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106-611: Although the name Culāsakaraj is a generic term meaning "Lesser Era" in Pali , the term Chula Sakarat is often associated with the various versions of the calendar used in regions that make up modern-day Thailand , Laos , Kampuchea , Myanmar and the Sipsong Panna area of China. In Thailand, it is only used in academia for Thai history studies . The name Chula Sakarat is derived from Pali culā "small" and Sanskrit śaka + rāja , literally meaning " Scythian king" (the meaning

212-415: A Middle Indo-Aryan language , is different from Classical 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 direct continuation of Ṛgvedic Sanskrit. Instead it descends from one or more dialects that were, despite many similarities, different from Ṛgvedic . The Theravada commentaries refer to

318-515: A before doubled consonants: The vowels ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ are lengthened in the flexional endings including: -īhi, -ūhi and -īsu A sound called anusvāra (Skt.; Pali: niggahīta ), represented by the letter ṁ (ISO 15919) or ṃ (ALA-LC) in romanization, and by a raised dot in most traditional alphabets, originally marked the fact that the preceding vowel was nasalized. That is, aṁ , iṁ and uṁ represented [ã] , [ĩ] and [ũ] . In many traditional pronunciations, however,

424-531: A lingua franca or common language of culture among people who used differing dialects in North India, used at the time of the Buddha and employed by him. Another scholar states that at that time it was "a refined and elegant vernacular of all Aryan-speaking people". Modern scholarship has not arrived at a consensus on the issue; there are a variety of conflicting theories with supporters and detractors. After

530-447: A voiced retroflex lateral approximant [ɭ] or non-retroflex [l] "l" sound. Both the long ā and retroflex ḷ are seen in the ISO 15919 / ALA-LC rendering, Pāḷi ; however, to this day there is no single, standard spelling of the term, and all four possible spellings can be found in textbooks. R. C. Childers translates the word as "series" and states that the language "bears

636-664: A continuation of a language spoken in the area of Magadha in the time of the Buddha. Nearly every word in Pāḷi has cognates in the other Middle Indo-Aryan languages, the Prakrits . The relationship to Vedic Sanskrit is less direct and more complicated; the Prakrits were descended from Old Indo-Aryan vernaculars . Historically, influence between Pali and Sanskrit has been felt in both directions. The Pali language's resemblance to Sanskrit

742-552: A degraded form of Pali, But Masefield states that further examination of a very considerable corpus of texts will probably show that this is an internally consistent Pali dialect. The reason for the changes is that some combinations of characters are difficult to write in those scripts. Masefield further states that upon the third re-introduction of Theravada Buddhism into Sri Lanka (The Siyamese Sect), records in Thailand state that large number of texts were also taken. It seems that when

848-575: A few loan-words from local languages where Pali was used (e.g. Sri Lankans adding Sinhala words to Pali). These usages differentiate the Pali found in the Suttapiṭaka from later compositions such as the Pali commentaries on the canon and folklore (e.g., commentaries on the Jataka tales ), and comparative study (and dating) of texts on the basis of such loan-words is now a specialized field unto itself. Pali

954-475: A functional system that made reasonably accurate predictions. The text was influential on the solar year computations of the luni-solar Hindu calendar . The text was translated into Arabic and was influential in medieval Islamic geography . The Surya Siddhanta has the largest number of commentators among all the astronomical texts written in India. It includes information about the mean orbital parameters of

1060-665: A high degree of mutual intelligibility. Theravada tradition, as recorded in chronicles like the Mahavamsa , states that the Tipitaka was first committed to writing during the first century BCE. This move away from the previous tradition of oral preservation is described as being motivated by threats to the Sangha from famine, war, and the growing influence of the rival tradition of the Abhayagiri Vihara . This account

1166-495: A mix of several Prakrit languages from around the 3rd century BCE, combined and partially Sanskritized. There is no attested dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan with all the features of Pali. In the modern era, it has been possible to compare Pali with inscriptions known to be in Magadhi Prakrit, as well as other texts and grammars of that language. While none of the existing sources specifically document pre-Ashokan Magadhi,

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1272-415: A number of similarities between surviving fragments and Pali morphology. Ardhamagadhi Prakrit was a Middle Indo-Aryan language and a Dramatic Prakrit thought to have been spoken in modern-day Bihar & Eastern Uttar Pradesh and used in some early Buddhist and Jain drama. It was originally thought to be a predecessor of the vernacular Magadhi Prakrit, hence the name (literally "half-Magadhi"). Ardhamāgadhī

1378-416: A smaller gap between the two. However, it has turned out that the new system is actually slightly less accurate (0.56 second a year) than the old system in terms of the drift from the scientifically measured tropical year . At any rate, the old and the new systems are 23 minutes 50.8704 seconds and 23 minutes 51.4304 seconds respectively ahead of the actual tropical year. The error continues to mount. Since

1484-450: A stationary globe around which sun, moon and five planets orbit. It makes no mention of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. It presents mathematical formulae to calculate the orbits, diameters, predict their future locations and cautions that the minor corrections are necessary over time to the formulae for the various astronomical bodies. The text describes some of its formulae with the use of very large numbers for " divya-yuga ", stating that at

1590-515: A year equal 365 in both Indian (Hindu) and Egyptian–Persian year. Further, adds Ôhashi, the Mesopotamian formula is different than Indian formula for calculating time, each can only work for their respective latitude, and either would make major errors in predicting time and calendar in the other region. Kim Plofker states that while a flow of timekeeping ideas from either side is plausible, each may have instead developed independently, because

1696-485: Is a Sanskrit treatise in Indian astronomy dated to 4th to 5th century, in fourteen chapters. The Surya Siddhanta describes rules to calculate the motions of various planets and the moon relative to various constellations , diameters of various planets, and calculates the orbits of various astronomical bodies . The text is known from a 15th-century CE palm-leaf manuscript , and several newer manuscripts . It

1802-420: Is a compendium of astronomy that is easier to remember, transmit and use as reference or aid for the experienced, but does not aim to offer commentary, explanation or proof. The text has 14 chapters and 500 shlokas. It is one of the eighteen astronomical siddhanta (treatises), but thirteen of the eighteen are believed to be lost to history. The Surya Siddhanta text has survived since the ancient times, has been

1908-577: Is currently relatively little known, particularly in the Thai tradition, with many manuscripts never catalogued or published. Paiśācī is a largely unattested literary language of classical India that is mentioned in Prakrit and Sanskrit grammars of antiquity. It is found grouped with the Prakrit languages, with which it shares some linguistic similarities, but was not considered a spoken language by

2014-503: Is found in Puranas where as Surya Siddhanta sticks with measurable time. The text measures a savana day from sunrise to sunrise. Thirty of these savana days make a savana month. A solar ( saura ) month starts with the entrance of the sun into a zodiac sign , thus twelve months make a year. The text further states there are nine modes of measuring time. "Of four modes, namely solar, lunar, sidereal, and civil time, practical use

2120-484: Is frequently chanted in a ritual context. The secular literature of Pali historical chronicles, medical texts, and inscriptions is also of great historical importance. The great centres of Pali learning remain in Sri Lanka and other Theravada nations of Southeast Asia: Myanmar , Thailand , Laos and Cambodia . Since the 19th century, various societies for the revival of Pali studies in India have promoted awareness of

2226-502: Is generally accepted by scholars, though there are indications that Pali had already begun to be recorded in writing by this date. By this point in its history, scholars consider it likely that Pali had already undergone some initial assimilation with Sanskrit , such as the conversion of the Middle-Indic bahmana to the more familiar Sanskrit brāhmana that contemporary brahmans used to identify themselves. In Sri Lanka, Pali

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2332-428: Is made among men; by that of Jupiter is to be determined the year of the cycle of sixty years; of the rest, no use is ever made". Surya Siddhanta asserts that there are two pole stars, one each at north and south celestial pole . Surya Siddhanta chapter 12 verse 43 description is as following: मेरोरुभयतो मध्ये ध्रुवतारे नभ:स्थिते। निरक्षदेशसंस्थानामुभये क्षितिजाश्रिये॥१२:४३॥ This translates as "On both sides of

2438-677: Is often exaggerated by comparing it to later Sanskrit compositions—which were written centuries after Sanskrit ceased to be a living language, and are influenced by developments in Middle Indic , including the direct borrowing of a portion of the Middle Indic lexicon; whereas, a good deal of later Pali technical terminology has been borrowed from the vocabulary of equivalent disciplines in Sanskrit, either directly or with certain phonological adaptations. Post-canonical Pali also possesses

2544-436: Is sometimes substituted with tanti , meaning a string or lineage. This name seems to have emerged in Sri Lanka early in the second millennium CE during a resurgence in the use of Pali as a courtly and literary language. As such, the name of the language has caused some debate among scholars of all ages; the spelling of the name also varies, being found with both long "ā" [ɑː] and short "a" [a] , and also with either

2650-936: Is that literature in Paiśācī is fragmentary and extremely rare but may once have been common. The 13th-century Tibetan historian Buton Rinchen Drub wrote that the early Buddhist schools were separated by choice of sacred language : the Mahāsāṃghikas used Prakrit, the Sarvāstivādins used Sanskrit, the Sthaviravādins used Paiśācī, and the Saṃmitīya used Apabhraṃśa . This observation has led some scholars to theorize connections between Pali and Paiśācī; Sten Konow concluded that it may have been an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Dravidian people in South India, and Alfred Master noted

2756-550: Is the inclination of the plane of the ecliptic. With radius of 3438 and sine of 1397, the corresponding angle is 23.975° or 23° 58' 30.65" which is approximated to be 24°. Question: How Can the Earth Be a Sphere? Thus everywhere on the terrestrial globe (bhūgola), people suppose their own place higher, yet this globe (gola) is in space where there is no above nor below. — Surya Siddhanta, XII.53 Translator: Scott L. Montgomery, Alok Kumar The text treats earth as

2862-416: Is the value by which each successive sine increases from the previous and similarly the 2nd order difference is the increment in the 1st order difference values. Burgess says, it is remarkable to see that the 2nd order differences increase as the sines and each, in fact, is about 1/225th part of the corresponding sine. The tilt of the ecliptic varies between 22.1° to 24.5° and is currently 23.5°. Following

2968-517: Is thought to have entered into a period of decline ending around the 4th or 5th century (as Sanskrit rose in prominence, and simultaneously, as Buddhism's adherents became a smaller portion of the subcontinent), but ultimately survived. The work of Buddhaghosa was largely responsible for its reemergence as an important scholarly language in Buddhist thought. The Visuddhimagga , and the other commentaries that Buddhaghosa compiled, codified and condensed

3074-423: Is time which can be known. This latter type is further defined as having two types: the first is Murta (Measureable) and Amurta (immeasureable because it is too small or too big). The time Amurta is a time that begins with an infinitesimal portion of time ( Truti ) and Murta is a time that begins with 4-second time pulses called Prana as described in the table below. The further description of Amurta time

3180-785: Is usually divided into canonical and non-canonical or extra-canonical texts. Canonical texts include the whole of the Pali Canon or Tipitaka . With the exception of three books placed in the Khuddaka Nikaya by only the Burmese tradition, these texts (consisting of the five Nikayas of the Sutta Pitaka , the Vinaya Pitaka , and the books of the Abhidhamma Pitaka ) are traditionally accepted as containing

3286-480: The Pāli (in the sense of the line of original text quoted) was distinguished from the commentary or vernacular translation that followed it in the manuscript. K. R. Norman suggests that its emergence was based on a misunderstanding of the compound pāli-bhāsa , with pāli being interpreted as the name of a particular language. The name Pali does not appear in the canonical literature, and in commentary literature

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3392-627: The Hellenistic period . For example, Surya Siddhanta provides table of sines function which parallel the Hipparchian table of chords , though the Indian calculations are more accurate and detailed. The influence of Greek ideas on early medieval era Indian astronomical theories, particularly zodiac symbols ( astrology ), is broadly accepted by the Western scholars. According to Pingree,

3498-586: The Indian subcontinent . It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist Pāli Canon or Tipiṭaka as well as the sacred language of Theravāda Buddhism . Pali is designated as a classical language by the Government of India . The word 'Pali' is used as a name for the language of the Theravada canon. The word seems to have its origins in commentarial traditions, wherein

3604-732: The Mahāsāṃghika branch became influential in Central and East India . Akira Hirakawa and Paul Groner also associate Pali with Western India and the Sthavira nikāya, citing the Saurashtran inscriptions, which are linguistically closest to the Pali language. Although Sanskrit was said in the Brahmanical tradition to be the unchanging language spoken by the gods in which each word had an inherent significance, such views for any language

3710-783: The Milindapanha ) may have been composed in India before being transmitted to Sri Lanka, but the surviving versions of the texts are those preserved by the Mahavihara in Ceylon and shared with monasteries in Theravada Southeast Asia. The earliest inscriptions in Pali found in mainland Southeast Asia are from the first millennium CE, some possibly dating to as early as the 4th century. Inscriptions are found in what are now Burma, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia and may have spread from southern India rather than Sri Lanka. By

3816-625: The Pali Canon and non-canonical texts, and include several examples of the Ye dhamma hetu verse. The oldest surviving Pali manuscript was discovered in Nepal dating to the 9th century. It is in the form of four palm-leaf folios, using a transitional script deriving from the Gupta script to scribe a fragment of the Cullavagga . The oldest known manuscripts from Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia date to

3922-532: The Surya Siddhanta being a living text is the work of medieval Indian scholar Utpala , who cites and then quotes ten verses from a version of Surya Siddhanta , but these ten verses are not found in any surviving manuscripts of the text. According to Kim Plofker , large portions of the more ancient Sūrya-siddhānta was incorporated into the Panca siddhantika text, and a new version of the Surya Siddhanta

4028-435: The Surya Siddhanta is written in classical Indian poetry tradition, where complex ideas are expressed lyrically with a rhyming meter in the form of a terse shloka . This method of expressing and sharing knowledge made it easier to remember, recall, transmit and preserve knowledge. However, this method also meant secondary rules of interpretation, because numbers don't have rhyming synonyms. The creative approach adopted in

4134-552: The Surya Siddhanta was to use symbolic language with double meanings. For example, instead of one, the text uses a word that means moon because there is one moon. To the skilled reader, the word moon means the number one. The entire table of trigonometric functions, sine tables, steps to calculate complex orbits, predict eclipses and keep time are thus provided by the text in a poetic form. This cryptic approach offers greater flexibility for poetic construction. The Surya Siddhanta thus consists of cryptic rules in Sanskrit verse. It

4240-533: The Surya Siddhanta with fully described models, the Greek influence on Indian astronomy is strongly likely to be pre- Ptolemaic . The Surya Siddhanta was one of the two books in Sanskrit translated into Arabic in the later half of the eighth century during the reign of Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur . According to Muzaffar Iqbal, this translation and that of Aryabhatta was of considerable influence on geographic, astronomy and related Islamic scholarship. The contents of

4346-559: The Surya Siddhanta . The various old and new versions of Surya Siddhanta manuscripts yield the same solar calendar. According to J. Gordon Melton, both the Hindu and Buddhist calendars that are in use in South and Southeast Asia are rooted in this text, but the regional calendars adapted and modified them over time. The Surya Siddhanta calculates the solar year to be 365 days 6 hours 12 minutes and 36.56 seconds. On average, according to

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4452-490: The 11th century, a so-called "Pali renaissance" began in the vicinity of Pagan , gradually spreading to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia as royal dynasties sponsored monastic lineages derived from the Mahavihara of Anuradhapura . This era was also characterized by the adoption of Sanskrit conventions and poetic forms (such as kavya ) that had not been features of earlier Pali literature. This process began as early as

4558-749: The 13th–15th century, with few surviving examples. Very few manuscripts older than 400 years have survived, and complete manuscripts of the four Nikayas are only available in examples from the 17th century and later. Pali was first mentioned in Western literature in Simon de la Loubère 's descriptions of his travels in the kingdom of Siam. An early grammar and dictionary was published by Methodist missionary Benjamin Clough in 1824, and an initial study published by Eugène Burnouf and Christian Lassen in 1826 ( Essai sur le Pali, ou Langue sacrée de la presqu'île au-delà du Gange ). The first modern Pali-English dictionary

4664-482: The 2nd-century CE cave inscriptions of Nasik mention sun, moon and five planets in the same order as found in Babylon , but "there is no hint, however, that the Indian had learned a method of computing planetary positions in this period". In the 2nd-century CE, a scholar named Yavanesvara translated a Greek astrological text, and another unknown individual translated a second Greek text into Sanskrit. Thereafter started

4770-627: The 5th century, but intensified early in the second millennium as Pali texts on poetics and composition modeled on Sanskrit forms began to grow in popularity. One milestone of this period was the publication of the Subodhalankara during the 14th century, a work attributed to Sangharakkhita Mahāsāmi and modeled on the Sanskrit Kavyadarsa . Peter Masefield devoted considerable research to a form of Pali known as Indochinese Pali or 'Kham Pali'. Up until now, this has been considered

4876-523: The Buddha used during his life. In the 19th century, the British Orientalist Robert Caesar Childers argued that the true or geographical name of the Pali language was Magadhi Prakrit , and that because pāḷi means "line, row, series", the early Buddhists extended the meaning of the term to mean "a series of books", so pāḷibhāsā means "language of the texts". However, modern scholarship has regarded Pali as

4982-469: The Burmese calendar and its Siamese cousin both used the Surya method. But between 1840 and 1853, Konbaung Dynasty switched to what it believed was a more accurate method called Thandeikta (a hybrid of the old Surya and an updated version of Surya from India). Thandeikta introduced a slightly longer solar year (0.56 second a year longer than the old system) and a slightly longer lunar month that produces

5088-462: The Burmese calendar as the official calendar under the name of Chula Sakarat (Culasakaraj) until 1889. The calendar fell out of use throughout the region in the second half of the 19th century with the advent of European colonialism. The only remaining independent state Siam too dropped the calendar on 1 April 1889 per King Chulalongkorn ( Rama V)'s decree. It was replaced by Rattanakosin Era . Today,

5194-456: The Burmese system. Each calendar has the same regular year of 354 days and a leap year of 384 days. However, whereas the Burmese calendar adds the intercalary day only in a leap cycle according to its Metonic cycle, the Siamese calendar adds the intercalary day to a regular year. The Siamese calendar does add the extra day in the same place (Jyestha/Nayon), however. Down to the mid-19th century,

5300-613: The Earth's diameter to be 8,000 miles (modern: 7,928 miles), the diameter of the Moon as 2,400 miles (actual ~2,160) and the distance between the Moon and the Earth to be 258,000 miles (now known to vary: 221,500–252,700 miles (356,500–406,700 kilometres). The text is known for some of the earliest known discussions of fractions and trigonometric functions . The Surya Siddhanta is one of several astronomy-related Hindu texts. It represents

5406-573: The Greeks had adopted 60 relative units for the radius, and 360 for circumference", the Indians chose 3,438 units and 60x360 for the circumference thereby calculating the "ratio of circumference to diameter [pi, π] of about 3.1414". The Surya Siddhanta was one of the two books in Sanskrit that were translated into Arabic in the later half of the eighth century during the reign of Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur . The tradition of Hellenistic astronomy ended in

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5512-575: The Hindu text Atharvaveda (~1000 BCE or older) the idea already appears of twenty eight constellations and movement of astronomical bodies. According to Pingree, the influence may have flowed the other way initially, then flowed into India after the arrival of Darius and the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley about 500 BCE. The mathematics and devices for time keeping mentioned in these ancient Sanskrit texts, proposes Pingree, such as

5618-606: The Meru (i.e. the north and south poles of the earth) the two polar stars are situated in the heaven at their zenith. These two stars are in the horizon of the cities situated on the equinoctial regions". The Surya Siddhanta provides methods of calculating the sine values in chapter 2. It divides the quadrant of a circle with radius 3438 into 24 equal segments or sines as described in the table. In modern-day terms, each of these 24 segments has angle of 3.75°. differences differences differences differences The 1st order difference

5724-512: 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 themselves more closely with the Maurya Empire . However, only some of the Buddha's teachings were delivered in the historical territory of Magadha kingdom . Scholars consider it likely that he taught in several closely related dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan, which had

5830-445: The Prakrits." According to K. R. Norman , differences between different texts within the canon suggest that it contains material from more than a single dialect. He also suggests it is likely that the viharas in North India had separate collections of material, preserved in the local dialect. In the early period it is likely that no degree of translation was necessary in communicating this material to other areas. Around

5936-658: The Sinhala commentarial tradition that had been preserved and expanded in Sri Lanka since the 3rd century BCE. With only a few possible exceptions, the entire corpus of Pali texts known today is believed to derive from the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya in Sri Lanka. While literary evidence exists of Theravadins in mainland India surviving into the 13th century, no Pali texts specifically attributable to this tradition have been recovered. Some texts (such as

6042-458: The Sri Lankan tradition and then spread to other Theravada regions, some texts may have other origins. The Milinda Panha may have originated in northern India before being translated from Sanskrit or Gandhari Prakrit . There are also a number of texts that are believed to have been composed in Pali in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Burma but were not widely circulated. This regional Pali literature

6148-606: The Thandeikta system not only does not solve but actually increases the accumulating drift issue, Burmese calendarists have resorted to periodically modifying the intercalation schedule of the Metonic cycle, starting in 1839 CE, using apparent reckoning. The fixed Metonic cycle remained in place in Siam. Pali Pāli ( / ˈ p ɑː l i / ), also known as Pali-Magadhi , is a classical Middle Indo-Aryan language on

6254-541: The UK; incongruously, the citizens of the UK were not nearly so robust in Sanskrit and Prakrit language studies as Germany, Russia, and even Denmark . Even without the inspiration of colonial holdings such as the former British occupation of Sri Lanka and Burma, institutions such as the Danish Royal Library have built up major collections of Pali manuscripts, and major traditions of Pali studies. Pali literature

6360-517: The West after Late Antiquity . According to Cromer, the Surya Siddhanta and other Indian texts reflect the primitive state of Greek science, nevertheless played an important part in the history of science , through its translation in Arabic and stimulating the Arabic sciences. According to a study by Dennis Duke that compares Greek models with Indian models based on the oldest Indian manuscripts such as

6466-559: The anusvāra is pronounced more strongly, like the velar nasal [ŋ] , so that these sounds are pronounced instead [ãŋ] , [ĩŋ] and [ũŋ] . However pronounced, ṁ never follows a long vowel; ā, ī and ū are converted to the corresponding short vowels when ṁ is added to a stem ending in a long vowel, e.g. kathā + ṁ becomes kathaṁ , not *kathāṁ , devī + ṁ becomes deviṁ , not * devīṁ . Surya Siddhanta The Surya Siddhanta ( IAST : Sūrya Siddhānta ; lit.   ' Sun Treatise ' )

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6572-428: The astronomical and mathematical methods developed by Greeks related arcs to chords of spherical trigonometry. The Indian mathematical astronomers, in their texts such as the Surya Siddhanta, developed other linear measures of angles, made their calculations differently, "introduced the versine, which is the difference between the radius and cosine, and discovered various trigonometrical identities". For instance "where

6678-562: The available sources suggest that Pali is not equatable with that language. Modern scholars generally regard Pali to have originated from a western dialect, rather than an eastern one. 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 . These similarities lead scholars to associate Pali with this region of western India. Nonetheless, Pali does retain some eastern features that have been referred to as Māgadhisms . Pāḷi, as

6784-458: The best known and the most referred astronomical text in the Indian tradition. The fourteen chapters of the Surya Siddhanta are as follows, per the much cited Burgess translation: The methods for computing time using the shadow cast by a gnomon are discussed in both Chapters 3 and 13. The author of Surya Siddhanta defines time as of two types: the first which is continuous and endless, destroys all animate and inanimate objects and second

6890-418: The bite of snakes. Many people in Theravada cultures still believe that taking a vow in Pali has a special significance, and, as one example of the supernatural power assigned to chanting in the language, the recitation of the vows of Aṅgulimāla are believed to alleviate the pain of childbirth in Sri Lanka. In Thailand, the chanting of a portion of the Abhidhammapiṭaka is believed to be beneficial to

6996-413: The calendar in the mid-11th century in place of Mahasakaraj, the standard calendar of the Khmer Empire . However, scholarship says the earliest evidence of Burmese calendar in modern Thailand dates only to mid-13th century. The use of the calendar appears to have spread southward to the Sukhothai , Ayutthaya , and eastward to Laotian states in the following centuries. Subsequent Siamese kingdoms retained

7102-506: The calendar is used purely for cultural and religious festivals in Myanmar. Thailand has moved on to its own version of Buddhist calendar since 1941 although the Chula Sakarat era dates remain the most commonly used and preferred form of entry by the academia for Thai history studies. Various regional versions of Chula Sakarat/Burmese calendar existed across various regions of mainland Southeast Asia. Unlike Burmese systems, Sipsong Panna , Kengtung, Lan Na, Lan Xang and Sukhothai systems refer to

7208-535: The calendar months because the animal naming system was no longer in use in Burma. Chula Sakarat, like the Burmese calendar, was largely based on the Hindu calendar , an older version of Surya Siddhanta . However, unlike Hindu calendar, it also uses a 19-year Metonic cycle . In order to reconcile the sidereal months of Hindu calendar with Metonic cycle's solar years , the calendar inserts intercalary months and days on some schedule. The Siamese system uses three similar but not identical types of lunar years used by

7314-423: The death of the Buddha, Pali may have evolved among Buddhists out of the language of the Buddha as a new artificial language. R. C. Childers, who held to the theory that Pali was Old Magadhi, wrote: "Had Gautama never preached, it is unlikely that Magadhese would have been distinguished from the many other vernaculars of Hindustan, except perhaps by an inherent grace and strength which make it a sort of Tuscan among

7420-506: The diffusion of Greek and Babylonian ideas on astronomy and astrology into India. The other evidence of European influential on the Indian thought is Romaka Siddhanta , a title of one of the Siddhanta texts contemporary to Surya Siddhanta , a name that betrays its origin and probably was derived from a translation of a European text by Indian scholars in Ujjain , then the capital of an influential central Indian large kingdom. According to mathematician and historian of measurement John Roche,

7526-441: The early grammarians because it was understood to have been purely a literary language. In works of Sanskrit poetics such as Daṇḍin 's Kavyadarsha , it is also known by the name of Bhūtabhāṣā , an epithet which can be interpreted as 'dead language' (i.e., with no surviving speakers), or bhūta means past and bhāṣā means language i.e. 'a language spoken in the past'. Evidence which lends support to this interpretation

7632-409: The end of this yuga , Earth and all astronomical bodies return to the same starting point and the cycle of existence repeats again. These very large numbers based on divya-yuga , when divided and converted into decimal numbers for each planet, give reasonably accurate sidereal periods when compared to modern era western calculations. The solar part of the luni-solar Hindu calendar is based on

7738-410: The epithet in consequence of the perfection of its grammatical structure". There is persistent confusion as to the relation of Pāḷi to the vernacular spoken in the ancient kingdom of Magadha , which was located in modern-day Bihar . Beginning in the Theravada commentaries, Pali was identified with ' Magadhi ', the language of the kingdom of Magadha, and this was taken to also be the language that

7844-499: The first chapter of the Surya Siddhanta attributes the words to an emissary of the solar deity of Hindu mythology , Surya , as recounted to an asura called Maya at the end of Satya Yuga , the first golden age from Hindu texts, around two million years ago. The text asserts, according to Markanday and Srivatsava, that the Earth is of a spherical shape. It treats Earth as stationary globe around which Sun orbits, and makes no mention of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. It calculates

7950-607: The language and its literature, including the Maha Bodhi Society founded by Anagarika Dhammapala . In Europe, the Pali Text Society has been a major force in promoting the study of Pali by Western scholars since its founding in 1881. Based in the United Kingdom, the society publishes romanized Pali editions, along with many English translations of these sources. In 1869, the first Pali Dictionary

8056-454: The language underwent a small degree of Sanskritisation (i.e., MIA bamhana > brahmana, tta > tva in some cases). Bhikkhu Bodhi , summarizing the current state of scholarship, states that the language is "closely related to the language (or, more likely, the various regional dialects) that the Buddha himself spoke". He goes on to write: Scholars regard this language as a hybrid showing features of several Prakrit dialects used around

8162-587: The loan-words typically seen when ideas migrate are missing on both sides as far as words for various time intervals and techniques. It is hypothesized that contacts between the ancient Indian scholarly tradition and Hellenistic Greece via the Indo-Greek Kingdom after the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great , specifically regarding the work of Hipparchus (2nd-century BCE), explain some similarities between Surya Siddhanta and Greek astronomy in

8268-666: The monastic ordination died out in Sri Lanka, many texts were lost also. Therefore the Sri Lankan Pali canon had been translated first into Indo-Chinese Pali, and then back again into Pali. Despite an expansion of the number and influence of Mahavihara-derived monastics, this resurgence of Pali study resulted in no production of any new surviving literary works in Pali. During this era, correspondences between royal courts in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia were conducted in Pali, and grammars aimed at speakers of Sinhala, Burmese, and other languages were produced. The emergence of

8374-412: The months by numbers, not by names . This means reading ancient texts and inscriptions in Thailand requires constant vigilance, not just in making sure one is correctly operating for the correct region, but also for variations within regions itself when incursions cause a variation in practice. However, Cambodian (Khmer) month system, which begins with Margasirsa as the first month, demonstrated precisely by

8480-430: The moon's revolution is right within a second; those of Mercury, Venus and Mars within a few minutes; that of Jupiter within six or seven hours; that of Saturn within six days and a half". The Surya Siddhanta was one of the two books in Sanskrit translated into Arabic during the reign of 'Abbasid caliph al-Mansur ( r.  754–775 CE ). According to Muzaffar Iqbal , this translation and that of Aryabhata

8586-462: The names and numbers. Note: The Sukhothai and Lan Xang numbering systems and the now abandoned Burmese numbering system are the same. Cambodian and Thai systems give animal names to the years from a cycle of 12. The practice also existed in Burma but had died out by the 17th century. In March 1638, King Thalun of Burma rejected the proposal by King Prasat Thong of Siam to change the animal names of

8692-465: The natural language, the root language of all beings. Comparable to Ancient Egyptian , Latin or Hebrew in the mystic traditions of the West , Pali recitations were often thought to have a supernatural power (which could be attributed to their meaning, the character of the reciter, or the qualities of the language itself), and in the early strata of Buddhist literature we can already see Pali dhāraṇī s used as charms, as, for example, against

8798-641: The period 7300-7800 BCE based on a computer simulation. The Surya Siddhanta is a text on astronomy and time keeping, an idea that appears much earlier as the field of Jyotisha ( Vedanga ) of the Vedic period. The field of Jyotisha deals with ascertaining time, particularly forecasting auspicious dates and times for Vedic rituals. Vedic sacrifices state that the ancient Vedic texts describe four measures of time – savana , solar, lunar and sidereal, as well as twenty seven constellations using Taras (stars). According to mathematician and classicist David Pingree , in

8904-514: The planets, such as the number of mean revolutions per Mahayuga , the longitudinal changes of the orbits, and also includes supporting evidence and calculation methods. In a work called the Pañca-siddhāntikā composed in the sixth century by Varāhamihira , five astronomical treatises are named and summarised: Paulīśa-siddhānta , Romaka-siddhānta , Vasiṣṭha-siddhānta , Sūrya-siddhānta , and Paitāmaha-siddhānta . Most scholars place

9010-401: The recently departed, and this ceremony routinely occupies as much as seven working days. There is nothing in the latter text that relates to this subject, and the origins of the custom are unclear. Pali died out as a literary language in mainland India in the fourteenth century but survived elsewhere until the eighteenth. Today Pali is studied mainly to gain access to Buddhist scriptures, and

9116-466: The short variants occur only in closed syllables, the long variants occur only in open syllables. Short and long e and o are therefore not distinct phonemes. e and o are long in an open syllable: at the end of a syllable as in [ne-tum̩] เนตุํ 'to lead' or [so-tum̩] โสตุํ 'to hear'. They are short in a closed syllable: when followed by a consonant with which they make a syllable as in [upek-khā] 'indifference' or [sot-thi] 'safety'. e appears for

9222-467: The sine tables and methods of calculating the sines, Surya Siddhanta also attempts to calculate the Earth's tilt of contemporary times as described in chapter 2 and verse 28, the obliquity of the Earth's axis , the verse says "The sine of greatest declination is 1397; by this multiply any sine, and divide by radius; the arc corresponding to the result is said to be the declination". The greatest declination

9328-516: The subtle nuances of that thought-world. According to A. K. Warder , the Pali language is a Prakrit language used in a region of Western India . Warder associates Pali with the Indian realm ( janapada ) of Avanti , where the Sthavira nikāya was centered. Following the initial split in the Buddhist community , the Sthavira nikāya became influential in Western and South India while

9434-414: The surviving version of the text variously from the 4th-century to 5th-century CE, although it is dated to about the 6th-century BCE by Markandaya and Srivastava. According to John Bowman, the version of the text existed between 350 and 400 CE wherein it referenced fractions and trigonometric functions, but the text was a living document and revised through about the 10th-century. One of the evidence for

9540-479: The term 'Pali' as the name of the language of the Theravada canon also occurred during this era. While Pali is generally recognized as an ancient language, no epigraphical or manuscript evidence has survived from the earliest eras. The earliest samples of Pali discovered are inscriptions believed to date from 5th to 8th century located in mainland Southeast Asia, specifically central Siam and lower Burma . These inscriptions typically consist of short excerpts from

9646-469: The text, the lunar month equals 27 days 7 hours 39 minutes 12.63 seconds. It states that the lunar month varies over time, and this needs to be factored in for accurate time keeping. According to Whitney, the Surya Siddhanta calculations were tolerably accurate and achieved predictive usefulness. In Chapter 1 of Surya Siddhanta , "the Hindu year is too long by nearly three minutes and a half; but

9752-429: The third century BCE, subjected to a partial process of Sanskritization. While the language is not identical to what Buddha himself would have spoken, it belongs to the same broad language family as those he might have used and originates from the same conceptual matrix. This language thus reflects the thought-world that the Buddha inherited from the wider Indian culture into which he was born, so that its words capture

9858-425: The time of Ashoka there had been more linguistic divergence, and an attempt was made to assemble all the material. It is possible that a language quite close to the Pali of the canon emerged as a result of this process as a compromise of the various dialects in which the earliest material had been preserved, and this language functioned as a lingua franca among Eastern Buddhists from then on. Following this period,

9964-406: The water clock may also have thereafter arrived in India from Mesopotamia. However, Yukio Ôhashi considers this proposal as incorrect, suggesting instead that the Vedic timekeeping efforts, for forecasting appropriate time for rituals, must have begun much earlier and the influence may have flowed from India to Mesopotamia. Ôhashi states that it is incorrect to assume that the number of civil days in

10070-446: The words of the Buddha and his immediate disciples by the Theravada tradition. Extra-canonical texts can be divided into several categories: Other types of texts present in Pali literature include works on grammar and poetics, medical texts, astrological and divination texts, cosmologies, and anthologies or collections of material from the canonical literature. While the majority of works in Pali are believed to have originated with

10176-418: Was composed or revised probably c. 800 CE from an earlier text also called the Surya Siddhanta . The Surya Siddhanta text is composed of verses made up of two lines, each broken into two halves, or pãds , of eight syllables each. As per al-Biruni , the 11th-century Persian scholar and polymath, a text named the Surya Siddhanta was written by Lāṭadeva , a student of Aryabhatta I . The second verse of

10282-741: Was launched in 640 CE in Sri Ksetra Kingdom (in modern Myanmar ) with the epochal year 0 date of 22 March 638. It was largely a recalibration of then prevailing Mahasakaraj or Saka Era . It was later adopted by the Pagan Kingdom . According to the Chiang Mai Chronicles and the Chiang Saen Chronicles, Chiang Mai, Chiang Saen and their tributary states of middle and upper Tai country (except Lamphun and Sukhothai) submitted to King Anawrahta and adopted

10388-426: Was likely revised and probably composed around 800 CE. Some scholars refer to Panca siddhantika as the old Surya Siddhanta and date it to 505 CE. Based on a study of the longitude variation data from the text, Indian scientist Anil Narayanan (2010) concludes that the text has been updated several times in the past, with the last update around 580 CE. Narayan obtained a match for the nakshatra latitudinal data in

10494-600: Was not exclusively used to convey the teachings of the Buddha, as can be deduced from the existence of a number of secular texts, such as books of medical science/instruction, in Pali. However, scholarly interest in the language has been focused upon religious and philosophical literature, because of the unique window it opens on one phase in the development of Buddhism . Vowels may be divided in two different ways: Long and short vowels are only contrastive in open syllables; in closed syllables, all vowels are always short. Short and long e and o are in complementary distribution:

10600-421: Was not shared in the early Buddhist traditions, in which words were only conventional and mutable signs. This view of language naturally extended to Pali and may have contributed to its usage (as an approximation or standardization of local Middle Indic dialects) in place of Sanskrit. However, by the time of the compilation of the Pali commentaries (4th or 5th century), Pali was described by the anonymous authors as

10706-470: Was of considerable influence on geographic, astronomy and related Islamic scholarship. The historical popularity of Surya Siddhanta is attested by the existence of at least 26 commentaries, plus another 8 anonymous commentaries. Some of the Sanskrit-language commentaries include the following; nearly all the commentators have re-arranged and modified the text: Mallikarjuna Suri had written

10812-576: Was prominently used by Jain scholars and is preserved in the Jain Agamas. Ardhamagadhi Prakrit differs from later Magadhi Prakrit in similar ways to Pali, and was often believed to be connected with Pali on the basis of the belief that Pali recorded the speech of the Buddha in an early Magadhi dialect. Magadhi Prakrit was a Middle Indic language spoken in present-day Bihar, and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Its use later expanded southeast to include some regions of modern-day Bengal, Odisha, and Assam, and it

10918-506: Was published by Robert Childers in 1872 and 1875. Following the foundation of the Pali Text Society , English Pali studies grew rapidly and Childer's dictionary became outdated. Planning for a new dictionary began in the early 1900s, but delays (including the outbreak of World War I) meant that work was not completed until 1925. T. W. Rhys Davids in his book Buddhist India , and Wilhelm Geiger in his book Pāli Literature and Language , suggested that Pali may have originated as

11024-593: Was published using the research of Robert Caesar Childers, one of the founding members of the Pali Text Society. It was the first Pali translated text in English and was published in 1872. Childers' dictionary later received the Volney Prize in 1876. The Pali Text Society was founded in part to compensate for the very low level of funds allocated to Indology in late 19th-century England and the rest of

11130-751: Was thought and held to be "era" by some of those having adopted the Indianised culture in Indochina , including the Thais). In Thailand, this era is used in contrast with the Shalivahana era , commonly known in Southeast Asia as Mahāsakaraj or the Great or Major Era ( Burmese : မဟာ သက္ကရာဇ် , [məhà θɛʔkəɹɪʔ] ; Khmer : មហាសករាជ , ALA-LC : Mahāsakarāj ; Thai : มหาศักราช ; RTGS :  Mahasakkarat ). The calendar

11236-431: Was used in some Prakrit dramas to represent vernacular dialogue. Preserved examples of Magadhi Prakrit are from several centuries after the theorized lifetime of the Buddha, and include inscriptions attributed to Asoka Maurya . Differences observed between preserved examples of Magadhi Prakrit and Pali lead scholars to conclude that Pali represented a development of a northwestern dialect of Middle Indic, rather than being

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