I am also not really getting my head around this. It seems to just be a mistake? DPD says endings in -ya are “gerund” while endings in -tvā are “absolutive”, and distinguish the senses. But normally absolutive = gerund (in Pali anyway). In Magadhabhasa the two endings are treated together and the senses not distinguished.
One interesting detail in Magadhabhasa:
Some facets of the way absolutives are employed can be more easily grasped when the remnant nature of the instrumental case is borne in mind
This is a really good point. An abolutive expresses something whose action has been completed before the main action. But by implication, the main action is enabled through the prior action, or can happen because of it, this giving an instrumental sense. Consider say in the jhana formula, upasampajja viharati, “having entered one dwells”. It’s not just incidentally that one “enters” first, but rather one is able to dwell because one has entered.
This duality comes across in a number of idioms where a word, typically ending with a long feminine -ā, functions ambiguously between absolutive and instrumental. This is further complicated because the final -ya can be dropped. A classic example is abhiññā sacchikatvā: does this means “having realized by means of direct knowledge”, or “having realized after directly knowing”?
Many thanks to both of you for (1) raising the question and (2) clarifying & expounding! This seems like an important mini-discussion, if only for trying to make sense of how DPD classifies these. But Bhante adds supremely nuanced details
Question 1: te yena so janapado yen’ aññataraṃ gāma-padaṃ ten’ upasaṅkamiṃsu
gāma-padaṃ is classified as a genitive tappurisa compound although it is written in the accusative, correct? Is it classified as such because yena requires a genitive?
Question 2: tena hi samma tvañ ca sāṇa-bhāraṃ bandha, ahañ ca sāṇa-bhāraṃ bandhissāmi
How would one recognize sāṇa-bhāraṃ as a genitive tappurisa compound when, for all intents and purposes, it looks like the accusative?
Or maybe I’m going down a rabbit-hole and get too concerned about recognizing genitive tappurisa compounds?
I was going to talk about this very issue in class tonight, when we do a little review of recent week’s material! Thanks, Stephen. But I’ll go over it again anyway, since I thought there might be confusion on that.
