Question about grammar of 'chandarāgo' in MN109

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Hi,

my question is about grammar of Pali, more specifically the verse in MN109:

Yo kho, bhikkhu, pañcasu upādānakkhandhesu chandarāgo taṁ tattha upādānan”ti.

My question is for the word “chandarāgo” (made of chanda + rāga):

  • does this word end in “o” because it is an object of the sentence?
    • if that is so why is it not “chando rāgo”?

If we picked words “interest” for chanda and “passion” for rāga,
then which way could we translate “chandarāgo”:

  • interest and passion
    • does Pali commonly skip or lacks using the word and?
  • passionate interest
    • is it valid translating rāgo as passionate? If not is there other way to say passionate?
  • or the ‘o’ ending has nothing to do with it and something else

For example DPD translates with “and” but NCPED uses both “and” and “that is”

Digital Pāḷi Dictionary
chandarāgo

  1. chandarāga: masc. interest and passion; desire and lust [chanda + rāga]

New Concise Pali English Dictionary
chandarāga
masculine

  1. appetite and desire; desire that is appetite

Thank you for your answers!

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No, it’s the subject. The -o ending is nominative singular, which agrees with the yo at the start. The sentence has no verb, or rather an implicit verb (hoti), and chandarāgo is the main topic.

This can often be a matter of idiom. Certain kinds of compounds, called dvanda, can be resolved as a simple list of items, which each item having the same grammatical case. If chandarāgo is this kind of compound, then it can indeed be resolved this way, and translated the same: “desire and lust”, or if we adopt your translation, “interest and passion”. However, given the closeness of meaning here, I’d prefer “desire” in this case.

We understand this as a dvanda compound because the two terms have very similar meanings. Also, elsewhere we find, eg. kāmacchando kāmarāgo, “desire for sensual pleasures, lust for sensual pleasures”.

We even find one sentence:

ayaṁ kāmadhātuyā chando rāgo
This desire and lust for the sensual element

Yes, “and” (ca) is used for clarification and is not strictly necessary.

This would be more likely to be rāgachando. Theoretically you might use this to distinguish different forms of desire, eg. rāgachanda vs. dhammachanda, “lustful desire” vs. “righteous desire”. But it doesn’t occur in early Pali.

It’s a noun, so it would be “passion”. The adjectival form is ratta.

No that’s fine, Pali has a lot of words for shade of desire, so it depends how passionate!

The “o” ending signifies masculine singular nominative, which normally functions as the subject of a verb.

This is what’s called a kammadhāraya compound. It’s grammatically possible, but I’m not aware of any contexts where it makes sense.

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Thank you for the informative answer!

Thus, if I understand it correctly, there is a possibility for dvanda compound for “and” but also there is the possibility for “for” as in the provided example eg. kāmacchando kāmarāgo., which would yield “passion for interest” or “lust for desire”.

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No, this is another kind of compound, a tappurisa. In such compounds the resolved terms have different case endings, whereas in a dvanda they are the same.

In this case it would be resolved kāmesu chando, “desire for sensual pleasures", where the sense of “for” is conveyed by the locative case. See eg.

kāmesu chandarāgavinayo
dispelling of desire and lust for sensual pleasures

(This sense of “for” might be more literally rendered “in regard to” but “for” is more idiomatic.)

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