The History of Buddhist Thought c28.19

c28.19

The language of the Pāli Canon is described by the commentators as Māgadhī (the language of Magadha). There can be no doubt that this was the original language, but it is now usually held that Pāli as we know it must have developed in the west of India, and the probability is that the present Pāli Canon comes from a Buddhist community of monks in the region of Ujjenī (Ujjain), who adapted it to their own dialect. It still retains traces of an earlier dialect in the verse passages. The Sarvāstivāda schools went further, and turned the whole of their Canon into Sanskrit, though in this case also traces of a popular dialect, a form of Prakrit, appear in the metrical passages. The Mahāvastu, which also aims at being Sanskrit, preserves many more traces of its original Prakrit.