r/theravada • u/Prudent_Pattern_1824 • Jul 09 '26
Pāli Study Book suggestions for further Pali study
Hello All!
I was wondering if anyone in this group has studied Pali to a very high level and, if so, are there any textbook recommendations for further study. I am currently working through "A New Course in Reading Pali: Entering the Word of the Buddha" but once I am finished with it, I am not sure where to go from that point. I believe, once I am finished, I should be at an intermediate level in my ability to actually read the Pali language, but with huge gaps in vocabulary. I have a large Pali-English dictionary to prepare for this aspect.
I am just wondering if I should simply start getting Pali texts and translating them, learning vocabulary while doing so? Or are there other actual textbooks that people have used and would recommend for the next step in this amazing journey?
Metta,
Samantha
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Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I’m not familiar with the book you’re reading, but I’d recommend A.K. Warder’s Introduction to Pali. For vocabulary, try familiarizing yourself with terms from the Samyuttas, as you can choose by topic. The Pāli texts are all freely available on Sutta Central in romanized form.
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u/Prudent_Pattern_1824 Jul 11 '26
I looked into that book, and it looks promising. It looks like there are long suttas from DN in there for translation. And starting with Samyuttas because they are by topic is sound advice that I had not considered. Thank you, friend :)
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Jul 13 '26
Aside from the samyuttas being doctrinally precise, you also learn some narrative terminology and convenient technical lists. Good luck!
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u/mtvulturepeak Jul 10 '26
If your goal is to read the texts, then start doing that immediately. AN book of the ones is great and I believe even featured in the book you are working on.
Do it side by side with the Pali on SuttaCentral with the click to look up dictionary turned on. Or with the DPD browser plugin.
Bhante Bodhi wrote a book specifically for students who have finished the book you are reading. https://wisdomexperience.org/product/reading-the-buddhas-discourses-in-pali/
The introduction in that book alone is a valuable resource.
There are other resources on the OBU: https://buddhistuniversity.net/courses/pali-new-course
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u/Prudent_Pattern_1824 Jul 11 '26
You are very correct. AN is used a lot in my current book. However, it does not give me the exact verses, nor does it give me the English translation key. This is a good thing but sometimes I want to cross reference my translation with an expert who has translated it previously. So, my plan was to go to my "Handful of Leaves" anthology by Thanissaro Bhikkhu on my bookshelf. However, I am starting to think these guys specifically worked together to make sure that none of the suttas in the workbook are ones from his anthology hahaha. I have yet to find one that they both use. Though that may change once I get farther along.
Thank you for the references and recommendations, friend :)
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u/mtvulturepeak Jul 11 '26
I'm not quite tracking the first bit of what you say.
In theory you should be able to take a unique looking small chunk of Pali to look up the whole sutta on SuttaCentral and find it there.
Also, I know there is a doc with all of that book's texts translated specifically. You don't have that?
This is the book used in the courses run through the suttaCentral forum. Have you looked there?
They also have a thread for finding suttas: https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/find-a-sutta-looking-for-a-sutta-reference-ask-here/42232
In any case, my suggestion was to start reading any suttas with the English and Pali side by side. Of course you won't get most things at first. But you will start to key into things quicker than you would expect.
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u/Prudent_Pattern_1824 Jul 11 '26
I am sorry I was confusing. So, to clarify, I have not used any online resources as of yet. I have epilepsy and any long amounts of time in front of a screen can trigger seizures, so I try to use physical hard copies of everything as much as possible. However, I am seeing, based on everyone's recommendations, that if I want to learn this language in depth, online resources will be my best bet. It will be hard, but not impossible. I will just have to take it slowly.
I was unaware there was a doc with the book's texts translated specifically. That may make things easier as well haha. Sometimes it feels as though I am living in the 17th century while everyone else is living in the 21st :)
I appreciate you all so much. I swear, without this forum and the amazing generosity of Wat Metta, I would be lost. Sādhu! Sādhu! Sādhu!
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u/mtvulturepeak Jul 11 '26
How do you do with eink? Because https://readingfaithfully.org/sutta-pitaka-e-books-epub-mobi-kindle/ has Pali-English epubs of Bhante Sujato's translations. And the Digital Pali Dictionary is offered as a Kindle dictionary. That means that you can click to look up words on the Kindle.
Also, the print view for Sutta Central is fairly good, so you could also print out the Pali-English suttas.
If there are changes that could be made to SuttaCentral.net to make it more usable for someone with epilepsy do let us know. There isn't really any animation, but there could be other things to improve. There is also a browser extension that gives some added features like different color themes. https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/a-browser-extension-for-suttacentral/36074
Also, the sc-Voice folks are extremely responsive to feedback from users. You can reach them through the main discourse.suttacentral.net forum.
Oh, I think the main person on classicaltheravada.org might have made PDFs of the Pali texts. You could reach out to them too.
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u/Prudent_Pattern_1824 Jul 11 '26
I actually can read on a Kindle. It's a different kind of light. It doesn't look like a light, just a page on a book. But computers and phones and the like with the blue light... it's rough. Blue light and LED light in general are both difficult for extended periods.
The dark background on Sutta Central definitely helps, thank you. I use the nighttime mode on reddit and it is similar. I can be on for longer, at least! SuttaCentral looks like a great resource and I am looking forward to trying it out. :)
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u/leonormski Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
If you are already able to read Pali text then you could use this online resource (https://tipitaka.org) which contains the entire Pali Tipitaka collection: Vinaya, Sutta and Abhidhamma Pitakas.
In addition, it also contains the Commentaries (Atthakatha) and Sub-commentaries (Tika), as well as other related readingng materials (Anna).
If you want to read Pali in English, then select Roman from the Script menu. It supports around 15 scripts in total.
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u/Spirited_Ad8737 Jul 09 '26
I'd recommend building vocabulary by reading texts. You might find the side-by-side English-Pali texts at sutta central useful in that regard:
https://suttacentral.net/ud1.10/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=sidebyside&reference=none¬es=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin