These verbs are describing the actions of the dhammas, arising and diminishing.
(See my quick translation above)
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Hi Beth. This is quite a tricky sentence, especially if you are looking at @sujato’s translation of AN 1.308 on SC, as he has shuffled some things around. The essential meaning is there, but relating the Pāli to the English shown is almost impossible.
This sentence can be broken down (decomposed? 
) into two parts. The main sentence:
Nāhaṁ, bhikkhave, aññaṁ ekadhammampi samanupassāmi … yathayidaṁ, bhikkhave, micchādiṭṭhi.
And the relative clause which is stuck in the middle of it … yena anuppannā vā kusalā dhammā nuppajjanti uppannā vā kusalā dhammā parihāyanti …
So the main sentence says “I do not see even another single thing … that is, wrong view.” [leaving out the vocatives for clarity]
Then the relative clause states " … by which unarisen skillful mental states do not arise, or arisen skillful mental states disappear …". Both uppajjanti and parihāyanti are the verbs of this clause. [There are two verbs because the clause has two parts separated by vā … vā (“or”). I don’t know where you got the idea they were some kind of adjective.
Does this help?
BTW - I will be going through this sentence in some detail in our next class.
BB’s translation is quite clear ““Bhikkhus, I do not see even a single thing on account of which unarisen wholesome qualities do not arise and arisen wholesome qualities decline so much as wrong view.”
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Not exactly sure what your question for me is, Ayya.
My question is about word yathayidaṃ, why it is translated as “that is”.
“Such as this” is probably a better translation.
BB has “so much as”, Bhante Sujato has “like”. Yathayidaṃ breaks downs as yatha-y-idaṃ. Where yatha means “like” and idaṃ “this”, with -y- as an internal sandhi connector between two vowels.
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Yes, thank you…Stephen’s translation above is what I had come up with, more or less:
…by which unarisen wholesome dhammas don’t arise or arisen wholesome dhammas diminish…
which makes my sentence read (quite loosely) like this:
Hey monastics, listen up: I don’t see anything – literally, not one thing! – like wrong view by which dormant, wholesome qualities don’t emerge and emergent, wholesome qualities diminish.
However, this is clearly an awkward sentence in English. Also, just now I see BB’s translation in your post. That reads well and fits the pāli verb conjugations but it still feels a bit awkward. So it makes sense to me why Bhante S may have translated it the way he did, where the subject of the two verbs is aññaṁ ekadhammaṁ – micchādiṭṭhi (correct?).
If I use total license to make this into modern English (let’s say for a novel) I would translate it like this, mirroring Bhante S’s subject-verb shuffling:
Hey monastics, listen up: I don’t see anything – literally, not one thing! – like wrong view which does this kind of stuff. It keeps dormant, wholesome qualities from emerging in the mind and and it makes emergent, wholesome qualities diminish. I can’t emphasize this enough.
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Ven. @Sobhana, @stephen @moderators Could one of our moderators move Ayya’s post over to Class 3 as it’s part of Class 3’s homework? That way any follow-on posts can be nested there. I don’t know which moderator to ask in this thread and don’t want to bother all of them.
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The yathayidaṃ phrases are like the punchline of the story, or the answer to a riddle, or a Socratic method where the student has to ponder the question “what is the one thing?” before coming to the answer. It can be good for the translation to build up the suspense like this even if it is not as smooth a sentence in English.
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Love your ‘modern’ English. <3 I wish I could do something like this in Thai. The young generation would have no problems understanding the Buddha!
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Dear @johnk ,
Have you posted the PDF file of the slides from your class on 18 March yet? I seem to be unable to find it. 
Thanks for the reminder.
There’s not much in them, actually. But here they are
SC Pali 2024 Slides Class 2.pdf (376.6 KB)
And also here is page 13 from the Collins Grammar with the cases summary
Collins Pali Cases Summary.pdf (211.4 KB)
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Thank you, @johnk
I really am grateful that you’ve taken time to teach us and are so patient with the explanation.
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Dear Ven. Sobhana, thank you for your sharing which helps me a lot. Just got a follow up thought, will the word ‘yaṁ’ help prove the word ‘cittaṁ’ is nominative as ‘yaṁ’ is nominative? When I read the notes from G&K’s grammar #4.2 ‘yaṁ’ as a relative pronoun is used to introduce a relative clause which in turn modifies a noun that it follows. So is ‘yaṁ’ a relative pronoun to introduce ‘adantaṁ aguttaṃ arakkhitaṃ asaṃvutaṃ mahato anatthāya saṁvattati’ which in turn modifies ‘cittaṁ’. Since ‘cittaṁ’ is the noun that leads to great harm etc so it is in nominative and ‘yaṁ’ is its relative pronoun so it is also in nominative. I am sorry I maybe circling around… I am inching forward and am still struggling to understand a short sentence like this…. Any further advice will be highly appreciated. Thanks.
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Yes, Mickey, that’s correct. The relative pronoun yaṃ is neuter in agreement with cittaṃ which is neuter, and it is nominative as the subject of the verb of the relative clause, saṃvattati.
Thank you John for the advice. Best,
hi @johnk, thank you so much for this class - i am very grateful for the opportunity to learn pali. however, it seems i am going to have difficulty attending the classes live due to work commitments.
do you mind if i continue to watch the recordings after they are posted and follow on through the discussion threads here? i have a pretty good understanding of noun declensions and verb conjugations from nine years of latin long ago and i’m finding i can keep up with G & K with your recordings. I hope that will be ok.
thank you, indy
That will be just fine, Indy. Will miss having you online with us, of course, but quite happy with you following on with the recordings and participating in the discussions. Your prior Latin knowledge (9 years, wow!) is definitely a big plus with learning Pāli.
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This here is the table I am using for Pāli pronoun declensions I got it from the Bhavana Society long ago, but cannot locate where it comes from. The relative pronoun yaṃ can be either nominative or accusative, so that doesn’t give the answer. One has to understand that yaṃ is pointing to cittaṃ, and cittaṃ is the subject doing the action, leading to harm.
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