Dear Ven Pandita,

Thank you for this detailed and helpful reply. It's certainly (for me
at least) a new way of looking at indeclinables. Very interesting!

With metta, John

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Ven. Pandita" <ashinpan@...> wrote:
>
> Dear John
>
> Sorry for my late reply. Recent thunderstorms have seriously disturbed
> mobile networks in Sri Lanka, and it is still not yet better to date.
>
> You wrote:
>
> > My understanding is that "sara.nanti" is simply a sandhi by
> > assimilation of "sara.na.m" and "ti" (for "iti"). Thus sarana.m is
> > still accusative but is set in direct quotes, and not instrumental at
> > all.
>
> I won't deny its being sandhi, for, sandhi is none other than
> assimilation of adjacent sounds. However, in "pure" sandhi, there
are no
> semantic relations involved. If there weren't any sort of relation
> between "sara.na.m" and "iti", it would have been pure sandhi. The
> question is whether there is such a relation or not.
>
> Now let's assume sarana.m is in accusative. If it were really the case,
> "gacchaami" would have become a verb requiring a double object. Then
> "iti" wouldn't have been necessary. Cf:
>
> Puriso assa.m gaama.m nayati = The man brings the horse to the village
> (Here "nayati" is a verb of double object)
>
> On the other hand, suppose "iti" is used here to indicate a direct
> quote. A quote is a self-contained set of words without any relation to
> any word outside the quote. Then, in this case, we cannot claim that it
> must be of the same case, i.e., accusative, as "buddha.m". On the
> contrary, we must take the context into account.
>
> Now let's go to the commentary of Khuddakapaa.tha.
>
> . . . Ta.msama'ngii satto ta.m sara.na.m gacchati, vuttappakaarena
> cittuppaadena "esa me sara.na.m, esa me paraaya.nan"
> ti evameta.m upetiiti attho. (Pj1 - 16)
>
> Trs.: . . . A being endowed with such a mind relies on him (i.e., the
> Buddha) as a refuge. The meaning of it is " (He) approaches him (the
> Buddha) with the aforementioned kind of mind as 'This is my refuge,
this
> is my shelter' "
>
> Depending on this commentary we can interpret "buddha.m sara.na.m
> gacchaami" in two ways.
>
> The first is taking "sara.nanti" as a quotation, and translating it as
> "I rely on the Buddha (thinking) 'This is my refuge' " In this method,
> "sara.na.m" is in nominative case.
>
> The second is taking "sara.nanti" as an indeclinable compound. Then the
> translation would be: " I rely on the Buddha as refuge".
>
> > Also, I didn't comprehend your statement that "sara.nanti" can be
> > viewed as an indeclinable compound having the instrumental case. By
> > definition an indeclinable doesn't have any cases, is it not?
>
> In classic grammars, in fact, indeclinables are nouns but with
> case-endings elided, and subsequently, without changing their forms in
> various contexts. This view has practical reasons. For instance:
>
> mahanto puriso (= a great man)
> mahantena purisena (= with a great man)
>
> You may notice in the examples above that adjectives take the cases and
> numbers of the nouns they modify. Then what about "purisoti etena",
> which should be translated as " with this word 'puriso'"? This is a
very
> common form in the commentarial literature.
>
> Here the grammarians take "purisoti" as modified by "etena". Since they
> must be of the same case, "purisoti" is viewed as an indeclianble
> compound with the instrumental case elided.
>
> with metta
>
> Ven. Pandita