Even if we can't find vicinati/vicinaati we can certainly find the optative
of the same verb in 'yoniso vicine dhammam' (let him/one properly
investigate ...), and also the forms viceyya and vicetabba. See the PTS
Dictionary for the occurrences of this verb in the Buddha-desanaa. (I note
that Nina van Gorkom spotted the same point after I wrote this)



The basic meaning is to 'deconstruct'. The root is ci : heap up, assemble.
With the prefix vi - it means (primitively) to take apart, dismantle, and by
extension to investigate - to see into the reality of a thing by
'deconstructing' it. In fact, am I not performing a vicaya on the word
vicaya by 'separating out' its elements in this way?



From ci we have citi = a heap or pile. In Sanskrit citaa = a funeral pyre
(the heaped up wood).



The puthujjana will say 'I am angry'. The meditator will note that a
certain phenomenon (dhamma) has occurred, and he will perform a dhammavicaya
- i.e. he will investigate the phenomenon by 'deconstructing' - observing
the sequence of arising and falling, the attachment and the sense of attaa,
and the entire process of mental events, rather than leaving it as one
undifferentiated mass/heap/ citi called 'anger'.



The above explanation is popular etymology, derived possibly from the fact
that whereas Vedic has two separate roots both ci, one meaning to
look/observe/be intent on, and the other to heap/pile up, only the second
one is recorded as surviving as a prefixless verb in Pali and later
Sanskrit. It is therefore probably more linguistically accurate to derive
vicaya from ci = look etc. ('look into' along the lines of
passati/vipassanaa), though less graphic than the notion of
'deconstructing'.



As to Wijeratna's observation that there is no term dhamma vicaya, under the
ordinary rules of the language if one can say dammam vicine one can also
virtually automatically nominalise the expression by turning it into
dhammavicaya. So, having exhorted people by saying dhamma vicine, he might
ask the next day 'how is the dhammavicaya going?' To the native speaker,
that would be no more than a standard and unremarkable variant of dhammam
vicine. If I have been digging the potatoes, I have been doing the potato
digging. Also, whether or not that particular grammatical collocation is
found in the extant texts, if one can say dhammavicyasambojjhanga, it
follows that the speaker has an underlying vocabulary that includes the
compound word dhamma-vicaya, and is talking about one of the various
sambojjhangaa, i.e. the dhamma-vicaya one. Since all of the other words
with which sambojjhanga is compounded do also exist independently, it seems
to me far more likely than not that dhammavicaya was also regarded by native
speakers as existing independently. In fact I would go as far as to say
that the existence of dhammavicayasambojjhanga necessarily presupposes the
existence of dhammavicaya.



To say that there is no term dhamma vicaya is somewhat akin to saying that
there is no locative plural for sambojjhanga. It may so happen that in the
places where the word occurs in the extant texts the exigencies of the
grammatical context do not require the locative plural ending, but is it
there a part of the underlying grammatical matrix.



James Whelan



From: Pali@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Pali@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of DC
Wijeratna
Sent: 22 January 2010 04:49
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Pali] 7 factors of enlightenment, vitakha and vicara





There is no term "dhamma vicaya".
However, "dhammavicayasambhojjhan.go"- is a compound of dhamma + vicaya +
sambhojjhan.ga.
"dhammavicayasambhojjhan.go" is one of the seven bodhi-factors.
Thus it is not known to 'mere worldlings' (puthujjana).
Here it appears to mean to discriminate between right and wrong dhammas and
to select the right ones. The reason for saying so is the context in which
it appears.
It is not investigation.
There is no word called vicinati in the Buddha-desnaa. May be later texts.
D. G. D. C. Wijeratna

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