Mazard's Version of Mason's Pali Grammar

Front Cover
Eisel Mazard, Dec 24, 2014 - Foreign Language Study - 262 pages

A grammatical textbook for the Pali language with Burmese and Sinhalese script (alongside the Romanization), this edition offers a combination of the new (2015) and the old (1868), with some eccentric digressions into the Ashokan inscriptions, theories of the history and origins of the language, and anecdotes from an era when European archaeology and scholarship were (re-)discovering Theravada Buddhist philosophy.

Mason's approach to the language is based in the ancient grammar of Kaccāyana, and reflects the first (pioneering) attempts of Europeans to explain the language to a western audience (often making comparisons to Latin, Greek and Sanskrit).

This can be used in conjunction with the three other (free!) PDF textbooks for the Pali language available for download (at www.pali.pratyeka.org).

 

Selected pages

Contents

Common terms and phrases

ˆා 1st declension 3rd person accusative adjectives adverbs affix alphabet Alwis anuswara Aorist Ashoka's base Buddha Buddhadatta's dictionary Buddhist Burmah Burmese burn Ceylon changed character COCO Conditional Mood conjugation consonant dative determinate compound Duroiselle ecc3 eczg elided ending English example feminine gender genitive göö Greek Imperative Mood Indicative Mood inscriptions Kaccáyana Kaccayano letter locative Magadha Mágadhí masculine Mason's original text Max Müller meaning Nárada Thera neuter nominative noun OO OO Optative Mood Páli Pali Course Pali Grammar Pali Language Pali-English particle passive past participle past participle Perfect Tense person pronoun person singular plural Practical Grammar Prakrit preposition present tense QoC/D QQ ec reduplication Sanskrit script signification Sinhalese sometimes spelling Sri Lanka suttapitaka terminations third person translation usage verb verbal roots verse vowel word written

About the author (2014)

Appendix B ("Who was Francis Mason?") provides some biographical information on the 19th century Christian missionary who ended up producing a textbook that is (now) almost exclusively interesting to Buddhists.  Mason is credited for pioneering work in a number of languages, including Mon, Karen and Pali.

Eisel Mazard finished this peculiar edition of the book in 2005 (as a sort of by-product of his own study of the language), and his 2015 introduction provides some sketch of how and why this happened.  His online presence can be found via www.eisel-mazard.com

Bibliographic information

TitleMazard's Version of Mason's Pali Grammar
AuthorsFrancis Mason, Eisel Mazard
PublisherEisel Mazard, 2014
Length262 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Foreign Language Study / Ancient Languages
Foreign Language Study / Miscellaneous
Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative
Religion / Buddhism / Theravada
  
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