SuttaCentral
Thread for discussing chapter 22 of Warder for the class on February 6th 2024.
Meeting ID: 829 5896 1475
Passcode: anicca
Homework for this class:
Dear Pāli Class participants.
Since we are wrapping up formal classes for this course in a couple of weeks I wanted to talk about Dāna.
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Question 1:
devayāniyo (deva + yāniyo) - Ajahn Brahmali’s footnote 21 on pg 35 of his answer says that this is a bahubbīhi compound. Can this be if yāniyo is a future passive participle? Does a bahubbīhi compound have to end in a noun?
Also a related question… in Meiland’s notes (Pg. 148) to Warder he states that some of the words Warder lists as Bahubbīhi’s are not actually so because they don’t end in nouns… any opinions on this?
Question 2:
Atthi, bhikkhave, aññ’eva dhammā gambhīrā duddasā duranubodhā santā paṇītā atakkāvacarā nipuṇā paṇḍitavedanīyā, ye tathāgato sayaṁ abhiññā sacchikatvā pavedeti
My translation: * Monks, there are even other states, deep, difficult to see, hard to understand, peaceful, sublime, beyond the realm of thought, subtle, understandable by the wise, which the Tathagata realised and directly knowing himself declared*
I just wanted to confirm if I understood the grammar:
gambhīrā duddasā duranubodhā santā paṇītā atakkāvacarā nipuṇā paṇḍitavedanīyā = are all adjectives or past participles acting as adjectives that agree with Dhammā (m. pl. nom)?
ye - is this also a pronoun in the m. pl. nom?
sayaṁ- is this an indeclinable adverb? or and adjective?
abhiññā - DPD says that this could be an adjective, feminine noun, or absolutive? I translated it as an absolutive (directly knowing).
Thank you 
Yes , a bahubbihi compound needs to end in a noun.
See Bodhi, Reading the Buddha’s Discourses in Pali, p. 41.
Perhaps ‘devayāniyo’ is a tappurisa.
‘Sayam’ is an adverb meaning ‘by oneself’.
In this context, ‘abhiñña’ is the absolutive of the verb ‘abhijānāti’.
I agree with the rest.
Thank you Stephen for always quickly and diligently answering our questions throughout the course! 
Thank you, for your study and persistence!
Ditto that! Thank you, Stephen, indeed. It takes a lot of pressure off me since I can’t always get to answer student’s questions in a timely fashion, due to other commitments.
I think we might be getting hung up on semantics here. Yes, I think devayāniyo is itself a tappurisa cpd, consisting of deva and yāniyo, a future passive participle. But, remember that participles (past, present, or future passive) tend to function as adjectives or nouns (and in Pāli there is no real distinction between nouns and adjectives - they are all just nāma). And devayāniyo is here qualifying maggo (an exocentric reference), so I would say that both AB and BB are right, and devayāniyo is functioning as a bahubbīhi here.
Thanks, Stephen, for reminding us of BB’s excellent description of bahubbīhis in his wonderful book. Since not everyone may have access to the book, I am loading up the releveant excerpt from it here.
Bhikkhu Bodhi on Bahubbīhi Compounds.pdf (113.8 KB)
IMHO, you could just about throw away all of Warder’s descriptions of bahubbīhis and just read this BB extract, and you would probably understand them better.
Really good work on all this Ayya Acala! Your diligence is commendable.
In answer to your question - yes, these are all adjectives qualifying dhammā.
ye - is this also a pronoun in the m. pl. nom?
Yes.
Hi
My apologies, I just realised I won’t be able to attend this week’s class. A friend has asked me to help out with her birthday celebration, so I’ll be busy the entire evening.
I have completed all the exercises and don’t have any outstanding questions. My best wishes for the class and all those attending it.
Dear Ven Acala (and Stephen), and others who are interested. On further reflection, I don’t think yāniya is a future passive participle at all. I rather now believe that this is simply the -iya suffix added to the noun yāna to make it adjectival.
Warder, in lesson 22 on p.187, talks about nouns with -suffix -ka or -ika being added to convert a noun into an adjective. Bhikkhu Bodhi in the section on bahubbīhis from RDPD (an excerpt of which I sent above), on p.43 goes further and says “Compounds of nouns can be turned into bahubbīhis by the addition of certain suffixes, particularly -ka, -ika, -iya, and -in.”
PED supports this interpretation. See:
Yānika & Yāniya Yānika & Yāniya (adj.) (-˚) [fr. yāna] 1. (lit.) leading to, conducive to, as ˚yāniya in deva˚ magga D i.215, & Brahma˚ magga the way leading to the Brahma – world D i.220. — 2. (in appld meaning, cp. yānikata) ˚yānika one who has become used to, whose habit it is . . ., in vipassanā˚ & samatha˚ at Vism 588.
Hope this helps clarify things.
I’m completely mystified. On page 35 Ajahn Brahmali’s footnotes finish at #19, and having just finished my homework I’ve not encountered devayāniyo. … I feel concern that I’ve worked on the wrong passages.
Would a kind person please point me to the text where devayāniyo is found?
In case it’s helpful for anyone else as well, I’ll just leave a note here to review the interrogative pronouns on P73-74. Especially where Warder says:
As a general rule if a sentence contains an interrogative word the whole sentence is interrogative
But how could it be otherwise? Unless reported speech, of course.
On another note, I thought I was warming up to take issue with Ajahn Brahmali, over his translation of aṭṭhādasahi vatthūhi as “through eighteen grounds” curious. Aṭṭhādasa does hide away on p599 of the PED as meaning 18. But only checking the broader context in DN1 and B Sujato’s translation there convinced me of this meaning. It seemed more straightforward to translate it as “understanding the meaning,” with aṭṭha as “meaning” and dasa as an adjective from √dis (see), as the DPD suggests. I’m following Sujato’s “on eighteen grounds.”
DPD reports “which” as a meaning which confused me
Gillian. The relevant paragraph is the first one of Lesson 21, Reading 3. And it is at the bottom of p.34 (not p.35) of the version of Brahmali’s answer key that I have.
So which meaning of which was it which confused you? 
More to the point, which is the interrogative word in my sentence?
maybe it’s English which is more confusing than even Pali?
chuckles 
I had the same, brief oh no experience. Gave me a nice reason to review the passage again.
For some strange reason, I had translated it as deva-like, which would be an acceptable translation? Given its adjectival-ness?
Hi,
The compound is built upon the word ‘yāna’ = ‘vehicle’ - e.g. ‘Mahāyāna’.
See the PED entry which John posted above.
Perhaps literally something like ‘deva-transporting’, ‘deva-conveying’ …
