Hello John. Question from the homework. I asked some other friends who know Pali so I sorta-kinda get it, but I imagine others may have the same question I did. Something that was particularly helpful in one explanation was how the sentence looks without “adhigantuṁ”.
Copy paste:
Hello friends… I am currently stuck with something in my homework. Based on the example they give in the book I can make the sentence work but I don’t actually know what I’m doing.
Tīhi, bhikkhave, aṅgehi samannāgato pāpaṇiko abhabbo anadhigataṁ vā bhogaṁ adhigantuṁ, adhigataṁ vā bhogaṁ phātiṁ kātuṁ.
From AN 3.19
“Adhigantuṁ” is explained as the infinitive of adhigacchati. Which, fine. But I don’t know what it’s doing in the sentence.
Thanks for your question. As you state adhigantuṃ is indeed an infinitive (of the verb adhigacchati), and there is also another infinitive in that sentence, which you didn’t mention, kātuṃ (verb karoti). Both of these infinitives are tied to the adjective abhabbo (incapable) or later on in the exercise bhabbo (capable). Thus the pāpaṇiko is not capable to obtain/attain, or later, endowed with different factors is capable to attain.
So, I hope you can see that the Pāli structure for use of infinitives is actually very similar to English use (“all the class is keen to learn Pāli!”).
I don’t see how the sentence makes any sense without the infinitive here. Does this help?
To elaborate a little further and hopefully make this clear:
Endowed with three factors, mendicants, (Tīhi, bhikkhave, aṅgehi samannāgato) a shopkeeper is unable (pāpaṇiko abhabbo) to obtain unattained wealth, or (anadhigataṁ vā bhogaṁ adhigantuṁ) bring to fullness attained wealth (adhigataṁ vā bhogaṁ phātiṁ kātuṁ).
Apologies about the delay in the response! I’m been trying to get my head back into the space when I was first doing this exercise and I think I remember what caused the confusion. In the book it says it is similar to the English “to be” and I got stuck on the “be” part and didn’t see a way to have “be” in the sentence and still make sense. I also believe I was overthinking the -taṁ vs. -tuṁ declensions.
This was the explanation given by the friend I mentioned, for what it’s worth:
It looks to me like it’s modifying the adjective “abhabbo” in connection with “bhogaṃ”. That is, “incomptent (abhabbo) to acquire (adhigantuṃ) wealth (bhogam).” Without it, the sentence would be something like “The merchant is incompetent wealth (not yet) acquired.” The infinite is needed to turn it into “The merchant is incompetent to acquire wealth (not yet) acquired.”
Like, to be incompetent, you have to be incompetent in doing some activity. Or at least with reference to some kind of verb or verbal indicating what a person is incompetent or competent at doing. So the infinitive there is telling you what the merchant is incompetent at doing regarding unacquired wealth.
