the first line literally mean: "whose precursor is mind", "having mind as a fore-goer or leader" "whose foremost member is mind", "having mind as chief" "consisting of mind" or "made by mind" The literal meaning is therefore: "The dharmas have mind as their leader, mind as their chief, are made of/by mind. If [someone] either speaks or acts with a corrupted mind, from that [cause] suffering goes after him, as the wheel [of a cart follows] the foot of a draught animal." A slightly freer translation by Acharya Buddharakkhita Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox. Conversion between Sanskrit and Pali forms Pali and Sanskrit are very closely related and the common characteristics of Pali and Sanskrit were always easily recognized by those in India who were familiar with both. A large part of Pali and Sanskrit word-stems are identical in form, differing only in details of inflection. Technical terms from Sanskrit were converted into Pali by a set of conventional phonological transformations. These transformations mimicked a subset of the phonological developments that had occurred in Proto-Pali. Because of the prevalence of these transformations, it is not always possible to tell whether a given Pali word is a part of the old Prakrit lexicon, or a transformed borrowing from Sanskrit. The existence of a Sanskrit word regularly corresponding to a Pali word is not always secure evidence of the Pali etymology, since, in some cases, artificial Sanskrit words were created by back-formation from Prakrit words. The following phonological processes are not intended as an exhaustive description of the historical changes which produced Pali from its Old Indic ancestor, but rather are a summary of the most common phonological equations between Sanskrit and Pali, with no claim to completeness. Vowels and diphthongs Sanskrit ai and au always monophthongize to Pali e and o, respectively Examples: maitrī → mettā, auṣadha → osadha Sanskrit āya, ayā and avā reduce to Pali ā Examples: katipayāhaṃ → katipāhaṃ, vaihāyasa → vehāsa, yāvagū → yāgu Sanskrit aya and ava likewise often reduce to Pali e and o Examples: dhārayati → dhāreti, avatāra → otāra, bhavati → hoti Sanskrit avi and ayū becomes Pali e (i.e. avi → ai → e) and o Examples: sthavira → thera, mayūra