Exploring Traditional Pali Grammar 6
Ruupasiddhi comments on Kc 7

The Ruupasiddhi, or Mahaaruupasiddhi is a
traditional Pali grammar within the Kaccaayana
school. What that means is that it is based on
the same set of suttas, but provides its own
vutti or further comment. It might be interesting
to see an alternative style of expressing similar
ideas as in the last lesson. There are some
commentarial conventions occurring here that we
haven't seen so far in the Kc vutti. Also, this
passage provides some help with the question I
had about the expression 'pañcapañcaso', leading
me to revise the previous installment in this
series.

One major translation issue with these texts is
that it's often hopeless to try to translate the
suttas themselves into complete sentences. They
are meant to be easy to remember shorthand
statements, which remind the listener of their
corresponding vuttis. I remember being taught
similar 'suttas' when learning German. For
instance: Aus, ausser, bei, mit, nach, seit, von,
zu, dativ! We pupils had to scream this over and
over in unison until we knew it by heart. But it
would be awkward to translate as: (The
prepositions) aus, ausser, bei, mit, nach, seit,
von, (and )zu (take) dative (case). Especially
when all that extra information is provided in
the immediately following 'vutti'.

In the below, for example, the single word
'mantaa' stands for 'the 25 consonants up to and
including the letter "m"'. Trying to put all that
extra info into parentheses in the translation of
the sutta defeats the whole purpose. A possible
approach might be to try translating the suttas
into newspaper-headline style: concise statements
leaving out articles, copulative verbs and so on.
Or we might try to imagine what a strict German
teacher might make her pupils recite. Further
study could look at whether Pali syntax and word
order, rhythms and phenomena such as 'fronting',
play a role in emphasizing and topicalizing
elements of the suttas. This might or might not
be fruitful for finding apt English translations.
At the very least it could inject some needed fun
into the studies.

The text is taken from the Sri Lanka Tipitaka
Project e-edition, which I believe is the same as
the version posted at:


http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/fiindolo/gretil.htm#PPhil


Text:

vaggaa pañcapañcaso mantaa /7/

tesa.m kho byañjanaana.m kakaaraadayo makaarantaa
pañcaviisati byañjanaa pañcapañcavibhaagena
vaggaa naama honti. ta.m yathaa ka kha ga gha ^n
- ca cha ja jha ña - .ta .tha .da .dha .na - ta
tha da dha na - pa pha ba bha ma iti vaggaa.

te pana pa.thamakkharavasena
kavaggacavaggaadivohaara.m gataa. Vaggo ti
samuuho. Tattha pañcapañcavibhaagenaa ti vaa
pañca pañca etesam atthii ti vaa pañcapañcaso. Mo
anto yesa.m te mantaa.

Translation:

Classes five, up to 'M' by fives! /7/

Among these very consonants, the twenty-five
consonants from 'ka' to 'ma' sorted five by five
are called 'classes'. The following "ka...
[snip] ... ma" are classes.

Moreover, these are designated 'ka-class',
'ca-class' etc in accordance with their first
syllables. 'Class' means a group. Here,
'pañcapañcaso' means either 'sorted five and
five', or 'there are five fives of these'.
'Mantaa' means 'of which "m" is their end'.

[end of translation]


Notes:

1) Mo anto yesa.m te mantaa

This reads literally: of which 'mo' is their end,
these are 'mantaa'. This is using a condensed
commentarial convention which isn't really
translatable. It works like this: 'manta' is a
word in the sutta which requires explication, if
for no other reason because it could be confused
with 'manta', the Pali form of 'mantra', or
spell, charm, recitation.

Mantaa here is a bahubbiihi (or possessive)
compound (see Warder, page 137). And internally
it is a kammadharaya (Warder, pg 108). 'ma' IS
the 'anto' which is possessed by 'yesa.m'. All of
this is explained by the short formula: mo anto
yesa.m. Note that 'mo' and 'anto' are both placed
in the same (nominative) case, showing their
kammadharaya relation to each other.

Because 'yesa.m' is a relative pronoun, it needs
a correlate, which is 'te'. This corrlate also
serves the function of indicating that the word
mantaa, in the sutta, is in the nominative
plural. The explication of the compound has used
the genitive, as a marker of it's being a
bahubbiihi, and now the little word 'te' switches
us back to the nominative plural, which is the
actual case and number of mantaa when it occurs
in its context in the sutta.

So much information can be contained in such a short phrase!

2) Vaggo ti samuuho

This tells us that a synonym for the word 'vagga'
is 'samuuha'. The reason for this is probably
that 'vagga' has two separate meanings: 'group'
(which I have translated 'class', derived from
Sanskrit 'varga') and 'disparate' (derived from
Skr vyagra). It's in order to disambiguate the
word that this needs to be stated.

Notice also that here, words to be defined are
placed in the nominative case. In the Kc vutti so
far such words have been put in the stem form.
Both alternatives are acceptable. There is even a
rule in Kc about this (which I believe is
applicable here):

li^ngatthe pa.thamaa /286/

In the (sense of) the meaning of the stem, the nominative (case) /286/

This means that the nominative is used when using
a word simply to indicate it's bare meaning (as
opposed to employing it in a sentence in
conjunction with the action of a verb).

3) In my previous installment I wrote:

>I've separated pañca from pañcaso here, though
>in Senart they are joined as a compound ... It's
>also possible that it should be read as a
>compound 'pañcapañcaso' meaning 'in five fives'
>or 'five by five' or something like that. I'm
>unsure here.

Based on the explication of 'pañcapañcaso' in the
Ruupasiddhi passage above, I think I should have
gone with the second alternative. So lesson 5
should be revised accordingly.

Words:

pañcaviisati: twenty-five
pa.thama: first, pa.thamaa (short for pa.thamaa vibhattii) nominative case
pa.thamakkharavasena: pa.thama-akkhara-vasena, in
accordance with the first syllable
li^nga: stem form of a word, elsewhere 'grammatical gender'
-vasena: according to
vibhaaga: analysis, sorting, division, grouping
vohaara: designation, appelation
samuuha: group, mass, collection