Re: ratyaa, ratya.m

Dear Bhante Yuttadhammo,

I like the glimpse into Thai pali studies that you give by way of an introduction. Nice image :-)

I can't give an authoritative answer to this complex question, but I'd like to toss out some general perspectives. I'm very happy to be corrected if there are mistakes or gaps.

This sort of difficulty looks to me like a typical result of the mixture of descriptive and prescriptive techniques in traditional Pali grammar. Odd forms like ratyaa occur at a number of places in the canon, probably for metrical reasons (Geiger §86.2 gives som examples, including where the /y/ assimilates). Traditional grammarians were stuck in a bind, because they wanted to both fully account for the diversity of Buddhavacana AND give a coherent and concise set of rules to guide the composition of new commentarial texts. From what I have seen so far, they didn't succeed in fully sorting out the implications of these contradictory aims, and therefore Pali vyakarana must be viewed as work-in-progress: the prehistory of a Pali Paa.nini who has yet to arrive.

So about nandi (f) (‚ nandin), to be safe you could just use the normal form with -iyaa etc if you are composing a text. If you you find other forms in the corpus then you might want to use them, but I wouldn't personally coin new 'archaic' irregular forms on the basis of rules classical vyakarana that were devised and tacked on to try to account for odd forms.

Another way of saying this is that rules describing archaic forms should be considered non-productive. English also has many frozen expressions containing archaisms that are no longer productive, i.e. can not be used as a model for new sentences.

best regards,

/Rett

>
>
>I've entered into study of Pali the Thai way, surrounded by midget
>samenaras yelling at the top of their lungs and running circles around
>me in their ability to memorize Pali texts. I have a question regarding
>the grammar we are studying. It says that under the paradigm for "ratti
>(f.)", 5th and 7th vibhatti, ekavacana can become "ratyaa" and "ratya.m"
>respectively. Since ratti is the word used as an example, it appears
>that they would then have us conjugate "nandi" as "nanyaa, nanya.m" and
>"vati" as "vayaa, vaya.m" !? Reading through Duroiselle's grammar, it
>gives the same impression:
>
>    (d) Before Ç, of the same cases, final i of the stem may become y by
>    rule 27(i)-a; and as in PÇli there can be no group of three
>    consonants* one t is dropped. Hence we get: ratti + Ç = rattyÇ = ratyÇ.
>    *Except ntr, as in antra, etc.
>
>
>Our teacher, Mahavituun explained it clearer, saying that in his
>understanding, the rule should be "where three consonants are grouped,
>*and two of them are the same*, remove one of the two that are the
>same." This makes it clear, but then how to conjugate "nandi"? Should it
>be "nandyaa" or should it be assumed that this form simply cannot exist
>(according to Maha Vituun)? I am wondering whether there is any
>clarification regarding this in the ancient grammars.
>