This part is a collection of Pāli grammatical textbooks. I select the important ones, put them here, and make them easy to access and navigate. By the traditional account, there are three big schools of Pāli grammarians: Kaccāyana, Moggallāna, and Saddanīti. All these with their chief commentaries will be added here, together with other remarkable works.
I think studying these texts is not necessary to normal Buddhist practitioners, but they can be an intellectual challenge for those who have already done the basic things and need to go deeper in the field. I do not think knowing deep grammar will bring you more or higher liberation. (Instead, it can hinder the progress because it needs lots of time and effort.) However, for scholarly-minded learners, studying Pāli language in depth can make the time worthwhile, and it contributes to the field of Buddhist Studies at large.
Western students may find these works difficult, because it is hard to get full translations of these in their languages. This tells us that serious studies of the traditional Pāli textbooks in the West are really pressing. Perhaps, learning them with a help from living languages like Thai or Myanmar is more viable.
The head of all suttas in the grammar books presented here are put together, suitable for search and overview, in Grammatical Sutta Finder. This tools can also relate one work to each other.
For those who are interested in Pāli roots, they can use Pāli Root Finder to examine the whole territory. And apart from Saddanīti Dhātumālā listed below, Kaccāyana-dhātumañjūsā and Dhātvatthasaṅgaha can be good sources for learning.
1. Kaccāyanabyākaraṇaṃ
The grammar book by Kaccāyana is the oldest. But how old is a matter of dispute. To the traditional mind, the author was the Venerable Mahākaccāyana comtemporary to the Buddha. It is really unlikely if we consider seriously the language used at that time. The book was probably composed in Sri Lanka by using a Sanskrit grammatical model (after Kātantra, to be precise), maybe after the era of commentaries but before that of subcommentaries.
The Kaccāyana has a number of commentaries or rearranged works. The most important is Padarūpasiddhi or Rūpasiddhi written by Buddhappiya Dīpaṅkara around the second half of the 13th century. When Pāli students study Kaccāyana, Rūpasiddhi is normally brought together to gain more understanding. As we can see that most of the Kaccāyana suttas have their corresponding Rūpasiddhi sutta. So, I put them together here.
2. Moggallānabyākaraṇaṃ
The second big school is of Moggallāna. The work was written in the early 12th century. It often has different views from Kaccāyana. As noted by K. R. Norman, “Moggallāna deals with the linguistic material more exhaustively and with greater understanding of the essence and character of Pali.” In general, the formulas of Moggallāna’s suttas are terse and more difficult to decipher.
Moggallāna wrote his own commentary known as Moggallānapañcikā. This work is somewhat difficult to follow. A more popular commentary on Moggallāna is Payogasiddhi written by Medhaṅkara around the 13th century. Its status is like Rūpasiddhi to Kaccāyana. So, I put Moggallāna and Payogasiddhi together in the same manner. However, the Pañcikā is also included as the reader’s option.
Another recent important commentary in this school is Leḍī Sayāḍo’s Niruttidīpanī, finished in 1903. With this work, we can link Moggallāna to Kaccāyana and Saddanīti suttas. This is really helpful to Pāli students and researchers for doing a comparative study.
3. Saddanītippakaraṇaṃ
Saddanīti is a monumental work written by Aggavaṃsa in Myanmar around the 12th-13th century. This is the most comprehensive Pāli grammatical book ever produced. It has three parts: Padamālā, Dhātumālā, and Suttamālā. The last one is the most important and more widely known. Because, I think, it follows the traditional format with formulas and explanations laid down formerly by Pāṇini.
In large part, Padamālā deals with declensions of terms. Analysis of the root bhū is given in detail towards the end. Other Pāli roots are listed in Dhātumālā in the way of Dhātupāṭha tradition. Detailed explanations are given only for some common roots.
4. Abhidhānappadīpikā
Apart from grammatical works, we also have Pāli lexicography. The ealiest is Abhidhānappadīpikā by Moggallāna around the late 12th century. But this is probably another person with the same name as the grammarian. The two were roughly contemporary. By and large, It is a dictionary of synonyms, composed in verses and not in order. This is not an original Pāli work. As noted by K. R. Norman, the “[l]arge portions, particularly in the portion on synonyms, are taken in toto from the Amarakośa,” a Sanskrit work of the same kind.
Then Norman remarks that “A proportion of the vocabulary in the Abhidhānappadīpikā is therefore artificial, in the sense that it had no existence in Pali until it had been specially coined for inclusion in the dictionary.”
By this view, we can say that the dictionary is not really a collection of used words in the way of our dictionaries today. Rather, it is a transformation from Sanskrit words into Pāli. Hence, some words are found in use, but some are not.
This book has its ṭīkā called Abhidhānappadīpikāṭīkā, composed around the 14th century. So, we put them together here.
Because of its unfamiliar format, the book is of little use today. It will be better if we have a sorted tabular version with some translation. This kind of revision is painstaking, so I postpone it to my future work (if someone has not done it yet).
5. Subodhālaṅkāro Vuttodayaṃ ca
Another group of text dealing with poetics and prosody was composed by Saṅgharakkhita in Sri Lanka around the 12th century. Subodhālaṅkāra is about art of poetic composition, whereas Vuttodaya is about prosodic meter. All these books are adaptation from Sanskrit works. As for we also have Subodhālaṅkāraṭīkā in the collection, I put it here separately because it already contains the text of the main work.
Appreciation in Pāli poetics is a result of deep knowledge in Pāli grammar and its uses. Perhaps, you have to master Pāli by using it fluently before you can find poetic composition appealing. In the traditional curricula, advanced Pāli students are supposed to have ability to write Pāli in verses. Doing so nowadays is only for pedagogic purpose, if not for promoting certain ideology.
In my view, there are no practical uses of Pāli composition nowadays. Pāli used to be the lingua franca in Buddhist world, but no longer today. Writing things in Pāli is very difficult, if not impossible, to make the communication clear to the modern mind. Pāli itself brings with it an ancient mindset. Using that in the modern context likely produces miscomprehension rather than understanding.
Therefore, I encourage those who aim their study to write a Pāli treatise or commentary to write it in a modern language instead. By this way, you can make the work clear and comprehensible to the reader. It does not matter much what language you write because workable AI translators are coming. However, English is still the best choice for most people.
An example I would like to mention is Vuttodayamañjarī written in Thai by Ven. Gandhasārābhivaṃsa (2002, MCU). This is the best commentary on Vuttodaya I have ever seen. It presents prosodic forms in tables easily understood by the reader. That is a good commentary should be nowadays.
Notes