it died out as a literary language in India[614] but in Ceylon, Burma, Siam and Camboja it became the vehicle of a considerable religious and scholastic literature.  The language of Asoka’s inscriptions in the third century B.C. is a parallel dialect, but only half stereotyped.  The language of the Mahavastu and some Mahayanist texts, often called the language of the Gathas, seems to be another vernacular brought more or less into conformity with Sanskrit.  It is probable that in preaching the Buddha used not Pali in the strict sense but the spoken dialect of Magadha[615], and that this dialect did not differ from Pali more than Scotch or Yorkshire from standard English, and if for other reasons we are satisfied that some of the suttas have preserved the phrases which he employed, we may consider that apart from possible deviations in pronunciation or inflexion they are his ipsissima verba.  Even as we have it, the text of the canon contains some anomalous forms which are generally considered to be Magadhisms[616].

The Cullavagga relates how two monks who were Brahmans represented to the Buddha that “monks of different lineage ... corrupt the word of the Buddha by repeating it in their own dialect.  Let us put the word of the Buddhas into chandas[617].”  No doubt Sanskrit verse is meant, chandas being a name applied to the language of the Vedic verses.  Gotama refused:  “You are not to put the word of the Buddhas into chandas.  Whoever does so shall be guilty of an offence.  I allow you to learn the word of the Buddhas each in his own dialect.”  Subsequent generations forgot this prohibition, but it probably has a historical basis and it indicates the Buddha’s desire to make his teaching popular.  It is not likely that he contemplated the composition of a body of scriptures.  He would have been afraid that it might resemble the hymns of the Brahmans which he valued so little and he wished all men to hear his teaching in the language they understood best.  But when after his death his disciples collected his sayings it was natural that they should make at least one version of them in the dialect most widely spoken and that this version should be gradually elaborated in what was considered the best literary form of that dialect[618].  It is probable that the text underwent several linguistic revisions before it reached its present state.

Pali is a sonorous and harmonious language which avoids combinations of consonants and several difficult sounds found in Sanskrit.  Its excellence lies chiefly in its vocabulary and its weakness in its syntax.  Its inflexions are heavy and monotonous and the sentences lack concentration and variety.  Compound words do not assume such monstrous proportions as in later Sanskrit, but there is the same tendency to make the process of composition do duty for syntax.  These faults have been intensified by the fact that the language has been used chiefly for theological discussion.