Re: Introductory verse and commentary

Thanks for the answers. I'd like to say now, as a kind of blanket
statement, that anything I don't respond to should be understood as
'read with gratefulness and pleasure'. It's impossible to respond to
everything (apart from the fact that the number of posts would
snowball to infinity). Similarly, I'm happy for whatever responses I
get, but don't expect any. That's how e-mail forums seem to work.

>  suttassa hito suttahito (sandhikappo),
>ta.m suttahita.m,

Yes, this sounds better. I'd also go with the commentary here. My
first guess would be that that way in which  knowledge of the rules
of sandhi would be beneficial to the suttas would be that it would
help preserve them from corruption. Since copying manuscripts is a
way of gaining merit, it can happen that basically illiterate people
make copies with disastrous results. The more grammar that scribes
understand, the less likely they are to mutilate the fine points (one
would hope), and the more likely they are to notice and correct their
own errors. Further, the more people who are able to read the
suttas,the more they can be put into practice and kept alive and
relevant. I wonder if there is a connection here to the attitude
which culminated in Panini's detailed phonetic analysis of Sanskrit;
its explicit goal was to protect Vedic from linguistic change (which
was viewed as corruption rather than development).

>  Instead of
>'subuddhu.m' the Sinhalese and Indian reading is 'suboddhu.m' which
>makes me curious as to whether both forms accord with the grammatical
>rules or only just one of them.

Here's Fahs' entry for the infinitive of the root 'budh':

bujjhitum buddhum -bodhitum -bodhum boddhum

I'm not sure whether he has culled that list from the literature, or
is providing entries from one of the grammars, but I suspect the
former.

>There is an informative explanation of this kind
>of etymology in Lily de Silva's introduction (p. lxviii) to the Tika
>on the Digha Nikaya (PTS) which I will quote on another occasion.


Thanks! I just returned that book to the library without having read
the introduction! (lazy me). I'll try to remember to look at it next
time I'm there.

A work on this subject which could be of interest is Eivind Kahrs'
_Indian Semantic Analysis_ 1998, which treats these sorts of niruktis
and discusses broader philosophical questions and rhetorical
strategies. It's not a work on Pali, but might still be interesting
to people on this list.

>
>>  4) I was wondering if the commentator should have written
>_uddhata.m_
>>  tamo yena so uttamo. 'Tamo' = skrt 'tamas' which is neuter but the
>>  commentator seems to be treating it as a masculine -a stem word. Is
>>  this a mistake, or is there a viable new form 'tamo' (m) -a stem?
>
>I think it is possible that 'tamo' might be taken as a masculine as
>our commentator has it. Apte's Sanskrit dictionary gives a
>masculine form 'tama.h' (darkness).

Where exactly? I couldn't find that in Apte, or MW, but I only spent
a couple of minutes searching. I did find a masculine, tamasa.h, but
the only masculine of tamas (as a consonant stem) that I found was as
an epithet of Rahu.

>I'd like very much to do a detailed study of all the
>words in the verses as explained in the commentary. I know this will
>take a long time but the important thing is that we will still be
>learning a great deal about Pali. And we can bring in any of
>Kaccayana's suttas or material from other grammars to help explain
>things better.

I agree that even if we just study a single word in depth, it could
lead to further questions, which lead to further questions and we'd
finally end up learning all sorts of things about the language.
Wherever this goes is fine by me. I just send in questions or other
responses when I have time. My hope is that there will be lots of
aside 'chat' about methods, editions, where to find books, favorite
dictionaries, good restaurants in various cities, you know, the
works! I was also very happy to see how exactly you had transcribed
from what I believe is Burmese characters? Just getting that
late-commentary extract was exciting! I printed it out and started
writing all over it.

best regards,

/Rett