Magadhi Prakrit - Pali and Ardha-Magadhi

Pali and Ardha-Magadhi

Theravada Buddhist tradition has long held that the Pāli language was synonymous with the ancient Magadha language; and indeed, there are many remarkable analogies between Pāli and an old form of Magadhi Prakrit known as Ardhamagadhi ("Half Magadhi"), which is preserved in ancient Jain texts. (Both Gautama Buddha and the 24th Tirthankara Mahavira preached in ancient Magadha ).

The most archaic of the Middle Indo-Aryan languages are the inscriptional Aśokan Prakrit on the one hand and Pāli and Ardhamāgadhī on the other, both literary languages.

The Indo-Aryan languages are commonly assigned to three major groups - Old, Middle and New Indo-Aryan. And a number of their morphophonological and lexical features betray the fact that they are not direct continuations of Ṛgvedic Sanskrit, the main base of 'Classical' Sanskrit; rather they descend from dialects which, despite many similarities, were different from Ṛgvedic and in some regards even more archaic.

MIA languages, though individually distinct, share features of phonology and morphology which characterize them as parallel descendants of Old Indo-Aryan. Various sound changes are typical of the MIA phonology:

• The vocalic liquids 'ṛ' and 'ḷ' are replaced by 'a', 'i' or 'u';
• the diphthongs 'ai' and 'au' are monophthongized to 'e' and 'o';
• long vowels before two or more consonants are shortened;
• the three sibilants of OIA are reduced to one, either 'ś' or 's';
• the often complex consonant clusters of OIA are reduced to more readily pronounceable forms, either by assimilation or by splitting;
• single intervocalic stops are progressively weakened;
• dentals are palatalized by a following '-y-';
• all final consonants except '-ṃ' are dropped unless they are retained in 'sandhi' junctions.

The most conspicuous features of the morphological system of these languages are: loss of the dual; thematicization of consonantal stems; merger of the f. 'i-/u-' and 'ī-/ū-' in one 'ī-/ū-' inflexion, elimination of the dative, whose functions are taken over by the genitive, simultaneous use of different case-endings in one paradigm; employment of 'mahyaṃ' and 'tubhyaṃ' as genitives and 'me' and 'te' as instrumentals; gradual disappearance of the middle voice; coexistence of historical and new verbal forms based on the present stem; and use of active endings for the passive. In the vocabulary, the MIA languages are mostly dependent on Old Indo-Aryan, with addition of a few so-called 'deśī' words of (often) uncertain origin.

Ardhamagadhi differs from later Magadhi Prakrit on similar points as Pāli. For example, Ardhamagadhi preserves historical l, unlike later Magadhi Prakrit, where l changed into r. Additionally, in the noun inflection, Ardhamagadhi shows the ending -o instead of Magadhi Prakrit -e at least in many metrical places.

Pāli Dhammapada verse 103:

Yo sahassaṃ sahassena, saṅgāme mānuse jine; Ekañca jeyyamattānaṃ, sa ve saṅgāmajuttamo.

Greater in battle than the man who would conquer a thousand-thousand men, is he who would conquer just one — himself.

Jain Samana sutta 125:

Jo sahassam sahassanam, samgame dujjae jine. Egam jinejja appanam, esa se paramo jao. (125)

One may conquer thousands and thousands of enemies in an invincible battle; but the supreme victory consists in conquest over one's self.