Padarūpasiddhi

13 Oct 2026 · 6 min read

Buddhappiya's Padarūpasiddhi, the twelfth- or thirteenth-century recast of Kaccāyana that orders the rules for teaching and derives every word form step by step, translated into English with links to the Kaccāyana pages.

Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammāsambuddhassa

Homage to the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Fully Awakened One.

The Padarūpasiddhi (“the formation of word forms”) was written by Buddhappiya — Dīpaṅkara by his own name — a Coḻa monk trained in Sri Lanka who calls himself a pupil of Ānanda; the tradition places him in the second half of the thirteenth century, recent scholarship in the twelfth, before the Moggallāna, according to which Elder Ānanda is meant. It takes over every sutta of Kaccāyana but seven, adds two that the tradition credits to the Nyāsa (109 and 111), states sixteen twice — which is how the Burmese count of 684 followed here arises where the Thai and Sinhalese editions count 668 — but replaces the old vutti with Buddhappiya’s own commentary and rearranges the rules into a teaching order: all the masculine lemmas in a together, with their full inflection table and the derivation of every form, then the other lemmas, and so on through the seven sections. It became the standard textbook of the Kaccāyana school, and the Bālāvatāra follows its arrangement.

Each sutta on these pages carries two numbers: its place in the Padarūpasiddhi (1–684, the number the Kaccāyana pages cite in parentheses) and, after §, the Kaccāyana sutta it is. A card under each heading leads to the Kaccāyana page, where the rule’s own analysis, examples and counter-examples are; the Rūpasiddhi page gives Buddhappiya’s own text: his commentary translated literally, block by block, his inflection tables and derivations set out step by step, and his verses. The page does not comment on the text; where his sutta differs from Kaccāyana’s in a way that changes the rule, or a carried word has no visible source, a note of a sentence says so, and footnotes record the emendations of the Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana text and the places where this translation differs from Rachiwong’s (1995) for the sections she covers.

The text is the Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana edition, whose file has one block of the Nāmakaṇḍa out of place and a few misprinted numbers; the pages restore the order and number the suttas by their position.

Ganthārambha (Opening verses)

Ka

Visuddhasaddhammasahassadīdhitiṃ,
Subuddhasambodhiyugandharoditaṃ;
Tibuddhakhettekadivākaraṃ jinaṃ,
Sadhammasaṅghaṃ sirasā’bhivandiya.

The Conqueror, with the thousand rays of his pure true Dhamma,
risen over the Yugandhara mountain of a perfect awakening well understood,
the one sun of the threefold field of a Buddha —
him, with his Dhamma and his Saṅgha, I salute with bowed head,

Kha

Kaccāyanañcācariyaṃ namitvā,
Nissāya kaccāyanavaṇṇanādiṃ;
Bālappabodhatthamujuṃ karissaṃ,
Byattaṃ sukaṇḍaṃ padarūpasiddhiṃ.

and, having bowed to the teacher Kaccāyana,
relying on the commentaries on Kaccāyana and the rest,
I shall compose, to awaken beginners, a straightforward
Padarūpasiddhi, clear and well divided into sections.

Reading the option markers

The Analysis of every sutta reads its option marker in these terms, after Ruiz-Falqués, Boundaries and Domains, §2.3.

flowchart LR
  O(["an option marker in the sutta"]) --> VA["vā, or"]
  O --> KV["kvaci, in some places"]
  O --> NV["navā, or not"]
  O --> VB["vibhāsā, optionally"]
  O --> CA["ca, tu, api, niccaṃ also control options"]
  VA --> VK["vikappa: an open option<br/>both forms are good Pāḷi"]
  VA --> VV["vavatthitavibhāsā: a restricted option<br/>Buddhappiya states its domain"]
  VV --> N1["nicca: obligatory for these words"]
  VV --> N2["anicca: optional for those"]
  VV --> N3["asanta: never for the rest"]
  KV --> KV1["an exception to a wider rule:<br/>the form occurs only in the words named"]
  NV --> NV1["glossed as kvaci (Rūp 21)"]
  VB --> VB1["glossed as vā (Rūp 360)"]

Buddhappiya’s seven sections set against the Kaccāyana chapters whose rules they take; a rule may be quoted in more than one place.

flowchart LR
  subgraph K["Kaccāyana"]
    K1["Sandhikappa §1–§51"]
    K2["Nāmakappa §52–§270"]
    K3["Kārakakappa §271–§315"]
    K4["Samāsakappa §316–§343"]
    K5["Taddhitakappa §344–§405"]
    K6["Ākhyātakappa §406–§523"]
    K7["Kibbidhānakappa §524–§623<br/>Uṇādikappa §624–§673"]
  end
  subgraph R["Padarūpasiddhi"]
    R1["1. Sandhikaṇḍa 1–59"]
    R2["2. Nāmakaṇḍa 60–282<br/>by lemma, with inflection tables"]
    R3["3. Kārakakaṇḍa 283–329"]
    R4["4. Samāsakaṇḍa 330–360"]
    R5["5. Taddhitakaṇḍa 361–423"]
    R6["6. Ākhyātakaṇḍa 424–544"]
    R7["7. Kibbidhānakaṇḍa 545–684"]
  end
  K1 --> R1
  K2 --> R2
  K3 --> R3
  K3 -. "the form rules, where an inflection table first needs them" .-> R2
  K4 --> R4
  K5 --> R5
  K6 --> R6
  K7 --> R7

1. Sandhikaṇḍa (Sandhi section)The definitions of letters and terms, then vowel, consonant and niggahīta sandhi, every example derived step by step.

2. Nāmakaṇḍa (Noun section)The inflection of nouns, lemma by lemma, with full inflection tables: masculine, feminine, neuter, pronouns, numerals, then the suffixes that stand for inflections, prefixes and particles.

3. Kārakakaṇḍa (Kāraka section)The seven inflection forms and the relations they express, each defined where its form is assigned.

4. Samāsakaṇḍa (Compound section)The six kinds of compound, each with its sub-kinds and the derivation of every example.

5. Taddhitakaṇḍa (Secondary derivation section)The secondary suffixes grouped by sense: descent, relation, abstraction, comparison, possession, number, adverbs.

6. Ākhyātakaṇḍa (Verb section)The endings of the eight tenses and moods, the seven conjugation classes (Kaccāyana's eight, the `gaha` roots folded into the `kī` class) with their model roots fully conjugated, and the derivative verbs.

7. Kibbidhānakaṇḍa (Primary derivation section)The primary suffixes by sense: gerundives, agent nouns, participles, infinitives and absolutives, the uṇādi words, and the colophon.

Reference translation

Rachiwong: Rūpasiddhi (1995)Phramaha Sriporn Rachiwong's University of Pune thesis: a study of the Rūpasiddhi and an English translation of the Nāmakaṇḍa, Samāsakaṇḍa and Ākhyātakaṇḍa, reproduced as a reading edition. The Nāma, Samāsa and Ākhyāta pages have been cross-checked with it, and their footnotes record where its Thai edition or its construals differ.

Research

Ruiz-Falqués: Boundaries and DomainsHow Buddhappiya restricts an option to a domain (vavatthitavibhāsā); the framework of these pages' reading of the option markers.