Dear John, Nina, Ole and friends,

Ole, I beg to differ. I do not agree that -to is not ablatival. Allow
me to illustrate with an example.

Magga.m khettato upagacchati.
He approaches the road from the field.

In fact, -to is used in Pali as an ablative suffix, often with an
adverbial sense.


John, from the above example, you would see that it is still possible
to use the ablative in English if we are skillful enough. The trick
here is that upagacchati does not mean literally approaching (moving
towards) something, but to address or tackle a subject or concept.
Hence,

Sa`nkhaara.m niccato upagacchati.
He approaches sa`nkhaara from (the point that it is) permanent.
[or]
He considers conditioned phenomena from (the point that it is)
permanent.


metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, John Kelly wrote:

While I understand that you would like the English to reflect the
Pali ablative as closely as possible, it is not appropriate in this
case. As has been pointed out, the 2nd and 3rd translations you
offered make no sense at all in English. One regards something AS
something else.