Dear Ong Yong Peng,

Now it is quite OK. As for the peculiar syntactical features you mention,
it seems to me that using datives where English uses nominatives (/There is
to me/ as against / I have/) -- this is a feature we find in Sanskrit,
Pali, Sinhala and Tamil, and most probably in all South Asian languages.

Mahinda

On May 17, 2011 6:12am, Ong Yong Peng <palismith@...> wrote:
> 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.


















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