Re: The "Continuative Participle" mystery solved?

Hi Rett,

Thanks for the quote from Warder --as always, his prose is opaque to the
point of being obfuscatory.

>>  I am almost proud to say that I do not own a copy of Warder's grammar:
>
> And you're from University of Toronto? ;-)

About the only thing Warder and I have in common is that we despise Toronto,
and especially its university; I, however, have escaped it, whereas he has
not.  I met and interviewed him once (for about an hour and a half) --the
result of that interview can be found on-line.

> What makes Warder helpful
> for working with traditional grammar (at least at the beginning) is
> that his book includes very many of these grammatical terms, like
> pubbakiriyaa, and that they are indexed.

However, they are not credited to sources; and it is significant (to me)
that the terms endemic to Kaccayana be kept discrete from later accretions
to the grammatical tradition.  My book does use some grammatical terms of
later coinage, but they are all duly notes as being foreign to Kaccayana
  --and, where possible, I have traced their usage to their school of origin.

> This is really interesting. Any chance you could send in a few lines
> from the ruupasiddhi using the term? (only if you have time, of
> course)

The entire Ruupasiddhi is available as a free etext --as are the others I
mentioned.  I did not mention that the term is also employed in the
Balavataro (with the alternate spelling Pubbakriya --rather than
Pubbakiriya).  This makes it quite easy to search and find instances of the
term being employed:
http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/fiindolo/gretil.htm#PPhil

Scroll down to Pali texts --the grammars are under "paracanonical texts",
under the further category of "Philology", as I recall.

> In any case, naming the form after one particular employment (past
> action) might have been avoided since the form can also refer to
> simultaneous action.

No no --that's precisely why the chosen name is perfect!  "Pubba-" doesn't
necessarily mean "Past", but has meanings related to preparation (as I wrote
previously).  Thus, a present usage such as "Having cooked we eat" fits the
term; and so would more complex examples, "Would that we had cooked we could
eat", etc.

E.M.



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