Talk:Trāyastriṃśa

trayas- or trāyas?

Is it supposed to be a vṛddhi-derivative? i can't find the form trāyastriṃśa in either Monier-Williams or Grosses Petersburger Wörterbuch (online versions), both list trayastriṃśa as derived from trayastriṃśat. The article is not consistnet at the moment. The title reads trāyatriṃśa but the body has the form trayatriṃśa. No sources are listed whatsoever, and I don't dare change without feedback, since i'm in no way an expert on this. --Amilah (talk) 16:33, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

and on a side note: the text under the picture has what seems to me a kind of mixed version: travatimsa. I doubt this is a genuine form. Again, someone with a little more insight in buddhist terms, please help out. --Amilah (talk) 16:51, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Here's a link to a page from Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit dictionary: [1]. It shows the entries trāyatriṃśa and trāyastriṃśa, though it also cites trayastriṃśa as a variant. The Pali form is tāvatiṃsa. This is not the usual Pali word for "thirty-three", which is tettiṃsā or tettiṃsati. The long ā of the Pali name shows that it was intended to be a vṛddhi form, though I'm not totally sure whether such a derivative would be entirely in accord with the canons of Paninian grammar. But in all likelihood trayastriṃśa with short a was a hypercorrection based on analogy with the numeral trayastriṃśat. The forms without -s- are probably based on variations in Sanskrit pronunciation (by Prakrit speakers): e.g. trāyastriṃśa > trāyaḥtriṃśa > trāyattriṃśa > trāyatriṃśa. RandomCritic (talk) 02:51, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

How on earth could I forget the bastard of old indic? Many thanks! Btw, you don't suppose that the vṛddhi-like ā is a hypercorrection? short a seems to be the older form if we follow M-W and the PBW --Amilah (talk) 22:17, 2 September 2012 (UTC)