Two or more words combined together to form a single composite term is called a compound – e.g. blackboard, notebook, homemade etc. In older parts of the Pali canon, compounds are simple and seldom contain more than two or three elements: nāma-rūpa = name & form, ceto-vimutti = liberation of mind, But they become more complicated in later language: sīlasamādhipaññāvimuttivimuttiñāṇadassanaparibhāvitaṃ → sīla + samādhi + paññāvimutti + vimutti + ñāṇadassana + paribhāvitaṃ As a general rule, all members of a composite term are in their stem forms (no inflection of case, person or gender) except the final term which is inflected according to its gender, casting the whole composite to that inflection. pañca+upādāna+khandh ā pañca+upādāna+khandh ānaṃ pañca+upādāna+khandh esu The separate stems are joined using the rules of sandhi (joining) making compounds tricky sometime to tease apart. pañc u pādāna k khandhā → pañca+upādāna+khandhā The Digital Pali Re...
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