Re: Past Participle

Dear Bhante Yuttadhammo,

Thanks for the interesting question.

>
>
>I have a question about transformation of a sentence from one form to another.
>Pardon me if my poor grammatical knowledge skews the question I have to ask, but
>it seems clear that when verbs are transformed into past participles, they are
>generally construed as passive (e.g. karoti = he does, kata = it is done).  It
>is not so clear with verbs having to do with motion (eg gacchati).  For example,
>  "aha.m  buddha~nca dhamma~nca sa"ngha~nca sara.na.m gataa"
>
>So, now I am looking at a verse in the Dhammapada that goes:
>
>ga.no vo maa upaccagaa

The version I have reads "kha.no ve maa upaccagaa" (Hinüber/Norman 1995)


>I don't quite understand upaccagaa, but I understand that it means "may it not
>overcome".

In case the form is what's unclear here you have upa + ati + a (aorist augment) + gaa

ati+a > atya > acca
upa + acca > upaacca > upacca

>
>If I want to change this sentence, putting "vo" as the subject (or more
>accurately, "so"), in order to say: "he who is not overcome by the moment" (i.e.
>he who doesn't let the moment pass him by), would the following be correct?
>
>ga.nena anupaatigato


In the same verse (Dhp 315) you have a construction related to what you wish to express: kha.naatiitaa "those passed by by the moment".

If you analysed the cpd I guess it would be kha.nena atiitaa

atiitaa is, of course, from ati+ i (another root of motion like gam).

So I would think your suggestion works, alternatively "kha.nena anatiito"

If it is unprecedented in the corpus then you are getting into the difficult area of productive Pali composition. You'd probably be well served by Sanskrit, since there are more materials out there on how to write good and idiomatic Sanskrit. Scholars like A.P. Buddhadatta Mahathera almost certainly had solid Sanskrit underlying their ability to write in Pali (not to mention the authors of the .tiikaa-s, and even Buddhaghosa himself who set the standard for commentarial Pali). If you look at the creativity and inventiveness of Sanskrit authors during the classical period then I think you're safe in coining terms and phrases as long as you can justify them according to the classical grammars. That appears to be the attitude used by classical Indian authors: if the rules allow it, it's okay, regardless of whether it's precedented in the ancient literature or not. If challenged you can point to kha.naatiitaa which is, after all, not merely allowed by the usual rules, but is also Buddhavacana.

best regards,

/Rett