YP,

Since you're a S'porean Chinese, perhaps I can assume that you know Hokkien and probably Mandarin too. In Hokkien (my own non-standard transliteration), "thnee boei lok hor liao," and in Mandarin (hanyu pinyin) "tian yao xia yu liao" can be properly translated to idiomatic English as "It's going rain."

"Thnee" and "tian" are also normally used to mean god, as in (Hokkien) "thnee tui wa chin nya ho" and (Mandarin) "tian dui wo heng hao". In English, "God is very kind to me."

The same applies for "devo" in Pali.

So, we can see how Chinese and Indian languages (and possibly other Asian languages too), share some parallel ways of expression. When translating this kind of expression literally to English, it can sometimes be pretty weird. Another example is "kamma.m karoti". I leave it to you to see how that is the same too.

kb

Mahinda Palihawadana wrote thus at 01:11 AM 03-03-09:

>On 3/2/09, Kumara Bhikkhu <yg@...> wrote:
>> Don't you think "devo" here may be better translated as the sky or rain
>> cloud?
> This is right. 'deva' is a common Pali term for rain, rainy sky or
>cloud . This meaning is noted in PTS Dictionary under DEVA. So devo
>vassati means "it rains" or "it is raining".
>
>Mahinda