PALGRAVE, WILLIAM GIFFORD, b. England,- 1826; son of sir Francis Palgrave, an English author, educated at the Charterhouse; obtained a scholarship at Trinity college, Oxford. He served iu the Indian army, and in 1847 was commissioned 2d lieut. in the 8th Bombay native infantry. In 1853 lie resigned his commission, and joined the society of Jesus connected with the Roman Catholic church, and went to the Jesuit seminary at Laval to study theology, residing most of his time in s. India dur. ing his engagement with that society, and stayed in Rome. two years. lIe was ordained priest, resided several years in and near Damascus, acquired a complete mastery of the Arabic language and Mohammedan theology, and went voluntarily to join the mission at Syria and Palestine, for which, on account of his knowledge of Arabic, he was peculiarly fitted. In 1861 lie delivered in Ireland a course of lectures on the massacres of the Christians in Syria. In 1862 he set out on an expedition from Mann ou the w. border of the Sherarat desert, and traveled through the Wahabite kingdoms of central Arabia, disguised as a physician, and subsequently visited the provinces adjacent to the Persian gulf and Indian ocean. He was shipwrecked on the coast of Oman, returning to Europe through Bagdad and Aleppo in 1863. In 1864 be abandoned the order of Jesuits at Berlin. He had become so familiar with the Arabs and their language that he was looked upon by them as one of their own leaders and sheikhs, and he took part on several occasions in their religions services. In 1865-66 he was in Egypt on government business; and returning, was appointed to various consulates. In 1864 he published A Personal Narrative of a Year's Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia, and was presented with the gold medal of the French geographical society. The book awakened sonic curiosity, as the precise object of his wanderings was not made public. In 1872 his Essays on Eastern Questions appeared, and Hermann Agha, an East ern Narrative, a novel in 2 vols. In 1875 Alkamah's Cave, a Story ofNejd, was published; iu 1876, Dutch Guiana, an account of a fortnight's stay there. He has contributed valu able papers to the Contemporary Review, is a fellow of the royal geographical and the royal Asiatic societies, and an honorary member of a number of scientific institutions in foreign lands.
PALI (a corruption of the Sanskrit Prakrit, q.v.) is the name of the sacred language of the Buddhists. Its origin must be sought for in one or several of the popular dialects of ancient India, which are comprised under the general name of Prakrit, and stand in a similar relation to Sanskrit as the Romance languages, in their earlier period, to Latin. It has been formerly assumed that Pali arose from the special Prakrit dialect .Magaidhl, or the language spoken in Magadha; but, according to the view expressed by Lassen in his Indische Alterthumskunde, an hypothesis of this kind is not tenable, since the peculiarities of this dialect are not compatible with those of the Pali language. The same distinguished scholar holds that the Prakrit dialects, called the S'auraseni and .Milliarasht'd, have a closer relation to the Pali than any other, and that the origin of the latter must therefore be traced to the country of western Hindustan, between the Jumia river and the Vindliva mountain; though he observes, at the same time, that the Pali is older than these dialects, and that the latter are therefore more remote from Sanskrit titan the former. Whether the oldest works of the Buddhist religion were written in Pan may be matter of doubt. It is more probable, on the contrary, that the language in which the founder of the Buddhist religion conveyed his doctrine to the people was not yet that special language, but a mixture of classical and popular Sanskrit, such as it still appears in the Buddhistic SQtras. At a later period, however, Pali became the classic-al language in which the Buddhists wrote their sacred, metaphysical, and profane works. The most important historical work written in this language is the Mahavans'a (q.v.); other Pali works, which have lately become known in Europe, and deserve especial mention, are the DItanonapada, on the Buddhist doctrine; and five Jatakas, contain ing a fairy tale, a comical story, and three fables—both works edited and translated by V. Fausball (('open. 1855 and 1861). Pali ceased to be a living language of India when Buddhism was rooted out of it; it was carried by the fugitive Buddhists to other coun tries, especially Ceylon, Burmali, and Siam, but in these countries, too, it had to give way before the native towns, in which the later Buddhist literature was composed.