Abstract:
The scientific study of a language, and its structure including the study of grammatical
aspects, syntax, morphology and phonetics, is called linguistics. As far as the historical
linguistics is concerned, it is the study of history and development of language which is conducive to study the causes of language changes. Furthermore, philology, morphology,
syntax, semantics ...etc are the branches of the linguistic subject. Historical linguistics
is helpful to gain lexical word-meanings of a language. Specially, it is very important to have a sufficient phonological understanding in Pali for gaining substantial knowledge
on Buddhist studies. Although some educated ones in Pali accept the superficial meaning of the
complicated Pali terms without applying them to linguistic methods, a considerable number of
Buddhist scholars whose priority is given to study Buddhism with special reference to
commentaries, Pali and Sanskrit dictionaries and linguistics can be seen. To understand
properly, ‘what the Buddha said and what the Buddha wanted to intend, one should be aware of both semantics and pragmatics.’ Understanding the meaning of a word without knowing the semantics and pragmatics is meaningless and not useful. On the other hand, no one can put arbitrary interpretations in academic studies. When a line of pali stanza of Dhammapada
is scrutinized, various interpretations (semantics) without paying attention to pragmatics can be seen. For instance, “Dhammapīti sukham seti……” Here, the meaning of the word “pīti” is joy or pleasure according to word level meaning (semantics). But in the context of the
pragmatics, the meaning of the word Dhammapiti, is one who drinks the Dhamma. Therefore,
an exact ending of a word-meaning is drawn and that word is to be linguistically scrutinized considering the parallels, lexicons, commentaries, neighboring contexts and correspondings.
Therefore, in this brief paper, an attempt has been made to compare few Pāli terms in
‘Brahmajāla Sutta’ in Dīgha Nikāya which have been differently mentioned in the Buddha
Jayanti Tipitaka version and Burmese Tipitaka version, in order to make some clear
understanding of exact usages of those words based on philology and parallels, lexicons,
commentaries, neighboring contexts and correspondings.
