Pali Literature and Language c5.17

c5.17

V. Weighty arguments have however been urged against the view that Pāli is a dialectical form of Māgadhi or is based on it. Precisely the chief distinguishing features of Māgadhi, as we know them from the grammarians and from the inscriptions and the dramas, are unknown to Pāli. These features are: 1. the mutation of every *r* into *l* and every *s* into *ś*, and 2. the ending *-e* in N. Sg. Masc. and Neut. of *a*-stems and of consonantal stems inflected like them. Pāli however retains the *r* (its change into *l* is indeed frequent but not the rule), and possesses no *ś* at all, but only *s*, and the nominal forms mentioned above end in it with *-o*, or *-am*. For this reason already Burnouf and Lassen³ contested the theory that Pāli is a Magadha-dialect.