Hello Ven. Pandita,
Thank you for the explanation, however it confuses me more than it
clarifies. I thought pali predated sanskrit, and that the written pali
language was predated by a spoken Maggada(?). So in the Buddha's time,
there was no "real pali". AnapanaSSati did not exist as a written word.
Only phonetic sounds and syllables sounding something like,
"uh-nuh-punnuh-sa-tee" existed in the language, transmitted by speaking
from monk to monk, village to village. I'm not trying to say there are
no legitimate grammatical reasons for what you explained, I'm just
trying to understand why compounding has to be represented in writing
the way it is today.
If I were to represent sounds of compound dhamma words in written
form like this:
anapana-sati,
dhamma-vicaya-sambojjanga,
samadhi-indriya,
sadda-indriya,
panna-indriya,
etc., is there any ambiguity or grammatical reason where the receiver of
my written communication could misinterpret what I wrote?
Whereas I see "pannindriya" in the romanized pali text it looks like a
complete and new stranger to me even though I'm completely familiar with
panna and indriya.
I don't really see hyphens as an eye sore either, if that's the only
objection of why compounding is not represented with hyphens. I was just
reading a dual pali/english line by line sutta where the author
translated ekayano as "one-way-path". Is that "real" english? I don't
know the answer to that, but I do know as a native English speaker that
the hyphens did not introduce any ambiguity or alter the intended
meaning from the sender. In fact, it improved the clarity.
Ultimately the Buddha was most interested in teaching about dukkha
and its cessation, using whatever the most popular language and simple
words that could communicate meaning the most clearly to as many people
of as many cultures and backgrounds, for as long as possible. If he
thought that hyphens in written transmissions of suttas would reduce
the steep pali learning curve for buddhists from the future, I bet he
would approve.

-Frank

On 1/25/2010 9:48 AM, ashinpan wrote:
>
>
> Frank,
>
> You wrote:
>
> > Since the pali suttas were an oral tradition originally, not written,
> > and the fact that it exists now in thai script, roman script, and
> > whatever other localized script, I wonder if there is some reason
> why we
> > can not adopt a convention of compounding that allows the exploitation
> > and ease in digital processing/searching. For example, if compound
> words
> > were written as anapana-sati instead of anapanaSSati,
> > dhamma-vicaya-sambojjhanga, etc, wouldn't that lend clarity, structure,
> > ease in understanding and communicating as well as instant dictionary
> > lookup capability? Am I missing something? Is there a good reason for
> > "anapanaSSati" instead of "anapana-sati"?
>
> In the example that you give, i.e., "anapanaSSati", the cons. "s" is
> doubled because "sati" is derived from the Skt. form "sm.rti" and the
> conjunct "sm" of the original "sm.rti" is assimilated into "ss" when
> "sati" is a non-initial compound member.
>
> If you choose to write "anapana-sati" instead, it won't be real Pali.
> Rather it will only be your interpretation of that particular compound.
>
> with metta
>
> Ven. Pandita
>



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