Perfect Past Tense (*parokkhā*)

Perfect Past Tense (parokkhā)

Kaccāyana 417. apaccakk’parokkhā’tīte.

“when not present to sight, perfect past”

This tense is very rare in Pāli. So much so, that there seems to be some contradiction between traditional grammars and modern grammars about what it actually means!

The name itself parokkhā comes from paro + akkha, which means “beyond the eye, unseen, unknown.” Its opposite is sammukhā, which means “face to face with, in the presence of”

The parokkhā is supposed to refer to a past action that was unseen by the speaker, e.g. “The ancient sages said...”

But, modern grammars have given it the name of - Perfect Past Tense, which is a tense common to Indo-European languages. It means a completed past action. “He had cooked the food.”

Whatever the exact meaning, there are so few examples of it in Pāli, that you are safe translating it as a normal past tense, something that happened a long time ago, a completed action, something the speaker personally did not witness.

How to Form the Perfect Past Tense

This is constructed by reduplicating the root, which then undergoes some morphological changes.

√bhū	√bhū + bhū	babhū + a	babhūva

Perfect Past Parassapada “had become; had existed”
(√bhū + bhū > babhū)

	sg	pl
3 paṭhama	babhūva	babhūvu
2 majjhima	babhūve	babhūvittha
1 uttama	babhūvaṃ	babhūvimha

Perfect Past Attanopada “had become by oneself;
had existed by oneself”
(√bhū + bhū > babhū)

	sg	pl
3 paṭhama	babhūvittha	babhūvire
2 majjhima	babhūvittho	babhūvivho
1 uttama	babhūviṃ	babhūvimhe

Theoretically there is also a Passive Perfect Past, but that’s enough non-existent grammatical forms for now.

When the Perfect Past occurs in suttas, it is frequently from the irregular root √ah (to speak) - different form of root √brū. Has the following forms:

āha – said (he had said)

āhaṃsu – they said (they had said)

āhu – they said (they had said)