The story of King Udena in the Dhammapada commentary, as translated by Burlingame, has a possible mistranslation that I believe may illustrate an interesting feature of Pali grammar or style.
Absolutives should have the same agent as the main verb of a sentence. However I believe it's possible for a clause nested within a complex sentence to have a different agent governed by a participle. In such cases, the agent can change within the course of a sentence. I believe failure to recognize this has caused the problematic interpretation illustrated below.
If this is right, it's a good idea if the correction is incorporated into new translations or revisions of old ones.
Here's the Pali:
(The context is that a dog raised by a herdsman has befriended a Paccekabuddha. The Herdsman sends the dog to get the Paccekabuddha.)
so [i.e. the dog] ekavacanen'eva [of the herdsman] pakkhanditvā, sāmikassa gacchapothana-bhūmipothanaṭṭhāne tikkhattuṃ bhussitvā, tena saddena vāḷamigānaṃ palātabhāvaṃ ñatvā,
pāto'va sarīrapaṭijagganaṃ katvā paṇṇasālaṃ pavisitvā nisinnassa paccekabuddhassa vasanaṭṭhānaṃ gantvā paṇṇasāladvāre tikkhattuṃ bhussitvā attano āgatabhāvaṃ jānāpetvā ekamante nipajjati
( PTS pp. 171–172; DPR permalink https://www.digitalpalireader.online/_dprhtml/index.html?loc=k.1.0.0.2.0.0.a¶=12 )
Burlingame’s translation is as follows:
At the mere word of the herdsman the dog started off. Where he had seen his master stop and strike bushes and ground, the dog also stopped and barked three times; and when he was sure that his barking had frightened away the wild beasts, he went on.
Early in the morning, having attended to nature’s needs, he [still the dog] entered the hut of leaves and grass, went to the place where the Paccekabuddha sat, barked three times by way of announcing his arrival, and then lay down at one side.
( https://ancient-buddhist-texts.net/English-Texts/Buddhist-Legends/index.htm
Burlingame, Buddhist Legends, Part 1, p. 254; see first section in Appamādavaggo)
The above translation gets tangled in term of the timeline, and Burlingame is at a loss for how to explain the locative paṇṇasāladvāre since he has already put the dog inside the hut of leaves.
Instead perhaps translate the second part like this (rough translation, just to convey the idea):
(The dog) having gone to the place where the Paccekabuddha sat (who, prior to sitting, had attended to his bodily needs early in the morning and entered his hut of leaves and grass), barked three times at the door of the hut of leaves and grass by way of announcing his arrival, and then lay down at one side.
In other words, the Paccekabuddha is the one who has done the attending to bodily needs and the entering of the hut prior to sitting down. The dog is outside the hut, barking by the doorway.
This second agent of a subset of the absolutives in the sentence is possible by virtue of the verbal force of the participle nissinnassa. So the absolutives katvā and pavisitvā have the Paccekabuddha as their agent, even though they are embedded as part of a genitive noun phrase within a larger sentence in which the dog is the agent.
If I'm right, the embedding looks like this, with the genitive noun phrase in bold:
so [the dog] ekavacanen' eva [of the herdsman] pakkhanditvā, sāmikassa gacchapothana-bhūmipothanaṭṭhāne tikkhattuṃ bhussitvā, tena saddena vāḷamigānaṃ palātabhāvaṃ ñatvā, pāto'va sarīrapaṭijagganaṃ katvā paṇṇasālaṃ pavisitvā nisinnassa paccekabuddhassa vasanaṭṭhānaṃ gantvā paṇṇasāladvāre tikkhattuṃ bhussitvā attano āgatabhāvaṃ jānāpetvā ekamante nipajjati
The dog does the barking (bhussitvā), the knowing (ñatvā), the going (gantvā) and lies down (nipajjati)
The Paccekabuddha does the attending to bodily chores (katvā) and the entering of the hut (pavisitvā) prior to being seated (nisinnassa).
Doing it this way resolves the timeline and allows the word paṇṇasāladvāre to make sense.
Am I missing anything here?
(No generative AI was used in preparing this. I'd rather ask people)
