A Concise History of Buddhism [antikvár]

The Pronunciation of Sanskrit In this book, technical terms are usually quoted in Sanskrit in preference to Pah, unless direct reference is being made to a Pah source. All references to the Pâli Canon are to the editions of the Páli Text Society. Where reference is made to a complete sutta, the number of the sutta only is given. Where reference is made to a passage from a sutta, volimie and page numbers are given for the Páli text (as is the standard practice). In the Enghsh translations published by the Páli Text Society, these numbers are usually to be found at the head of the page, on the inner margin. The use of Sanskrit and Páli terins in this book has been unavoidable. They have been printed with the standard diacritical marks used for transcribing the forty-eight letters of the Sanskrit alphabet into the twenty-five of the Roman alphabet. Readers without any knowledge of Sanskrit or PáU may find this daunting, but the guide below offers approximate equivalents for those sounds that differ from standard southern British English pronimciation. The 'short' vowels, i.e. a, i, and u, are voiced more briefly than the others which are known as 'long' vowels. Stress is usually placed on the penultimate syllable of a word, imless that syllable contains a short vowel followed by a single consonant, in which case the stress is displaced back towards the beginning of the word on to a syllable without those characteristics. For example, the stress is placed on the first syllable in the word éasana. AAHiere possible compound terms have been hyphenated to ease pronunciation. A guide to pronimciation is given overleaf.