Re: three rounds

Hi Num,

> Hi Nina and Jim,
>
>
> I just like to share some input from a Thai (not Pali, sorry :))
perspective.
> As I said before, we borrow a lot of words from Pali-Sansakrit.  The more
I
> read the more I found this out.  Language is something very unique to
human.
> I have read couple of articles about estimating the time and history of
human
> migration and genetic linkage in India and American-Indian by using
language
> tracing.   I do not like to study linguistics or literature that much.

Thank-you for sharing your input which I found interesting and helpful.

> In Thai the word "Pari" is not uncommonly used. It is pretty used much as
a
> prefix as well.  The meaning of "Pari" in Thai is somewhat like; all
around,
> surrounded, all or completely. The followings are some examples I can
think
> of. These words all have foreign smell.
>
> Parikatha : circumstantial speech, hint dropping speech.
> Parinibbana :  ceasing all, completely ceased
> Parinnana : knowing all around like in parinna 3
> Paricheta, paricheta-rupa : something being cut all around, section; like
in
> paricheta 1-9, or means  boundary like in parichetarupa
> Parisuddhi : completely clean, very pure
> Parimontala : peripheral area, circle. Somewhat commonly use in Thai,
Bangkok
> and parimontala means Bangkok and the suburbs around her.  Or the area
which
> is encircled by a white thread in a religious or royal ceremony.
> Parivane : in Thai mean the area around.
> Parivatta : turning around, orbit, rotating around, revolving around,
> circling .

I'm sorry to say that I know next to nothing about the Thai language. I take
it that the above words can be found as entry-words in a Thai dictionary, is
that right? I can recognize the
Pali words corresponding to all of them except 'parivane' (vana = forest?).
'parimontala' likely corresponds to Pali/Skt. 'parima.n.dala' and
'paricheta' to Pali 'pariccheda'. I also saw your 'upatampaka' on dsg today
which I think must be equal to the Pali 'upatthambhaka' (supporting). The
Thai meaning of 'pari' is pretty much, as you describe it, the same as the
basic one for Pali like: 'all around'. The Greek 'peri' is similar, but Old
English doesn't seem to have anything like it. Latin uses 'circum-'. In Pali
texts like the Abhidhaanappadiipikaa and the Saddaniiti one finds many more
meanings and occasionally the commentaries give meanings for the prefixes
but are often hard to find. In the tika for AN I.49 a meaning is given for
the 'upa' of 'upakkilesa'. The meanings you give for 'parivatta' are very
good.

> The Dhammacakkapavattana sutta, my understanding of this word is it means
the
> wheel (cakka) of dhamma that keeps the cycle(vatta) going on for a very
long
> period of time (kapa), am I even close?

I think you may be off the mark here. My understanding is that 'pavattana'
is a  causative word having a meaning like 'turning (the wheel) in a forward
direction'. Your usage of 'cycle' sounds a lot like samsara which is akin to
the wheel of life (bhavacakka). Isn't the wheel of dhamma altogether
different from the wheel of life? I understand 'dhamma' here to mean the
teachings of the Buddha or the middle way.

> Budsir : I have not much luck with the site. Even I have a LAN system at
work
> the site is still very slow. For me there is always a problem to get into
> this site.  The search engine on Budsir is not that user friendly.
Anyway,
> there are couple website that I can download the whole tipitaka or zip
file
> of each book in 45 volumes version, no atthakatha available though. The
> search engine on Winword 2000 is pretty good. There is also an update for
> Thai Font available directly from Microsoft online support.  I have found
> couple of errors in the Budsir-Mahidol version, such as 6 instead of 16,
> kusala instead of akusala or tomanassindriya instead of somanassaindriya.
On
> Thai keyboard Tor-tahan and Sor-sear is a key a part.  Such an enormous
work,
> I think an error is inevitable.

I've only been to the Budsir site a couple of times mainly to test it out
and it seems to work okay for me. I try to avoid the home page because of
the graphics (over 1 MB!). This is the only site I'm aware of that allows
one to search the Tipitaka and Atthakatha online. I probably won't use it
much myself as it's more convenient to search my Budsir disk. One
disadvantage of the Budsir site is that you can't seem to copy and paste a
page of text in a readable form. Most of my searching for Pali words is done
on the Burmese CSCD disk largely because it has so many more texts,
including the tikas. When you say you can download the Tipitaka from several
websites, do you mean the Thai version of it (in Pali)? And if so, could you
give the URLs? The sites for Tipitaka downloads that I know of are
tipitaka.org (Burmese) and metta.lk (Sinhalese) and also the Journal of
Buddhist Ethics website which has the same version as metta.lk.

> I like your B&W pic on dsg. It has an interesting composition, nice
backlight
> and contrast. I think I prefer to call it as an abstract not just a
portrait
> B&W.  I have not done any B&W for a while.  Nice pic and it's good to be
able
> to match face and name.

Thanks, Num, I'm glad you can appreciate the artistic quality of it. It was
taken by an artist friend of mine who was keen on photography. I like the
one of you with the hippopotamus, a great shot!

In your other note you asked about the icestorm in Toronto. I wasn't in
Toronto at the time but I didn't hear on the radio that it was bad. I think
they were expecting a lot worse. I remember that there were problems and
delays at the airport around that time (more than 2 weeks ago). In early
1998 there was a really bad icestorm in eastern Ontario and Montreal but
Toronto just barely escaped it. Lots of long power outages and downed trees.
I heard of the ice being 4" thick. Imagine a car encased in ice that thick!

Best wishes,
Jim


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