The Old and Middle Indian languages belong to the Indo-Iranian (or ‘Indo-Aryan’) branch of the Indo-European family, and so are distant relatives of English, Latin, Greek and indeed most of the languages of Europe. In consequence, certain words in Pali are likely to sound familiar to the English reader: for example, mātā, ‘mother’; pitā, ‘father’; deva, ‘god’ (cf. Latin deus); dvi, ‘two’. The relationship between, say, English and Sanskrit or Pali is that of distant cousins. Claims that English is ‘descended’ from Sanskrit are pure fantasy. Both share a remote ancestor (‘Proto-Indo-European’) that ceased to exist in prehistoric times but has in part been reconstructed by philologists.

The Old and Middle Indian languages belong to the Indo-Iranian (or ‘Indo-Aryan’) branch of the Indo-European family, and so are distant relatives of English, Latin, Greek and indeed most of the languages of Europe. In consequence, certain words in Pali are likely to sound familiar to the English reader: for example, mātā, ‘mother’; pitā, ‘father’; deva, ‘god’ (cf. Latin deus); dvi, ‘two’. The relationship between, say, English and Sanskrit or Pali is that of distant cousins. Claims that English is ‘descended’ from Sanskrit are pure fantasy. Both share a remote ancestor (‘Proto-Indo-European’) that ceased to exist in prehistoric times but has in part been reconstructed by philologists.