Pali Literature and Language c5.33

c5.33

IX. I consider it wiser not to hastily reject the tradition altogether but rather to understand it to mean that Pāli was indeed no pure Māgadhī, but was yet a form of the popular speech which was based on Māgadhī and which was used by Buddha himself. It would appear therefore that the Pāli canon represents an effort¹ to reflect the Buddhavacanam in its original form. This theory would have been refuted if it could be proved that the Pāli canon must have been translated from some other dialect. Sylvain Lévi² has tried to prove this. He points out a number of termini such as ekodi, samghādisesa, etc., in which a sonant appears in the place of a surd. From these data he infers the existence of a pre-canonical language in which the softening of intervocalic surds was the rule. I do not consider Lévi's arguments to be convincing. Firstly, because all these etymologies given by Lévi are uncertain. Secondly, because the softening of surds takes place not only in the "termini" but also in a large number of other words.³ Moreover, in my opinion, no special case should be made out of this phonological phenomenon. For they merely represent one of the various dialectical peculiarities which are met with in Pāli. Thus, for instance, we find equally frequent cases of the opposite process (hardening of a sonant) as well as various other features which considered together prove the mixed character of the Pāli language.