Pali was not "translated" from the spoken language of Magadha.Bankei wrote:- The Pali canon was translated into Pali from another language(s), and errors have occured and misunderstandings or misinterpretations
- Various councils occured throughout history to 'fix' errors.
- There are variations in the wording of different manuscripts available in different countries. which one would count as correct?
Here is a screen shot of a typical variant reading between different editions of the Pāli text of the Vinaya Piṭaka, Pārājikakaṇḍa. The tooltip shows the variant readings in the Singhalese (si) and Thai (sya) editions of the Pāli texts. The text being the Chatthasangayana Burmese edition.T.W. Rhys Davids in his book Buddhist India, and Wilhelm Geiger in his book Pali Literature and Language suggested that Pali may have originated as a form of lingua franca or common language of culture among people who used differing dialects in North India, used at the time of the Buddha and employed by him.
In all variant readings that I have come across, the differences are trivial, different spellings, or a word or phrase missing here and there. Certainly nothing to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Pāli texts.