Monday, November 5, 2018

Wikipedia Trail: From Jataka Tales to Middle Indo-Aryan Languages

The Jaka Tales  are about the past lives of Gautama Buddha in human and animal forms. Typically, there are a lot of characters involved who cause trouble, but then the Buddha figure intervenes and solves the problem. These tales are a part of the Pāli Canon, which I looked at next. 
The Pāli Canon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pāli_Canon 
The Pāli Canon are the standard scripture for Theravada Buddhism. There are 3 general categories called Vinaya Pitaka dealing with rules, Sutta Pikata about sermons, and Abhidhamma Pikata about philosophy. It is the most complete canon in the in the Pāli language. 
The Pāli language is also known as Magadhan, native to India. It is studied by many people because it is the sacred language of all Theravada Buddhism texts, and some for Hinduism as well. It is very closely related to Sanskrit. It is also a Middle Indo-Aryan language. 
 Middle Indo-Aryan languages (MIA) were used between 600BC - 1000AD. It just shows where in the development of this language that Pāli was used. It is the predecessor of languages such as Hindustani, Punjabi and Bengali. I thibk it is interesting how languages transform overtime. 




  



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