SamāsaSamāsa “compound noun” is one of the major forms of word-buildings in Indo Aryan Languages. According to grammarians it is said that Samāso Padasamkhepo. It means summarizing, shortening boiling down the words. The combine sense of relative words denoting Nāma “nouns”, Upasagga “prefixes” and Nipāta “indeclinable particles” is called Samāsa compound. And the nouns including participles, adjectives and pronouns are very frequently combined in compounds Samāsa.

When there are gaps in between words it creates inconvenient in utterance of words and sometime in writing. Samāsa indicates the richness and sweetness of language. Therefore, in the pronunciation, Samāsa is useful to save the effort and energy and in writing it saves the space. We can also say that this compound is similar to other language using in the world to day. As a regard to compounds, seldom more than two or three stems are combined in the older languages. There are a large number of advantages of Samāsa in the use of language. Some of them are Precision in expression, Beauty in expression, Accuracy of grammar and Convenience in prose and composition.

And some compounds have an indeclinable as their first member. A few compounds are made up entirely of indeclinable. Here the six kinds of compounds in Pāli briefly mentioning as follow;

(1) Kammadhāraya Samāsa or “Adjectival”, an adjective and a substantive noun are combined.

(2) Digu Samāsa or “Numeral Determinative”, a numeral and a substantive are combined.

(3) Tappurisa Samāsa “Dependent determinative”, a substantive of one of the seven cases accepts Pathama and Alabana are combined with a substantive.

(4) Dvanda Samāsa “Copulative”, two or more similar nouns are combined. (5) Abyayībhava Samāsa “Adverbial”, an idea enable including adverb is combined

with a substantive. (6) Bahubbīhi Samāsa “Attributive”, these nouns are expressed something different to

what they directly denote. Digu Samāsa is the one, which I have to explain in a little more detail including some of its examples. When a numeral and a substantive are combined, it is called Digu. The numeral must be the first member. The compound may be neither a neuter singular nor a plural of the gender of the second member. Digu is divided into two Samāhāra and Asamāhāra. Samāhāra “collective” expresses a whole and takes the form of the neuter singular. For example Tayo + loko = Tilokam.

Pañca + sīlāni = Pañcasīlam.

Asamāhāra “individual” does not express a whole, but takes the plural form. Here the objects indicated by the last member are considered individually. For example Tayo+ bhavā = Tibhavā.

Pañce + indriyāni = Pañcindriyāni.Taking the fact describing above we know that the combination of Samāsa is one of the usefulness in Pāli language until to the present time.