Dheerayupa, I’m looking at your post and want to do some more research before I can respond properly! Hmm… 
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Something here: Kasina practice in the EBTs - #2 by Onze
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Encountered this sentence during this morning’s study of MN32:
Svāgataṁ āyasmato ānandassa bhagavato upaṭṭhākassa bhagavato santikāvacarassa.
I mistakenly assumed all the words ending in -assa were genitive, which makes no sense. Dative doesn’t make logical sense either, until I looked up svāgataṃ and saw that it always pairs to a dative…
So - if I understand correctly, because the speaker (Ven. Sāriputta) is extending a welcome to/for Ven. Ānanda, then his name & the immediate adjective āyasamato would take the dative.
Just checking that I understand correctly - upaṭṭhākassa and santikāvacarassa also take the dative, despite being separate relative clauses, because they describe Ven. Ānanda & need to agree with his case declension? I’ve grouped cells based on what I think the clauses are.
Adding to my confusion - the other translations below chose to render santikāvacarassa as an adjective or a whole other clause, so I didn’t realize immediately that it was a noun in the dative form - possessed by the Blessed One. (Still trying to get used to the idea that a genitive subject can possess something besides a nominative or an accusative)
Bh. Sujato: Welcome to Ānanda, the Buddha’s attendant, who is so close to the Buddha.
Bh. Bodhi: …welcome to the venerable Ānanda, the Blessed One’s attendant, who is always in the Blessed One’s presence.
This all looks correct to me, Karunā. Well done.
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Thanks, John! Appreciate your checking in on this thread for our extracurricular questions.
On third look, everything dative makes sense -
“Welcome to/for Ven. Ānanda, to/for the Blessed One’s attendant, to/for the Blessed One’s close companion.”
Greetings, a question here.
In our latest Gair & Karunatillake class with John Kelly, we reviewed this from AN 3.66:
“Anabhijjhāti kho ahaṁ, sāḷhā, etamatthaṁ vadāmi. Aluddho kho ayaṁ, sāḷhā, anabhijjhālu neva pāṇaṁ hanati, na adinnaṁ ādiyati, na paradāraṁ gacchati, na musā bhaṇati, parampi na tathattāya samādapeti, yaṁ sa hoti dīgharattaṁ hitāya sukhāyā”ti.
Of note is the word anabhijjhā, the antonym of which, abhijjhā, appears earlier in the sutta. It sparked my interest as a synonym for alobho (& lobho).
The standard (uninspiring 
) definition seems to be non-coveting (as a synonym for non-greed).
According to DPD, the use of anabhijjhā (and its antonym, and various declensions) is hardly used anywhere else except in the Aṅguttaranikāya. When I did more research, it seems to appear more frequently later on, beginning with the Abhidhammapiṭaka. (I don’t know my Tipiṭaka and commentaries histories very well yet, so I may be misstating this.)
Does this term become a standard in certain Theravada traditions in place of alobho (& lobho) or in addition to? If so, why? I had never heard it before in teachings.
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Abhijjā is used in one of the most important suttas in the canon, the Satipaṭṭḥāna - MN 10 and it’s longer sibling DN 22.
Idha, bhikkhave, bhikkhu kāye kāyānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṁ;
vedanāsu vedanānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṁ;
citte cittānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṁ;
dhammesu dhammānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṁ.
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It’s found in all the nikāyas, though very often in its adjectival form, anabhijjhālu. That it occurs with greatest frequency in the AN is because this is the nikāya that has the greatest number of suttas on the three sucaritas and the ten kusala kammapathas. In both of these schemes it occurs as one of the three kinds of mental good conduct, manosucarita.
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In John Kelly’s G&K Lesson 4 class, I recall a discussion around translating piyato in the following (Dhp209-220)
Piyato jāyatī soko - piyato jāyatī bhayaṃ;
Piyato vippamuttassa - n’atthi soko, kuto bhayaṃ?
In my initial translation, I said something like “holding others dear” but I recall we discussed a broader translation as “subject-object” where the object can be anything, not just people. (Piyato is the ablative form (masc. sing.) of the adjective piya.)
The discussion stuck in my mind a bit … I wondered why my initial inclination was to go toward “subject-person object” instead of “subject-object.”
Today, reading the excellent essay by Venerable Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā (thank you Ven. @Vimala 
for the referral), I learned an intriguing background for the term from the Vedic Baudhāyana-śrautasūtra. Here Ven. Dhammadinnā talks to a “sex-change motif” that’s in play to establish “the dictum that sons are dearer to women.”
Then I learned of Soreyya/ā’s story, which apparently draws on the Sinhalese Saddharmaratnāvaliya, a work based on the Pali Dhammapada-aṭṭhavaṇṇanā.
Not surprisingly, Soreyya/ā’s story was new to me (I’m not well-versed in the Dhammapada stories yet). Here’s what I found most interesting:
The Baudhāyana-śrautasūtra employs a lexicon of priyá as opposed to ápriya that belongs to the Vedic affective vocabulary of mind states concerned, broadly speaking, with the rapport between the person and the objects he or she comes in relationship with. This may include parts of her own physical body or external animate and inanimate objects. The substantivised adjective priya- (Vedic priyá-) points to dearness of what is considered one’s own, and is thus “dear” …
…In later Vedic texts such as the Āraṇyakas and the Upaniṣads blood relations that belong to oneself (and to whom one in turn belongs) or one’s husband, wife, etc., are also priya. Here the senses “dear”, “beloved”, “favourite” seem to prevail, with a focus on the affective aspect, which thus points to a tinge of possessiveness with respect to what is felt as priya also in the absence of an explicitly intended expression of a specific relationship.
Doing something that is apriya to a Vedic deity, prone as the deity is to wrath and resentment, and depriving him of what is priya to him bears consequences for the person who is held responsible for such an action…
That is, maybe there’s a case to be made for the pāli equivalent piya pointing toward holding people dear rather than generic objects. The Vedic backdrop even suggests holding dear one’s good standing with a deity.
Ven. Dhammadinnā goes on:
Priya and apriya are of course central to the Buddha’s formulation of the first noble truth of duḥkha: as a matter of fact, being joined to what is not priya/piya is duḥkha/dukkha, and being separated from what is priya/piya is duḥkha/dukkha too: appiyehi sampayogo dukkho, piyehi vippayogo dukkho. The terminology is especially poignant considering that the cause of duḥkha/dukkha as per the second noble truth, craving, is glossed as sineha in a discourse in the Aṅguttara-nikāya, according to which craving is the moisture thanks to which the seed of consciousness grows in the field of kamma, and that cessation of craving is the cessation of duḥkha/dukkha as per the third noble truth.
Following the breadcrumbs here, Ven. Dhammadinnā makes this connection:
Coming to the commentarial and post-commentarial period, an interesting occurrence of sineha is found in the Visuddhimagga, in the context of a discussion of the characteristic of friendliness or amity (mettā) as a divine abode (brahmavihāra) or immeasurable quality of the mind (appamāṇa). The Visuddhimagga states that the characteristic of friendliness is a wish for the welfare of others, its function is the promotion of welfare, its manifestation the disappearance of annoyance, and its proximate cause seeing the endearing or positive aspect in beings. Friendliness is then said to succeed when it makes ill-will subside and to fail when it produces sineha. Such a selfish affection or lust (rāga) is regarded as the near enemy of friendliness, since it is able to corrupt owing to its similarity, like a foe masquerading as a friend. In order not to fail, friendliness should be well protected from it.
Once again, we’re back to holding dear our relationships with people (or someone). The fact that we’re cultivating mettā as a counter-medicine for sineha also strikes me as intriguing, given all the context. (And there’s still a lot of essay content after those particular quotations. It’s a fascinating essay on several levels.)
All of this to say:
Holding others dear give rise to sorrow and fear – liberated from holding others dear, sorrow and fear are nowhere to be found.
As an aside, I’ve followed Ven. Dhammadinnā’s work for years via the Āgama Research Group.
I hope I’m not hijacking this thread, I just wanted to know if anybody knows of online Pali reading groups? I wanted to sign up for the one Joe’s offering on this forum starting in February but it’s at a time where I need to be 
So preferably a European-based sutta study group. I’d be grateful for any feedback.
Stephen is having a class which is suitable for US and might be for Europe. Will inform you of the time for the next class.
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Yes, thank you! Shortly after I posted this, I discovered his thread. I’ll have to check my work schedule but the chances are good.