Skip to main content

Chronology of the Pali Canon

4👑☸ → misc.  

EBT Timeline: important dates related to EBT texts



External resources


 from dhammawheel forum:

Chronology of the Pali Canon

Post by Assaji » 

Hello Pali friends,

I would like to share some sources and thoughts on the chronology of the Pali Canon.

First, the research on chronology.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE PALI CANON
BY DR. BIMALA CHURN LAW

http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/bcl.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE NIKĀYAS
Bhikkhu Thich Minh Thanh

http://www.viet.net/anson/ebud/mind/02_chap2.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

STUDIES IN THE ORIGINS OF BUDDHISM
GOVIND CHANDRA PANDE

http://www.exoticindia.ru.com/book/deta ... sm-IDC304/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Buddha Spoke Pāli
by Stefan Karpik

http://pali.nibbanam.com/kosalan.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

How old is the Suttapitaka? The relative value of textual and epigraphical sources for the study of early Indian Buddhism.
by Alexander Wynne

http://www.ocbs.org/images/documents/Wynne.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Cooking the Buddhist Books: The Implications of the New Dating of the Buddha for the History of Early Indian Buddhism"
by Charles S. Prebish

http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethi ... rticle.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Recovering the Buddha's Message
R.F. Gombrich

http://www.scribd.com/doc/64865244/Reco ... h-TBF-1988" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Top
User avatar
Assaji
Posts: 1956
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 2009 11:24 am
Contact: 
Contact Assaji

Re: Chronology of the Pali Canon

Post by Assaji » 

Next, the epigraphic evidence.

The Hati-Gumpha inscription of Kharavela, dated the 160th year of the Maurya era (second century BCE) is written in a language which is very close to Pali:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathigumpha_inscription" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://books.google.com.ua/books?id=QYx ... 9&lpg=PA19" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://books.google.com.ua/books?id=XdC ... A5&lpg=PA5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://orissa.gov.in/e-magazine/Journal ... f/9-10.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://gujaratisbs.webs.com/Abstracts%2 ... 20More.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The language of Girnar Asokan edicts is also very close to Pali.

Research of Dr Meena Talim:

http://www.exoticindia.ru.com/book/deta ... on-IHF006/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.aryanbooks.co.in/product.asp?pro_id=65" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The minor differences between the languages of these inscriptions and Pali are described on the pages 4-5 of K.R. Norman's work "The Pali Language and the Theravadin Tradition":

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61312930/The- ... orman-1983" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Top
User avatar
Assaji
Posts: 1956
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 2009 11:24 am
Contact: 
Contact Assaji

Re: Chronology of the Pali Canon

Post by Assaji » 

Now, as to the question of the stratification of Pali Canon by lexical and grammatical markers.

Rhys-Davids'es Pali-English dictionary mentions the words which are used only in the later texts:

ānubhāva
kilesa
bhāva
mālaka
yujjhati
yogin
rasmi
laddhi
vaḍḍhaki
vasabha
viññāṇaka
vimāna
vetulla

Sanskritized prefixes:

ava-
samabhi-

plural of "citta"
yuvassa

There's also a formidable work on the evolution of the Pali metre:

http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/T ... utline.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Paul Kingsbury has done a great work on inducing the chronology through the grammatical markers:

Inducing a Chronology of the Pali Canon
Paul Kingsbury

http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/publications/C ... gsbury.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The chronology of the Pali Canon: The case of the aorists
by Kingsbury, Paul

http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3073020/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The results of his work support the conclusions of Dr. Bimala Churn Law - the gradual evolution of sigmatic vs non-sigmatic aorists is evident from early to late texts, from Sutta-Nipata to Apadana.

So the thorough approach to chronological analysis of the Pali Canon, which will use grammatical, lexical and metrical markers, will make it possible to produce more accurate chronology.

It may even be possible to sort out the chronology of suttas by geographical locations, from the first Buddha's rainy season at Deer Park, to the Mahaparinibbana sutta.

http://stylomilo.com/files/mv/YMBASr1/D ... ddhism.doc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Meta, Dmytro
Last edited by Assaji on Mon Jun 04, 2012 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Advice to younger meditators on jhāna, sex, porn, masturbation

Someone asked: Is porn considered harmful sexual.activity? I don't have a sex life because I don't have a partner and I don't wish to engage in casual sex so I use porn to quench the biological urge to orgasm. I can't see that's it's harmful because nobody is being forced into it. The actors are all paid well and claim to enjoy it etc. The only harm I can see is that it's so accessible these days on smart devices and so children may access it but I believe that this is the parents responsibility to not allow unsupervised use of devices etc. Views? Frankk response: In another thread, you asked about pleasant sensations and jhāna.  I'm guessing you're young, so here's some important advice you won't get from suttas   if you're serious about jhāna.  (since monastics are already celibate by rule)   If you want to attain stable and higher jhānas,   celibacy and noble silence to the best of your ability are the feedstock and prerequiste to tha
Post a Comment
Read more

SN 48.40 Ven. Thanissaro comments on Ven. Sunyo's analysis

This was Ven. Sunyo's analysis of SN 48.40: https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2024/05/exciting-news-honest-ebt-scholars-like.html And here is Ven. Thanissaro's response to that analysis: I think there’s a better way to tackle the issue of SN 48:40 than by appealing to the oldest layers of commentarial literature. That way is to point out that SN 48:40, as we have it, doesn’t pass the test in DN 16 for determining what’s genuine Dhamma and what’s not. There the standard is, not the authority of the person who’s claiming to report the Buddha’s teachings, but whether the teachings he’s reporting are actually in accordance with the principles of the Dhamma that you know. So the simple fact that those who have passed the Buddha’s teachings down to us say that a particular passage is what the Buddha actually taught is not sufficient grounds for accepting it. In the case of the jhānas—the point at issue here— we have to take as our guide the standard formula for the jhānas, a
Post a Comment
Read more

1min. video: Dalai Lama kissing boy and asking him to suck his tongue

To give more context, this is a public event,  * everyone knows cameras are rolling  *  it's a room full of children * the boy's mom is standing off camera a few feet away watching all of this * the boy initiated contact, he had already had a hug with Dalai Lama earlier and then asked Dalai Lama for another hug which triggered this segment  17 min. video showing what happened before that 1 min. clip and after, with some explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT0qey5Ts78 16min talk from Ajahn Acalo with his thoughts on Dalai Lama kissing boy, relevance to Bhikkhu monastic code, sexual predators in religion in general, and how celibate monastics deal with sexual energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2m0TcUib0 The child's comments about the incident in a filmed interview later https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/world-news/2023/04/18/643eba5d46163ffc078b457c.html The child: It's a great experience It was amazing to meet His Holiness and I think it's a great ex
Post a Comment
Read more