>
>Could any one recommend a reference book, a dictionary or grammar
>book, where thoese grammatical terms, such as 'bhaavanaphum.sakam.',
>in commentaries can be found?

Hi,

Warder's _Introduction to Pali_ includes a wealth of Pali grammatical
terms, usually placed in parentheses in the body of the text after
the corresponding English terms. These are referenced in his
'grammatical index' (though a few rarer terms like 'saamin' as an
alternative term for genitive, are only found in the body of the
text, and not in the index. This is important for you to know, since
'saamin' is the sort of term you might encounter in the
commentaries). Bhaavanapu.msaka (adverbial accusative) is explained
and exemplified on page 116 there. This book is constantly in print
from PTS, and is suitable for beginners.

One very useful reference is Helmer Smith's edition of the
_Saddaniiti_, which has recently been reprinted by PTS. It is
exceptionally well-indexed, so you can look a term up in the index
verborum, and there find references not only to where the term
appears in Sadd, but also to it's location in the 'conspectus
terminorum' which defines the terms in French. French grammatical
terms usually resemble the corresponding English words, so it's
useful even for those of us who don't know French. Saddaniiti can be
a bit daunting at first, but anyone starting out with this book is
welcome to ask here for tips.

Margaret Cone's _A Dictionary of Pali_ has excellent coverage of
grammatical terms (referred to as gr.t.t. 'grammar technical term'),
but so far it only goes up to the letter Kha. We are hoping for the
second volume any year now. This is also from PTS, and is suitable
for beginners.

Monier Williams' _Sanskrit-English Dictionary_, and Louis Renou's
_Terminologie Grammaticale du Sanskrit_ are both helpful, but the
user often has to guess what the corresponding Sanskrit form of the
Pali word would be. Renou is out of print.

Ole Holten Pind's two part article, "Studies in the Paali
Grammarians" in the Journal of the Pali Text society, XIII and XIV,
is full of translations of grammatical passages from the commentarial
literature. There's no index of terms, unfortunately, but if you read
the article with a highlighter pen in hand you can assemble one.

Similarly, Eivind Kahrs' article "Exploring the Saddaniiti" in JPTS
incudes extensive translations from, above all, the Kaaraka passages
in Saddaniiti. Very helpful.

I would recommend Warder to begin with, and Smith's edition of the
Saddaniiti as soon as possible. Warder's coverage of basic
grammatical terms is quite good and the indexes are easy to use. It
will take you a long way. I had Warder on my shelf and struggled for
several weeks with grammatical terms before discovering how much help
was to be found in there. Cone is invaluable for anyone working with
Pali and the articles by Pind and Kahrs will come into play as soon
as anyone wants to get more deeply into the study of traditional
grammar.

best regards,

/Rett