The origin of Pāli and its position among the Indo-European languages

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• Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect, chronologically situated between Old Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) and New Indo-Aryan languages. It belongs to the Indo-European language family.
• The ancestors of the Indo-Aryans and Iranians, known as Indo-Iranians, reached the area north of modern Iran by 2000 B.C. before splitting. The Indo-Aryans then moved into India in successive waves.
• In India, the Indo-Aryans encountered and mixed with indigenous populations, including Dravidian speakers, leading to the borrowing of words and the development of mixed dialects.
• Different waves of invaders spoke distinct dialects, traces of which can be found in the earliest Indo-Aryan text, the Ṛg-veda. This text also shows early signs of Middle Indo-Aryan developments (“Prakritisms”).
• By around 500 B.C., vernacular dialects called Prakrits were significantly different from the Sanskrit of the brahmanical class, which was later codified and “frozen” by grammarians like Pāṇini.
• The Buddha and Mahāvīra preached in these vernacular Prakrits, using local dialects to differentiate their teachings from the brahmanical tradition.
• The teachings of the Buddha were transmitted orally in various dialects. Over time, a process of standardization occurred through group recitations (sangītis) and a system of official reciters (bhāṇakas).
• Fearing the loss of the oral tradition, the Theravādin canon was written down in Ceylon in the first century B.C. The language of this canon (pāli-bhāsā) is what we now call Pāli.
• Pāli is not a single, pure dialect but a composite language. It is predominantly based on a Western dialect but contains features from other dialects (like Eastern Māgadhī), likely due to the diverse origins of the sermons and imperfect standardization.
• After being written down, the Pāli canon underwent some Sanskritization (e.g., restoring the word brāhmaṇa) but shows little influence from Sinhalese or Dravidian languages.
• Post-canonical Pāli works, however, show significant influence from Dravidian, Sinhalese, and Sanskrit, both in vocabulary and grammar.
• Medieval Pāli grammarians, influenced by Sanskrit models, created normative rules for Pāli. This led scribes to “correct” manuscripts, meaning the Pāli of the canon today reflects the standardized language of the twelfth century A.D.