Hi Rett,

I think you are right on this. I have no recollection of seeing the
personal pronoun used relexively in the suttas either (but my
knowledge of the suttas is still pretty limited). I will be watching
for it now, as you suggest.

I just looked in Warder too, and Chapter 22 covers the use of attan
and discusses relexive or possessive pronouns (including saka and
sa). At the top of pg 187 (3rd ed.) Warder says: "sa is inflected
according to the pronominal declension (Lesson 17) in all genders,
but is very rarely used except in verse. The meaning is the same as
saka." Here he is specifically talking about sa used reflexively.

Note that there is an analogy here to romance languages (e.g. French,
Italian) where if one is saying something like "he raises his hand",
they would use the equivalent of "he raises the hand". If the
possessive pronoun was used, it would imply that one was rasing
somebody else's hand.

Metta,
John

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, rett <rett@...> wrote:
>
>
> >Ong Peng: This makes me wonder if it is the style of
> >Mahavamsa which dictates the choice of words used. Can it also be
the
> >period in which Mahavamsa is written? While it was written over a
> >span of time, it is certainly written much later than the Tipitaka.
>
>
> I think this is exactly the right question to ask. It would be
great
> if members can keep their eyes peeled for examples in their reading
> from all periods of Pali literature. I'm not asking anyone to take
> time out from their regular studies to do this, just to perhaps
make
> a note of any exceptions they might happen to run across.
>
> Does the book by Ven. Narada you are using have an answer key? And
is
> it available online?
>
> /Rett