svArtha derivation and subtypes of taddhita pratyaya affixes

[Dipak Bhattacharya]

08 08 08
Dear Dr.Kragh,
The primarihood of the tacchiila suffixes is inherent and not a metalinguistic innovation. ;siila means 'habit, usual conduct' and pertains to action, taacchiilya: 'the state of having that as habit'. There cannot be any question of having that sense with a proper name. For de dang mthun pa'i rkyen the literal translation is tadanukuulapratyaya. But the commentator by all probability was thinking in Sanskrit and not in Tibetan. So this may elliptically mean tada(artha)anukuula pratyaya 'a pratyaya conducive to that meaning ie the meaning of the prak.rti'. One cannot question or criticise the author for not using a term for 'vaacaka' or 'abhidhaayin'. 
I shall be glad to know if this makes things a bit clearer. 
DB

--- On Fri, 8/8/08, Ulrich T. Kragh <utkragh at HUM.KU.DK> wrote:

From: Ulrich T. Kragh <utkragh at HUM.KU.DK>
Subject: Re: svArtha derivation and subtypes of taddhita pratyaya affixes
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Date: Friday, 8 August, 2008, 1:18 PM

Dear Indology list members,
thank you very much to Stefan Baums and Dipak Bhattacharya for their responses
to my inquiry about svArthika derivation and taddhita affixes. Both mails
contained several leads that were helpful to me.
 
I am still left with one question I would like to pose to the list. I have been
considering the possibility that the grammatical term tacchiila "having
that (action) as its nature or habit, characterized by that" might be the
term I have been looking for (for the Tibetan translation "de dang mthun
pa'i rkyen). However, I see in Tubb and Boose's "Scholastic
Sanskrit" page 58 that this function only seems to be applicable to primary
derivation (kRt pratyaya) from verbal stem to noun, and in the case of my
passage, I am dealing with a secondary nominal derivation (taddhita pratyaya). 
 
So here is my new question: would it at all be possible for a tacchiila
interpretation to be applied to a taddhita derivation?
 
Now, shortly in response to the postings by Baums and Bhattacharya.
Bhattacharya's explanations of the svArthika and its application to my
passage were very helpful - thank you very much. Baums asked whether the Tibetan
word "byams pa" might reflect Skt. maitraka/maitreya here. The answer
is no, the word is taken from Nagarjuna's Mmk root-text verse 17.1 on which
the passage comments, and the root-text (extant in Skt) clearly has maitram.
Secondly, Baums suggested that the Tibetan phrase "de dang mthun pa'i
rkyen" might be an unusual translation for taddhita (the regular
translation is "de dang phan pa'i rkyen). I appreciate this idea very
much, and I have also been toying with that possibility. However, the only
problem is that it cannot account for how the subcommentator Avalokitavrata
substitutes the word "de" (= Skt tad) with "bdag" (= Skt.
sva-) and "gzhan" (= Skt. any- or para-) in his explanation of the
passage, where he writes "bdag dang mthun pa'i rkyen" and
"gzhan dang mthun pa'i rkyen". I do not think that
*taddhitapratyaya could be turned into *svahitapratyaya and *anyahitapratyaya.
So, though the solution is tempting, then it does not solve all the problems.
Further, Baums suggested that the Tibetan translations of Bhavaviveka's Mmk
commentary and Avalokitavrata's subcommentary might be closely related, and
could have been adjusted to each other in the translation process. I agree, and
consider this quite likely. Both texts were translated by the same translators,
namely Jnanagarbha and cog ro klu'i rgyal mtshan. 
 
Once again, thank you to both of you for taking time to help me.
 
With best regards,
Tim
 
Dr. Ulrich Timme Kragh
Assistant Professor
Geumgang Center for Buddhist Studies
Geumgang University, Dae-myeong Ri, Sang-wol Myeon
Nonsan-si, Chungnam 320-931, Republic of Korea
Tel. +82-41-731 3618



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