Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t5.4

c8.s1.t5.4

Buddha spoke, not Sanscrit, but, like every one around him,[*] the popular idiom of eastern Hindostan. We can by inscriptions and the analogies of a closely allied, probably South Indian popular dialect, the Pâli, obtain an adequate picture of this dialect: a soft and agreeably-sounding language, which is distinguished from the Sanscrit by the same smoothing down of the conjoined consonants, the same tendency to vocalic terminations, which gives the Italian its character as opposed to the Latin language. People said mutte for muktas ("free"), vijju for vidyut ("the lightning"), as the Italian says fatti for facti, ama for amat. The syntax was simple and not very well suited to express fine and sharp shades of dialectic.