down; these texts thereafter become fixed and holy, remaining frozen and immune to later linguistic developments. (An exception to this is Lucumí, a ritual lexicon of the Cuban strain of the Santería religion, with no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kharoṣṭhī
Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara, Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara alongside various parts of South Asia and Central Asia. it remained in use until it died out in its homeland around the 5th century CE. It was also in use in Bactria, the Kushan Empire, Sogdia, and along the Silk Road. There is some evidence it may have survived until the 7th century in Khotan and Niya (Tarim Basin), Niya, both cities in East Turkestan. History The name Kharosthi may derive from the Hebrew ''kharosheth'', a Semitic word for writing, or from Old Iranian ''*xšaθra-pištra'', which means "royal writing". The script was earlier also known as ''Indo-Bactrian script'', ''Kabul script'' and ''Arian-Pali''. Scholars are not in agreement as to whether the Kharosthi script evolved gradually, or was the deliberate work of a single in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-Aryan Languages
The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east of the Indus river in Bangladesh, Northern India, Eastern Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal. Moreover, apart from the Indian subcontinent, large immigrant and expatriate Indo-Aryan–speaking communities live in Northwestern Europe, Western Asia, North America, the Caribbean, Southeast Africa, Polynesia and Australia, along with several million speakers of Romani languages primarily concentrated in Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. There are over 200 known Indo-Aryan languages. Modern Indo-Aryan languages descend from Old Indo-Aryan languages such as early Vedic Sanskrit, through Middle Indo-Aryan languages (or Prakrits). The largest such languages in terms of First language, first-speakers are Hindustani language, Hindi–Urdu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
