437
LESSON 15 11 2011 Lakkhana
Sutta Characterized by Action
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A Guide to Learning the Pali Language
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LESSON 437
Practice a Sutta a Day Keeps Dukkha Away
AN 3.2
PTS: A i 102
Lakkhana Sutta:
Characterized (by Action)
translated from the Pali
by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
“Monks,
a fool is characterized by his/her actions. A wise person is characterized by
his/her actions. It is through the activities of one’s life that one’s
discernment shines.
“A
person endowed with three things is to be recognized as a fool. Which three?
Bodily misconduct, verbal misconduct, mental misconduct. A person endowed with
these three things is to be recognized as a fool.
“A
person endowed with three things is to be recognized as a wise person. Which
three? Good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct, good mental conduct. A person
endowed with these three things is to be recognized as a wise person.
“Thus,
monks, you should train yourselves: ‘We will avoid the three things that,
endowed with which, one is to be recognized as a fool. We will undertake &
maintain the three things that, endowed with which, one is to be recognized as
a wise person.’ That’s how you should train yourselves.”
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A
Guide to Learning the Pali Language
by
John
T. Bullitt
See
also “Pali
Language Aids“
It’s
not difficult to learn a little Pali through self-study, using a textbook or
two as a guide. Many people find it helpful to study with others, either in a
formal classroom setting or in a more relaxed Pali study group. For many of us,
the goal is not to become expert scholars and translators of the language, but
simply to become acquainted with enough of the basics of the language to enrich
our personal understanding of the suttas and the Buddha’s teachings. For
self-study, Warder’s Introduction
to Pali
or de Silva’s Pali
Primer
are the basic texts. Johansson’s Pali
Buddhist Texts: An Introductory Reader and Grammar is also immensely
helpful. See the list of Pali
language textbooks
for more recommended titles.
Formal
classroom courses in Pali are offered at many universities with strong Eastern
Religions departments as well as at several Buddhist studies centers and
institutes (see the University of Minnesota’s list of schools that teach less
commonly taught languages, such as Pali). Some university-level Pali courses require
previous acquaintance with Sanskrit. If you are looking for a Pali teacher,
consider asking around at a university to see if there might be a graduate
student willing to tutor you or your study group, perhaps for a small fee. Some
professors may be willing to let you audit a course without going through the
official university registration process.
For
more information of interest to Pali students of all levels, see “Pali Language Aids“
Coping with Pali
diacritical marks
Pali
is a phonetic language with no written alphabet of its own. Students of the
language have therefore relied on their own native alphabets to read and write
Pali, ever since the 1st century BCE, when Sri Lankan scribes first
recorded the Tipitaka in the Sinhala alphabet. But the Europeans who began to
take an interest in South Asian languages in the 19th century
quickly discovered that their own roman alphabet was no match for the wide
range of phonemes (sounds) present in South Asian languages. European scholars
thus began representing the more problematic Pali phonemes by augmenting the
roman alphabet with a system of letter-pairs and diacritics, including the
macron (horizontal bar), dot-over, dot-under, and tilde:
Until
well into the mid-20th century, Pali typefaces using these
characters were used almost exclusively by specialty book publishers; a
scholar’s day-to-day duties of transcribing, translating, and editing had to be
laboriously carried out with typewriter, pen, and a steady hand with which to
apply the diacritics. Unfortunately, the first personal computers failed to address
the typographic challenge of diacritics, as they were designed around a very
limited character set (ASCII) that was only barely able to accommodate the
upper- and lower-case roman letters, ten digits, and a modest sprinkling of
punctuation marks. The extended-ASCII set, which soon followed, offered a suite
of additional special symbols, including many required for northern- and
eastern- European alphabets. But still no macrons or dot-unders. In the absence
of a universally accepted computer representation of non-ASCII characters,
students of non-European languages were left to invent their own stopgap
methods. These range from giving ordinary punctuation marks double-duty as
stand-ins for diacritics, to designing special diacritic fonts (all of which are
incompatible with each other), and everything in between.
A
good written phonetic representation of Pali — indeed, of any language — using
one’s native alphabet as a starting point should aspire to each of the
following ideals:
No
single method simultaneously realizes all of these goals; no single method is
“best.” (I should note, however, that one system — Unicode — holds
exceptional promise — but not until its fonts and keyboard mappings become more
seamlessly and universally integrated into the mainstream of word processors,
HTML authoring software, and web and e-mail clients.) The choice of which
method to use therefore depends both on your particular needs (e.g., Do you
demand phonetic precision? Are you printing a book or dashing off a quick
e-mail?) and on the typing, printing, and computing resources you have at your disposal
(e.g., Do you have a Pali font? Does your PC support Unicode?).
In
what follows I’ve singled out some of the more common strategies that Pali
students have used in recent decades, running the gamut from ignoring
diacritics altogether to using Unicode fonts. I evaluate the success of each
strategy in achieving the above-mentioned goals, to help you decide which
method best suits your needs.
Method 1. Ignore the diacritics
This
is certainly the simplest method. But the cost of that simplicity is heavy: the
irretrievable loss of crucial pronunciation details. This is the method I use
at Access to Insight. (I should add that I do make use of the palatal nasal ñ
because it is so easy to implement using HTML and because it is contained in
the extended-ASCII character set found on practically everyone’s computer
nowadays.)
Examples: |
panatipata itihidam |
Readability: |
Excellent |
Phonetics: |
Poor |
Ease of use: |
Excellent |
Portability: |
Excellent |
Overall: |
Fair. |
Uses: |
Informal |
Capitalized
letters represent letters with an accompanying diacritic. The method is simple,
but it has ambiguities: how, for example, would you distinguish between the
palatal and guttural n (n with a dot-under, and n with a dot-over)?
Examples: |
pANAtipAtA itihidaM |
Readability: |
Poor. |
Phonetics: |
Fair. |
Ease of use: |
Good. |
Portability: |
Excellent |
Overall: |
Fair. |
Uses: |
Informal |
Method 3. The Velthuis scheme: double
the vowels, punctuate the consonants
In
the Velthuis
scheme
two basic rules are observed:
Of
the plain-ASCII methods, this one is the most precise, as it carefully
preserves the significance of each special character. To the uninitiated,
however, the sight of all those doubled vowels and misplaced periods is utterly
bewildering, perhaps leaving them to wonder if someone’s keyboard is broken.
Examples: |
paa.naatipaataa itihida.m |
Readability: |
Fair. |
Phonetics: |
Excellent. |
Ease of use: |
Good. |
Portability: |
Excellent |
Overall: |
Good. |
Uses: |
Formal |
HTML
has access to the extended ASCII character set, which includes many accented
non-English European vowels (umlaut, circumflex, etc.), some of which can serve
as reasonable stand-ins for the long Pali vowels (ä ï ü; à ì ù;
or â î û etc.). The palatal n is straightforward: ñ.
Whatever type of accent you adopt, use it consistently.
Examples: |
pâ.nâtipâtâ itihidam |
Readability: |
Very |
Phonetics: |
Fair. |
Ease of use: |
Good. |
Portability: |
Good. |
Overall: |
Fair-Good. |
Uses: |
Informal |
This
method attempts to clear up the stuttering of Method 3’s doubled vowels, by
using a little HTML (Method 4).
Examples: |
pâ.nâtipâtâ itihida.m |
Readability: |
Fair. |
Phonetics: |
Excellent. |
Ease of use: |
Fair. |
Portability: |
Good. |
Overall: |
Fair. |
Uses: |
Informal |
For
high-quality print projects, nothing beats a well-designed Pali font. For an
extensive review of available Pali and Sanskrit fonts, see Transliteration and
Devanagari Fonts for Sanskrit, by Ulrich Stiehl. The Association for
Insight Meditation’s Pali Font
Resources page
offers several ANSI and Unicode fonts suitable for working with Pali.
Example (in “Normyn” font): |
|
Readability: |
Excellent. |
Phonetics: |
Excellent. |
Ease of use: |
Variable |
Portability: |
Poor. |
Overall: |
Excellent |
Uses: |
Printing. |
Method 7. Unicode and Unicode fonts
Unicode
has emerged in recent years as the international standard for representing
characters from most of the world’s alphabets. All the special characters we
need for Pali transliteration may be found in Unicode’s Latin Extended-A, and Latin Extended Additional code charts. They
can therefore be easily generated using HTML, provided that your web browser
uses a Unicode-savvy font.
There
are many Unicode fonts available that contain the characters needed for Pali.
Two useful sources are the Association of Insight Meditation’s ” Pali
Font Resources” and BuddaSasana’s ” Unicode Fonts for Romanized
Viet-Pali-Sanskrit“
The
following table lists the HTML Unicode entities required to generate each of
the special Pali characters. If your web browser supports Unicode, the
characters appearing in the last column of the table should resemble those
appearing the shaded column. If they do not match, then you may have to upgrade
your web browser, install Unicode fonts on your computer, or both. For details
about configuring your computer and browser to use Unicode, see the Unicode
website.
Pali letter |
Velthuis |
HTML |
Rendered on your browser as[3] |
|
A macron |
|
AA |
Ā |
Ā |
|
aa |
ā |
ā |
|
I macron |
|
II |
Ī |
Ī |
|
ii |
ī |
ī |
|
U macron |
|
UU |
Ū |
Ū |
|
uu |
ū |
ū |
|
N dot-over |
|
“N |
Ṅ |
Ṅ |
|
“n |
ṅ |
ṅ |
|
M dot-under |
|
.M |
Ṃ |
Ṃ |
|
.m |
ṃ |
ṃ |
|
N tilde |
|
~N |
Ñ |
Ñ |
|
~n |
ñ |
ñ |
|
T dot-under |
|
.T |
Ṭ |
Ṭ |
|
.t |
ṭ |
ṭ |
|
D dot-under |
|
.D |
Ḍ |
Ḍ |
|
.d |
ḍ |
ḍ |
|
N dot-under |
|
.N |
Ṇ |
Ṇ |
|
.n |
ṇ |
ṇ |
|
L dot-under |
|
.L |
Ḷ |
Ḷ |
|
.l |
ḷ |
ḷ |
Examples: |
pānātipātā itihidaṁ |
Readability: |
Excellent |
Phonetics: |
Excellent |
Ease of use: |
Poor-Good, |
Portability: |
Good-Excellent. |
Overall: |
Good. |
Uses: |
Web, |
There
are quite a few Pali books out there, but so far none surpasses the breadth and
depth of A.K. Warder’s superb Introduction to Pali. de Silva’s Pali
Primer, a relative newcomer to the Pali textbook scene, offers a light and
refreshing complement to the high-density Warder. If you’re trying to learn
Pali on your own, it can be helpful to have several books to turn to, as each
offers its unique perspective on the language.
The companion CD is well worth purchasing, as it gives the
student a good idea of what “real” spoken Pali should sound like.
Although each chapter contains numerous exercises or
passages for reading and translation, the latest edition contains answers to
only the first seven exercises. Several independently prepared answer keys are
currently available:
This book is intended to serve as an introduction to the
reading of Pali texts. For that purpose it uses authentic readings especially
compiled for the purpose drawn largely from Theravada canonical works, both
prose and poetry. The readings are in Roman script, and carefully graded for
difficulty, but they have also been selected so that each of them is a
meaningful and complete reading in itself, so as to introduce some basic
concepts and ways of thought of Theravada Buddhism. This book thus offers an opportunity
to become acquainted with the ways in which the teachings of the Buddha are
embodied in the language; a sense that is impossible to determine from English
translations. The book contains 12 lessons. Each of them has three parts: (1) a
set of basic readings and an accompanying glossary, (2) grammatical notes on
the forms of the lesson, and (3) a set of further readings with its own
glossary. The further readings introduce no new grammatical points, but
reinforce ones already presented and give further practice in them. The work
concludes, fittingly, with the Buddha’s first sermon, The Dhammacakkappavattana
Sutta. A cumulative glossary and index to the grammar is also provided.
1.
The first of the five
precepts:
“I undertake the precept to refrain from taking life.”
2.
The last line of the
Buddha’s first sermon (SN 56.11): “And that is
how Ven. Kondañña acquired the name Añña-Kondañña — Kondañña who knows.”
3.
These characters will
display properly only when your browser is set with a default font that
contains appropriate Pali Unicode characters.