Xishuangbanna Dai Language Of Pali Loanwords

The Dai language is a language of Zhuang-Dai branch of the Zhuang-Dong group of the Chinese - Tibetan language family. The Zhuang-Dai branch, also called Tai branch is a group of languages well known in the world. To this languages belong the Dai, Zhuang and Buyi languages of our country and the languages of the Thai, Laotian etc and the Indian Ahong language. In the 6-8 century, Hinayana Buddhism spread to the Dai region of Xishuang Banna, combined with the ruling class and melted together with the animistic religion of the Dai and turned slowly into the main religion of the Dai people until now. In the view of the Dai culture, Buddhist culture is a rather progressive culture. Under its influence the conscious patterns, ethics and moral principles, value standards, social economy, daily life, customs and habits, communication manners, language and script, astronomy and geography, music and dance etc all made a substantial leap and at the same time he brought a very strong religious atmosphere. Buddhist culture promoted the progress of Dai society and the development of the social economy and made the Dai nationality leap to be the dominant nationality of their region. Pali language, which is closely interrelated with Hinayana Buddhism entered with the Buddhist mission Dai language, thus the waves of Buddhist culture left many Pali (Sanskrit) loan words in Dai language. Those words are unique in Dai language and are not found in Zhuang or Buyi of the same language group. Most Pali loanwords exist in the Buddhist sutras, local histories, astronomic calendars, medical books, literature and other books and records written in. Dai script. There are some words which already are integrated in the range of ordinary language, already is commonly understood by the ordinary people of that region and turned into an important part of the vocabulary of Dai language. For many reasons the number of people mastering Pali language is decreasing. Scholars restricting themselves on the material also do not pay enough attention to Pali loan words in Dai language. This thesis chooses the Pali loan words, which the author collected from Dai dictionaries, Dai written material and own fieldwork as the main object of its research. Based onthe research results of former scholars, it gives a systematic discussion about the structural types and characteristics of Pali loan words, the integration of loan words into Dai language and the influence of Pali loan words on the vocabulary of Dai language. This thesis takes the "Tour of the Buddhist Patriarch" as an example to analyze the characteristics and functions of Pali loan words in Dai Buddhist sutras from the microcosmic perspective of language use. Based on the former research it further develops the discussion about the influence of Hinayana Buddhism on Dai language and the necessity and possibility of compiling a dictionary of Pali loan words in Dai language. This thesis includes seven chapters:The introduction part gives a brief description of the meaning of research on Pali loan words, research tendencies, research methods and the object of the research of this thesis.The first chapter gives an account on the history and culture of the Dai nationality and the relation between the Pali script and Dai "le" script (old Dai script).The second chapter offers a classification of Pali loan words from the aspects of structure and meaning. From the aspect of integration, we distinguish transliterated words and matching words. Among the transliterated words, monosyllable words and bisyllable words suit the language habits of Dai language better than mulitsyllable words, syllable transcribed words are more vivid than as a whole transcribed words. Therefore are most Pali loan words integrated into Dai oral language syllable transcribed monosyllable and bisyllable words from the category of syllable transcribed words.The content of Pali loan word in Dai language is wide-ranging. From the category of meaning we can distinguish eleven categories, like religion, politics and economy, addresses of relative...