Re: paññaavuddhisutta.m. : cheating : ) and question

Dear Num,

>This are some vocabularies I looked up and also some questions as well,
>
>Vuddhi : growth, nourishment.   What is vuddhiyaa, and why -aa was put
there?

vuddhiyaa is the inflected form of vuddhi for the singular cases: instr.
dat. abl. gen. loc. The -aa is part of -yaa which is affixed to feminine
words in -i, -ii, -u, -uu. Because it is the same ending in all five cases
it is often difficult to know what the actual case is. I take it that our
'vuddhiyaa' is in the dat. (see Warder p. 410 under sa.m-vatt).

>Catu : 4, we somewhat use catu in Thai.  cattaaro'me, I couldn't find "ime"
>in my dicts. as well as the online dict.  I guess that a a conjugation of
>catu+ime.

catu is the stem form. See my reply to Mike on finding "ime". cattaro'me are
two separate words: cattaaro ime and 'me is definitely not the inflectional
ending of cattaaro. You can check this by looking at the paradigms for catu
(see Warder p.153). I think your choice of the word 'conjugation' is
incorrect. Euphonic combination or sandhi would be more appropriate.

>bhikkhave : I don't know the -ave suffix, why it's there and what does it
>mean.

bhikkhave is a vocative plural form of bhikkhu. The suffix is ve and
the u is changed to a. Another pl. vocative form is bhikkhavo which is also
the form of the nom. and acc. pl. (see Warder p.134).

>Sa.mvattanti : in Thai vattana means progress, sa.m, su-, satta, sap- mean
>good, right, beautiful and more. So sappurisa equals to sattapurisa.
>Saddhamma means dhamma of a good person

Your 'satta' doesn't look familiar to me in this context. Don't you mean
'santa'?

>Seva : to associate with, sappurisasa.msevo : to to associate with a good
>person.  Sorry Jim, from your comment to Nina, how do you make purisa in to
>plural

In my post to Nina I gave the resolution of the compound as given in the
Pa.tis com. Do you remember 'sobhanaana.m purisaana.m sammaa sevane'?
purisaana.m is in the plural of the dative or genitive. That is why I made
it plural. However one could check through other commentaries for
resolutions of the same compound to see if any interprets a singular
(purisassa). Admittedly, without the commentary it is hard to ascertain
whether 'person' or 'persons' is meant.

>Savana : listen

listening, hearing
>Pati : react, against, return.   Patti( from my Pali-Thai dict.)  means to
>regress or fall. In Thai Patipatti means to do or to practice.

I don't see a verb 'patti' in PED but there is a 'patati' (he falls). You
also interpret 'pa.tipatti' as a verb but it's really a feminine noun. The
verb is 'pa.tipajjati'.

>I think, I should read more before I ask. But let me ask you my last
>question.  How does the sentence structure work in Pali
>
><<<<cattaaro'me bhikkhave dhammaa pa~n~naavuddhiyaa sa.mvattanti.>Four
>dhammas, bhikkhus, lead to the growth of wisdom.>>>>

That seems like a hard question. To see how it works you should identify the
individual components. I can see 4 basic components:

1. a phrase expressing the subject: cattaaro'me dhammaa which contains three
words all having a masc. nom. pl. ending. dhammaa is the main word and
functions as an agent. It is modified by a numeral adj. (cattaaro) and a
pronominal adj. (ime).

2. a vocative plural: bhikkhave to whom the sutta is addressed.

3. a verb: sa.mvattanti which is in the present indicative active 3rd pers.
plural. You match up the -nti ending with the agent.

4. a compound with the dative ending because the verb requires it.

In summary: [agent] [vocative] [verb] [dative of purpose]

>Look like adj. and then noun. I am confusing with the sequences of words in
>Pali sentence, why verb (sa.mvattanti) is at the end?  In Thai we say "a
boy good", instead of "a good boy" as in English.  In French it's even more
>confusing to me.

Sometimes there is a verb at the beginning although not very often. The
example I'm thinking of is: assosi kho vera"njo braahma.no: "Indeed the
brahmin of Veranja heard:..."

>Well, the bottom-line is I need to study more.

Learning a language does require a lot of time and effort to study. I know
this has been the case for me. I started studying Pali 25 years ago and yet
I still feel like I have an awful lot more studying to do. There's seems to
be no end to it.

>Thanks for your time, your attention and your patience.

You're welcome.

>Your bad student,

You're not such a bad student! It is good to ask questions as we can all
learn something.

Best wishes and keep up your good work in learning Pali,

Jim



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