In my middle age when family and career made fewer demands, I embarked on an MA course in Buddhist Studies. After many years as a practising Buddhist I was familiar with certain Pāli words but knew precious little about how the language was put together – i.e. its grammar. When the option arose to take a module on Pāli I grabbed it. This involved working through the first 22 lessons of A.K. Warder’s Introduction to Pāli, which was considered enough for someone with a dictionary to translate Pāli discourses. Thus I embarked on a journey of learning the Pāli language which continues to this day.
You might ask: why learn Pāli, and why Pãli in particular, as canonical texts are also to be found in Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese? Well, even if scholars argue over whether the Buddha ever spoke Pāli, it is almost certainly closest to the language or languages he used. The Pāli Canon, preserved by the Theravāda school, is considered to be the oldest surviving and most complete collection of Buddhist texts.
You might cite the excellent English translations we have available, and for much of my life I was content to use them for the purposes of study and practice. In any translation, however, we are presented with the translator’s individual interpretation as well as the linguistic interface between two languages. Translations can vary in style and meaning. To generalise, perhaps unwisely, Bhikkhu Sujato writes fluently in contemporary style with accessible meaning, while Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translations tend to be be more stilted but very faithful to the Pāli. By returning to the original Pāli text I believe I can get nearest to the meaning.
Undoubtedly, on a personal level, the most compelling reason for learning Pāli is the thrill of reading the language that takes us as close as we can get to what the Buddha actually taught. The historical Buddha is the key inspiration for me and the discourses in the Pāli seem to me to provide the clearest window on his life and teachings.
Certainly learning any language has its challenges, but there is a pleasure to be had from intellectual endeavour. If it ever felt like a chore I could simply stop – but that has never really occurred to me.
A sense of pride comes with knowing where to place the appropriate diacritics in the Roman script, as an absence of or incorrect diacritics amount to misspelling. (I have been been haughty about articles and books without diacritics, which was perhaps not skilful for a professing Buddhist!)
I have used many different grammars and one can but admire the scholarship of their authors. Ideally one has a teacher. I have twice had a personal tutor for a while, as well as doing online courses and a two week summer school.
No matter what your age, if you want to get as close as possible to what the Buddha thought and taught, I heartily recommend learning Pāli.