Notes on nominal composition in Pali I: three abbreviated compounds 

Hinbuer, Oskar von 
The Journal of the Bihar Research Society . 
Volume: Vol.63/64, pg.817‐821 
1977‐78 
 Notes on nominal composition in Pali I : Three ;
abbreviated compounds
O. Von Hinbuer

The well known story of the Buddhist Elder Srol).a Koiivirpsa, or Soi:ia
KoHvisa as he is called in Pali, has been treated m ore than onc e, e.g. _by H.
Beche r t : Bruchstuecke buddhistischer Verssammulungen aus Zentralasiatischen
Sanskrithandschrijten. I: Die Anavataptagatha und die Sthaviragiitlia ( Sanskrit�
texte aus den Turfarifunden VJ ), 1 and by E. VV aldschmidt : "Ein B eitrag zur
Ueberlieferung vorn Sthavira Srol).a Kotivirpsa".2 The verses attributed to
Sol)a in th e Theragii.tha have been translated and c ommented on recently by
K. R. Norman,3 Since the time of the oldest extant commentaries on the
Pali canon, the at'thakathii, Norman seems to be the first scholar to pay atten-.
tion to the grammatical problems of verse 640 :

nekkhamme ahimuttassa pavivekan ca cetaso

abyapajjhlidhimuttassa upadiinakkhas.sa ca
·'I'
I

.• • . .. sammli Cit tam vimuccati

"Of one who is intent upon going forth, and upon mental seclusion, who
is intent upon non-h armin g, and upon the annihi1ation of grasping ..... .
the mindis wholly released (Norman)".

The same verse occurs also in the Anguttaranikaya ( 3.378.25 sq3) and ill
the VinayaPitaka ( 1.184.37 sq. ) with the variant reading, nekkhammarp
i nstead of nekkhamme found in the Theragatha.

Although the translators generally did not misunderstand the meaning

of this verse-e. g. H. Oldenberg-T. W. Rhys Davids in : Vinaya·-Texts II p.
12 ( 1882 ) ; I. B. Horner in: The Book of Discipline IV, p. 244 ( 1951 ) ; E. M.

1 Published from Berlin, 1961, pp. 116-29.

2 In Melanges cl• lndianismc a La Memoire de Louis Reno11, Paris, 1968, VP• 77'3-787t
·3 The Elders' Verses l: Theragatfin. Landon. l969,

l03
818 L. N. Mi'shra Commemoration Volume

Hare in : The Book of the Gradual Sayings III p. 269 ( 1934 ) , it is worth
while to have a closer look at the construction of this sentence. For it is
difficult to see hpw upadanakkhayassa fits i!lto it. This . difficulty was felt by
the old commentators, who assumed a vibhattivipallasaJ a substitution of one
case by another : catunnampi uPadananatri khayatte, arahatte adhimuttassa. Bhu·
mmatthe hi etatti slimivacanlit'{l "intent upon the annihilation of the four graspings,
upon the state of an arhat : the genitive is used in the s ense of a locative"
says Dhammapala in his Paramatthadipani V ( 271. 11 sq. ) on the Thera·
gatha. The Samantapasadika ( 1083.4) on the Vinayapiiaka and the
Manorathapurat;1i ( 3.393.2 ) on the Anguttaranikaya, both attributed to
Buddhagho�a, h ave upayogatthe samivacanam "the genitive is used in the.. sense
of the accusative". Thus the comr11entaries . ( at(hakathlf) reflect.the different.
readings in the texts : nekkhamme bhummatthe againest nekkhammam : upayogatthe.
The commentators resor ting to a vibhattivipallasa thus. usually indicate
a syntactical problem found in the text of the canon, which they were unable
to cope with. As adhimutta governs the locative or the accusative in Pali we.
should expect either case. Therefore Norman. tries to. explain upadanakkha�.
yassa as a locative disguised in course of· t he text. tradition� He :· �tarts his
.
argument by pointing out that there was a , l oc;ativ� ending in-assi ·in the
.
·

Eastern dialect, the earliest language of Buddhist texts) which was transposed
intp a western dialect, i. e. Pali.4 Usually these locatives were recogni�ed as
such by those, who . transmitted the eastern . i�to the western dialect, and
were t ransformed into the western . locatives in-amhi or-asmim accordingly.
Up to now no locative in-assa has. been traced in Pali. It is only in the
northwest, as it seems; that ·there are traces. of this locative in-as(s)a iq
,
·

th� A�okan inscriptions and in the Gandhari Dharmapada, which .are explain cif
as assimilated forms in a weaker position of declensional endings.5 Norman;
4 AU Pii.li texts are quoted from the editions of the Pii.li Texts Society in London by
volume, page and line.
·

5 The problem of the original language of the Buddhist canon has been discuss�d
by H. Lueders : Beobacbtungen u ebe r die Sprache des buddhistischen Urkanons
( Abhandlungen der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Klasie
fuer Sprachen, Literatur und Kunst: Jahrgang 1952 Nr: IO) B.erlin 1954. The
results of Lueder's book have been summed up by M. A. Mehendi:ile : . SQme
Aspects oflndo·Ary110 Lin�uisties1 B omba y l96St p. 34�7';.
 Vol. LXIII & LXIV ] Notes on .Nominal Composition in Pati I 819

however, does not assume a sin1ilar weakening of the locative ending for the
Pali,.but a scribal err o r . In postulating this, he does not take into account
the fact th a t
the i-matra mus t have b�cn left ou t by a scribe at a time, when the
text was hand e d down in the east ern dialect. It is, however, anything but
clear, whether the Buddhist texts had been written down at su ch an early
period of our tradition. On the o th e r hand it is hard to see, why the ''trans­
lator" should have left un-changecl this locative in-aS'si so tha t the mista�e.­
a s sa for-assi could be attributed to later � Lage
of our tq1.dition.
a

Yet it is str a n ge that we can find another verse in 'the TheragathJi.

having a genitive where locative is to be expected : . subhasitassa sikkhetha etc.
Theragatha 239 = Saqiyuttanikaya
. . ( 1.46.13 )'1 " one should train oneself in .

the well-spoken utterance ( Norman )" with the con1mentary Saratthapakasini

( 1.104.6 ) subhasitatti sikkheyya ancl with the Theragatha commentary ( 2.95.5
sqq.. ) accordingly. Here too, , Nonnan assun1es old mistake of-assa instead
of-assi. . Further examples of
the same type may be added to those qu�ted
by Norman i kissa tvaqi imesafll na gacchasi Vina yapitaka ( 3. 138.27 sq. ) "wll.y .

.do you not go a mong these ( men ) ? ( Homer ) and ylJ tva1[L va;asi jin,n,/Usa "

Jataka ( 6.522.9 : verse ) "if you live with an old man" with the commentary
· . .. ·

jarajivttassa gehe.
Now it is from the very beginning not very likely that there should-�
•such a strange . repetition of the same n1istake A phonetic explanation as ,

.the one sought by Brough ( cf. n ote 3 ) is not entirely convi ncing. As J. Bloch7
.pointed out about fifty yea rs ago, the probl e m is to be solved by s 0itax rather
than by phonetics. There is a marked inclin�tion, which can b e observe� as
early as in the Vedic prose\ to extend the range of the genitive at the cost

6, .Cf. The Gaadhari Oharmapada. Edited with an introduction and commentary

by J. Brough.( J,.ondon Orlental Series Volume 7 ) . London 1962, p. 102, sq. § 53.
7 The Sanskrit parallel, too, has tbe geuitive : subha�itasya sik�eta etc. Udanavarga
23.1.
8 Le traitement du groupe sanskrit siffiante+m et la desinence du localif en moyen·
indieti. ln Memoirs de la Societe de Linguistique. 34. Paria 1929, pp. 261-270,
· esp. p. 268 sq.-For the· inscriptional ·evidence : M. A. Mehendale : Asokan
Inscriptions in India. A linguistic study. together with an exhaustive bibliography.
Bombay 1943, p. 49f.
 L .N. Mishra Co11tmemoration' Volume

efother cases. This tende ncy continues and. g rows in Midd l e Inda-Aryan.
Considering this developm ent ·the comments of Br o ugh on the Gandhari
Dharmapada quoted above have to be n1odified. The same holds good for the
$trange g enitive rakhamularya Gandhari Dhannapada 38 against the Pali
,Dhan1mapada 395 rukkhamulasmim. This is not, as Brough puts it, "dearly
an attempt at a learned spelling which has g one astray" but a correct genitive
-replacing a locative.9

Returning to upadiinakkhayasra in the Theragatha verse, it can be expl­

ained as a genitive substituting a locative a nd depending on adhi1nuttassa.
But if h possible to find an alternative interpretation of this form, which mi ght
:
be more convincing. Recently J. Gonda collected a lot of materia1 on ''Abbr­
eviated and inverted nominal compounds in Sanskrit" 10• Among other things
he draws the attention to the type dristapurvii athava frutti in the Nalopakhyana
·or the Mahabharata(S.50.13) for . 5rutapurva. Inthesame wayupadanakkhayassa
is t h e shortened form of upiidanakkhayadhimuttassa. That this e xpl ana tion is
indeed most probable can be further corroborated by the prose passage
p receding the
' quoted in both the
-verse texts ( Vinayapitaka 1.183.30 sqq.
and AJiguttaranikaya 3.376.30 sqq. ) :
nekkhammadhimutto, pavivekadhimutto, avyapajjhadhimutto upadanakkhayadhi­
;mutto etc .11 Thus the abbr eviat ed compound upadanakkhayassa proves to be
'exactly equiva1ent tosrutafound in the Mahabharata, or to nafriivakarri labhyati na
mok1ayanatp 'the (vehicle) of the disciple is not gained, not the vehicle leading to
deliverance'' from a Buddhis t Sanskrit text ( SamghatasUtra, Gi l git Manuscript
no. 3,7 leaf 34 verse line 6 sq. ) .

9 The relevant material is collected by H. Oertel : Zu den Kasus-variationen in der

vedischen Prosa. 3 Parts ( Sitzungsberichte der Bayrischen A kademie <fer Wi11sen·
.•

· scbaft�n. Phiiosopbisch·historische Abteilung. Jabrgaog 1937 Heft 8; 1938 Heft

6; 1939 Heft 6�) Muenchen 1937, 1938, 1939.
10
,..
ln my Studien zur Kasussyntax des Pali, besonders des Vidaya-Pi\aka" ( Muen·
"

cbner Studio� zur Sprachwissenschaft. Beihefte. Neue Folg e 2 ) Muenchen 1968,

' ..

p. 228. 1 treated Vinayapitaka 3.138.27 sq. and Jata ka 6.522.9. The interpreta·
tion given there has to be reconsidered in the light of this evidence.

11 In: Pratidiinam. lndian, Iranian and lndo·European Studies presented to F.B.J.

Kuiper. The Hague 1968, p. 221-246, esp. p. 228.
 Vol. tx.111 & txtv J Notes on Naminal ComPosition in Pali 1 821
The queer ufJetarri in the S uttani pat a verse 722 :

yaip, samai.io bahu bhasati upetarrt atthasamhitai1i

is to be ex plained as an abbreviated compound for atthupetarzi "when a samm;,a

s p ea ks much that is full of; provided with good sense". This agrees with
the inter pre tation of the commentary, Paramatthajotika II ( 500.13 ) : att!zup­
etarii dlzammupetm[t ca hitena ca samhita1zi. A thirJ example of thi:i type is found
in the Vinayapitaka ( 3.65.24sq.) again a

kit'(lcitto tvariz bhikkhuti tavkaliko ahaizi bhagava ti "monk, of what were you
;thinking ? I ( took it ) for the time being, lord ( Horner ) . Here tavakiiliko "

is an abbreviated compound for tlivakalikacitto as seen by the Samantapasadika

( 388.13 ) already.12
Once the possibili Ly of finding abbreviated compounds in Middle Indo­
_Aryan is recognised, further examples of this type may turn up and add to
our still scanty knowledge of Middle Indian nominal composition.13

12 Th� Sanskrit parallel to this verse edited by Waldschmidt in the Melanges Renou
( p. 781 ) referred to ab ov e differs from the Pali.
13 The explanation given in my 11Studien•t \cf. note 7) p. 282 sq. has to be modi·
fled
•

., • 14 G. V. Davane : Nominal Composition in Middle Indo·Aryan, Poona 1956 is

hardly more than a first attempt to collect the basic facts•