D ear Allan,

This compound is somewhat peculiar. pa.ticca is an absolutive. Now
absolutives do not normally occur as first member in compounds. In the
present case we need a syntactical complement to understand it e.g. a noun
in the accusative like hetum or kara.nam or any other term in the
accusative. As you can imagine the fact that absolutives normally denote
actions preceding the action denoted by the finite verb, provided that the
two actions have the same agent, this particular compound has generated a
heated controversy among Buddhists interested in grammar, because the action
denoted by the absolutive normally precedes that of the finite verb. Now all
we can say is that pa.ticcasamuppaada means "origination dependent (on
something). " The usual translation "dependent origination" is meaningless
and ungrammatical, besides being not very intelligent considering the
canonical context, in addition to the grammatical constraints on the
semantics of absolutives. Cf. the vinaya term pa.ticcakamma which means " an
action that is due (to someone else, i.e. caused by someone else). " For
instance, the crime that someone who has made you commit would be a
pa.ticcakamma. In short, it is a "syntactical compound" in the sense that it
is syntactically dependent upon an explicit or implicit term that is
independet and syntactically external to the terms of the compound.
Therefore the peculiar term "syntactical compound."

Does this clarify your query a bit?

Best wishes,

Ole



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