some thoughts on studying the texts

Dear group,

I will be going away for about five days starting Monday during which
time I won't be sending any email messages. I must say that I'm really
keen on studying these old Pali grammatical texts and I hope to
contribute considerably towards this as time goes on. I've been
thinking of how best to go about presenting the subject to this group.
At this early stage I think it might be best for me to go about
studying it on my own and periodically posting and sharing the results
of my studies as they become available. I won't be giving any
assignments and all of you are quite at liberty to treat this list
like you would a magazine subscription. However, if interested, you
are certainly very welcome to participate in this study by asking
questions, adding comments, offering suggestions, and also taking up
the study yourself and offering contributions just as I intend to do
myself.

Many of the grammatical texts available on the CSCD disk and from SLTP
are not in the best shape and in order to ensure the accuracy of the
texts I have to go through the ones I have and look for obvious typos
and render the text suitable for email use. For the
Kaccaayana-vyaakara.na and Buddhappiya's Ruupasiddhi, I have three
editions with which to compare. I believe that one of the best ways to
learn a grammatical text is to memorize the suttas or short aphorisms
at the very least. Unfortunately, this is not a standard approach for
most Westerners (who also don't usually like grammar either). Without
knowing a grammar really well it is very hard to find one's way around
and locate a specific sutta that applies to your grammatical question
without the aid of indices and tables which are not available online.
Effort can be made in the preparation of such indices and tables for
this group. I got started on listing the kit (pimary) affixes in
Kaccayana -- similar to the one I made for the Saddaniti. I can think
of all kinds of study projects to help us better understand and work
with these remarkable texts. Kaccayana's grammar contains 673 suttas
divided into 23 ka.n.das. The main divisions are: sandhikappo,
naamakappo (which includes syntax, compounds, and taddhita affixes),
aakhyaatakappo (verbs), and kibbidhaanakappo (primary affixes). More
to come...

Jim