Re: MN 3 questions (1)

Dear Venerable Bodhi,

I am using the "A New Course in Reading Pali" too, at Chapter 9

As you have mentioned below: "No book is perfect in this respect" - so how a self-learner like me can catch all grammatical forms idioms, and locutions meanings of the Canons. I already knew one way, that is asking question among our pali mail group, but sometimes I do not want to disturb every one

Sincerely yours,

Huynh Trong Khanh

From: "Bhikkhu Bodhi venbodhi@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2015 9:32 PM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] MN 3 questions (1)

Dear Vojislav,

I have used Lily De Silva's Pali Primer to teach elementary level Pali, but after working through the Primer one is still not sufficiently prepared to read the Pali of the Nikayas. The Pali Primer teaches the fundamentals of the grammar according to the models established by the Pali grammarians, but the Nikayas use many grammatical forms, idioms, and locutions not covered by the Primer. This is why it is valuable, indeed almost essential, to work with a textbook built around short passages from the Nikayas which explains the grammatical forms, idioms, and locutions. No book is perfect in this respect, but I prefer "A New Course in Reading Pali." Others have used Warder's "Introduction to Pali," but Warder's dense explanations can be daunting for a student who does not have a background in linguistics.

Best,
Bhikkhu Bodhi

On 6/25/2015 9:44 AM, vojislavkovacevic@... [palistudy] wrote:

Hello Bhikkhu Bodhi and thank you once again.

Of course I do use a book, De Silva's pali primer, and the DPR and english translations. But not everything is explained in a book, and sometimes if I am unsure about something I want to ask for confirmation, hence I am a member of this forum. Though of course is forced to reply.

I actually made a static web page with the grammar from De Silva's book ( without many of the examples from the book ), and I made it really easy for navigation so I use that when studying, since I have made it so that it is really easy to search through and jump to different sections (btw if anyone wants this let me know and I'll email them).

But the book is I guess not perfect, the only assaṃ I've found in my notes is singular feminine locative of ima (this), hence I was unsure how it fit in the sentence, and as it turned out it does not have anything to do with ima ( as you explained ). The other option was "horse". I guess assaṃ is what you were reffering to when you implied that I am studying the language without any support.

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