Dvanda, Bahubbīhi & Avyayībhāva
Three more compound types complete the system Lesson 16 began. One of them — bahubbīhi — gets its own name from the single most famous example in the entire Sanskrit-and-Pāli grammatical tradition, cited by grammarians for well over two thousand years.
Dvanda: The "And" Compound
A dvanda compound joins two or more members as if by "and" — a simple list fused into one word, usually naming a fixed, familiar pair.
Bahubbīhi: The Possessive Compound
A bahubbīhi compound describes something entirely outside the compound itself, by naming something that thing possesses — the way English "redhead" doesn't refer to a head at all, but to a person who has red hair. This category's own name is the traditional textbook case, unchanged since antiquity: bahu ("much") + vīhi ("rice") literally means "much rice," but the compound as a whole was traditionally used to describe a wealthy landowner — someone who has much rice, not the rice itself.
The test that distinguishes a bahubbīhi from the kammadhāraya you learned in Lesson 16: a kammadhāraya like mahāpurisa ("great man") refers to the man himself. A bahubbīhi with the same two words would instead describe someone or something else entirely — "one who has a great man [nearby/as a companion]," an outward-pointing description rather than a self-contained label. English marks this same distinction constantly with compounds like "blackbird" (a bird, self-contained) versus "black-belt" (a person, described by something they hold) — the second pattern is the bahubbīhi shape.
Avyayībhāva: The Adverbial Compound
An avyayībhāva compound becomes, as a whole, an indeclinable adverb — it never takes case endings at all, unlike every other compound type in Lessons 16–17. It's usually built from a prefix like yathā- ("according to") or yāva- ("as far as, until") attached to a noun.
All Six Compound Types, at a Glance
- Kammadhāraya (Lesson 16) — descriptive: "an X that is Y" (mahāpurisa, "great man")
- Tappurisa (Lesson 16) — dependent: "Y of/for/by X" (kammaṭṭhāna, "basis of action")
- Dvanda (this lesson) — copulative: "X and Y" (samaṇabrāhmaṇā, "ascetics and brahmins")
- Bahubbīhi (this lesson) — possessive, points outside itself: "one who has X" (bahubbīhi, "one who has much rice")
- Avyayībhāva (this lesson) — adverbial, indeclinable as a whole (yāvajīvaṃ, "lifelong")
Practice: Naming the Type
- candimasuriyā — candimā ("moon") + suriya ("sun")
- dīghajivha — dīgha ("long") + jivhā ("tongue") — describing a person as having a long tongue, not describing the tongue itself
- yathābalaṃ — yathā ("according to") + bala ("strength")
Check your answers
1. Dvanda — "moon and sun."
2. Bahubbīhi — "[one who has a] long tongue," describing the person, not the tongue.
3. Avyayībhāva — "according to [one's] strength," an indeclinable adverb.
Continuing From Here
Lesson 18 reviews everything in Part II with one larger worked example, then hands you off to Part III — the reading track, opening with public-domain ceremonial Pāli and building toward real passages from our own Visuddhimagga translation.