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Pali

Pāli (; IAST: ) is a Middle Indo-Aryan language that is widely studied as the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism and the language of the Tipiṭaka. Pali was designated a classical language of India by the Government of India on 3 October 2024.

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Pali is a Middle Indo-Aryan language that serves as the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism and is used in the Tipiṭaka, Buddhism's earliest scriptural texts. The language was officially designated as a classical language of India by the Indian government in October 2024.

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Key facts

Language.name: Pāḷi
Language.states: Ancient Magadh region of India
Language.era: 3rd century BCE – present
Language.speakers2: Liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism
Language.familycolor: Indo-European
Language.fam2: Indo-Iranian
Language.fam3: Indo-Aryan
Language.script: Brāhmī, Devanāgarī, Kharoṣṭhī, Khmer, Mon-Burmese, Thai, Tai Tham, Sinhala and transliteration to the Latin script, Chakma
Language.iso1: pi
Language.iso2: pli
Language.iso3: pli
Language.linglist: pli

Article

69 sections

Contents

Origin and development
Etymology
Geographic origin
Early history
Manuscripts and inscriptions
Early Western research
Modern scholarship
Emic views of Pali
Pali today
Pali literature
Relationship to other languages
Paiśācī
Ardha-Magadhi Prakrit
Magadhi Prakrit
Lexicon
Phonology
Vowels
Consonants
Morphology
Nominal inflection
a-stems
ā-stems
i-stems and u-stems
s-stems
nt-stems
an-stems
in-stems
ar-stems
Degrees of comparison
Pronouns
Verbal inflection
Endings
Conjugations
Present
Future
Conditional
Optative
Imperative
Preterite
Passive and denominative
Causative
Non-finite verb forms
Syntax
Word formation
Linguistic analysis of a Pali text
Conversion between Sanskrit and Pali forms
Vowels and diphthongs
Consonants
Sound changes
Assimilations
General rules
Total assimilation
Regressive assimilations
Progressive assimilations
Partial and mutual assimilation
Epenthesis
Other changes
Exceptions
Writing
Alphabet with diacritics
Transliteration on computers
Text in ASCII
Influence on other languages
See also
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
External links

==Origin and development== ===Etymology=== The word 'Pali' is used as a name for the language of the Theravada canon. The word seems to have its origins in commentarial traditions, wherein the (in the sense of the line of original text quoted) was distinguished from the commentary or vernacular translation that followed it in the manuscript. K. R. Norman suggests that its emergence was based on a misunderstanding of the compound , with being interpreted as the name of a particular language.