Re: Dipavamsa passage

Dear Ven. Nyanatusita and Petra,

In Childers Dictionary of Pali, he quotes Alwis's translation (partial) of Kaccāyana's grammar:

nama-lingaparikkhāro = "the furniture of nouns and their genders, niceties of composition" (I. 64)

so this does tend to confirm your intuition that the term refers to inflections.

Alwis' translation of this passage is found on page 67 (Kachchayana's Grammar of the Pali Language):

"They, moreover, disregarded the nature of nouns, their gender, and (other) accidents [this is the word he uses to translate parikkhāra], as well as the (various) requirements of style, and corrupted the same by different forms."

In a footnote he translates ākappakarani, as "decorations, embellishments, niceties of style or composition, or figures of speech."

You may download a copy of the book which has this whole section (page 63-69) translated at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tcd642jmyl6rl2y/d%27Alwis%2C%20Kachch%C4%81yana%27s%20Grammar%20of%20the%20P%C4%81li%20Language.pdf

Mettā,

Bryan

On Sunday, November 17, 2013 5:21:09 AM, Petra Kieffer-Pülz <kiepue@...> wrote:

Dear Ven Nyanatusita,

looking through Deokar's book on Technical terms ... of Pali grammars, I could not find the terms parikkhāra, ākappakaraṇiya or ākappa searched by you. Also Cone does not list ākappa as a technical term of grammar. By the way the Dīpavaṃsa verses are also quoted in the Sp-ṭ I 116, and there you have the reading ākappakaraṇāni (in the Burmese edition).

I, therefore, see no chance whatsoever to link parikkhāra and ākappa-karaṇāni with grammar.

Given the context where many different things are listed changed by the Mahāsāṅghikas, couldn't it be that nāma and liṅga refer to their language, but parikkhāra (requisite) and ākappa (dress or comportment) to their outward appeareance? Karaṇa could form a third instance (forming a Dvandva with ākappa), and refer to the performance of their legal acts or form a Tatpurusa with ākappa ("the act of making dresses??).

pakatibhāva I would understand as the "common (i.e. original) state" which still is kept by the Theravādin, but changed by the Mahāsāṅghikas, thus I would come up with something like:

"Forsaking the common way regarding nouns, genders, requisites, dresses and performance [of their legal acts] (or: and the act of making [their] dresses??), they made it differently."

Best,

Petra

Am 17.11.2013 um 06:41 schrieb Nyanatusita:

Dear All,

Perhaps someone can help with translating an obscure passage in the Dīpavaṃsa, which I need for an article I am working on.

Nāmaṃ liṅgaṃ parikkhāraṃ ākappakaraṇīyāni ca, / pakatibhāvaṃ jahitvā tañca aññaṃ akaṃsu te. = Geiger, 5.38, 44, 50; SL edition (on GRETIL) verse 77, 83, 89.

This was translated by Oldenberg in 1879 as:

“Forsaking the original rules regarding nouns, genders, compositions, and the embellishments of style, they changed all that.”

The context is a description of the changes that the Mahasamghikas and other schools made to their canons and texts.

I checked Pali and Sanskrit dictionaries but found nowhere an indication that parikkhāraṃ and ākappakaraṇīyāni can have the meaning of ““compositions, and the embellishments of style”. Both parikkhāra and ākalpa can mean 'decoration' but what does this mean in terms of grammar? The first two terms, nāmaṃ & liṅgaṃ would refer to noun and gender. Could the two terms parikkhāraṃ and ākappakaraṇīyāni perhaps refer to inflection or declension or the morphology of words, ,e.g. a locative plural in -ehi instead of -esu; or a nominative singular in -aḥ instead of -o or bhikṣu instead of bhikkhu or pācattika instead of pācittiya? The Mahasamghikas and other schools sanskritized their texts to varying degrees.

I am not sure too whether pakatibhāvaṃ means 'original rules', rather it would mean 'original state'.

Remarkably, there is no English translation of the Dipavamsa other than Oldenberg's 135 year old translation.

Best wishes,
Bh Nyanatusita

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