pulga wrote:Thanks, Sylvester. You probably have something to teach me.
Oh please, you're making me blush.
Sylvester wrote: Might the construction be what Wijesekara alludes to as a semi nominative absolute (p.35)?
I think it would be according to Prof. Wijesekara. Does Warder touch upon the idea in his
Introduction to Pali?
As far as I can tell, Warder only discusses the absolute constructions for the genitive and locative. Not surprising, since Wijesekara opines that the nominative absolute are uncommon in Pali and Skt.
In Lesson 24 (pg. 233) he discusses auxiliary verbs and lists as along with hú (bhú), car, (ṭ)ṭhā, vatt, and vi-har as all partaking of periphrastic constructions implying a temporal sense.
Yup, that's right. It seems that a present participle periphrastic is discussed at pg 238. The stars are somewhat aligned in this case, as both this periphrastic reading and the nominative absolute reading have temporal dimensions. The former for duration, while the latter indicating contemporaneity (between the verbs in the subordinate and main clauses) given the present participle.
How would Wijesekara classify the Buddha's admonition "pahitattá viharatha"? Is pahitatta here nominative? Or should the stress be placed on the past participle pahita, i.e. does the word mean "self-controlled" or "a self that is controlled" ?
I have not seen this discussed by Wijesekara, but I think he would not depart from the plain reading of
pahitatta as a participle. We can dispense with ä self that is controlled" given its Vedic nuance as a substantive rather than a pronoun.
The trick now is to ask - is the participle
pahitatta functioning adnominally (ie as a adjective) or adverbally (as a verb)? I don't think it could be adnominal, since the
as verb always describes substantive nouns, not adjectives. However, if it is functioning adverbally, then it is possible to read it as either periphrastic with
samāna, or as a nominative absolute, where both participles are related as such to a silent/suppressed substantive noun in the nominative.
The only reason why I wonder if the nominative absolute may not be a likelier (statistically) candidate is because the periphrastic seems (in my limited reading) uncommon in a subordinate clause. The absolute constructions, by definition, need to be in a subordinate clause. To be sure, Warder does list periphrastics in subordinate clauses, but they seem to be in the minority.