Re: Mmd-p.t passage regarding Kc 1 (2 of 3)

Dear Khristos,

Thanks for weighing in on the discussion with your ideas. You have given us
much to think about. I will only touch on a small part for now and will
probably comment on some others later on when I have more time.

You wrote:
(2.2) The second idea might seem even farther removed from you text and its
meaning, but there may also be an interesting parallelism.  The root ‘pad’
in ‘ni.s-pad’ is supposed to have the primary meaning, ‘to fall’, and that
is probably where the sense of ‘pad’, ‘foot’, and hence ‘pada’ and ‘pāda’,
‘step, pace, stride; footstep, footprint, footfall’ (audible and visible);
and so also, ‘word, verse, measure’, and so on.  (There seems to be deep
connection between the movement of walking in steps and the movement of
speaking in words, which may be both analogical and ‘biological’.)

Going back to the sense of ‘to fall’, cf. ‘padyate’ and ‘ni.spadyate’: under
‘pajjati’, PED notes that the Vedic ‘padyate’ had only the sense ‘to come to
fall’, the later Skt. also ‘to go to’. >>

Jim:
The Dhātumālā (the 2nd volume of the Saddanīti) gives "gati" (motion) as the
meaning of the root "pad" (1127, 1493 pada gatiyaṃ). The root for "to fall"
that I normally associate this with is "pat" (391, 1454 pata gatiyaṃ)
although "pad" and "pat" share the same root meaning. For "nippajjati" (or
nipphajjati) we might consider what the prefix (upasagga) "ni" could
possibly mean. One can find a list of its meanings in the Suttamālā (Sadd
III 885) which gives first a verse with 14 meanings followed by a paragraph
with an example or two for each of its meanings. Unfortunately there are
none given for ni+pad among the very few examples. Sometimes if one checks
the commentaries one can find the meaning of a prefix given in a derivation
(nibbacana). It would help if one could find such for a word derived from
ni+pad. If not, we're left with the Sadd list of 14 or the more extensive
one at Abh 1165-7.

One could go through the two lists and come up with a short list of the
meanings for "ni" that seem to fit "pad". I think the meaning "avasāne"
(end, finish, comclusion) with its example "niṭṭhitaṃ" (finished, completed)
could apply to ni + pad (to go to a conclusion, end) in the sense of "to
complete, finish, accomplish, perfect". Nipphanna has a close connection to
siddha (cf. Abh 748), and probably also nipphatti to siddhi. Rūpasiddhi,
siddha, sijjhati are frequently used in describing how a word is formed. I
see another possibility with "vibhajane niddeso" suggestive of analysis. So
it does seem to me that the original meaning depends on how we interpret the
prefix "ni". I would like to mention that the meaning of the root "phal" is
"nipphatti" according to Sadd (772 phala nipphattiyaṃ). When I think of
phala, I think of fruit, fruition, result.

I suspect that more than half of the original meaning of the Buddhavacana
has already been lost and can never be fully recovered until the next
appearance of a Sammāsambuddha. Perhaps, with a lot of hard work we might be
able to recover a tiny little bit...

Best wishes, Jim