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Excerpt from A Simplified Grammar of the Pali Language
It would be rather out of place in an elementary Gram mar to enter into a long discussion about the age and origin of the Pali language. A few words on the subject will be sufficient: Kuhn, following Westergaard, holds Pali to be the vernacular of Ujjein, the capital of Malava at the time when Mahinda, the son of Asoka, took the sacred Canon with him to Ceylon (beitrage, p. On the other hand, Oldenberg, rejecting that tradition, considers Pali to be the original language of the Kalinga country (vinaya pitaka, Introduction, p. Liv). He compares the language of the large inscription at Khandagiri (cunningham, Corpus Inscriptionum, i. And finds only very little difference between this and the Pfili. From this he con cludes that there must have been, about a hundred and fifty years before Mahinda, a frequent intercourse between Kalinga and the island; in fact, that the religion, together with its language, was brought over from there to Ceylon.
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