William Stede (Editor) T.W.Rhys Davids (Editor)Pali-English Dictionary

No need spend much more time for your requiredPlease don't bother customer!!!!!!!!!No need spend much more time for your requiredPlease don't bother customer!!!!!!!!!

For those who love the Dharma, I highly recommend this book for in-depth etymology of Pali.

Excellent dictionary. As far as I know, it is the best available.

I love this book and I haven't even bought it yet - but I have a digital copy I got for free.The one criticism about this dictionary I see on Amazon IS, however, a valid point: the word order IS strange when you begin using it. However that may be, if you're looking for an authentic Pali dictionary, well, this one is it - BECAUSE of the way it's arranged. This is because the "alphabetical" word order a Westerner might expect, given that we have an actual "alphabet" in the West, is not present here. Why?1) Like Sanskrit, Pali is not in fact an "alphabet" but rather an "abugida", and so the emphases on arrangement is based not on the rather arbitrary order of an alphabet like in the West (for instance, is there any inherent reason "A" should come before, say, "E" or "O"? How frequently is an "A" word used within the average speaker's expression? It seems "N", "S", "R", "T", etcetera appears more and thus might be expected to come first. Why does "A" follow "B" anyway?)2) Pali has a logic to its order of characters in the abugida, just like Sanskrit, which is based on first vowels and then consonants (and in fact, also like the way English-speaking children learn vowels and consonants as distinct phonological groupings).So basically, this dictionary respects the logic of the phological groupings of the language. Vowels come first and then consonants. If we feel that it's "normal" for "N" to come before "S", we do not question why this should be so. In the same way, rather than taking an ethnocentric view in studying this language, Rhys made no presumptions regarding "normal". Comme ci, comme ca. This linguistic ethic is an almost universally-accepted anthropolocal viewpoint, in fact.When learning a language, it must become clear in the mind of the learner that language is actually a pscho-linguistic endeavor. It is not enough to try and "tackle" Pali as if there were some "LEARN BLAH-BLAH-BLAH IN 7 DAYS" expedient to the task at hand. Instead, the expedient is to approach the subject on its own terms, with no expectations - an acceptance that you are, as an amateur linguist (which is what learning Pali amounts to), studying a whole worldview actually.An example of why the Pali student would save themselves a lot of grief would be to point out the grammar of Pali. If you think a Pali-English dictionary that respects the abugida's word order is problematic, wait until you find out that verbs come at the END of the sentence, or that you must understand the rules for prefixes in order to understand who or what the subject and object is, etc. It's fascinating! But it's not going to be your average Western language course, that's for sure.All word order in Rhys' seminal work will confuse you until you begin to really digest that abugida word order, the "alphabet" of Pali which is basically a simplified set of the Sanskit. Actually, this is a great opportunity - Pali is actually a literary language, meaning only used in writing - Devanagari is one of SEVERAL scripts used for writing Pali, and once you master the abugida, the grammar, etc, you can then take on translatiing Pali written in scripts from countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Laos, you name it! These predominantly Theravadan countries possess the Pali canon using beautiful scripts that FOLLOW this "strange" order of phonetic units of the Pali abugida! Thus, unlike something like Chinese (now THERE'S a whopper of a language to master, even if you only become literate and not verbally fluent!), you have only 41 characters to master in ANY of these writing systems within the Theravadan world, and with that, you can travel to any of these places - say, Thailand - and be up and running in Sinhalese (Sri Lanka) or Kamboja (Thailand) in no time!So for those who who are really amped about learning Pali in order to study the words of the Tathagata at least, buy this dictionary and make the commitment and you'll be happy you did!As an aside, if you're looking for a FREE Pali course, got to http://www/bodhimonastery.org/a-course-in-pali-language. The monks there give it to you the same way the Buddha did - freely! Also, although the site mentions a certain grammar text, ONLY get the print version, as the Kindle version is flawed enough to make you cuss. If you listen to only the first like 5 minutes of the audio course at the above-mentioned site, the bhikkhu will mention a free alternative: "Pali Primer" by Lily de Silva from Sri Lanka. Google it and it'll be the very first (non-sponsored) search result - and there you go, you'll have a PDF version the author gives to you. I got that one and it was like this huge epiphany when you start out trying to sound out the words of a sutta knowing only the abugida in Sanskrit and have a copy of Rhys' dictionary! The dictionary will only give you root words and not the various stems that give the sentence meaning.Please excuse the verbosity here and take what fits for you. If you're interested in the Dhamma or not, good luck on you studies!

The Critical Pali Dictionary project presents the language in much greater breadth and depth. But it is a multi-generational project and seems to have run out of funding after the first few letters. Margaret Cone has begun a project and covered the first few letters. This is still the dictionary to consult for complete coverage. (The notion that this dictionary should have covered grammar is simply silly. Works on Pali grammar are available separately.)

I was expecting it as an easy to follow dictionary, but it was the reverse. Moreover, the print was too small and sometimes unreadable. I should have gone for a modern Pali-English dictionary than this classical one; not recommended for beginners!

説明には７５４ページとあるのに、送られて来たのは７３８ページしかありませんでした。つまり一とじ、１６ページが欠落していました。後記Nachwortまでで終わっていて、欠落しているのはインデックスか補遺だと推測されますが、交換も面倒だし、差し支えないだろうとそのままにしました。落丁が嫌な人は、新刊でなく、古本を買う方が良いと思います。仏教サンスクリットは、パーリ語に近い部分が多いので、パーリ語文献を読む人だけでなく、サンスクリット仏典を読む人にも必須な場合をしばしば経験しています。