>Dear friends,
>
>Can anyone help me with the following difficult to translate verse
>from the verses at the end of AN 5:55 (A iii 69)?
>
>Tesa.m kaamoghavu.lhaana.m kaame aparijaanata.m,
>Kaala.m gati.m bhavaabhava.m sa.msaarasmi.m purakkhataa.

Hi John and group,

I can see why you're having trouble, parts of it are unclear to me. But parts of it seem clear, such as the first line where the two padas are parallel to each other:

Tesa.m kaamoghavu.lhaana.m
of those who are swept away on the flood of pleasures

kaame aparijaanata.m
of those who haven't fully understood pleasures (another way of describing the same group of people as above)

(here aparijaanata.m is prob a gen plural present participle. It's a sanskritic 'archaic' form and kaame is the direct object of the phrase)

Some guesses along the way as to the rest:

As far as kaala.m gati.m is concerned, it could possibly be a phrase synonymous with the common duggati.m (inexplicably in the accusative) but I wonder if it isn't actually a compound kaala.mgati.m which could simply mean 'death' or 'death-going'.* Then the cpd could possibly even be a bahubbiihi adjective qualifying bhavaabhava.m:

Repeated existence in samsara which has (or leads to) death / death-leading repeated existence in samsara)

or

Repeated existence in samsara leading to death. (this is what is possessed as preferable by the people described in the first line)

Maybe there's even an outside chance that kaala.mgati.m is a time-adverbial 'over the course of time' ?

This solves some problems but still leaves others, such as exactly how purakkhataa fits in. It might be step in the right direction. Or it might not. Maybe the text is corrupt.

* cpr kaala.mkata = kaalakata, attha.mgata

best regards,

/Rett