[palistudy] atthesu

Howdy Jim,

>I understood the gloss on Sd 1245 to take 'pesa' etc. to be referring
>to meanings: "pesane atisagge pattakaale ca icc etesu *atthesu*
>kiccapaccayaa honti." (p.862). However, I'm not sure if 'meanings'
>here is meant as 'attha' itself has many meanings including 'payojana'
>(purpose, use, application) which could apply too.

My guess for now is that he's not using 'attha' in any special way,
since 'etesu atthesu' is such a common formula for explicating a
string of locatives of sense (like pesane atisagge...). And that
string of locatives is explicating the compound in the sutta proper.
Since the technique is such conventional commentarial usage, I
wouldn't expect 'attha' to be used unconventionally here.

Instead I'd take his use of 'attha' in general to simply be wide
enough to include both meaning and purpose. I haven't seen him
explicitly state this, but I'm inferring it because many nuances of
meaning are defined according to pragmatic considerations. For
example differences between 'giving directions', 'ordering', 'asking
nicely', etc, all of which on the surface level appear in the form of
a command in the imperative. (Sd 880, for example).

So, for example, if you address someone using the imperative, while
prostrating yourself before that person, then it's not an order but a
'formal request' and is the height of politeness:

ajjhesana.m ajjhi.t.tha.m namakkaarapubbako niyogo, tasmi.m
ajjhi.t.the: desetu bhagavaa dhamma.m., rajja.m kaaretha no ubho icc
aadi. (from Sd 880)

tr. "Formal entreaty (defined tautalogically as ajjhesana.m =
ajjhi.t.tha.m) is an enjoinment (niyogo) accompanied by prostration
(namakkaara-pubbako). In this sense (of) formal entreaty: May the
Fortunate One teach Dhamma. May you both rule us, etc."

Since this particular nuance of attha is defined in terms of social
conventions, I can't help but consider it more pragmatically based.

Still, some important issues of the use of the imperative are simply
left out (at least here). There is greater politeness in the
imperative if it's put in the third person, and if a 'royal plural'
is used. Person and number lead to a lot of important nuances in
imperative use that I haven't yet seen taken up by Aggava.msa.

>  There is an
>interesting section on the term 'artha' in Kahrs' Indian Semantic
>Analysis, pp.39-47 which I have started to go through.

I'm glad you're looking into that. I had to send my library copy
back, but I enjoyed that book a lot, as far as I got. I think I'll
put in a new interlibrary loan request . I even found a copy of Yaska
at a used bookstore, but haven't done much with it yet.


best regards,

/Rett