Dear Dhivan,
I see that Abh 613ab lists 4 Pāli names for 'rhinoceros' as follows:
" Khaggakhaggavisāṇā tu, palāsādo ca gaṇḍako; "
(i.e., khaggo, khaggavisāṇo, palāsādo, and gaṇḍako)
Abh-ṭ gives the following interpretation for 'khaggavisāṇo':
"Khaggasadisaṃ visāṇamassa saṇṭhānatoti khaggavisāṇo, ṇo. Ettha khaggasaddo
asipariyāyo."
I would translate the first part as "its horn is shaped like a sword". I
think ṇo may stand for a taddhita affix 'a' added to the whole compound. The
last part with asipariyāyo confirms that the 'khagga' in the compound
'khaggavisāṇo' does not refer to a rhinoceros but to a knife type object.
However, 'khaggo' on its own can mean a rhinoceros as if it were short for
'khaggavisāṇo' — like saying rhino instead of rhinoceros.
I'm not sure if this has any relevance to the Uraga verses but it does show
that 'khaggavisāṇo' = 'khaggo'. I think a form with the meaning of 'the
horn of the rhinoceros' would be a neuter tappurisa compound
(khaggavisāṇaṃ).
Best wishes,
Jim
----- original message -----
From: "Dhivan Jones dhivanjones@... [palistudy]"
<palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: January 29, 2017 6:58 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Article on the Uraga verses (Sn 1–17)
Dear Ven Bodhi,
I know that you are going to be mostly off-line until mid-March but I wanted
briefly to reply before too much time goes by. Thanks again for your
extremely thoughtful precise comments both on the maning of the expression
/khaggavisāṇa/ and on the Uraga verses. I don’t think I have anything more
to add on the Uraga verses, except again that a more thorough study of the
non-dualist strand of dhamma in early Buddhist texts would be great; but as
for your comments on /khaggavisāṇa/ I could say something in reply to your
interest in unambiguous ancient uses of /khaggavisāṇa/ in the sense of
‘rhinoceros’. Among the various arguments I put forward in my article
concerning the ambiguity of /khaggavisāṇa/, I think the most ambiguous (so
to speak) is the usage in the Jain text the Jinacaritra. There the Prakrit
expression /khaggivisāṇaṃ/ is used alongside other words for animals, and is
followed by a verse summary in which /khaggivisāṇaṃ/ is replaced by
/khagge/. Of course this is not an example of the unambiguous use of
/khaggavisāṇa/ to mean ‘rhinoceros’. But my argument overall was not that
Pāli /khaggavisāṇa/ meant ‘rhinoceros’ in an unambiguous sense but that
readers of the time would have ‘heard’ the expression as referring
ambiguously to both the rhinoceros and its horn. And if this was the case
then it is acceptable to translate /khaggavisāṇa/ as ‘rhinoceros’, a
translation with many advantages from a poetical point of view.
With all good wishes, and very much looking forward to the publication of
your translation of the Sutta-nipāta,
Dhivan