Dear Mahinda,

thank you. This is a valuable lesson in Pali! Yes, I do now remember [dative]...[atthi] = has.

I thought English being an IndoEuropean language may have/had similar syntax. I did a quick research, and sure it did.

I quote from the Online Etymology Dictionary on the entry 'have':

<OED> Sense of "possess, have at one's disposal" (I have a book) is a shift from older languages, where the thing possessed was made the subject and the possessor took the dative case (e.g. L. est mihi liber "I have a book," lit. "there is to me a book"). <OED>

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=have

So, in our sentence, 'rakkhitar' is the subject, and the possessor took the dative case 'assa'.

Can you also help Nina with her question on ca. Thanks.

metta,
Yong Peng.

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

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.

> 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?"