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

Dear Jim, thanks for that response and information.  I really like your
attention to detail!

I'll try to follow up on your pointers, here, along the way.  I also have
another separate question, not directly related to this topic, so I'll post
it as a separate message.

Metta,
Khristos

On 18 July 2010 04:04, Jim Anderson <jimanderson_on@...> wrote:

>
>
> 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
>
> 
>


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