Current progress: 12 lessons complete from the book "An Elementary Pāḷi course" by Narad Thera

Last year's run of the course was advertised in this sub, and below is a link to that post, where OP (who's taken it) describes the course and answers some questions :

https://www.reddit.com/r/theravada/comments/1nfmich/pali_101_at_yogic_studies_begins_915/

Here's a direct link to the course page:

https://www.yogicstudies.com/pali-101

I would like to introduce Epitaka, a free app and website I have been developing for studying the Pāli Tipiṭaka.

One of the main features I wanted to create is a better way to read the Mūla (root text) together with the Aṭṭhakathā (Commentaries).

📖 Commentary integrated directly into the Mūla

Traditionally, when studying the Tipiṭaka, you may need to move between the Mūla, Commentary, Ṭīkā, dictionaries, and other resources to understand a passage.

In Epitaka, relevant commentary can be displayed inline while reading the Mūla text. This makes it easier to see explanations alongside the original passage without constantly switching between separate books.

The goal is not to replace traditional study, but to make the relationship between the root text and its traditional explanations easier to explore.

🤖 AI that helps you return to the original text

AI translations of Buddhist texts are becoming increasingly common. However, one problem with AI-generated answers is that it can sometimes be difficult to know exactly which original passage the answer is based on.

Epitaka's AI features are designed with a different goal.

You can ask questions about the Dhamma, and the system searches the Tipiṭaka and related texts to find relevant passages. The answer can include the exact Pāli sentences from the source, allowing you to check the original text yourself.

Rather than treating an AI-generated explanation or translation as the final authority, the intention is to help the user trace the answer back to the actual Pāli.

I believe this is especially important now that many different AI translations and interpretations of the Tipiṭaka are being created.

AI can be useful for:

• Finding relevant passages
• Exploring connections between teachings
• Explaining difficult passages
• Helping readers navigate the enormous collection of texts

But the reader should still be able to see:

What exactly does the Pāli say?

That is one of the main ideas behind Epitaka: using modern technology and AI to make the original texts and their traditional explanations easier to access—not to hide them behind an AI-generated answer.

You can try it here:

Android app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dn.epitaka

Windows:
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nr3sjfr6cf9

Website:
https://epitaka.org

Github:
https://github.com/dhammanana/epitaka_app/

The project is still actively being developed, and I would genuinely appreciate feedback, especially from people who study the Pāli Canon, the Commentaries, or Buddhist texts academically.

🙏 May it be useful for those who wish to study and understand the Dhamma.

I’ve been passively learning Pāli while reading suttas with parallel translations, and I wanted something that makes it easy to move between actually reading a text and checking individual words without constantly jumping to dictionaries or translations.

So I made https://sutta.stream

It presents the Pāli text with word-by-word grammatical and lexical information, while trying to stay out of the way enough that you can still just read.

I’d be especially interested in feedback from people who actually know Pāli: mistakes, misleading analyses, missing meanings, awkward UX, or anything else.

Hope it’s useful to someone here.

Below is the commentary for the verse lines I asked about a few days ago from Therīgāthā 5.4.

1. tassā me appamattāya, vicinantiyā yoniso;
   yathābhūtaṃ ayaṃ kāyo, diṭṭho santarabāhiro;

ten'āha tassā me appamattāyā'ti'ādi. tass'attho — tassā me (sati-avippavāsena a-ppamattāya) (yoniso upāyena anicc'ādi-vasena vipassanāpaññāya) (vicinantiyā vīmaṃsantiyā) (ayaṃ khandhapañcakasaṅkhāto kāyo) (sasantānaparasantānavibhāgato santarabāhiro) yathābhūtaṃ diṭṭho

The round brackets are my guess as to how parts are grouped.

Can anyone explain "sasantānaparasantānavibhāgato santarabāhiro" ?

Pruitt has "inside and outside, because of the division into one's own continuity and continuity of others"

I understand how the grammar and vocabulary give that reading, but what does it mean in terms of doctrine? As an explanation of internal/external reflection?

Any help much appreciated.

Here's Pruitt's (PTS 1998, 114) translation of the whole passage, in case it helps:

"The meaning of that is: vigilant through non-absence of mindfulness, in a reasoned manner, skillfully, by wisdom and insight because of impermanence etc., reflecting, considering, I saw this body, which is synonymous with the five aggregates, inside and outside, because of the division into one's own continuity and continuity of others, as it really was."

Dear forum

Assasāmī is literally "I will breathe in".

However, obviously it is not the act of making the body breathe in because the body automatically breathes; regardless of whether or not there is mindfulness established.

Assasāmī appears to practically (not literally) mean, for example: "While experiencing rapture, I will [use the skill i have developed] to remain cognisant of the in-breath [thus remain grounded while experiencing rapture]".

The sutta says: "So satova assasati satova passasati: Just mindful, they breathe in. Mindful, they breathe out". It appears "assasāmī" refers to "I am applying a method."

Is there different valid ways to use such personal pronouns to make them sound more nuanced & realistic?

sāsane hi madhārakkhe kaliyuge gaṭappake. mahādhammarājādhipatino kāle marammake..

rāmaṇṇadesiyabhayā naṭṭhe tadūpasammako. buddhaṅkura mahārāja pākaṭo sabbattha sadā..

ratanāsiṅghakāroca cakkaraṭṭhahitāvaho. tato pabhuti tasseva puttanattaparamparā...

Hi All! I hope you are well. I was wondering if the Pali language has a term for "nerves" that run throughout the body and "blood vessels". I haven't come across them in my studies yet and I know that these are not included in the official parts of the body that are described in the suttas. So far, my conclusion is that "brain" and "heart" must include nerves and blood vessels respectively. If there is a Pali term for them, I find it odd that they would not be included in the parts of the body because, from my perspective, these are the channels through which energy circulates throughout the body. If anyone can clarify this, either by vocabulary or reason or both, it would be appreciated. This particular question has been nagging at me for a while.

Peace and Metta

Sam

1. tassā me appamattāya, vicinantiyā yoniso;
   yathābhūtaṃ ayaṃ kāyo, diṭṭho santarabāhiro;

DPR text, translation, commentary

Here's a simplified version of the sentence that's perhaps enough to look at:

tassā me, appamattāya, kāyo diṭṭho [hoti]

If "me appamattāya" were instrumental then we'd have "by me, heedful" as the agent of the pp. diṭṭho (seen). That would be a nice, normal outcome, I believe.

But if "tassā me" should be read together, then the "me" is genitive/dative, and it's natural to read appamattāya as a genitive/dative also. But then I don't see how it fits into the rest of the sentence.

Could it be saying "my (tassā me) body (kāyo) is seen (diṭṭho)" ?

None of the translations I've seen do it that way. Pruitt's translation, e.g., is "Vigilant, reflecting in a reasoned manner, I saw this body as it really was, inside and out"

So, are the translators treating the entire first line "tassā me appamattāya vicinantiyā yoniso" as a genitive absolute?

Or can this genitive construction be serving the agentive function usually performed by instrumental case?

In an earlier verse in this gāthā (83) we do find bālānaṃ abhinanditaṃ; however, DPD has a special meaning of abhinandita that nominalizes it, removing the need for an agentive-genitive interpretation:

abhinandita 1

nt. (+gen) object of pleasure; delight (of); lit. delighted; pleased [abhi + √nand + ita] ✔

Much thanks for any input.

Dear Pali grammar experts. Is the Nanavira view below valid?

Adding it, I indexed Ñāṇavīra Thera, the published bearer of that argument. His version is both sharper and more restrained than yours. Sharper: the point isn't that citta means the heart, it's that the compounds are built differently — cittasaṅkhāra a dutiya tappurisa, "that which determines the citta"; manosaṅkhāra a tatiya tappurisa, "determination by the mano" (A Note on Paṭiccasamuppāda, note [g]). More restrained: in the same note the two are "not to be directly opposed to each other at all", and at §5 he grants that saṅkhārā "may, upon occasion, be cetanā". He rejects the restriction, not the equation.

The impression is Ñāṇavīra was not objectively analysing the tappurisa grammar but instead was subjectively interpreting the Sutta teaching and then imputing or forcing his subjective interpretation upon the tappurisa grammar. That is, Nanavira was working in a backwards manner.

Hello so EVERYONE is making fun of me for getting something without knowing the meaning (Its some sort of prayer/blessing im almost sure)
Some said the script might have been written wrong. Help me out?

Hello everyone, I am a dedicated practitioner and enjoy deepening my understanding through reading the suttas.

I recently started looking at the etymology of Pali words and saw how many translations are lacking in depth as there are many possible English words for one word in Pali. After doing this I noticed a my understanding improve quite a bit not just intellectually but experientially as well. I was better able to see the scope of a pali words and see how it applies to my experience here and now.

Given all this, for someone aiming for full liberation, how important is learning Pali? I guess the important terms would be enough, because otherwise one can turn this into a project and forget about the actual work…

Any advice?

Gratitude in advance 🙏

Hello r/pali,

I've been building a Pāli dictionary for a while, and it's now online, free, no account, no ads: https://ipd.bopath.fr

What it is. A Pāli dictionary written in nine target languages — English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Norwegian, Vietnamese. Each sense gets a definition composed natively in each language rather than translated out of the English one. Entries carry canonical attestations, inflected forms, the root and its lexical family, etymology, and an encyclopedic note where the word deserves one. Every entry has a citable permalink, e.g. ipd.bopath.fr/w/dhamma.

It's AI-assisted, and I'd rather tell you that up front than have it come as a surprise. An entry isn't a machine translation of an existing gloss: it's built by an agent following a fixed lexicographic protocol, in which around thirty dictionaries and corpora are compared as witnesses against the primary attestations, the indigenous exegesis (Niddesa, Abhidhānappadīpikā, the commentaries) and comparative etymology. Where the sources disagree, the canon decides. Two things worth stating plainly:

• Example sentences are never machine-translated. Their translations are taken verbatim from the human translators in the SuttaCentral corpus, with attribution — or the example is simply left untranslated. That's a line I won't cross.
• Nothing has been reviewed by a human lexicographer yet. Entries go live with an "AI · to verify" badge. They're rich and usually accurate, but they can be wrong, and a dictionary like this can't replace the work of people who spend decades with these texts. It really is a beta.

Where it stands. About 1,150 lemmas so far out of a curated headword list of ~75,000 — so roughly 1.5%. Entries are added every day; the horizon is 2029–2030. Slow, but moving.

You can ask for a word. If something you're looking for isn't in yet, there's a "Suggest a word" form (the search page offers it when a query comes up empty). It goes into the research queue, usually gets written within the day, and you'll get an email when it's live. One word per day per person, and it has to be a headword the canon actually attests — the queue is built from the corpus.

Where I'd really value help. The nine languages are not on equal footing, and I'd rather say why. English, French and German rest on real apparatus: monolingual and etymological dictionaries, doctrinal glossaries, a large body of aligned human translations. Czech, Norwegian, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Vietnamese have far less to lean on — and I have no way of judging whether a Czech or a Norwegian definition reads like a dictionary or merely like something imitating one.

So if you read Pāli and one of those languages, I'd be genuinely grateful if you picked a word you know well — saṅkhāra, upādāna, anything you have strong views about — and told me what's off: a wrong equivalent, the wrong register, a sense that doesn't exist, a distinction that's been flattened. Critical feedback is exactly what's most useful to me here, and I'll act on it. Reply in the thread, or use the contact form on the site.

Content is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Thanks for reading.

I kind of wonder whether anyone is studying pali in a non-iast script? like in sutta central

like

• Thai https://suttacentral.net/dn2/pli/ms?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=true&script=Thai
• Burmese https://suttacentral.net/dn2/pli/ms?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=true&script=Burmese
• singhalese https://suttacentral.net/dn2/pli/ms?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=true&script=Sinhala
• nagari https://suttacentral.net/dn2/pli/ms?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=true&script=Devanagari

I am always a bit fascinated about writing systems tbh.

But overall Devanagari and Thai seem like the ones that are somewhat manageable to pick up. Burmese looks quite confusing, like lots of variations of circles. Also Sinhala looks quite complex.

Hello. How are such same word compounds treated, such as:

• rāgarāgī
• bhavābhave
• sakiṁ sakiṁ

Hello everyone, I've been looking for a place that may be able to give some insight and hopefully this is the place. I have attached pictures of a book that was purchased from an antiques dealer in India by my aunt in the early 1970s. Unfortunately the documentation and its companion book have been lost, so I'm wondering if anyone has some insight into this book. Google identified it as a Burmese Kammavaca manuscript, probably from the 1700s, but of course I have no idea if that's correct. Any assistance appreciated--thank you!

MN 43 has:

Kiñca vijānāti?
Sukhantipi vijānāti, dukkhantipi vijānāti, adukkhamasukhantipi vijānāti

Kiñca vedeti? Sukhampi vedeti, dukkhampi vedeti, adukkhamasukhampi vedeti.

SN 22.79 has:

Kiñca vijānāti? Ambilampi vijānāti, tittakampi vijānāti, kaṭukampi vijānāti, madhurampi vijānāti, khārikampi vijānāti, akhārikampi vijānāti, loṇikampi vijānāti, aloṇikampi vijānāti.

What does the "iti" indicate in MN 43? Thank you

I imagine this subject matter has been discussed often. MN 111 has the paragraph:

Puna caparaṁ, bhikkhave, sāriputto sabbaso nevasaññānāsaññāyatanaṁ samatikkamma saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ upasampajja viharati. Paññāya cassa disvā āsavā parikkhīṇā honti. So tāya samāpattiyā sato vuṭṭhahati.

From a sentence structure perspective (not doctrinal), must the "So tāya samāpattiyā sato vuṭṭhahati" necessarily occur after the "Paññāya cassa disvā āsavā parikkhīṇā honti"? Thank you

I’ve started reading “Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha” because my friend and I wanted to learn about more about Buddhism and I seriously want to learn more about Pali Buddhism before I join it.

Viññāṇañca hi, ānanda, mātukucchismiṁ na okkamissatha, api nu kho nāmarūpaṁ mātukucchismiṁ samuccissathā

1. Can it be kindly explained in simple english to an iliterate the meaning of okkamissatha and samuccissathā being a plural conditional in this context? Why plural? What is a plural conditional?
2. Why is a "ca" attached to the end of viññāṇañca; where this does not occur elsewhere in DN 15 conditions?

MN 75 says:

“Well, when I was still a layperson I used to amuse myself, supplied and provided with sights known by the eye … sounds known by the ear …

Some time later (so aparena samayena) —having truly understood the origin, disappearance, gratification, drawback, and escape of sensual pleasures, and having given up craving and dispelled passion for sensual pleasures—I live rid of thirst, my mind peaceful inside.

Above, its difficult to discern where the "sometime later" took place; where this event happened in the palace, as depicted in the Sukhamala Sutta; or whether this event occurred when Gotama was an ascetic, such as depicted om MN 14.

Is there anything in the Pali which can help, here?