Dear Nina and Mahinda,

thank you for this discussion and sharing of the Sinhala translation. I can see that we are all on the same page. ;-)

"Nanu cassa neva maataa na pitaa na bhaatikaadiisu koci rakkhitaa naama atthi, ko ta.m rakkhati"ti?

Previously, we have discussed and agreed that

1. rakkhitar is an agent noun
2. the words maataa, pitaa and bhaatikaadiisu are to be treated as a compound maataa-pitaa-bhaatikaadiisu.
3. ca is a conjunctive

This sentence has a very different style of writing, which is new and interesting to me. For example, the author could have simply used 'natthi' for 'there is not'. I guessed it may be related to the development of logic in India. For those who are not sure, I am referring to logic as a philosophical subject.

Even though I got a similar interpretating previously, but I treated 'assa' as 'shall be'. I will now attempt to use 'assa' as 'for him'. This time, I will use the good old trilinear method, so that more members can understand what is going onn.

I am using the English 'not' for Pali 'na', since it is semantically (logically) more accurate than 'no'. I am also dropping the emphatic particles to make it easier. Let's begin:

"Cassa na maataa na pitaa na bhaatikaadiisu koci rakkhitaa atthi, ko ta.m rakkhati"ti?
but-for him / not / mother / not / father / not / among brother and so on / whosoever / protector / there is / who / him / protects
"But for him, there is protector whosoever not among mother, father, brother and others, who (or what) protects him?"

Rendering this in more proper English structure, and including the emphatic particles, nanu, eva and naama:

"But surely for him, there is indeed no protector whosoever among mother, father, brother and others so, who (or what) protects him?"

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, mahipal6 wrote:

You are right, Nina.

"Nanu cassa neva maataa na pitaa na bhaatikaadiisu koci rakkhitaa naama atthi".

Here we have three emphatic particles: NANU, EVA and NAAMA; the particle of negation (NA) repeated thrice; the conjunctive CA. Perhaps it is this complex combination that confuses. A literal translation would be " (There) certainly isn't any protector whosoever (ko ci rakkhitaa) for him among father, mother, brothers and so forth (mataa, pitaa, bhaatikaadisu)".

"No protector among father, mother, brothers etc." looks odd in English, of course. We should take it as meaning "no protector such as..."

Translating 'assa' as "for him" may seem questionable because the pronoun 'ayam' is commonly taken as "this person", which is literally correct and can be applied here too.

To be doubly sure that this is how it has been understood, I looked up the (for us) famous 14th century Sinhala translation of the Dhammapada Commentary called Saddharma-ratnaavaliya, acclaimed as a literary masterpiece. Its rendering is as given above.

> > In this case, assa is in potential/conditional mood, so 'if' is already implied. I would regard the 'ca' in 'cassa' as conjunctives: and, but; unless it is consistently used in the conditional sense in the literature.

> N: I took assa differently, I thought: for him. Perhaps Mahinda can help us. By the way Mahinda, I find it helpful to read about some points twice in different posts, because then I will not forget! Repetitions in grammar are always useful. I am always happy to see your name and I hope you will come in more often to help us.