Dear Nina, John and friends,

thanks. I would say that my level of Pali is still low, and there's
much to learn. The use of "and" is what I picked up from Pali Primer.
In Duroiselle's, Chpt.14 §618(i), The Gerund always denotes an action
completed before another; it may be translated by the word "having"
followed by a past participle as: gantvaa, having gone; or by the
past tense followed by the conjunction "and" : gantvaa, he went
and... The gerund, therefore, being very extensively used, is the
most common connective in Pali , and practically does away with the
Pali conjunction equivalent to the English "and" connecting two
sentences.

I noticed in Ven. Narada's text, he introduced past tense before
gerund, and that fits Duroiselle's description of gerund. The same
goes for Warder's. Pali Primer introduces gerund before past tense,
and we know that it's okay, as gerund can be used with present tense
as well.

Although I'd like to subscribe to what John says: "that the gerund
generally is a subordinate clause to the verb that follows it most
closely", we may be wrong. The reason is that we probably think that
Pali, with its ancient grammatical rules, is as flexible as English.
And if so, Nina is right that gerund has a more rigid usage than we
would like to think. Unfortunately, I do not have any other grammars
with me. Probably Piya, Jim or Dimitry can throw in some light on
this.

metta,
Yong Peng

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, nina van gorkom wrote:
You often put "and" in order to avoid too much: after having... I am
sure there must be more to it then what is just said in Warder I
quoted. Interesting. What does the Saddaniti say?? Perhaps experts
can come in!!!