Re: te suta.m/me suta.m

Dear Jim,

>sammukhaa me ta.m aavuso Channa Bhagavato suta.m sammukhaa ca
>pa.tiggahita.m Kaccaanagotta.m bhikkhum ovadantassa:
>
>I would translate the above as:
>"This, friend Channa, was heard by me in the presence of the Blessed One,
>and accepted <by me> in the presence of <him> instructing Kaccaanagotta,
>the bhikkhu: ..."

Well, Jim, I was translating into English :-) But of course this is
more literal.

>I'm not sure if it's correct that "sammukhaa" should take a genitive and I'm
>puzzled as to why "sammukhaa" is repeated twice. Perhaps Ananda heard
>it on one occasion but it wasn't until later that he accepted it.

No, the sequence is very common in the form:
sammukhaa suta.m sammukhaa ca pa.tiggahita.m

If the two phrases are different, the second case should imply
'learning' in some form. Obviously, it is one thing to have heard
something and another to have taken it in so as to remember it.

Here's an example from D  II 124:
   tassa me sa'nghassa sammukhaa suta.m sammukhaa pa.tiggahita.m

What is different in the example addressing Channa is the order and
neither of our renderings attempted to address this. In fact this is
something that modern Thai Pali scholars have addressed to some
degree. It is taken up in the Oxford D.Phil thesis of Pathompong
Bodhiprasiddhi. So it is a clear that the position of samukhaa and me
is for the sake of emphasis.

I am not sure how to render that in English. Perhaps something like:
"This, friend Channa, I myself have heard in the actual presence of
the Lord and apprehended <it > in his presence ... " ?

Lance

>  Now, I
>would normally have taken "me" as an instrumental enclitic form of the
>stem "amha" in accordance with Aggava.msa. I don't yet know what
>Kaccaayana has to say about this in the Naamakappa but from reading
>Kacc-v 308 (cha.t.thii ca) "kato me kalyaa.no" is given as an example of
>the use of the sixth (genitive) case in the sense of the third which would
>include the instrumental agent. So one could take the "me" in the Channa
>quote as a genitive form. Kacc 308 & 309 together gives the genitive a
>very wide scope as it can take the place of 4 different cases in many
>instances and to add to the confusion there is the similarity of the forms
>of the dative or 4th case.
>
>Best wishes,
>Jim
>
><< One the one hand, there are many examples like the one you quote, where
>there is agreement between a ta-participle and the noun it qualifies, the
>agent of the ta-participle being in the genitive. However, there are things
>about the te suta.m/me suta.m constructions that puzzle me. See, for
>instance, the following example from S III 134: sammukhaa me ta.m aavuso ...
>Bhagavato suta.m sammukhaa ca pa.tiggahita.m Kaccaanagotta.m bhikkhum
>ovadantassa: dvayanissito, and so on. ovadantassa evidently qualifies
>Bhagavato (gen.), so we confront an example similar to the one I mentioned
>earlier: Two genitives are apparently constructed with suta.m. >>
>
>
>---
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