SuttaCentral
Ah! The DPR ABSOLUTELY CANNOT be used in the way you are using it. It’s not so much an error as all of those parsings are guesses.
I’d suggest you modify the definitive statement you make in your OP about the meaning of pāṇātipātā unless someone here can find something that supports it.
Ok, I’ve edited the OP, just with DPR, I don’t take it to be a dictionary, it’s just that PTS hasn’t really got much by way of analysis of the word so I am scratching around the internet looking for clues
This was not actually what I intended to say at any point, please see my earlier reply. I have fixed the original phrasing in brackets. I had meant remorseless and utter failure to undertake precepts.
Person A takes refuge, but doesn’t proceed to undertake a minimum standard of sila and has no intention of doing so later, to the point where person A does things that will lead them to hell. Person A’s going for refuge is not, in fact, going for refuge. This person is refugeless.
This opinion is given in Ven. Bodhi’s writing, see “Going for Refuge and Taking the Precepts”. But the style of analysis he is using is found in a number of commentaries, which, off the top of my head, also includes the Upasakajanalankara. There has to be an effective object of refuge. Going for Refuge & Taking the Precepts
The breach of the refuge means the breaking or violation of the commitment to the threefold refuge. A breach of the refuge occurs when a person who has gone for refuge comes to regard some counterpart to the three refuges as his guiding ideal or supreme reliance. If he comes to regard another spiritual teacher as superior to the Buddha, or as possessing greater spiritual authority than the Buddha, then his going for refuge to the Buddha is broken. If he comes to regard another religious teaching as superior to the Dhamma, or resorts to some other system of practice as his means to deliverance, then his going for refuge to the Dhamma is broken. If he comes to regard some spiritual community other than the ariyan Sangha as endowed with supramundane status, or as occupying a higher spiritual level than the ariyan Sangha, then his going for refuge to the Sangha is broken. In order for the refuge-act to remain valid and intact, the Triple Gem must be recognized as the exclusive resort for ultimate deliverance: “For me there is no other refuge, the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha are my supreme refuge.”
I would say that completely giving up on deliverance is even worse than taking up another system.
Yes, it’s completely uncontroversial and quite obvious from the word’s Sanskrit cognate.
Pali pāṇi = Skt pāṇi
Pali pāṇa = Skt prāṇa
Pali pāṇātipāta = Skt prāṇātipāta
So “hand” is excluded as a possible cognate because?
If someone can explain the error here:
|pāṇ|-|ātipātaṃ
2|c||
| — | — |
pāṇi: the hand; the palm. (m.)
atipāta: slaying; killing. (m.)
As in why this is obviously wrong and why
|pāṇa|-|ātipātaṃ
2|c||
| — | — |
pāṇa: breath (m.)
atipāta: slaying; killing. (m.)
Is to be preferred?
I just edited my earlier post, supplying the cognates.
It sounds like that is more of a commentarial thing or personal philosophical thing rather than something we get from the root texts. Do we get the concept of “breach of refuge” in the root texts? In fact the phrase he quotes at the end, “For me there is no other refuge, the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha are my supreme refuge” does not come from the root texts AFAIK. But it’s probably off topic for this thread. Would it be worth starting a new one?
Ah ! I see , thank you!!
The error can be known from the non-existence of the form pāṇātipāta in Skt or BHS.
Yes that makes sense, can I ask tho, are you aware of it is attested in Sanskrit prior to the suttas?
Like, it’s an open possibility at this point that the BHS derives the word from the Pali and simply makes the assumption that it’s breath and not hand that is meant?
(I understand I am clearly pushing a barrow up a very large hill at this point, I just want to get it all absouclear in my head 
You seem to be confusing the Pali word for living being with the word for hand/palm.
The Sanskrit version is ‘prana’.
(I’m not sure why you insist on this DIY Pali)
I don’t whether it is or not, but I expect Ayya Suvira will know.
That’s not impossible, but it’s unlikely, imo. Most Pali words get translated correctly into BHS, and those which get mistranslated rarely have to do with commonplace everyday things, such as killing. The mistranslated terms are typically specialized terms from Buddhist shoptalk, like sanghādisesa, patisambhidā, and karavīka.
I definitely recommend a systematic study of the Pali language
Yes. I keep meaning to make more time for precisely that. My copy of warder is forever on my desk, alas, life gets in the way 
Prāṇātipāta is a Jain and Buddhist word, not a Vedic term. I can’t dig up original Jain scripture for obvious reasons, but I assume this term was lifted directly from Jainism. A Jain lay householder undertakes sthūla prāṇātipāta viramaṇa, i.e. they refrain from the coarse taking of life as an aṇuvrata (lesser= aṇu + vrata= vow here meaning that their vows parallel those of monastics.)
Bhante @Snowbird…I don’t really have the level of interest to engage a new post sorry, but many thanks for drawing my attention to the lack of clarity in my wording. 
It is also worth noting that the standard ‘extended description’ of the first precept includes a synonym for (and derivative of) pāṇa: pāṇabhūta.
ekacco pāṇātipātaṁ pahāya pāṇātipātā paṭivirato hoti nihitadaṇḍo nihitasattho lajjī dayāpanno, sabbapāṇabhūtahitānukampī viharati
Sujato’s translation:
a certain person gives up killing living creatures. They renounce the rod and the sword. They’re scrupulous and kind, living full of compassion for all living beings
If you kill 100 hundred mosquitoes that irritate you by drilling into your skin, sucking your blood & possibly give you malaria or dengue fever and also kill 100 people who irritate you because they disagree with your opinions about the EBTs 
, do you think the consequences upon your own mind of these two types of killing (mosquitoes vs people) will be the same?
Or lets say if you kill 3,000 mosquitoes vs say kill 3 potential thieves & murderers in self-defense who enter your home and threaten your family, do you think the consequences upon your own mind of these two types of killing (3,000 mosquitoes vs 3 evil people) will be the same? 
Hi @CurlyCarl ! People on this forum seem OBSESSED with interpreting every question about the early buddhist texts as if they where just some sort of smokescreen for the REAL questions about ones personal ethics and religious practice.
I was under the (OBVIOUSLY FALSE) impression that this forum was devoted to the study of the early Buddhist textual material on its own merits, not as the ground for (interminable) discussions of contemporary ethics and religious practice.
I realise now that while occasional discussions of textual matters do occur, the vast majority of posters prefer to talk about their own religious and personal ethics/practices and theories, with teh EBTS used as the prefered “background” material for winning points ofr or against the arguments about the contemporary issues.
A PERFECT example of this was the thread about diet in early Buddhism where the people who used textual evidence to deduce that the early followers where most likely omnivores where almost immediately attacked as immoral and hostile anti-buddhists who where defending industrial agricultural practices.
Here in this thread also, my question was ENTIRELY motivated by a seeming “tension” between the notion that lay followers where in effect held to a much higher standard than monastics when it came to killing living beings, which struck me as odd since it appeared quite impractical given what we know about Indian society at the time.
I speculated that one reason might be that the word in the pancasila was incorrectly glossed. This speculation seems pretty thoroughly falsified at this point thanks to the poster who provided the sanskrit cognates.
This had and has NOTHING TO DO with my personal ethics, which, apart from the fact that I have been known to occasionally eat meat and that I do not find many of the arguments of vegetarians completely convincing, this forum knows NOTHING ABOUT.
For the record I am something of a pacifist and have been known to put up with flies and mosquitos in situations where many people would not. I am not sure if this is because of the Budda’s teaching or if its more that I was drawn to the teaching because of my instinctive sympathy towards pacifism. (a third possibility is that both my sympathy for pacifism and my interest in buddhism emanate form a past life where I was both).
The upshot is that I am interested in the EBT’s primarily from their own point of view, because I want to make sense of them on their own terms, not because I want to decode a set of religious instructions, I actually think that paying attention, reducing the hatred and lust and delusion in your heart, and trying not to be selfish are easily sufficient by themselves for more than a lifetime of spiritual practice, and not only does one not need the EBT’s to get these ideas, one probably doesn’t even need Buddhism, pretty much every religion and several of the better known philosophies all give this advice both in the past and now.
SO again, the reason I am researching and reading the EBT’s is not because I find myself confused about what I should or shouldn’t do or how I should or shouldn’t practice, I study them because i find them INTERESTING.
For example it seems pretty clear that the pancasila is based on the shorter section on ethics of the sekkha patipada, with the prohibition on harming plants and seeds replaced with a prohibition on alcohol (which some people claim was practically unknown in the Buddhas time)
This is in itself interesting as if the plants and seeds rule was applied to the laity then they would all starve and die which implies that the original system was more or less wholly aimed at monastics and makes the reception of lay ethics in pre-Ashokan times a quite mysterious and interesting subject.
SO in summary, it’s not so much that people here irritate me becasue they disagree with my musings on the EBT’s, its that they sort of completely ignore them and rush to answer (kind of personal) questions I never asked and if I did want to ask it would definitely not be something I would ask strangers on the internet.
So I just wish people would read my questions and respond to them on their own terms, not read them, translate them into whatever they thing i’m “really” asking about and answer that.
As for your actual question, I think killing a person is worse than killing a mosquito, and from my weak familiarity the Vinaya agrees with me, but from my reading of certain suttas it is much less clear there, and that is why I asked my question in the first place.