Psychomechanics & Pāli

Non-finite verbal forms in pāli
participles, absolutives, and
infinitive
Jacques COULARDEAU
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

Temporalité et spatialisation :
théories et applications
Hommage à Pierrette Vachon-
L’Heureux
For all information on and access to the full book
contact Sophie SAFFI
Aix-Marseille Université - Campus Aix-en-Provence,
BÂTIMENT RENÉ EGGER,
29 Avenue Robert Schuman,
Aix-en-Provence Cedex 01, 13628
Tel:+33(0)6 85 54 63 46
Email : sophie.saffi@univ-amu.fr
The full volume is available on the AIPL site at
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direct address is https://
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actes/16_actes.pdf
Le livre imprimé sera prochainement
disponible Auprès de Sophie Saffi,
sophie.saffi@univ-amu.fr

Temporalité et spatialisation :
théories et applications
Hommage à Pierrette Vachon-L’Heureux
Actes du XVIe colloque international de
l’Association Internationale de Psychomécanique
du Langage
coordonnés par
Sophie SAFFI & Virginie CULOMA SAUVA
Casa Cărții de Știință
Cluj-Napoca, 2022

Collection « Linguistique et Psychomécanique du langage »
dirigée par Sophie SAFFI et Ștefan GENCĂRĂU
© Les auteurs, 2022
Relecture : Elsa Pouvelle
Couverture : Roxana Ardelean
Maquette : Alexandra Ionel
Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naționale a României
Temporalité et spatialisation : théories et application : Hommage à
Pierrette Vachon-L’Heureux : actes du XVIe colloque international
de l’Association Internationale de Psychomécanique du Langage /
coordonnés par Sophie Saffi & Virginie Culoma Sauva. - Cluj-Napoca :
Casa cărţii de ştiinţă, 2022
Conţine bibliografie
ISBN 978-606-17-2126-9
I. Saffi, Sophie (coord.)
II. Culoma Sauva, Virginie (coord.)
81
Casa Cărţii de Știinţă
400129 Cluj-Napoca; B-dul Eroilor, nr. 6-8
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Sommaire
Hommage à Pierrette Vachon-L’Heureux------------------------------- 9
Patrick DUFFLEY, Renée TREMBLAY & Joseph PATTEE
Introduction -----------------------------------------------------------------13
Sophie SAFFI, Virginie CULOMA SAUVA
I.
Les théories linguistiques de la représentation du temps
Le présent « de parole »---------------------------------------------------27
Luciana T. SOLIMAN
Réflexion sur la représentation schématique guillaumienne
de la chronogénèse : le cas du français contemporain--------------45
Virginie CULOMA SAUVA
À quel stade en est notre connaissance des sources de Guillaume ?
Pour une contribution à la lumière du débat
philosophico-scientifique de son époque------------------------------55
Alberto MANCO
La rappresentazione linguistica della temporalità:
una misura possibile del tempo della realtà
o l’unica realmente possibile? --------------------------------------------71
Francesco PARISI
Lev Sémionovitch Vygotski ou le pressentiment
de la psychomécanique du langage -------------------------------------91
Pierre BLANCHAUD

6 • Temporalité et spatialisation : théories et applications
Au temps de Guillaume, ceci est un « du data »
qualifié à conserver-------------------------------------------------------119
Diane GAMACHE
II.
La chronogenèse guillaumienne appliquée à différents
systèmes de langue
Approche submorphologique
des temps in posse de l’espagnol---------------------------------------149
Stéphane PAGÈS
La spatialisation du temps dans la morphologie
verbale en italien néo-standard----------------------------------------167
Sophie SAFFI
Les stratégies mises en œuvre par l’allemand
pour rendre la distinction imparfait/passé simple ----------------197
Olivier DUPLÂTRE
De la chronogenèse des modes et des temps à la chronogenèse
éthico-existentiale. L’exemple de La Lettre écarlate /
The Scarlet Letter, de Nathaniel Hawthorne-------------------------219
Catherine CHAUCHE
La spatialisation et la temporalité du général et du particulier
dans le système lexico-sémantique de la langue -------------------237
Valéry KOUZNETSOV
Le verbe trilitère arabe dans la perspective guillaumienne------251
Manar EL KAK
Non-finite verbal forms in pāli participles,
absolutives and infinitive------------------------------------------------279
Jacques COULARDEAU

Hommage à Pierrette Vachon-L’Heureux • 7
III.
Varia
Plurilinguisme et création en Italie. Témoignage d’une création
franco-italo-tunisienne : la mise en œuvre du projet européen
HistoryBoards-------------------------------------------------------------- 301
Martine SOUSSE
Gestes et mots en italien : étude de cas sur un corpus
d’enregistrements de locuteurs natifs-------------------------------- 325
Lounis MEDJBOUR

Non-finite verbal forms in pāli
participles, absolutives and infinitive
Jacques COULARDEAU
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
Abstract: Pāli is an Indo-Aryan language that was devised specially
to transcribe in the third century BCE the oral preaching of Gautama
Buddha (who lived in the sixth-fifth centuries BCE) in Lumbini,
Shakya Republic (present-day Nepal). Pāli is not so much an artifi-
cial language as a language adapted to the particular discourse it
tries to transcribe and derived from probably several closely related
other Indo-Aryan languages with Sanskrit being kept in the back-
ground all the time. Pāli has the originality of not being attached to
a writing system so that it can be written with any of the writing
systems in use in the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia, in-
cluding, in more recent times, the Latin writing system extended for
some diacritic elements. We have to understand Buddhism is a par-
ticular development of old Sanskrit classic Vedas with the declared
ambition to differentiate itself from the various trends and branches
of Vedic and ascetic preaching that produced Hinduism. The main
difference is the refusal of any godlike creator of the universe.
I will study here the fundamental role of the four participles, the ab-
solutive and the infinitive in the building of this predicatory discourse.
The four participles are adjectival or nominal non-finite verbal forms
predicatively expanding either noun phrases or verbal phrases with
four possible forms and values:
1- The past participle of an action seen as fully completed is an ad-
jectival expansion of a noun phrase.

2- The active past participle is an adjectival expansion of a noun
phrase seen as the agent of an action that has been fully completed.
3- The present participle is an adjectival expansion of a noun phrase
with an action that is seen in progress, hence partly completed and
partly virtual.
4- The future passive participle is an adjectival form expanding a
noun phrase with an action that should, must, or could be done
with the contradiction between the injunctive or optative modaliza-
tion and the passive completion attached to a noun phrase which is
the virtual actant who should, must or could carry this completed
passive value.
The absolutive (at times called gerund) is a non-finite form that ex-
presses an action or state that, at the time of utterance, has been
completed, has been credited to the main actant of the main clause
of the utterance or the general situation conveyed by the utterance,
and whose completion and merit-crediting to the main actant make
the action of the main clause of the utterance possible, and without
which this very action is not possible.
The infinitive is a simple non-finite verbal expansion of the main
clause of the utterance attached to one particular actant of this main
clause or to its verb to which it is subservient. It expresses the ac-
tion in its fullness, though with various values in the sentences as
for virtual completion, partial completion, or total completion.
What kind of mapping of the inner time of these non-finite forms
can we see and how can the passive/active and injunctive/optative
dimensions be integrated? Are we in langue, or are we in discourse?
Is such predicatory discourse dealing with time, both universe and
inner times, the same way as any reporting discourse?
Résumé : Le Pāli est une langue indo-aryenne qui a été conçue spé-
cialement pour transcrire au troisième siècle avant notre ère la pré-
dication orale de Gautama Bouddha (qui a vécu au sixième-cinquième
siècle avant notre ère) à Lumbini, dans la République Shakya (Népal
actuel). Le Pāli n’est pas tant une langue artificielle qu’une langue
adaptée au discours particulier qu’elle tente de transcrire et dérivée
de probablement plusieurs autres langues indo-aryennes étroitement

apparentées, le sanskrit étant toujours maintenu à l’arrière-plan. Le
Pāli a l’originalité de ne pas être attaché à un système d’écriture de
sorte qu’il peut être écrit avec n’importe lequel des systèmes
d’écriture en usage dans le sous-continent indien et en Asie du Sud-
Est, y compris, à une époque plus récente, le système d’écriture latin
étendu pour certains éléments diacritiques. Il faut comprendre que
le bouddhisme est un développement particulier des anciens Vedas
classiques sanskrits avec l’ambition déclarée de se différencier des
diverses tendances et branches de la prédication védique et ascétique
qui ont produit l’hindouisme. La principale différence est le refus de
tout créateur divin de l’univers.
J’étudierai ici le rôle fondamental des quatre participes, de l’absolu
et de l’infinitif dans la construction de ce discours prédicatif.
Les quatre participes sont des formes verbales adjectivales ou no-
minales non finies expansant de manière prédicative soit des syn-
tagmes nominaux, soit des syntagmes verbaux avec quatre formes
et valeurs possibles :
1- Le participe passé d’une action considérée comme entièrement
achevée est une expansion adjectivale d’un syntagme nominal.
2- Le participe passé actif est une expansion adjectivale d’un syn-
tagme nominal vu comme l’agent d’une action qui a été entièrement
achevée.
3- Le participe présent est une expansion adjectivale d’un syntagme
nominal avec une action qui est vue en cours, donc en partie achevée,
en partie virtuelle.
4- Le participe passif futur est une expansion adjectivale d’un syn-
tagme nominal avec une action qui devrait, doit ou pourrait être faite
avec la contradiction entre la modalisation injonctive ou optative et
l’achèvement passif attaché à un syntagme nominal qui est l’actant
virtuel qui devrait, doit ou pourrait porter cette valeur passive
achevée.
L’absolutif (parfois appelé gérondif) est une forme non finie qui ex-
prime une action ou un état qui, au moment de l’énonciation, est
achevé, a été crédité à l’actant principal de la clause principale de
l’énoncé ou à la situation générale véhiculée par l’énoncé, et dont
l’achèvement et le crédit de mérite à l’actant principal rendent pos-
sible l’action de la clause principale de l’énoncé, et sans lequel cette
même action n’est pas possible.

L’infinitif est une expansion verbale simple non finie de la clause
principale de l’énoncé, attachée à un actant particulier de cette clause
principale ou à son verbe auquel elle est subordonnée. Il exprime
l’action dans sa plénitude, bien qu’avec diverses valeurs dans
les phrases, comme l’achèvement virtuel, l’achèvement partiel ou
l’achèvement total.
Quel type de cartographie du temps interne de ces formes non-finies
pouvons-nous voir et comment les dimensions passive/active et in-
jonctive/optative peuvent-elles être intégrées ? Sommes-nous dans
la langue, ou dans le discours ? Un tel discours prédicatif traite-t-il
du temps, à la fois de l’univers et des temps intérieurs, de la même
manière que tout discours déclaratif ?
In this article, I will only provide a full report of the real presen-
tation in Aix-en-Provence. The full research is in the process of being
published in the Indian subcontinent.
I started with a fast mention of the three migrations out of
Black Africa.
Firstly, to Northern Africa and the Sahara, reaching Morocco
circa 300,000 BCE. It produced all the Semitic or Afro-Asiatic con-
sonantal root languages.
Secondly, to Asia via the Horn of Africa and the Strait of Ormuz
circa at least 120,000 BCE, and there it met the Denisovans, particu-
larly in SE Asia (intense integration) and continental Asia (lighter
exchanges). It produced isolating and tonal languages.
Thirdly, the first wave, circa 70,000 BCE, followed the same
route but went to the Middle East where it met with the Neanderthals
for the first time. Then it moved west to Asia Minor and eventually
to southern Europe, east around the Caspian Sea into Central Asia
up to the Urals and Siberia, and north across the Caucasus, and then
to the whole of Europe, up north to Sápmi and Finland, west as far
south to the Iberic Peninsula, and north to Scandinavia, and The
British Isles, where they met the Neanderthals on a more permanent

basis. This first wave was completed around 45,000 BCE. It pro-
duced all the agglutinative Turkic languages.
Third, the second wave, circa 50,000 BCE, followed the same
route and stayed on the Iranian plateau where the Iranian languages
developed that will give Indo-European languages by migration west,
and Indo-Aryan languages by migration east, both after the Ice Age
Peak, circa 10,000 BCE.

My hypothesis can only be justified if we adopt a phylogenic
approach to the evolution of language. Any retrospective reconstruc-
tion leads to a blind alley at around 12,000 years in the past, some
say 15,000 years. That will never be able to go beyond the Ice Age
Peak, which was at 19,000 BCE, hence, 21,000 years ago, or so. But
that is not the topic of this presentation. Now let’s move to Pāli and
Buddhism.
Buddhism’s expansion is around the 3rd century BCE and in
Sri Lanka, the Buddhist monks were ordered by Emperor Ashoka
(reign c. 265-238 BCE) to transcribe and stabilize the collected
preaching of Buddha only kept in memory by the monks for two
centuries or so. The monks developed a special language, Pāli from
various Prakrit languages, and Sanskrit as the common matrix of all
of them, and they customized this language to Buddhism and its
concepts. And then they went preaching from Sri Lanka to South-
east Asia and the Far East.
Buddhism is a religion of personal action to improve life on
earth and one’s fate in life, including, for some, one’s fate after death.
In the modern world of science and technology, the question of death
and “reincarnation” is a discourse that does not block the debate on

life and how to improve it. But the language conveys some funda-
mental ideas.
a- the verbal system is fundamental to express the principle
that all human actions are directly under the modalization of the
“actor” or “actress.” You speak the way you think, and you think the
way you act. I think, therefore I speak, therefore I act. That’s deeply
different from Descartes’ cogito because being is not the objective of
Buddhism, but wisdom is, and wisdom can only come from the con-
trol of thought, speech, and body.
b- The finite forms mainly concern reported actions, all under a
strong modalization from the speaker who systematically chooses
the proper mode: assertive, optative, future, conditional, impera-
tive, but also active, passive, medial, causative, or even double
causative. These modes are all governed by the action balance sheet
built by the speaker outside the utterance, and the actor inside the
utterance who is supposed to be an agent (at best).
c- For Buddhism, all human action is meritorious meaning life
is a continuity of actions governed by the principle of necessary ac-
companying fulfillment, or the merit of the individual. This implies:

α- Concatenation of participle clauses to the main finite
verbal clause. Few subordinate clauses. Most second-tier clauses
are participial and use non-finite forms and they are not syntactically
subordinated with conjunctions of subordination or relative pronouns
with finite verbs, except, of course, and unluckily, in Western Euro-
pean translations that betray both the syntax of the language and the
meaning of the discourse. Most of these participle clauses are coor-
dinated concatenation with concatenative adjunctive particles.

β- The following particular cases
i- Gerund Clauses, invariable, fully performed and completed
actions standing as conditions for further actions.
ii- Gerundives that are only adjectivized participles, hence
agreeing with the noun they modify.
iii- Infinitive clauses that imply an objective targeted by the
subject, most of the time, of the main verb to which it is concatenated.
iv- active and passive participles of active or passive verbs.
v- Causative and double causative participles on causative
and double causative verbs.
vi- Absolutes: concatenated participle clauses connected to the
main finite verbs by carrying a functional case: locative, genitive,
instrumental, accusative, and the very dubious nominative that, in
fact, looks like a simple adjectivized participle clause attached to the
nominative nominal element in the main clause.
The case of an absolute is applied to the participle and the
“agent/subject” of it. This “agent/subject” normally would be in the
nominative (functional nominal phrases attached to a participle nor-
mally carry the proper casual marks) but the absolute value applies

the case of the absolute to this “agent/subject” that drops its nomi-
native case.
This builds up the architecture of the Pāli sentence as follows.
This non-finite concatenated architecture is the linguistic reali-
zation of the triple principle of Buddhism:
i- Anicca: everything changes. Everything is nothing but some
surrounding environment at best experiential and always circum-
stantial, hence bound to come to an end, completed or not. No prin-
ciple could state a permanence of any sort in any phenomenon de-
scribed by the speaker.
ii- Dukkha: since everything has an end, satisfaction or satiety
are not the objectives of life. Life is the systematic ending of anything
that started before and won’t last longer than always too short. The
standard translation of “suffering” is purely descriptive of the feeling
of loss or deprivation when anything comes to an end. Note this is
also true for negative elements and the end of such painful experi-
ences is pleasurable, even if this pleasure does not last very long.
We have to be meritorious, not pleasure-oriented. We have to store
all our actions, positive or negative, and that provides us a fair chance

to survive our own death, positively or negatively. When we reach
such a meritorious level of satisfaction, we may experience a feeling
of contentment, but even so, the most enlightened Buddha has to go
on being meritorious because enlightenment itself is not everlasting.
The architecture of the Pāli sentence is the image of this meritorious
enlightenment: a series of circumstantial concatenated elements lead-
ing to an assertive modalized statement that can carry any modaliza-
tion: assertive, optative, future, conditional, imperative, active, pas-
sive, medial voice, and causative, or even double causative.
iii- Anattā: since everything changes and everything always
comes to an end, at times very fast, nothing and nobody has any kind
of essence, self, or soul that would have any permanence or even
durability or duration. That’s the very principle of non-being, and
even the most enlightened Buddha does not have an essence: he is
only an evanescent positive balance among all the meritorious data
he has accumulated in life, and this balance can break at any time.
The idea of a reincarnated Buddha is absurd in Buddhist terms since
when a Buddhist reaches the state of enlightenment when he dies
in this state, he will evade the cycle of birth-death-rebirth and merge
into the cosmic energy of the universe.
iv- The only sustainability in this meritorious approach to life
is the non-excessive-attachment to anything or anybody. This is the
fourth fundamental dimension of Buddhist philosophy: tanha is the
enslaver or slave master in our personal life. Everything is circum-
stantial, experiential, and evanescent. But you have to develop non-
attachment to even this non-attachment because then there would
be no meaning in having anything to do with others, with yourself,
with life per se. Asceticism and suicide are the results of the mor-
bidity of tanha when it becomes the dominant value of an individual:
attachment to non-attachment. Then let us die. But this attachment
to non-attachment is not enlightenment and then the death of such
an individual does not in any way bring him, her, or them any meri-
torious fulfillment.

That leads us to a famous case analyzed by T.Y. Elizarenkova
and V.N. Toporov, in The Pāli Language (1976). A long cycle of
twelve gerunds and the impossibility to translate such a cycle into
Indo-European languages, and probably many others.
So pi migapotako pāse baddho avippanditvā yeva bhūmiyaṃ
mahāphāsukapassena pāde pasāretva nipanno pādānaṃ
āsannaṭṭhāne khureh ‘eva paharitvā paṃsu ca tiṇāni ca uppāṭetvā
uccārapassāvaṃ vissajjetvā sīsaṃ pātetvā jivhaṃ ninnāmetvā
sarīraṃ kheḷakilinnaṃ katvā vātaggahaṇena udaraṃ uddhumātakaṃ
katvā akkhīni parivattetvā heṭṭhānāsikasotena vātaṃ sañcarāpento
uparimanāsikasotena vātaṃ sannirumhitvā sakalasarīraṃ thad-
dhabhāvaṃ gāhāpetvā matakākāraṃ dassesi.
First, Elizarenkova’s translation:
The young antelope bound by a noose, without trying to break loose,
lying on its side on the ground, its legs outstretched, was kicking its
hoofs, trampling the dust and the weeds, defecating, its head down,
its tongue out, sweat all over its body, its belly inflated, tears rolling
from its eyes, letting out its breath through the lower nostril and
keeping it in by the upper nostril, its body having become rigid, pre-
tended to be dead.
She does not provide the source of this translation and we as-
sume it is hers. We can see at once that the initial “so” (3rd person
singular pronoun) is not translated though she treats the first nomi-
nal phrase, “migapotako pāse baddho” as the subject of the final verb,
“dassesi.” She translated most of the gerunds with finite verbs which
breaks the general feeling of accumulation of crucial steps and stages
towards inescapable death and replaces it with a rather empathetic
description of the animal’s death concluded by “pretended to be
dead” which means the death was faked, whereas the gerunds imply
that surviving would be a miracle since the twelve gerunds are the
fully completed realistic march to death, each gerund being one

unretrievable step closer, till the last one that does not bring the pre-
tension of death but the absolute state of death.
We lack the necessary tools to translate this value into similar
terms. I can propose a translation into English and another into
French, but neither really gives us this inescapable progression to
death as a series of twelve stages in which the fulfillment of any one
of them is the pre-condition of the next one. It is the absolute nega-
tion of any semblance in the final state.
Translation into English:
Look at him, the young wild animal collared in a hunter’s trap lace
who, once he had abandoned the idea of freeing himself, once he had
let himself go on the ground, his legs outstretched, once he had
stopped kicking out with all his four legs, once he had brought to an
end his trampling the dust and the grass, once he had released excre-
ments and urine, once he had let his head go on the side, once he had
let his tongue hang out from his mouth, once he had discharged floods
of perspiration all over his body, once his stomach had fully swollen,
once tears had flown from his eyes, once his breath had ceased exhal-
ing, and once his body had become tense in complete rigidity, then this
young wild animal stuck in this hunter’s trap lace appeared fully dead.
Translation into French:
C’est lui, le jeune animal sauvage pris à un lacet de chasseur qui, une
fois qu’il eût abandonné l’idée de se libérer, qu’il se fût abandonné
au sol, les quatre pattes tendues, qu’il eût fini de ruer de ses quatre
sabots, qu’il eût arrêté de piétiner la poussière et l’herbe, qu’il eût
libéré excréments et urine, qu’il eût laissé choir sa tête sur le côté,
qu’il eût laissé sa langue pendre hors de sa bouche, qu’il eût relâché
des flots de sueur sur tout son corps, que son ventre eût gonflé, que
ses larmes eussent coulé de ses yeux, que son souffle eût cessé de
s’exhaler, et que son corps se fût rigidifié dans une raideur totale,
alors, oui, lui, le jeune animal sauvage pris à un lacet de chasseur
nous apparut bien totalement mort.

To show how intrinsically that syntactic architecture is perfectly
adapted to Buddhist preaching, I will take an example from the
Dhammapada, verses 231-234. Let me give the verses in Pāli first:
Dhammapada verses in Pali:
Verse 231
kāyappakopaṃ rakkheyya,
kāyena saṃvuto siyā.
kāyaduccaritaṃ hitvā,
kāyena sucaritaṃ care.
Verse 232
vacīpakopaṃ rakkheyya,
vācāya saṃvuto siyā.
vacīduccaritaṃ hitvā,
vācāya sucaritaṃ care.
Verse 233
manopakopaṃ rakkheyya,
manasā saṃvuto siyā.
manoduccaritaṃ hitvā,
manasā sucaritaṃ care.
Verse 234
kāyena saṃvutā dhīrā,
atho vācāya saṃvutā.
manasā saṃvutā dhīrā,
te ve suparisaṃvutā.
Then a standard translation into English:
English translation of verse(s):
Verse 231
Let a man guard himself against irritability in bodily action,
let him be controlled in deed.
Abandoning bodily misconduct,
let him practice good conduct in deed.
Verse 232
Let a man guard himself against irritability in speech,
let him be controlled in speech.
Abandoning verbal misconduct,
let him practice good conduct in speech.

Verse 233
Let a man guard himself against irritability in thought,
let him be controlled in mind.
Abandoning mental misconduct,
let him practice good conduct in thought.
Verse 234
The wise are controlled in bodily action,
controlled in speech
and controlled in thought.
They are truly well-controlled.
In the Pāli text, the gerunds are in red, bold, and underlined
fonts, expressing elements that have to be fully completed to enable
the next phase to start. Past participles are in blue, bold fonts, ex-
pressing the result of the gerunds when completed. The original text
is available at https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/dhammapa
da-part-i/dhammapada-verses-231-234-3ndwh6_-k5U/, and the
translation is by Acharya Buddharakkhita, along with the recording.
We can see the architecture of the verses through this simple use of
two colors. The translation does not retain this architecture. I may
attempt to keep these non-finite forms in the last verse as follows:
Once a man has pushed down his physical impulses
This man has reached self-control in action
Once he has rejected his physical instincts
Then he can practice good behavior.
Once a man has pushed down his improper language
This man has reached self-control in speech
Once he has rejected his faulty language
Then he can practice positive discourse
Once a man has pushed down his unclean ideas
This man has reached self-control in thought
Once he has rejected his unclean visions
Then he can practice meritorious thinking

The wise men self-controlled in their body
These wise men self-controlled in their speech
The same wise men self-controlled in their thought
Them all perfectly and truly self-controlled wise men.
In the last verse, there are only past participles, and it is rather
easy to translate since they only express the resultative state of affair
brought by the fulfilling of the gerunds. The gerunds in the first three
verses express the same fulfillment of an action, but it is not only a
state of affairs, it is the result of a willful choice to do so fully. And
that is just what I mean when I say it is impossible to translate it into
our Indo-European languages. This last verse translated the way I
suggest gives this meritorious satisfaction when something good is
performed. And it is all our merit since we decided to do it to the full
extent of the project and intention. And yet there is no permanence
in this situation since the wise man has to control himself in body,
in speech, and in thought all the time, and it is this permanence of
self-control that is the real merit of wisdom. That is entirely contained
in the language and its concatenative morphology and syntax, in one
word its concatenative discourse.
To conclude I will say that some may think Pāli is agglutinative,
and Alvaro Rocchetti said so in Aix-en-Provence. That would be a
phylogenetic reduction. Pāli being a language from a phylogenetic
phase that is posterior to that of the vast Turkic agglutinative lan-
guages, it is normal it retains some elements of the anterior phases
of phylogenetic development. But it is not an agglutinative language
since it is very directly derived from Sanskrit, except of course if
you think, like some may do, that Sanskrit is an agglutinative lan-
guage. The main advocate, Professor Dr. Alfréd Tóth, of this aggluti-
nativization of nearly all languages is originally from one agglutina-
tive Turkic language, Hungarian. But it is true it is a very common
mistake in linguistics: many, too many linguists consider, at times
unconsciously, that the linguistic family of their first languages is
the matrix they use to build their linguistic vision. Latin and Greek

have too long been the matrixes of European linguistics. It is not so
rare to find, in some universities, professors teaching that in Arabic
you have the same conjugation as in European languages, person,
number, tenses, modes, and voices. It is certain that one can express
all these in Arabic, but most of these are not part of the conjugation
of Arabic verbs, just like in English “will go” is a periphrastic expres-
sion of the future but it is not a future tense per se. Same thing in
German with “Morgen werde ich nach Berlin fahren,” to take two
examples close to us. At least will I say the declaration that any lan-
guage can say absolutely anything equally may bring up the con-
clusion that the various ways to express a future action are the same
linguistic thing, whereas it is only the expression of a similar idea
with different means. It is so easy to forget that the meaning is in
the means we use to express it.
Resources
1- Comparative Editions of the Dhammapada, Anandajoti Bhikkhu
338 p. PDF, 2007-2011, https://www.academia.edu/22323581/
A_Comparative_Edition_of_the_Dhammapada.
2- Purushothaman P., Academia Letters, Some thoughts on linking
Tamil Sumerian, Gondi, Brahui and Indus Valley Scripts on nos-
talgic memories, 4 pages, 2021, https://www.academia.edu/
61435287/Some_thoughts_on_linking_Tamil_Sumerian_Gondi_
Brahui_and_Indus_Valley_Scripts_on_nostalgic_memories.
3- An Easy Introduction to Pāli, 2018 New Edition, https://archive.
org/details/MyPāliCourse, 377 pages.

4- A Practical Guide to Pāli Grammar, Anandajoti Bhikkhu,
https://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Textual-Studies/Gra
mmar/Guide-to-Pāli-Grammar.htm, 2014-2016.
5- Pāli Verbs Companion to Introduction to Pāli, by A.K. Warder,
2010 edition, two pages, https://learning.pariyatti.org/plugin
file.php/4247/mod_page/content/1/Pāli_Verbs.pdf.
6- Practical Grammar of the Pāli Language, Charles Duroiselle, 1906,
Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2009 https://www.amazon.com/
Practical-Grammar-Pāli-Language/dp/1104598949.
7- Dr. Irach J.S. Taraporewala, Sanskrit Syntax, Munshiram Mano-
harial, Delhi, India, 1967.
8- Arthur A. MacDonnell, A Sanskrit Grammar for Students, Oxford
University Press, (1927)-1975.
9- T.Y. Elizarenkova, V.N. Toporov, The Pāli Language, Nauka Pub-
lishing House, Moscow, 1976.
10- James W. Gair, W.S. Karunatillake, A New Course in Reading Pāli,
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi, India, (1998)-2005.
11- Narada Thera, The Dhammapada, Buddhist Cultural Center,
Dehiwela, Sri Lanka, 2544 (datation bouddhiste)-2000 (datation
grégorienne).
12- Bhikkhu Nanamoli, A Pāli-English Glossary of Buddhist Technical
Terms, Bhikkhu Bodi Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri
Lanka, (1994)-2007.
13- Steven Collins, A Pāli Grammar for Students, Silkworm Books,
Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2005.
14- A.P. Buddhadatta Mahathera, English-Pāli Dictionary, Bharatiya
Kala Prakashan, Delhi, India, (1954)-2006.
15- T.W. Rhys Davids, William Stede, Pāli-English Dictionary, Motilal
Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi, India, (1921-1925)-(1993)-2003.
16- The Dhammapada, A New Edition, Edited by Anandajoti Bhikkhu,
2007-2016, https://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Buddhist-
Texts/K2-Dhammapada-New/New-Dhammapada.pdf.

17- An Outline of the Meter in the Pāli Canon, Anandajoti Bhikkhu,
2002-2013, https://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Textual-
Studies/Outline/Outline-of-the-Metres.pdf.
18- Pārāyanavagga, A New Edition together with A Study of its Metre,
Ānandajoti Bhikkhu 2nd Revised Edition 2011/2555, https://
www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Textual-Studies/Parayana-Me
tre/Parayana-Metre.pdf.
19-Arnold Edward Vernon, Vedic Metre in Its Historical Development,
2019, Edition in English, Cambridge University Press, 1905, PDF
full-text https://ia800206.us.archive.org/23/items/vedicmetrei
nitsh00arnouoft/vedicmetreinitsh00arnouoft.pdf.
20- A Chanting Guide Pāli Passages with English Translations The
Dhammayut Order in the United States of America, PDF,
https://www.forestmeditation.com/audio/audio.html links to
audio recordings. https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.
php?p=89540&sid=03aaa1a50b300f14ba16385236cd47e2#p8
9540 Recorded Pāli Chants.
21- Dr. Vinod Kumar, Editor, Srisa Candra Vasu, Translator, The
ASTADHYAYI of PANINI, ‘A Treatise on Sanskrit Grammar), Parimal
Publications, Delhi, India, two volumes, Second Reprint Edition,
2019.

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