Jim wrote:

> You will find 'aakhyaati' and 'aakhyaata' both listed at
> DOP I 280 (Cone).

This is not inconsistent with my suggestion that both words
are (relatively) late borrowings from Sanskrit. The more
interesting fact (in the current discussion) is that they are not
listed in the PTS dictionary. Cone's dictionary has a much
broader and deeper textual basis than PTS. Unfortunately
I do not have easy access to a copy.

> The Pali grammarians take 'khaa' and 'khyaa' as two
> separate roots but give them both as a pair under one
> meaning (pakathane or kathane).

If I am right, this is their way of accommodating the
variations introduced under Sanskrit influence.

> 'aakhyaati' is a Pali as well as a Sanskrit verb.

The editors of the PTS dictionary did not recognize aakhyaati
or aakhyaata as Pali words. Evidently Aggava.msa did not
recognize the former as a Pali word either; otherwise he would
have used it rather than akkhaayati. This may indeed be the
explanation for the y in his verb. Clearly he did recognize
aakhyaata as a Pali word, and equally clearly it was borrowed
from Sanskrit by his predecessors. It is one of the four
'parts of speech' which appears in almost every early Sanskrit
grammar: naamaa 'khyaato 'pasarga nipaata (usually
translated 'noun, verb, prefix and particle'). On this evidence,
aakhyaati was borrowed later, maybe independently or maybe
under the influence of aakhyaata. Cf. K. V. Abhyankar,
A Dictionary of Sanskrit Grammar sv aakhyaata, pp. 54-5.

> I wonder if kiriyaapada.m might be a more general
> term that could include participles, infinitives,
> absolutives. and action-nouns.

Aggava.msa doesn't appear to make any distinction
between aakhyaata and kiriyaapada.m (which doesn't
necessarily mean there wasn't one). Abhyankar says
(p. 55): "When a k.rt affix is added to a root, the static
element predominates and a word ending with a k.rt
affix in the sense of bhaava or verbal activity is treated
as a noun and regularly declined…. Regarding
indeclinable words ending with k.rt affixes…, the
modern grammarians hold that in their case the
verbal activity is not shadowed by the static element
and hence they can be, in a way, looked upon as
aakhyaatas." I think Jim is right to restrict aakhyaata
to finite verbs in Saddaniiti.

> Would 'activity' be a better translation for 'kiriyaa'?
> I think 'kiriyaa' includes the meaning of 'bhaava' (state).

It seems to me that 'activity' is no improvement. We
cannot say that all verbs mean an activity any more than
that they all mean an action. I would say that 'make'
refers to an action, 'sleep' refers to an activity and 'stand'
refers to a state. Many verbs can do more than one, like
'eat'. But I suppose there are those who want to talk about
'the activity of being'. This is of course English and not Pali,
but it illustrates why efforts to define nouns and verbs
semantically are generally hopeless. In the real world if we
want to categorize a word, we don't proceed by asking what
it means, but rather by looking at its morphological form.
If bhavati is not acceptable as an obvious non-activity verb,
what about hoti? From the opposite angle, if kiriyaa,
kiriya.m and bhaava refer to activities (or whatever we
decide verbal meanings are) does that make them
aakhyaatas?

Abhyankar (sv kriyaa, p. 133) says: "The word bhaava
many times is used in the same sense as kriyaa or verbal
activity in the suutras of Paa.nini…. Some scholars draw
a nice distinction between kriyaa and bhaava, kriyaa
meaning dynamic activity and bhaava meaning static
activity." Kriyaa and kiriyaa are a Sanskrit/Pali doublet
like aakhyaati/akkhyaati. In the case of bhaava, there is
no phonological change to create such a doublet.

George