Pali: A Grammar of the Language of the Theravada Tipitaka, with a Concordance to Pischel's Grammatik Der Prakrit-Sprachen [Hardcover]

A fascinating book about a fascinating language, the language of the basic texts of Buddhism, what we, good Christians, the author of the book among others, call the canonical language of Buddhism, in spite of the fact that any Buddhist would say like the Buddha that there is no sacred text anywhere, hence no canonical text. The book is clear about the fact that Pali is not the daughter of Sanskrit, but rather the sister, or a very close cousin. Very similar altogether, the differences though point to older origins and some roots in pre-Sanskrit or even non-Sanskrit, proto Indo-European for example, languages or dialects. The book then is a very rich collection of data about the language. Morphonological data and then syntactic data. As such it is very interesting because on each point the book studies we have all the possible forms and examples of each one of them. But the book is not for a beginner. Many examples are not translated and you have to have a dictionary or to know what you are reading about. When the examples are actually translated the book does not specify in anyway the syntactic structure of the term, phrase or sentence given as an example. Actually we deal here with what I consider as the first drawback and even shortcoming of the book: it does not get into real syntax. It does not go beyond morphology. The title is thus treacherous and misleading. It is not a "grammar" of Pali but only a morphological and morphonological study of the language. We do need a description of the full grammar of the language to really understand some of the points the author makes brilliantly. I am not frustrated because he calls what I know as the non-finite forms of the verb, infinitives, though some are not infinitives at all, but gerunds and participles. He uses the Latin meaning of the word. That's his right and we know how to be careful. But it is in full contradiction with the fact that he says "the focus of the verbal conjugation is no longer the root but the present stem". This means there is no more infinitive per se in the language. But it is frustrating to have all these participles, gerunds and other non-finite forms listed with no real syntactic description of their meaning or meanings as for the time they capture, the aspect of the verbal process they express and even the "medium" or voice they carry. Even worse: the author does not specify the syntactic structures these forms can be used in with the case patterns of these constructions and the articulation of these non-finite forms onto finite verbs in a higher clause. In other words you will definitely be still hungry and thirsty when you get out of the book.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne

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