1.
Pali
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Pali is a Prakrit language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of much of the earliest extant literature of Buddhism as collected in the Pāli Canon or Tipiṭaka and is the language of Theravāda Buddhism. The word Pali is used as a name for the language of the Theravada canon, Childers translates the word as series and states that the language bears the epithet in consequence of the perfection of its grammatical structure. However, modern scholarship has regarded Pali as a mix of several Prakrit languages from around the 3rd century BCE, combined together and partially Sanskritized. The closest artifacts to Pali that have found in India are Edicts of Ashoka found at Gujarat, in the west of India. There is persistent confusion as to the relation of Pāḷi to the vernacular spoken in the ancient kingdom of Magadha, Pali, as a Middle Indo-Aryan language, is different from Sanskrit more with regard to its dialectal base than the time of its origin. A number of its morphological and lexical features show that it is not a continuation of Ṛgvedic Vedic Sanskrit. Instead it descends from one or more dialects that were, despite many similarities, however, this view is not shared by all scholars. Some, like A. C. Woolner, believe that Pali is derived from Vedic Sanskrit, Paiśācī is a largely unattested literary language of classical India that is mentioned in Prakrit and Sanskrit grammars of antiquity. e. Evidence which lends support to this interpretation is that literature in Paiśācī is fragmentary and extremely rare, many Theravada sources refer to the Pali language as Magadhan or the language of Magadha. This identification first appears in the commentaries, and may have been an attempt by Buddhists to associate more closely with the Maurya Empire. The Buddha taught in Magadha, but the four most important places in his life are all outside of it and it is likely that he taught in several closely related dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan, which had a high degree of mutual intelligibility. There is no attested dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan with all the features of Pali, Pali has some commonalities with both the western Ashokan Edicts at Girnar in Saurashtra, and the Central-Western Prakrit found in the eastern Hathigumpha inscription. In Sri Lanka, Pali is thought to have entered into a period of decline ending around the 4th or 5th century, the work of Buddhaghosa was largely responsible for its reemergence as an important scholarly language in Buddhist thought. Another scholar states that at time it was a refined. Modern scholarship has not arrived at a consensus on the issue, after the death of the Buddha, Pali may have evolved among Buddhists out of the language of the Buddha as a new artificial language. According to K. R. Norman, it is likely that the viharas in North India had separate collections of material, in the early period it is likely that no degree of translation was necessary in communicating this material to other areas. Around the time of Ashoka there had been more linguistic divergence, following this period, the language underwent a small degree of Sanskritisation
2.
Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
3.
Bengali language
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Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in South Asia. With over 210 million speakers, Bengali is the seventh most spoken language in the world. Dominant in the last group was Persian, which was also the source of some grammatical forms, more recent studies suggest that the use of native and foreign words has been increasing, mainly because of the preference of Bengali speakers for the colloquial style. Today, Bengali is the language spoken in Bangladesh and the second most spoken language in India. Both the national anthems of Bangladesh and India were composed in Bengali, in 1952, the Bengali Language Movement successfully pushed for the languages official status in the Dominion of Pakistan. In 1999, UNESCO recognized 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the movement in East Pakistan. Language is an important element of Bengali identity and binds together a diverse region. Sanskrit was spoken in Bengal since the first millennium BCE, during the Gupta Empire, Bengal was a hub of Sanskrit literature. The Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were spoken in Bengal in the first millennium when the region was a part of the Magadha Realm and these dialects were called Magadhi Prakrit. They eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi, Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what are called Apabhraṃśa languages at the end of the first millennium. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 1000–1200 AD from Sanskrit, for example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around the 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. Proto-Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty, during the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterized by the elision of word-final অ ô, the spread of compound verbs and Arabic and Persian influences. Bengali was a court language of the Sultanate of Bengal. Muslim rulers promoted the development of Bengali as part of efforts to Islamize. Bengali became the most spoken language in the Sultanate. This period saw borrowing of Perso-Arabic terms into Bengali vocabulary, major texts of Middle Bengali include Chandidas Shreekrishna Kirtana. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the dialect spoken in the Nadia region, a west-central Bengali dialect. Bengali presents a case of diglossia, with the literary
4.
Burmese language
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The Burmese language is the official language of Myanmar. Although the Constitution of Myanmar officially recognizes the English name of the language as the Myanmar language, Burmese is a tonal, pitch-register, and syllable-timed language, largely monosyllabic and analytic, with a subject–object–verb word order. It is a member of the Lolo-Burmese grouping of the Sino-Tibetan language family, the Burmese alphabet is ultimately descended from a Brahmic script, either Kadamba or Pallava. Burmese belongs to the Southern Burmish branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Burmese is the most widely spoken of the non-Sinitic Sino-Tibetan languages. Burmese was the fifth of the Sino-Tibetan languages to develop a system, after Chinese characters, the Pyu script, the Tibetan alphabet. However, several dialects substantially differ in Burmese with respect to vocabulary, lexical particles, the standard dialect of Burmese comes from the Irrawaddy River valley. Regional differences between speakers from Upper Burma, called anya tha အညာသား, and speakers from Lower Burma, called auk tha အောက်သား, occur in vocabulary choice, minor pronunciation differences do exist within the Irrawaddy River valley. For instance, for the term ဆွမ်း food offering, Lower Burmese speakers use instead of, the standard dialect is represented by the Yangon dialect because of the modern citys media influence and economic clout. In the past, the Mandalay dialect represented standard Burmese, moreover, with regard to kinship terminology, Upper Burmese speakers differentiate the maternal and paternal sides of a family whereas Lower Burmese speakers do not. Spoken Burmese is remarkably uniform among Burmese speakers, particularly living in the Irrawaddy valley. The figure would have much higher if non-Bamars were excluded. For the whole country, the rate was 49% for men and 5. 5% for women. The migration of Burmese speakers of Bamar descent to Lower Burma is relatively recent, as late as the mid-1700s, the Austroasiatic language Mon was the principal language of Lower Burma and the Mon people who inhabited it. After the Burmese-speaking Konbaung Dynastys victory over the Mon-speaking Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757, by 1830, an estimated 90% of the population in the region identified themselves as Bamar due the influx from Upper Burma, assimilation, and intermarriage. In the British colonial era, British incentives, particularly geared toward rice production, as well as political instability in Upper Burma, more distinctive non-standard varieties emerge as one moves farther away from the Irrawaddy River valley toward peripheral areas of the country. These varieties include the Yaw, Palaw, Myeik, Tavoyan, despite substantial vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among most Burmese dialects. Dialects in Tanintharyi Region, including Palaw, Merguese and Tavoyan, are conservative in comparison to Standard Burmese. The Tavoyan and Intha dialects have preserved the /l/ medial, which is only found in Old Burmese inscriptions
5.
Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
6.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
7.
Japanese language
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Japanese is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million speakers, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic language family, whose relation to language groups, particularly to Korean. Little is known of the prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few Japanese words, during the Heian period, Chinese had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology of Old Japanese. Late Middle Japanese saw changes in features that brought it closer to the modern language, the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region in the Early Modern Japanese period. Following the end in 1853 of Japans self-imposed isolation, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, English loanwords in particular have become frequent, and Japanese words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person, Japanese equivalents of adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener. Japanese has no relationship with Chinese, but it makes extensive use of Chinese characters, or kanji, in its writing system. Along with kanji, the Japanese writing system uses two syllabic scripts, hiragana and katakana. Latin script is used in a fashion, such as for imported acronyms. Very little is known about the Japanese of this period, Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language. Through the spread of Buddhism, the Chinese writing system was imported to Japan, the earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese, but they may have been meant to be read as Japanese by the kanbun method. Some of these Chinese texts show the influences of Japanese grammar, in these hybrid texts, Chinese characters are also occasionally used phonetically to represent Japanese particles. The earliest text, the Kojiki, dates to the early 8th century, the end of Old Japanese coincides with the end of the Nara period in 794
8.
Romanization of Japanese
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The romanization of Japanese is the application of the Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is referred to in English as rōmaji. There are several different romanization systems, the three main ones are Hepburn romanization, Kunrei-shiki romanization, and Nihon-shiki romanization. Variants of the Hepburn system are the most widely used, Japanese is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Chinese and syllabic scripts which also ultimately derive from Chinese characters. It is also used to transliterate Japanese terms in text written in English on topics related to Japan, such as linguistics, literature, history, and culture. Rōmaji is the most common way to input Japanese into word processors and computers, all Japanese who have attended elementary school since World War II have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese. The word rōmaji literally means Roman letters, and in Japan it is often used to refer to the Latin alphabet itself than to any specific form of romanized Japanese. The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on the Portuguese orthography and it was developed around 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named Yajiro. Jesuit priests used the system in a series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to read Japanese orthography. The most useful of these books for the study of early modern Japanese pronunciation and early attempts at romanization was the Nippo jisho, in general, the early Portuguese system was similar to Nihon-shiki in its treatment of vowels. The latter continued to be printed and read after the suppression of Christianity in Japan, the Hepburn system included representation of some sounds that have since changed. The Nihon-shiki romanization was an outgrowth of that movement, several Japanese texts were published entirely in rōmaji during this period, but it failed to catch on. Today, the use of Nihon-shiki for writing Japanese is advocated by the Oomoto sect, during the Allied occupation of Japan, the government of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers made it official policy to romanize Japanese. However, that failed and a more moderate attempt at Japanese script reform followed. Hepburn romanization generally follows English phonology with Romance vowels and it is an intuitive method of showing Anglophones the pronunciation of a word in Japanese. It was standardized in the USA as American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese, Hepburn is the most common romanization system in use today, especially in the English-speaking world. The Revised Hepburn system of romanization uses a macron to indicate long vowels. For example, the name じゅんいちろう, is written with the kana characters ju-n-i-chi-ro-u, without the apostrophe, it would not be possible to distinguish this correct reading from the incorrect ju-ni-chi-ro-u
9.
Khmer language
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Khmer /kmɛər/ or Cambodian is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. With approximately 16 million speakers, it is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language, Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious registers, through Hinduism and Buddhism. The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak Central Khmer, the dialect of the plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer, outside of Cambodia, three distinct dialects are spoken by ethnic Khmers native to areas that were historically part of the Khmer Empire. The Northern Khmer dialect is spoken by over a million Khmers in the regions of Northeast Thailand and is treated by some linguists as a separate language. Khmer is primarily an analytic, isolating language, there are no inflections, conjugations or case endings. Instead, particles and auxiliary words are used to indicate grammatical relationships, general word order is subject–verb–object, and modifiers follow the word they modify. Classifiers appear after numbers when used to count nouns, though not always so consistently as in languages like Chinese, in spoken Khmer, topic-comment structure is common and the perceived social relation between participants determines which sets of vocabulary, such as pronouns and honorifics, are proper. Khmer differs from neighboring languages such as Thai, Burmese, Lao, words are stressed on the final syllable, hence many words conform to the typical Mon–Khmer pattern of a stressed syllable preceded by a minor syllable. The language has been written in the Khmer script, an abugida descended from the Brahmi script via the southern Indian Pallava script, approximately 79% of Cambodians are able to read Khmer. Khmer is a member of the Austroasiatic language family, the family in an area that stretches from the Malay Peninsula through Southeast Asia to East India. Austroasiatic, which also includes Mon, Vietnamese and Munda, has been studied since 1856 and was first proposed as a family in 1907. Despite the amount of research, there is doubt about the internal relationship of the languages of Austroasiatic. Diffloth places Khmer in a branch of the Mon-Khmer languages. In these classification schemes Khmers closest genetic relatives are the Bahnaric and Pearic languages, more recent classifications doubt the validity of the Mon-Khmer sub-grouping and place the Khmer language as its own branch of Austroasiatic equidistant from the other 12 branches of the family. Khmer is spoken by some 13 million people in Cambodia, where it is the official language and it is also a second language for most of the minority groups and indigenous hill tribes there. Additionally there are a million speakers of Khmer native to southern Vietnam and 1.4 million in northeast Thailand, Khmer dialects, although mutually intelligible, are sometimes quite marked. The dialects form a continuum running roughly north to south, the following is a classification scheme showing the development of the modern Khmer dialects
10.
Korean language
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It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of the Peoples Republic of China. Approximately 80 million people worldwide speak Korean and this implies that Korean is not an isolate, but a member of a small family. There is still debate on whether Korean and Japanese are related with each other, the Korean language is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax. A relation of Korean with Japonic languages has been proposed by linguists like William George Aston, Chinese characters arrived in Korea together with Buddhism during the pre-Three Kingdoms period. Mainly privileged elites were educated to read and write in hanja, however, today, the hanja are largely unused in everyday life, but in South Korea they experience revivals on artistic works and are important in historic and/or linguistic studies of Korean. Since the Korean War, through 70 years of separation, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation, verb inflection, the Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in North Korea and South Korea. In South Korea, the Korean language is referred to by names including hanguk-eo Korean language, hanguk-mal, Korean speech and uri-mal. In hanguk-eo and hanguk-mal, the first part of the word, hanguk, refers to the Korean nation while -eo and -mal mean language and speech, Korean is also simply referred to as guk-eo, literally national language. This name is based on the same Chinese characters meaning nation + language that are used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages. In North Korea and China, the language is most often called Chosŏn-mal, or more formally, the English word Korean is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first dynasty known to Western countries. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as Koryo-saram and Goryeo In, the majority of historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate. Such factors of typological divergence as Middle Mongolians exhibition of gender agreement can be used to argue that a relationship with Altaic is unlikely. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list, a good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asa, meaning hemp. Also, the doublet wo meaning hemp is attested in Western Old Japanese and it is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term. Among ancient languages, various relatives of Korean have been proposed. Some classify the language of Jeju Island as a distinct modern Koreanic language, Other famous theories are the Dravido-Korean languages theory and the mostly unknown southern-theory which suggest an Austronesian relation. Korean is spoken by the Korean people in North Korea and South Korea and by the Korean diaspora in countries including the Peoples Republic of China, the United States, Japan. Korean-speaking minorities exist in these states, but because of cultural assimilation into host countries, Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea
11.
Sinhalese language
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Sinhalese, known natively as Sinhala, is the native language of the Sinhalese people, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 16 million. Sinhalese is also spoken as a language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages, Sinhalese has its own writing system, the Sinhalese alphabet, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script closely related to the Kadamba alphabet. Sinhalese is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, Sinhalese, along with Pali, played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. The closest relative of Sinhalese is the language of the Maldives and Minicoy Island, Sinhala is a Sanskrit term, the corresponding Middle Indo-Aryan word is Sīhala. The name is a derivation from siṃha, the Sanskrit word for lion Siṃhāla is attested as a Sanskrit name of the island of in the Bhagavata Purana, the name is sometimes glossed as abode of lions, and attributed to a supposed former abundance of lions on the island. According to the chronicle Mahavamsa, written in Pali, Prince Vijaya, in the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India which led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits. An example of an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular in Sinhalese Prakrit. There are several cases of vocabulary doublets, e. g. the words mässā and mäkkā, some of the differences can be explained by the substrate influence of the parent stock of the Vedda language. Sinhalese has many words that are found in Sinhalese, or shared between Sinhalese and Vedda and not etymologically derivable from Middle or Old Indo-Aryan. Common examples are kola for leaf in Sinhala and Vedda, dola for pig in Vedda, Other common words are rera for wild duck, and gala for stones. The author of the oldest Sinhalese grammar, Sidatsangarava, written in the 13th century CE, the grammar lists naramba and kolamba as belonging to an indigenous source. Kolamba is the source of the name of the commercial capital Colombo, however, formal Sinhalese is more similar to Pali and medieval Sinhalese. g. I do not know whether it is new, as a result of centuries of colonial rule, modern Sinhalese contains some Portuguese, Dutch and English loanwords. It is now spoken by a few families in Macau and in the Macanese diaspora, Sinhalese shares many features common to other Indo-European languages. For native speakers all dialects are mutually intelligible, and they might not even realise that the differences are significant, the language of the Vedda people resembles Sinhala to a great extent, although it has a large number of words which cannot be traced to another language. The Rodiya use another dialect of Sinhalese, Rodiya used to be a caste in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka no longer recognizes castes, in Sinhalese there is distinctive diglossia, as in many languages of South Asia
12.
Thai language
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Thai, also known as Siamese or Central Thai, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people and the vast majority of Thai Chinese. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family, over half of the words in Thai are borrowed from Pali, Sanskrit and Old Khmer. It is a tonal and analytic language, Thai also has a complex orthography and relational markers. Spoken Thai is mutually intelligible with Laotian, Thai is the official language of Thailand, natively spoken by over 20 million people. Standard Thai is based on the register of the classes of Bangkok. In addition to Central Thai, Thailand is home to other related Tai languages, Isan, the language of the Isan region of Thailand, a collective term for the various Lao dialects spoken in Thailand that show some Siamese Thai influences, which is written with the Thai script. It is spoken by about 20 million people, Thais from both inside and outside the Isan region often simply call this variant Lao when speaking informally. Northern Thai, spoken by about 6 million in the independent kingdom of Lanna. Shares strong similarities with Lao to the point that in the past the Siamese Thais referred to it as Lao. Southern Thai, spoken by about 4.5 million Phu Thai, spoken by half a million around Nakhon Phanom Province. Phuan, spoken by 200,000 in central Thailand and Isan, Shan, spoken by about 100,000 in north-west Thailand along the border with the Shan States of Burma, and by 3.2 million in Burma. Lü, spoken by about 1,000,000 in northern Thailand, and 600,000 more in Sipsong Panna, Burma, nyaw language, spoken by 50,000 in Nakhon Phanom Province, Sakhon Nakhon Province, Udon Thani Province of Northeast Thailand. Song, spoken by about 30,000 in central and northern Thailand, Elegant or Formal Thai, official and written version, includes respectful terms of address, used in simplified form in newspapers. Rhetorical Thai, used for public speaking, religious Thai, used when discussing Buddhism or addressing monks. Royal Thai, influenced by Khmer, this is used when addressing members of the family or describing their activities. Most Thais can speak and understand all of these contexts, street and Elegant Thai are the basis of all conversations. Rhetorical, religious, and royal Thai are taught in schools as the national curriculum, many scholars believe that the Thai script is derived from the Khmer script, which is modeled after the Brahmic script from the Indic family. However, in appearance, Thai is closer to Thai Dam script, the language and its script are closely related to the Lao language and script
13.
Vietnamese language
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Vietnamese /ˌviɛtnəˈmiːz/ is an Austroasiatic language that originated in the north of modern-day Vietnam, where it is the national and official language. It is the language of the Vietnamese people, as well as a first or second language for the many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. As the result of Vietnamese emigration and cultural influence, Vietnamese speakers are found throughout the world, notably in East and Southeast Asia, North America, Australia, Vietnamese has also been officially recognized as a minority language in the Czech Republic. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family of which it has by far the most speakers, Vietnamese vocabulary has borrowings from Chinese, and it formerly used a modified set of Chinese characters called chữ nôm given vernacular pronunciation. The Vietnamese alphabet in use today is a Latin alphabet with diacritics for tones. As the national language, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by ethnic Vietnamese, Vietnamese is also the native language of the Gin minority group in southern Guangxi Province in China. A significant number of speakers also reside in neighboring Cambodia. In the United States, Vietnamese is the sixth most spoken language, with over 1.5 million speakers and it is the third most spoken language in Texas, fourth in Arkansas and Louisiana, and fifth in California. Vietnamese is the seventh most spoken language in Australia, in France, it is the most spoken Asian language and the eighth most spoken immigrant language at home. Vietnamese is the official and national language of Vietnam. It is the first language of the majority of the Vietnamese population, in the Czech Republic, Vietnamese has been recognized as one of 14 minority languages, on the basis of communities that have either traditionally or on a long-term basis resided in the country. This status grants Czech citizens from the Vietnamese community the right to use Vietnamese with public authorities, Vietnamese is increasingly being taught in schools and institutions outside of Vietnam. Since the 1980s, Vietnamese language schools have been established for youth in many Vietnamese-speaking communities around the world, furthermore, there has also been a number of Germans studying Vietnamese due to increased economic investment in Vietnam. Vietnamese is taught in schools in the form of immersion to a varying degree in Cambodia, Laos. Classes teach students subjects in Vietnamese and another language, furthermore, in Thailand, Vietnamese is one of the most popular foreign languages in schools and colleges. Vietnamese was identified more than 150 years ago as part of the Mon–Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family. Later, Muong was found to be closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon–Khmer languages. The term Vietic was proposed by Hayes, who proposed to redefine Viet–Muong as referring to a subbranch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Muong
14.
Theravada
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Theravāda is a branch of Buddhism that uses the Buddhas teaching preserved in the Pāli Canon as its doctrinal core. The Pali canon is the only complete Buddhist canon which survives in a classical Indic Language, Pali, another feature of Theravada is that it tends to be very conservative about matters of doctrine and monastic discipline. As a distinct sect, Theravada Buddhism developed in Sri Lanka, Theravada also includes a rich diversity of traditions and practices that have developed over its long history of interactions with varying cultures and religious communities. It is the dominant form of religion in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, and is practiced by minority groups in Bangladesh, China, Nepal, and Vietnam. In addition, the diaspora of all of these groups as well as converts around the world practice Theravāda Buddhism, contemporary expressions include Buddhist modernism, the Vipassana movement and the Thai Forest Tradition. The name Theravāda comes from the ancestral Sthāvirīya, one of the early Buddhist schools, according to its own accounts, the Theravāda school is fundamentally derived from the Vibhajjavāda doctrine of analysis grouping, which was a division of the Sthāvirīya. Significantly, the Sthāviras in turn comprise three sub-nikāyas, the Jetavanīyas, the Abhayagirivāsins, and the Mahāvihāravāsins, according to Damien Keown, there is no historical evidence that the Theravāda school arose until around two centuries after the Great Schism which occurred at the Third Council. These teachings were known as the Vibhajjavada, emperor Ashoka is supposed to have assisted in purifying the sangha by expelling monks who failed to agree to the terms of Third Council. The elder monk Moggaliputta-Tissa was at the head of the Third council and compiled the Kathavatthu, later, the Vibhajjavādins in turn is said to have split into four groups, the Mahīśāsaka, Kāśyapīya, Dharmaguptaka, and the Tāmraparṇīya. The Theravāda is said to be descended from the Tāmraparṇīya sect, the most distinctive features of this phase and virtually the only contemporary historical material, are the numerous Brahmi inscriptions associated with these caves. They record gifts to the sangha, significantly by householders and chiefs rather than by kings, the Buddhist religion itself does not seem to have established undisputed authority until the reigns of Dutthagamani and Vattagamani. The first records of Buddha images come from the reign of king Vasabha, in the 7th century, the Chinese pilgrim monks Xuanzang and Yijing refer to the Buddhist schools in Sri Lanka as Shàngzuòbù, corresponding to the Sanskrit Sthavira nikāya and Pali Thera Nikāya. Yijing writes, In Sri Lanka the Sthavira school alone flourishes, the school has been using the name Theravāda for itself in a written form since at least the 4th century, about one thousand years after the Buddhas death, when the term appears in the Dīpavaṁsa. According to Buddhist scholar A. K. Warder, the Theravāda, spread rapidly south from Avanti into Maharashtra and Andhra and down to the Chola country, as well as Sri Lanka. According to Richard Gombrich this is the earliest record we have of Buddhist scriptures being committed to writing anywhere, the Theravada Pali texts which have survived are derived from the Mahavihara of Anuradhapura, the ancient Sri Lankan capital. Later developments included the formation and recording of the Theravada commentary literature, the Theravada tradition records that even during the early days of Mahinda, there was already a tradition of Indian commentaries on the scriptures. Of great importance to the tradition is the work of the great Theravada scholastic Buddhaghosa. Buddhaghosa wrote in Pali, and after him, most Sri Lankan Buddhist scholastics did as well and this allowed the Sri Lankan tradition to become more international through a lingua franca so as to converse with monks in India and later Southeast Asia
15.
Mahayana
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Mahayana is one of two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice. The Buddhist tradition of Vajrayana is sometimes classified as a part of Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva who has accomplished this goal is called a samyaksaṃbuddha, or fully enlightened Buddha. A samyaksaṃbuddha can establish the Dharma and lead disciples to enlightenment, Mahayana Buddhists teach that enlightenment can be attained in a single lifetime, and this can be accomplished even by a layperson. The Mahāyāna tradition is the largest major tradition of Buddhism existing today, with 53. 2% of practitioners, major traditions of Mahāyāna Buddhism today include Chan Buddhism, Korean Seon, Japanese Zen, Pure Land Buddhism, and Nichiren Buddhism. It may also include the Vajrayana traditions of Tiantai, Tendai, Shingon Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism, according to Jan Nattier, the term Mahāyāna was originally an honorary synonym for Bodhisattvayāna — the vehicle of a bodhisattva seeking buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. The term Mahāyāna was therefore formed independently at a date as a synonym for the path. The earliest Mahāyāna texts often use the term Mahāyāna as a synonym for Bodhisattvayāna, the presumed dichotomy between Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna can be deceptive, as the two terms were not actually formed in relation to one another in the same era. Among the earliest and most important references to the term Mahāyāna are those that occur in the Lotus Sūtra dating between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE. Seishi Karashima has suggested that the term first used in an earlier Gandhāri Prakrit version of the Lotus Sūtra was not the term mahāyāna, the origins of Mahāyāna are still not completely understood. The earliest Western views of Mahāyāna assumed that it existed as a school in competition with the so-called Hīnayāna schools. The earliest textual evidence of Mahāyāna comes from sūtras originating around the beginning of the common era. There is also no evidence that Mahāyāna ever referred to a formal school or sect of Buddhism, but rather that it existed as a certain set of ideals. Membership in these nikāyas, or monastic sects, continues today with the Dharmaguptaka nikāya in East Asia, therefore, Mahāyāna was never a separate rival sect of the early schools. Paul Harrison clarifies that while monastic Mahāyānists belonged to a nikāya, from Chinese monks visiting India, we now know that both Mahāyāna and non-Mahāyāna monks in India often lived in the same monasteries side by side. Those who venerate the bodhisattvas and read the Mahayana sūtras are called the Mahāyānists, much of the early extant evidence for the origins of Mahāyāna comes from early Chinese translations of Mahāyāna texts. These Mahāyāna teachings were first propagated into China by Lokakṣema, the first translator of Mahāyāna sūtras into Chinese during the 2nd century CE. Guang Xing states, Several scholars have suggested that the Prajñāpāramitā probably developed among the Mahāsāṃghikas in southern India, in the Āndhra country, warder believes that the Mahāyāna originated in the south of India and almost certainly in the Āndhra country. They note that the ancient Buddhist sites in the lower Kṛṣṇa Valley, including Amaravati, Nāgārjunakoṇḍā and Jaggayyapeṭa can be traced to at least the third century BCE, akira Hirakawa notes the evidence suggests that many Early Mahayana scriptures originated in South India
16.
Mahayana sutras
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The Mahayana sutras are a broad genre of Buddhist scriptures that various traditions of Mahayana Buddhism accept as canonical. They are largely preserved in the Chinese Buddhist canon, the Tibetan Buddhist canon, around one hundred Mahayana sutras survive in Sanskrit, or in Chinese and Tibetan translations. The origins of the Mahayana are not completely understood, the earliest views of Mahayana Buddhism in the West assumed that it existed as a separate school in competition with the so-called Hīnayāna schools. These views have largely dismissed in modern times in light of a much broader range of early texts that are now available. The old views of Mahayana as a separate lay-inspired and devotional sect are now dismissed as misguided. The early versions of Mahayana sutras were not written documents but orally preserved teachings, the verses which were committed to memory and recited by monks were viewed as the substitute for the actual speaking presence of the Buddha. The earliest textual evidence of the Mahayana comes from sutras originating around the beginning of the common era. There is also no evidence that Mahayana ever referred to a formal school or sect of Buddhism, but rather that it existed as a certain set of ideals. This continues today with the Dharmaguptaka ordination lineage in East Asia, therefore, Mahayana was never a separate rival sect of the early schools. Those who venerate the bodhisattvas and read the Mahayana sutras are called the Mahayanists, much of the early extant evidence for the origins of Mahayana comes from early Chinese translations of Mahayana texts. These Mahayana teachings were first propagated into China by Lokakṣema, the first translator of Mahayana sutras into Chinese during the 2nd century CE, others such as A. K. Warder have argued that the Mahayana sutras are not historical. Western scholarship does not go so far as to impugn the religious authority of Mahayana sutras and it is widely accepted that Mahayana sutras constitute a body of literature that began to appear from as early as the 1st century BCE, although the evidence for this date is circumstantial. This picture may be qualified by the analysis of early manuscripts recently coming out of Afghanistan. In effect we have a vast body of anonymous but relatively coherent literature and this suggests that Mahayana was not simply an accretion of fabricated doctrines, as it is sometimes accused of being, but has a strong connection with the teachings of Buddha himself. However weak the claim to historicity that the Mahayana sutras hold, then these sutras may be properly regarded as the words of the Buddha. Some teachers take the view that all teachings that stem from the insights of Buddha constitute the Buddhas speech. There are scriptural supports for this even in the Pāli Canon. There the Buddha is asked how the disciples should verify, after his death and his statement is neither to be approved nor scorned
17.
Valagamba of Anuradhapura
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Valagamba, also known as Vattagamani Abhaya and Valagambahu, was a king of the Anuradhapura Kingdom of Sri Lanka. Five months after becoming king, he was overthrown by a rebellion and an invasion from South India and he is also known for the construction of the Abhayagiri Dagaba. Valagamba was the son of King Saddha Tissa, the brother of Dutthagamani. His three elder brothers Thulatthana, Lanja Tissa and Khallata Naga ruled the country before him, a general of the army named Kammaharattaka killed Khallatanaga, the last of them and seized power. Valagamba in turn killed Kammaharattaka and took the throne himself in 103 BCE and he kept Mahaculika, the son of Khallatanaga, as his own son, and took Anuladevi, Mahaculikas mother, as his queen. He also had another queen named Somadevi, five months after his coronation as king, a Brahmin in Rohana named Tissa rebelled against him. At the same time, an army from South India led by seven Tamil leaders landed in Mahatittha. Tissa and the seven Tamil leaders all sent messages to Valagamba, Valagamba informed the Brahmin Tissa that the kingdom will be his and told him to defeat the invading army. Accepting this, Tissa tried to fight but was defeated by the Tamils, after this, the seven Tamil leaders waged war against Valagamba, and defeated him after a battle at Kolambalaka. While the king was fleeing in a chariot, a nirgrantha (Jain named Giri shouted that the king was fleeing, Valagamba resolved to build a temple there, and later built the Abhayagiriya after he regained the throne. When the pursuers were gaining on them, Queen Somadevi got down from the chariot to lighten it and give the king a chance to escape, the Pathra Dathu was also taken to India. The five Dravidians namely Pulahatta, Bahiya, Panya Mara, Pilaya Mara, Valagamba fled to Malayarata for safety and a monk named Kuppikkala Mahatissa helped him while he was in hiding. The king organized an army in order to attack Anuradhapura. However, a rift between him and his ministers resulted in leaving him and thus weakening the army. However, the sangha brought about a reconciliation and Valagamba resumed his preparations for attacking Anuradhapura. In c.89 BCE, Valagamba regained the throne after defeating Dathika, the last of the invading Tamil leaders and he sent for Somadevi and restored her as queen, and built a temple named Somarama in her honour. The king built Abhayagiri Dagaba and a stupa, which has a height of about 70 metres, the Abhayagiri temple became one of the three main Buddhist institutions in the country. He converted the caves he was hiding in to a temple and this temple is known as the Dambulla Rock Temple
18.
Sangha
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Sangha is a word in Pali and Sanskrit meaning association, assembly, company or community and most commonly refers in Buddhism to the monastic community of bhikkhus and bhikkhunis. These communities are referred to as the bhikkhu-sangha or bhikkhuni-sangha. As a separate category, those who have attained any of the four stages of enlightenment, according to the Theravada school, the term sangha does not refer to the community of sāvakas nor the community of Buddhists as a whole. In a glossary of Buddhist terms, Richard Robinson et al. define Sangha as, the two meanings overlap but are not necessarily identical. Some members of the ideal Sangha are not ordained, some monastics have yet to acquire the Dharma-eye, the Sangha is the third of the Three Jewels in Buddhism. Due to the temptations and vicissitudes of life in the world, monastic life is considered to provide the safest and most suitable environment for advancing toward enlightenment, in Buddhism, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha each are described as having certain characteristics. These characteristics are chanted either on a daily basis and/or on Uposatha days, the Sangha also fulfils the function of preserving the Buddha’s original teachings and of providing spiritual support for the Buddhist lay-community. The Sangha has historically assumed responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the doctrine as well as the translation and propagation of the teachings of the Buddha. Between midday and the day, a strict life of scripture study, chanting, meditation. Transgression of rules carries penalties ranging from confession to permanent expulsion from the Sangha, saichō, the founder of the Japanese school of Tendai, decided to reduce the number of rules down to about 60 based on the Bodhisattva Precepts. The Order of Interbeing, established in 1964 and associated with the Plum Village movement, has fourteen precepts observed by all monastics and they were written by Thích Nhất Hạnh. In practice, they often have a few personal possessions. Traditionally, Buddhist monks, nuns, and novices eschew ordinary clothes, originally the robes were sewn together from rags and stained with earth or other available dyes. A Buddhist monk is a bhikkhu in Pali, Sanskrit bhikṣu while a nun is a bhikkhuni, Sanskrit bhikṣuṇī. An emphasis on working for food is attributed to additional training guidelines laid down by a Chan Buddhist master, Baizhang Huaihai, notably the phrase, the idea that all Buddhists, especially Sangha members, practice vegetarianism is a Western misperception. In the Pali Canon the Buddha rejected a suggestion by Devadatta to impose vegetarianism on the Sangha, according to the Pali Texts, the Buddha ate meat as long as the animal was not killed specifically for him. Consequently, the Theravada tradition does not practice vegetarianism, although an individual may do so as his or her personal choice. On this question Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions vary depending on their interpretation of their scriptures, in some Mahayana sutras, meat eating is strongly discouraged and it is stated that the Buddha did not eat meat
