Dear Jim,
To continue our conversation regarding the Cariyaapi.taka stanza "so
bajjhata.m.." etc.
(1) Metre: One can agree with your wanting to change the name of the
metre from Indravajraa to Upajaati i.e., a mixture of Indravajraa and
Upendravajraa.The only material difference between the two is that the
initial ga.na (unit of three syllables) of a paada in Indravajraa is
L,L,S while in Upendravajra it is S,L,S and in Upajati it could be
either. When we look at the whole of the 13 verse ballad in which this
stz occurs, we see that of the 52 instances of initial ga.na, 27
conform to Indravajraa and 22 to Upendravajraa and the other three are
irregular . So it is possible to regard the metre as Upajaati.

(2) Chabbhi. My point is that -bhi in chabbhi is not just an aadesa
(substitute) for --hi 'allowed' by grammar, but a phonetic development
of the regular instr,-abl. ending -bhis of Old Indo-Aryan. Behind
most, if not all, aadesa and aagaama forms (i.e., forms that
grammarians explain as due to aadesa or aagama), we find a more
natuarl phonetic phenomenon. Consider sa.laayatana, cha.labhi~n~naa,
chassu and chabbhi. They all go back to an OIA form which is
reflected in Vedic .sa.t- (it is a different matter that behind
.sa.t- itself there are a lot of phonetic developments). But
grammarians will resort to different explanations for these forms.

I am not saying that these forms are instances of Skt influencing
Pali. That would be historically not correct. What I say is that they
are a reflection of common OIA forms. Skt as a language is actually
younger than the ancient Pali of the early strata of the Tiptaka. But
Skat retains older forms because after the celebrated grammarian
Paa.nini (c.4th c. BC), phonetic developments that went beyond his
rules came to be regarded as errors or aberrations. There are of
course other instances of Skt influencing the later Pali tradition.

If some of these froms like chabbhi are very rare, that is
considerably due to the very process of 'correction' that I mentioned
earlier. Sometimes this process becomes clear when one looks at the
variant readings of MSS. Naturally, CSCD itself has to have adopted
one reading (i.e., a 'correction') and disregard the variant
readings.

Best wishes.

Mahinda

On 12/8/08, Jim Anderson <jimanderson.on@...> wrote:
> Dear Mahinda,
>
> Thanks for your comments and observation in this and the previous
> messages. Here's my response:
>