Dear Nina and Alan,

I may be inaccurate in writing: ' The "ya.m"
qualifies "a~n~naa.na.m"...' I think "qualifies" is normally used to
describe an adjective + noun relation which would be the case if it
were "whatever nescience...(there is)". But in our case I translated
it as "whatever is nescience regarding..." with a copula "is" which
causes "whatever" to lose its adjectival function.

From Ven. Pandita's Relationl Grammar, the nominal identity relation
below seems to come closest to describing the ya.m + a~n~naa.na.m
relation.

<<A.1. Nominal Identity (Ordinary) Relation [NIO]
so acariyo = He (is/was) (a/the) teacher.>>

Best wishes,
Jim

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Nina van Gorkom <vangorko@...> wrote:
> Dear Jim,
> thank you. What you explain is also very useful for me. Any piece
of advice
> is much appreciated,
> Nina.
> op 29-07-2005 16:38 schreef Jim Anderson op jimanderson_on@...:
> >
> > I agree that this is a pronoun but with the meaning "whatever"
> > instead of "it". The "ya.m" qualifies "a~n~naa.na.m" in each of
its
> > four occurrences in the sentence but omitted in the last three
due to
> > ellipsis. Your sentence is incomplete without the concluding main
> > clause "aya.m vuccati bhikkhave avijjaa". What you have is a
chain of
> > four relative clauses: