Three Forms, Three Functions
At a Saturday revision class, a student preparing a Hindi rendering of an unseen prose sentence marks three forms in the same clause: tena, āyasmatā Ānandena, and bhikkhūnaṃ. The sentence is: 'Tena kho pana samayena āyasmatā Ānandena Bhagavato santike dhammaṃ sutvā bhikkhūnaṃ ārocitaṃ hoti.' The first draft renders all three with the Hindi postposition se, so 'by that time' appears to be an instrument, Ānanda appears to be a means rather than a person, and bhikkhūnaṃ is left vague. The teacher marks three errors but gives no corrections; the student must label each form's function, decide whether bhikkhūnaṃ is dative or genitive, and choose between a sequential and a causal rendering of sutvā. The teacher warns that one of the three forms is idiomatic and should not be parsed word by word, and that the passive ārocitaṃ hoti controls which participant is promoted to subject.
1. Label the function of tena, ānandena, and bhikkhūnaṃ in the sentence, and state which of the three cannot be decided from morphology alone.
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The three forms cannot be handled by one gloss.
- tena: formally instrumental singular of ta-, but in tena kho pana samayena it is a fixed temporal phrase, 'at that time'. The test is substitution: no instrument is being used, and kho pana marks narrative transition, not means.
- ānandena: instrumental singular marking the agent of the passive ārocitaṃ hoti. The verb is passive, so the thing announced is the grammatical subject and the person who announces appears in the instrumental. It is not an instrument in the ordinary sense.
- bhikkhūnaṃ: the ending is syncretic; dative plural and genitive plural are identical here. Syntax decides. ārocitaṃ hoti takes a recipient or beneficiary, so dative: 'announced to the monks'. A genitive ('the monks' announcement') would make the monks owners of the content, which the context does not support.
Only bhikkhūnaṃ is genuinely undecidable from morphology alone; tena is decided by a fixed collocation, and ānandena by the passive construction.
2. Translate the sentence and justify your treatment of sutvā.
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Translation: 'At that time, the Venerable Ānanda, having heard the Dhamma in the presence of the Blessed One, announced it to the monks.'
Justification: sutvā is an absolutive (gerund). Its default function is to mark an action completed before the main verb, and its subject is normally the same as the main clause's subject. Here Ānanda hears and Ānanda announces, so the sequence is: hearing first, announcing second. A causal rendering ('because he had heard') adds a logical relation that the participle does not itself mark; Pali would normally signal that with a causal clause such as yasmā ... tasmā. The narrative context favours simple sequence, so the sequential rendering is the safer judgement.
3. If a classmate argues that bhikkhūnaṃ must be genitive because it ends in -ānaṃ, how would you rebut using this sentence?
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The ending -ānaṃ is not diagnostic: in Pali the dative and genitive plural of many stems, including a-stems, are identical in form. Case is a function, not a spelling.
Use substitution to show this. Singularise the phrase: bhikkhussa ārocitaṃ can mean 'announced to the monk' (dative) or 'the monk's announcement' (genitive). The form alone does not decide; the verb does. ārocitaṃ hoti is a verb of telling, which takes a recipient. The monks are the audience being informed, so dative is the natural reading. Word order supports this: bhikkhūnaṃ sits immediately before ārocitaṃ, a common position for a dative complement of a verb of speech. The genitive would require contextual evidence that the monks possessed or authored the announcement, which is absent.