Hi Yong Peng and group,

>
>May I clarify with your last sentence. Do you mean the Sandhi should
>be resolved as
>
>attha.m aa~n~naati, rather than attha.m a~n~naati (as you wrote)?

If this idea is right, it's

attham a~n~naati

with a real m at the end of attha, not .m. (though that's not so important) Picture a syllabic script writing:

a ttha ma ~n~naa ti

The word-break occurs within a single glyph /ma/ because of the inherent short a in Indian syllabic scripts. That's why the two words were written together.

The verb has a prefixed aa- but in this form it's shortened because of the law of morae. (Pali vowels tend to be short before double consonants). You will sometimes run into the aa- prefix as just a- like here, but it's not a sandhi, just a regular Pali phonetic reduction.

>Also, what does aa~n~naati (or a~n~naati) mean? ~Naati, according to
>PED, is not even a verb.
>

You can find this form as an alternative listed under the PED entry for aajaanaati (p.96), 'understands, knows, learns' or in Cone (p.289) 'understands, perceives'.

best regards,

/Rett