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svāssa

sandhi contraction: so + assa

1. that would be
2. that his; that for him

Built from

• so — root · that, he
  Demonstrative pronoun from Indo-European *so-/*se-, the ancestral form of English 'he', Latin 'se', and Greek 'ho'. Points to a definite referent already introduced in discourse.
• assa — ending · (his) / (would be)
  Either genitive singular masculine of so ('of that, of him') or 3rd singular optative of atthi ('to be, might be'). In sandhi, -o + assa fuses to -āssa, creating the contraction. The optative expresses conditional or potential meaning in the protasis of a conditional sentence.

Analysis. so (demonstrative pronoun, nominative singular masculine) + assa (genitive singular masculine of so, or 3rd singular optative of atthi 'to be'). The contraction svāssa arises from so + assa with vowel fusion; context determines whether assa functions as genitive ('that of him, that his') or optative ('that [it] would be').

Etymology. so is the Pali demonstrative pronoun cognate with Sanskrit sa- and the Indo-European demonstrative stem *so-/*se- (English 'he', Latin 'se', Greek 'ho'). assa as genitive is the oblique stem of the same pronoun; as optative it derives from √as 'to be' (cognate with English 'is', Latin 'esse'). The fusion of o + a into ā is regular Pali sandhi.

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

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