Some Remarks about Pali adjectives and about "pavana" as an adjective

Rett and E.M

Concerning the topic raised by you, I would like to discuss something
first --- how Pali adjectives are viewed in Burma.

Basically we have only four categories of Pali words --- nouns, verbs,
prefixes (upasaara) and indeclinables (nipaata). We don't have
adjectives nor adverbs as distinct categories but only nouns
adjectivally or adverbially used. This approach is, in my opinion, more 
compatible with  actual usage. I would try to prove it using an example,
which I admit I have made up, but you can correct me if you think it
looks superficial.

dve janaa nagara.m gacchanti. eko (1)_pa.n.dito_ puriso hoti, itaro
baalo.(2) _pa.n.dito_ baalassa magga.m dasseti.(3) _pa.n.dito_ hi naama
kattabbaakattabba.m jaanaati.

Trs.   Two persons go to the town. One is a wise man (while) the other,
a foolish (man). The wise one shows the way to the foolish one. A wise
man indeed knows what should be done and what should not be done.

In the example above, there are three /pa.n.dito/s, which are used in
three ways.

The first is an adjective modifying /puriso/. (Identical Adjective
relation in my RG. Of course, it can be also used as a predicate like in
"/so pa.n.dito hoti /= he is wise")

The second is a noun that represents the wise man mentioned in the
preceding sentence. (You might like to say it is only a pronoun but we
call it a noun because we have a different definition of pronouns
(/sabbanaama/) --- only those declined more or less similarly to /sabba
/are called pronouns)

The third is also a noun but it represents the class of all wise persons.

All words that you would call adjectives in Pali can be used in all
three ways given above. They are not really equivalent to English
adjectives, which can be used in the first and third ways but not in the
second (I don't know about those in French, German, etc) Moreover, all
nouns can be used as adjectives --- in theory at least. And they are
declined with various nominal cases just like ordinary nouns.

Therefore, we like to view them as nouns adjectivally used rather than
as belonging to a separate category of adjectives.

In the case of /pavana/:

rett wrote:

>According to Apte's dictonary, pavana is an adj meaning 'pure' in Sanskrit, so ancient Pali grammarians may have considered it a valid Pali word even if it never happens to occur in that sense in the corpus of Pali literature.
>

We have no objection to calling it an adjective because, as mentioned before, all nouns can be theoretically used as adjectives. In practice, however, we should check whether it is
actually used in Pali literature or not.


>Pavana is glossed as sodhana in Sadd Dhaatumaalaa:
>1246 puu pavane
>pavana.m sodhana.m
>
>This is the noun form, and appears to have been chosen (or constructed) to 'fit' the root. It does seem related to the adjective sense Mason reports.
>
>The verb form gets used in the nirutta of puñña . From the same Sadd entry:
>puññan ti attano kaaraka.m punaati sodhetii ti puñña.m
>This is possibly parallel to a Sanskrit tradition deriving pu.nya < puunati.
>
>Does Mason provide an actual example of the use of pavana in the sense 'clean' in Pali? Could you say more about where this occurs?
> 
>
  From the gloss you have taken from Sadd, the root puu really means "to
cleanse, to purify" Then pavana, if actually used as an adjective, may
mean "cleansing, purifying" We can't be sure, however, without referring
to the actual context where it appears.

with metta

Ven. Pandita



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