se.t.tho -- derivation 6

Derivation 6

Text: sundare satipa.t.thaanaadibhede dhamme eseti buddhetiiti vaa
se.t.tho. hetukattusaadhanoya.m. supubba-esadhaatu buddhiya.m ta. ta.m
se.t.tha.m. -- Namakkaara.tiikaa, p.11

Translation: Or, he increases, he makes grow the beautiful dhammas in
the category of satipa.t.thaana and so on; thus 'se.t.tho'. This
(=se.t.tho) has the function of the causal agent. The root 'esa' in
the sense of increase or growth, preceded by the prefix 'su', 'ta'
(the past participle affix). That 'se.t.tha.m' (accusative singular).

Comments:

1) On "eseti buddheti". Both verbs are causative forms. The
Saddaniiti, p.446 lists the root for the first verb in: "926 esa
buddhiya.m. esati." The CPD has an entry (1 of 6) for the verb 'esati'
with the meaning of "to be wise, understand" and derives it from the
foregoing Sadd 926 root but takes the 'buddhiya.m' to be from the root
'budh' (to understand) which may be an error. In footnote b (Sadd
p.446) the 'buddhiya.m' is taken to be a by-form of 'vuddhiya.m' on
the basis of the Burmese nissaya gloss: 'pvaa3'. Not being sure if
this word really meant 'increase', I checked with Suan Lu Zaw and with
his kind permission I quote his answer (Apr. 9) as follows:

****
The Burmses term "pvaa: / pwaa:" means, exactly as you said, increase,
growth, escalation, which are the equivalent meanings of the Pali term
"vuddhi".

The colon signs are used in Burmese script to indicate the highest
tone or the 3rd tone among the three tones. Burmse has only three
tones, by the way.

The first tone "pwa" means to swell, inflate, bloat, puff up, which
are the physical aspects of the meanings of vuddhi. The third tone
"pwaa:" covers both physical and mental meanings of vuddhi.

Thus, the first tone and the third tone for the Burmese "pw(a)" are
related as you can see.

The second tone "pwaa" has the meaning of loudness and/or muchness of
speech. So we can also see some aspects of increase in the context od
sound and speech. <endquote>
****

'buddheti' seems to be a by-form of the causative 'vaddheti' as far as
I can tell. There are quite a number of variations on the stem (which
could be a cause for confusion): vaddh- --> vuddh-, buddh- &
va.d.dh- --> vu.d.dh-, bu.d.dh-. 'buddheti' is extremely rare as the
only other occurrence with the same meaning I could find is in the
same Namakkaara-.tiikaa, p.200 as a gloss for 'va.d.dheti' which
lends further support for the meaning of 'he increases' instead of 'he
causes to understand'.

2) The meaning of this derivation of 'se.t.tho' is 'increaser of the
beautiful (dhammas)'. Instead of 'increaser', 'grower' or 'propagator'
are other possible alternatives.

Best wishes,
Jim