Hi Yong Peng,

You wrote:

>
>
>thanks. But, I am actually asking:
>
>seyya = ? + iya [Nr]
>
>I refers to the nominal base for seyya.

Interesting question. That's been bugging me too. I took a quick look
(over my morning coffee) in Saddaniiti and a couple of modern
grammars. So far I haven't found a nominal base for seyya except as a
grammatical construction (< 'sa.ms', to point out, declare, which in
the form pasa.msati means praise, extol. It's not too much of a
stretch for the idea 'praised' to mean 'good' and so on).

As I'm sure you've also noticed, the comparative and superlative
forms 'seyya' and 'se.t.tha' don't have a corresponding form which is
merely positive. In this way it's rather like English which has good,
better, best. The comp/sup are based on another root than the
positive, and you can't find some English word *bet meaning 'good'.

Saddaniiti (sutta 512) implies that the corresponding sequence is:

- pasattha, seyya, se.t.tha (good, better, best, or extolled, more
extolled, most extolled).

The rule is expressed in the form of a substitution; the word 'sa' is
substituted for pasattha in the case of the endings -iya and -i.t.tha.

Here the 'sa' in pasattha is taken as standing for the word and takes
the -iya, -i.t.t.ha endings. But as I said, afaik this is probably a
grammatical construction invented after the fact, not a description
of the historical development of the words.

A few similar cases occur in the immediately following rules:

- vu.d.dha, jeyya, je.t.t.ha (old, older, oldest)
- antika, nediya, nedi.t.tha (near, nearer, nearest)
- baa.lha, saadhiya, saadhi.t.tha (strong, stronger, strongest, or
capable/mighty)
- khuddaka, ka.niya, ka.ni.t.tha (small, smaller, smallest)
Alternately:
- yuva, ka.niya, ka.ni.t.tha (young, younger, youngest)
One could also imagine:
- appa, ka.niya, ka.ni.t.tha (small, smaller, smallest)

Some or perhaps all of the above are directly borrowed from
traditional Sanskrit grammar and I'm not sure whether all the above
comp/sup forms actually occur in canonical and/or commentarial Pali.
Hope this is of interest. I'd be especially interested in hearing
from anyone who might know of this topic being discussed in the
commentarial literature.

best regards,

/Rett