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avinipātadhammo

avinipātadhamma

masc nom sg of avinipātadhamma (adj)

1. not liable to states of suffering; lit. not bad fall nature

Built from

• a — prefix · not, without
  Plain negation. Cognates: English un-, Greek a(n)- (atheist). Negates the entire compound.
• vi — prefix · apart, asunder
  Spatial prefix meaning separation or downward direction. Cognates: Latin dis-, English divide. Here intensifies the sense of 'falling away into lower realms'.
• nipāta — stem · fall, descent
  From ni- (down, into) + √pat (fall). The compound ni-pāta refers specifically to descent into the lower rebirths (apāya). Concrete imagery: a precipitous fall downward.
• dhamma — stem · nature, quality
  Pali/Sanskrit dhamma (nature, thing, dharma). The suffix marks the compound as a possessive bahuvrīhi, 'one having/characterized by the nature of not-falling-into-lower-realms'.
• ø — ending · nominative singular
  Masculine nominative singular ending (zero morpheme in Pali), used when the adjective agrees with a masculine singular nominative noun or stands predicatively.

Analysis. a-vi-nipāta-dhamma: 'not-apart-fall-nature', i.e. not characterized by (vi-nipāta) a falling apart or descent into lower states of being. The compound uses the prefix a- (negation) with vi-nipāta, the abstract noun from vi-√pat 'to fall asunder/descend into lower realms', and dhamma 'nature, quality, condition'.

Etymology. From a- (not) + vi- (apart, asunder; also intensive clarity) + nipāta (falling, descent) + dhamma (nature). The vi-nipāta compounds the spatial imagery of 'falling apart' or 'descending into' with the sense of downward motion into the lower rebirths (animal, ghost, hell realms). Dhamma (nature, quality) is cognate with Latin -damma (from √dhē 'to place, put'). The word encodes the Buddhist doctrine that certain beings (especially those who have entered the Stream, or sotāpanna) are incapable of descent into the lower realms, no matter how they behave in the present life.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

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