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Pali Chanting Tone Guide in Thai Styles

This document provides guidelines for chanting Pāḷi in the Thai tradition, including tone rules. There are two main styles - Makhot and Saṁyok. Makhot uses three pitches (high, base, low) and four tones (base, high/falling, low, low falling). Syllables meeting three criteria take a high/falling tone. Saṁyok is similar but replaces the high/falling tone with a rising tone. The document explains vowel and syllable lengths, stopped vs. unstopped syllables, and provides examples of tones.

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354 views3 pages

Pali Chanting Tone Guide in Thai Styles

This document provides guidelines for chanting Pāḷi in the Thai tradition, including tone rules. There are two main styles - Makhot and Saṁyok. Makhot uses three pitches (high, base, low) and four tones (base, high/falling, low, low falling). Syllables meeting three criteria take a high/falling tone. Saṁyok is similar but replaces the high/falling tone with a rising tone. The document explains vowel and syllable lengths, stopped vs. unstopped syllables, and provides examples of tones.

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1

Tone Rules
for Pi Chanting in the Thai Tradition
The tone rules for Pi Chanting in the Thai Tradition are based on the Thai alphabet, as it
is used to write Pi. Pi itself is not a tonal language. However, there are still advantages to
learning the system: It helps to distinguish between some consonants that are similar, such as k
and kh, t and th, p and ph, etc.; it makes memorization easier; and if you go to Thailand your
chanting will fit in with the group.
Pi has two sorts of vowels, long, e, , o, , & ay; and shorta, i, & u. Syllables are also
either long or short. Its important to remember that long and short vowels are one thing, and
long and short syllables are another. Short syllables end in a short vowel (or are just a short
vowel, like the first syllable in u-po-sa-tha, which consists of just the vowel u ). Long syllables
end in either a long vowel, , , o, e, ay(bha-ga-v, bud-dho), a consonant (vij-j, sam-panno), including semi-vowels h, y, r, l, , and v (da-ha, sey-yo), or , the pure nasal, which gets
its own category (e-va, i-ma). This means that a long syllable can have either a short (ta) or
a long (te) vowel, but if the vowel is short the syllable will be long only if it ends in a consonant
or .
Long syllables can be either stopped or non-stopped. A syllable is stopped if it ends in one
of these consonants: k, c, t, , p, g, j, d, , b, or si.e., the sound stops. (s is included in this list
because in Thai a final s turns into a t.) Otherwiseif the long syllable ends in a vowel or one
of the consonants m, n, , , , y, l, or its unstopped, as the sound doesnt stop. (Syllables
never end in v, r, or any of the aspirated consonants dh, bh, etc. Apparently only two words in
Pi have a syllable that ends in h, brhmana and brahm, and because the syllable in both cases
begins with a consonant that doesnt carry a tone, the question of whether h is considered a
stop is irrelevant.)
Examples
short: a-ra-ha, abhi-v-de-mi, su-pa-i-pan-no
long, stopped: sam-bud-dho, svk-kh-to, tas-sa, met-ta
long, unstopped: a-ha, ho-mi, a-ve-ro, dham-mo
Tones in the Thai tradition of Pi chanting
There are two main styles of chanting in Thailand: Sayok (=sayogaconnected) and
Makhot (=Magadhathe state in ancient India). In the Dhammayut order, most chants are done
in the Makhot style (the Jayanto is an exception), while in the Mahnikya, most chanting is
Sayok.
Makhot
Makhot has three pitches: the base pitch, which most of the syllables are, a high pitch,
usually either a whole step or a minor third above the base, and a low pitch, usually a whole
step below the base pitch.
There are four tones, based on these three pitches:
1) Base or middle tone, which is just the base pitch. This is the most common tone and is
the default.

2
2) High or falling tone, which can be either on the high pitch for the duration of the
syllable or start high and then drop to the base pitch. Which way to do it is a matter of choice or
what sounds natural. This one is predictable and considered necessary, and therefore the
important one to understand. The rules for when to use it are explained below.
3) Low tone, which stays on the low pitch. Its use is somewhat arbitrary or traditional, and
Ajaan Geoff doesnt recommend using it in the Pimokkha.
4) Low falling, which starts on the base pitch and drops to the low pitch partway through.
This one is pretty rare, occurring only on stopped syllables with a long vowel, beginning with
certain consonants. So far the only examples Ive found are met-ta and vi-mok-kha.

Rules for the high/falling tone


Syllables with the following three characteristics have a high/falling tone:
1) The syllable is longending in either a long vowel, , or a consonant (as explained
above).
2) It is not stoppedeither ending in a long vowel, , or the consonants n, , , , m, l, , r,
or y.
3) Initial consonant: It begins with one of these consonants: s, h, ch, th, h, kh, or ph. (There
is one small complication here: an initial m following a final s takes the tonal property of the s,

making the syllable starting with the m high: tas-m, -yas-m, yas-mi
Examples of the high/falling tone

sam-m, a-ha, kho, khan-dho, h-nis-sa-ro, ya-th, sey-yo, ho-ti, hon-ti


A long vowel, such as o, can still have a consonant following it in the same syllable (as in
honti). If a syllable with a long vowel is stopped, then it does not have a high tone, as in sot-thi,
pho-hab-ba, khet-te, ya-thj-ja. (Compounds like the second syllable in yath+ajja>yathjja are
easily mistaken for a high tone because we are used to yath having a high tone on the second
syllable.)

Also note that yath is ya-th, not yat-h. As mentioned in the Chanting Guide, the
notations th, h, ph, ch, kh, (also dh...) indicate one sound in Pi, and are represented by one
letter in the Thai script. However, the sequences yh, mh, lh, h, vh, nh and h are in almost all
cases the end and beginning of two syllables: may-ha, am-hehi, da-ha, ta-h, etc. This
sometimes makes a difference in tone, as in sahhi vchi upavhayant (from the Mah Samaya
Sutta): sa(high)-h(high)-hi, rather than sa(mid)-h(high)-hi, This is reflected in the fact
that there are no single Thai letters for these combinations. An exception to this rule is the
combination nh, as in nhr (tendons), nhyeyya (from the Pimokkha). It is a high tone,

following the h, and usually comes out as na-h-r, na-h-yey-ya anyway.


Optional high tones
Syllables with a short vowel and either no final consonant (making it a short syllable) or a
stopped final consonant (making it a long syllable), and beginning with the consonants v, bh, r,
n, , m, y, are sometimes given a high tone:

c-va-ra, pa-ri-bhut-ta, sa-ra-na, ma-kasa, pa-ha-m-nus-sa-ti


These are optional, and for the Pimokkha Ajaan Geoff does not recommend making
them high.
Low tones
As noted above, these are all optional, and dont always follow Thai tone rules:

Bha-ga-v, sam-bud-dhas-sa, kit-ti-sad-do, a-ha-m-da-re-na, khet-te


___
____ __ _ __

____
Sayok
There are three differences between the Makhot and the Sayok styles:
1) In Makhot style, there is a pause to breathe between phrases, whereas in Sayok the
chanting never stops, so individual chanters need to breathe at different times.
2) In Makhot style, there is some leeway in following the rules for long and short syllables
(the Namo is an example of this). In Sayok those rules are followed strictly
3) In Sayok, the high/falling tone is replaced with a rising tone, rising over the duration
of the syllable from the base pitch to the high pitch. The four categories of tones are the same,
just with the rising tone replacing the high/falling tone.
Another example:

A-ha bhan-te sam-ba-hu-l n-n-vat-thu-k-ya p-cit-ti-y-yo -pat-ti-yo -pan-no t

pa-i-de-se-mi.

Pas-sa-si -vu-so?

-ma bhan-te pas-s-mi. (-ma is an example of the optional high tone)

-ya-ti -vu-so sa-va-rey-y-si.

S-dhu su-hu bhan-te sa-va-ris-s-mi.

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