Dear Rene,

Neither Perniola nor Warder are reliable sources of information on Pali
compound formation. I would suggest reading the excellent section on
compound formation in Whitney's famous Sanskrit grammar. It is fairly easy
to extrapolate from Whitney's description of Sanskrit compound formation
because Pali and Sanskrit are similar in that respect.

Regards,

Ole Pind

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Pali@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Pali@yahoogroups.com] På vegne af rsalm
Sendt: 18. oktober 2005 21:41
Til: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Emne: Re: [Pali] asama etc [was: Compounds]

Dear Rett,

Thank you for your three posts this morning. If you think our discussion
is like 'attacking your favorite child,' then your're taking this too
personally. We're learning Paali, not attacking each other's children!

Regarding this brouhaha about Bh compounds, if you and Alan insist on
holding this position, then we all have a right to ask: where in the books
does it say that a Bh samaasa must end with a noun? If you can't show that,
then you have no case.

I have six grammar books and none of them know this rule. The books often
give adjectives at the end of these compounds, as I showed in my last post.
They also call them "adjective" (sometimes adverb). Why should I take your
word against the evidence of Warder, Perniola, et al? I already brought to
your attention examples (there are many more) from the books. Your
explanations today do not convince me.

Why is it so important to you that the last element in a bahubbiihi must be
in a noun? Maybe there's some way you're interpreting bahubbiihis that is
leading you to see them in this way.

I have more to write on compounds, but will leave that for another time.

-- Rene

----- Original Message -----
From: rett
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 12:42 AM
Subject: [Pali] asama etc [was: Compounds]


>
> >From Warder (138) come other examples of adjectives that end the
>Bh compound: dosantaro [manusso], "[a man] with hatred within";

Here 'antara' is a noun meaning 'interior' or 'heart' 'mind'.


> asama [bhagavant], "unequalled [fortunate one]."

Again, this can be translated 'lacking an equal'. sama is a noun
here. English has the same ambiguity. 'Equal' can be an adjective but
you can also speak of someone who is someone else's equal. In the
latter case the word is a _noun_.

Look up 'equal' in an english dictionary and you will see three
entries under the heading: 1. Adj, 2. N. 3. V. It's not necessary to
always explicitly separate those first two entries in similar cases
in a Sanskrit/Pali dictionary because adjectives can productively
function as nouns anyway, wheras in English they can usually only do
so in certain lexicalized cases like here.


>Warder writes: "Compounds which formally resemble tappurisas,
>kammadhaarayas, or dvandas may be used as bahubbiihisS." This would
>presumably also include those compounds which are noun + adj.

Nope. It doesn't include that case. That would make the concept of
bahubbiihi totally redundant, and it would never have entered the
stock of technical terms in modern linguistics (in the Skt form
bahuvrihi) as it has done. I am generating strongly defensive
emotions here, as if you were attacking my favorite child. I never
knew I had such strong attachment to the concept of the bahubbiihi. I
think it's because I am a bit proud (vicariously) of the
contributions ancient Indian linguistics has made to modern science.
More fodder for meditation and letting go.

>With a change, however, we can make it Bh: dhammaabhaasito buddho.
>Here, the Buddha 'possesses' (as it were) the dhamma that is spoken,
>i.e., "the Buddha [who] has spoken the doctrine." Please correct
>this if it is wrong.

It might be able to be a highly implausible bahubbiihi if you
paraphrased it as you say: the Buddha possesses something which was
spoken namely Dhamma. So you are reading the ppp bhaasito as
qualifying dhamma in a kammadhaarya relationship, rather than
qualifying buddho. Hence it is not an 'adjective' here in the normal
sense of heading a compound functioning as an adjective qualifying
the thing it is coordinated with in the sentence. It is rather
functioning nominally, and the _entire compound_ becomes an adjective
with an -a stem qualifying buddha. That's how bahubbiihis work. But
that wouldn't amount to saying bahubbiihis can 'end with adjectives',
for all the reasons we've gone through in my last three posts. In any
case even reading it as a bahubbiihi in this way, this example sounds
really strange to my ears and would probably never come up precisely
because it would be so confusing.

best regards,

/Rett


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