Diamonds, Thunderbolts, and the Impossibility of Translation

Some time back, on my Facebook Heart Sutra group, I argued along the lines that vajra doesn't mean "diamond" and that Sanskrit compounds in the form X-ccheda always mean "that which cuts X". And diamonds are, in any case, easy to cut. And this all meant that Diamond Sutra  was the wrong translation for Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā. A chap called Leo emailed me to say that since vajira does mean "diamond" in Pāli (at least in the PTS Dictionary), Vajracchedikā should still be translated as "Cutter of Diamonds".

I had to admit that the PTS Dictionary does give 'diamond' as a definition (s.v. vajira², p.593). However, I'm a little doubtful about arguing from a Pāli dictionary to the name of a Sanskrit text and I don't think we should always just take the dictionary's word for it. So I checked a couple of the examples the PTSD gives for this definition and this led to some interesting reflections. The first passage is:

"Just as there is nothing that a vajira cannot split, whether jewel or stone" (seyyathāpi, bhikkhave, vajirassa natthi kiñci abhejjaṃ maṇi vā pāsāṇo vā; AN 1.124).

Now this one is important because here a vajira is contrasted with vijju (Skt vidyut) which definitely means "lightning". This suggests that vajira does not mean lightning-bolt here, and it raises the question of the the relationship between vajra and vidyut. And this requires a digression to consider Indra and his vajra.

Vajra

The word vajra derives from the root √vaj "strong, powerful" with the -ra suffix to make a substantive noun: it denotes an embodiment of power and potency. Compare this with the word ugra "powerful, violent, mighty, etc", which is very likely the same word, but with a prior change of vaj > uj (by the process known in Sanskrit as samprasaraṇa).

In Vedic texts, the vajra is most strongly, but not exclusively, associated with the God Indra. According to Mayrhofer, his name probably comes from √in "to use force" and means "strong, powerful". Thus the words indra and vajra are synonyms. Indra is used in the sense of "lord" or "master" and in the word for the senses, indriya, as "capacity" or "faculty". In this sense, Indra is the archetypal kṣatriya or warrior-king. 

In Buddhist texts Indra is usually referred to by another synonym, Śakra "Mighty" or "Able", and as the Devānām Indra "Lord of the Shining Ones". He is directly addressed as Kauśika, which is a reference to myths elaborated in the Brahmaṇa texts and Epics in which the Devas are no longer masters of the universe, but are entangled in worldly affairs in the manner of the Greek Gods. The Vedic-speaking incomers have now dominated Punjab and dealt with their civil war and seem more settled. Brahmin priests are beginning to assert their social dominance over the warrior kings. Śakra is a minor character in early Buddhist texts, but one of the main characters in the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras (where my working theory is that he represents the views of those who practice dhyāna meditation, because he is the Lord of the Devas and the devaloka which is equated with dhyāna). In Buddhist texts Indra seems to have lost his belligerence and his vajra, but not in Buddhist art where he is routinely depicted with both, although these attributes are more often associated with the yakṣa Vajrapāni (the one who wields the mace).

iron mace from India

Vinayak Mahadev Apte (1956) tells us that vajra does not mean "thunderbolt" in the Ṛgveda.  He also points out that there is only one rain god in the Ṛgveda and that is Parjanya; and if anything vidyut "lightning" is associated with him and not with Indra. In fact, Indra is not a storm god at all. The vajra of Indra is a weapon, one that was forged by Tvaṣṭṛ, an artificer god (= Hephaestus?). The vajra is a two-handed, metallic (āyasa) mace with 1000 spikes (sahásrabhṛṣṭi). It is thus described also in Pāḷi when wielded by Vajirapāṇi (vajirapāṇi yakkho āyasaṃ vajiraṃ ādāya MN I.231). In the Ṛgveda, the vajra is described as stable (sthavira) and durable (dharṇasi); it is habitually in the possession of Indra, along with his horse and chariot. Meaning it is unlike highly unstable and impermanent lightning.

Indra was not a storm god, but a warrior god who embodies manly virtues in a warrior society. "While Indra is many things, his exploits are overwhelmingly defined by acts of physical strength, violent contestation, or outright battle: these are his raison d'être" (Whitaker 2016: 58). Indra's weapon represents an embodiment of and symbolises these same qualities. According to Apte, other non-storm gods also wield a vajra weapon at times, especially Vedic Bṛhaspati.

The connection with lightning is puzzling. When Jarrod Whitaker argues that "in a few instances is Indra' s weapon equated poetically with lightning" (2016: 58) I am unconvinced. He cites one example (Rgveda 1.33.10cd):

1.033.10c: yújaṃ vájraṃ vṛṣabháś cakra índro
1.033.10d: nír jyótiṣā támaso gā́ adukṣat

"The bull Indra made his mace his yokemate. He milked the cows out of
the darkness with light." (Jamison & Brereton 2014: 138)

I think Whitaker may be confusing light (jyoti) with lightning (not mentioned). Apte noted that Indra is associated with "waters" in the Ṛgveda, but they have been misinterpreted as rain. In fact, they are the cosmic waters associated with light and day. The enemy of Indra, Vṛtra, who helps to define him, is not a demon of drought, as is often asserted, but of darkness (tamas). The battle between Indra and Vṛtra is the classic battle between light and dark. Milking and cows here are metaphors for the creative power (māyā) of the God. Indra is sometimes referred to as vṛtrahan (P.  vatrabhū) "the smiter or enemy of the Vṛtra". This name also appears in Iranian myth as Vṛθragna (Old Iranian), and Vərəθraγna (Avestan). (NB Skt han derives from an earlier Indo-Iranian √ghan)

Buddha accompanied by
"mace-wielder", Vajrapāṇi
as Greek God. 

There is an interesting parallel here with ancient Greece. Chief God, Zeus also wields a weapon that is popularly supposed to be a "lightning bolt". In fact, his weapon is called κεραυνός (keraunos) "smasher, crusher", not βροντή (brontí,) “thunder” or ἀστραπή (astrapḗ) "lightning". The noun keraunos seems to come from Proto-Indo-European *ker "injure, spoil" and is thus also unrelated to meteorological phenomena. As a name, "smasher" is suggestive of a club or mace.

In Rob Linrothe's Ruthless Compassion, we can see that wrathful deities, particularly Vajrapāṇi ("Holding the Weapon"), are depicted carrying a club or mace. And in Gandhāran art, the yakṣa, Vajrapāṇi is sometimes depicted accompanying the Buddha as Heracles or perhaps Zeus, often armed with a mace.

With all this clarity about what the vajra is and is not, we are left wondering how and when vajra was confused with the thunderbolt or lightning, let alone with a diamond. The mistaken reading of the celestial waters may have contributed, but it seems like a stretch to think that was all that was required to completely change the meaning of a word.

Coming back to the the diamond question, the second Pāli example is from the Dhammapada:

"For the evil done by oneself, born or produced by oneself;
Cleaves the foolish, as a vajira a stone or jewel." 

Attanā hi kataṃ pāpaṃ, attajaṃ attasambhavaṃ;
Abhimantheti dummedhaṃ, vajiraṃ ahmamayaṃ maṇiṃ. (Dhp 161). 

So there is clearly an idea that vajira (whatever it is) can split (abhejja) or cleave/crush (abhimantheti) stone or other gems. So now we need to consider what we know about diamonds.


Diamond

Our word "diamond" comes from the Greek ἀδάμας  (adamas), the mythical hardest substance; in antiquity, usually some form of metal. Marvel comic fans will be familiar with the idea of adamantium. Interestingly, the concept of the hardest substance is common to Greece and Greater India, but it is applied to very different substances. The etymology is uncertain: The OED says that it comes from dama "tame" and thus means "indomitable" (Cf Sanskrit dama) but other sources suggest it may be a loan word (from Persian perhaps?). The word was first applied to the gemstone in English in the 14th Century.

Diamond is a crystalline allotrope of elemental carbon. Natural diamonds form octahedral crystals. Such crystals have a high refractive index, a high melting point (ca. 4000 °C), and the highest thermal conductivity of any natural material. Natural diamonds were typically formed between 1 billion and 3.5 billion years ago, deep in the earth's mantle and were brought to the surface by volcanic activity. They are usually found embedded in igneous rocks. Incorporation of other atoms can give diamonds a variety of hues.

Until the 18th Century, India was the primary producer of diamonds in the world, though they were traded far and wide, even in antiquity.

Diamond is the hardest natural substance. A diamond can scratch any other mineral. We use diamonds to scratch glass, for example, before breaking it. By about 700 AD in India, shards of diamond were being used to drill holes in quartz beads (Gorelick & Gwinnett 1988). In modern industry, diamond-tipped drill bits using synthetic diamonds are used for high performance situations and for drilling very hard substances.

However, diamonds also score low on the "toughness" scale which measures the ability to absorb energy and deform. Diamonds are brittle. Hit a diamond with a hammer and it will most likely shatter. Granite, for example, is about 100 times as resistant to breaking as diamond is. Hit a stone made of granite with a diamond and the diamond will shatter. So the idea that diamonds can split stone is obviously false.

uncut diamond

In antiquity, diamonds were simply left in their natural state. They were not even used as jewelry to begin with. Around the 14th Century in India, steel tools began to be used to split diamonds so as to give them facets. This process is called "cutting". It highlights the brilliance of the gem, i.e. the way it refracts and reflects light. In the modern approach to "cutting", the faces of the crystal are polished using an abrasive wheel,  It is, in fact, extremely easy to cut a diamond, though it takes skill to do so with the necessary precision to shape the gem into one of the classic "cuts". 

In ancient India, diamonds were so rare, and thus expensive, that only kings owned them. As far as I can tell, up to the point of being called after Indra's mace, diamonds were known generically as maṇi or jewels. They were not worn as jewelry and thus most people probably never saw them but only heard about them second hand. The common people were apt to be maṅgalikā (or superstitious) so, perhaps inevitably, diamonds became associated with magical powers in the popular imagination. And the chief magical power is that the diamond can cut any other substance. It can split rocks and stones, but is itself uncuttable, unbreakable, uncrushable, and so on. 

Conclusion

In summary then indra, vajra, and śakra are all synonyms for "power". The original vajra was a two-handed, metal mace with sharpened spikes, wielded by Indra/Śakra against his foe, Vṛta. The word denotes an embodiment or instantiation of physical power. Semantically, vajra does not mean either "lightning" (which is vidyut) or "diamond". Similarly, the weapon of Zeus, also a mace, has no semantic connection with meteorological phenomena.

However, the mace of Indra became associated with lightning at some point and the name vajra was later applied to diamonds as myths of indestructibility grew up around them. The process of how this happened and the timeline are still unclear to me.

But given the usage we can make a pragmatic argument that vajra does indeed mean "diamond" in that the word is applied to diamonds and is understood to mean "diamond" in particular contexts (such as we saw in the Pāli passages above). However, the argument is weakened because the "diamonds" in question have magical properties and it is precisely these magical properties seem to be what motivated ancient Indians to redeploy the name of Indra's weapon.

So yes, we could translate vajraccheda as "cuts diamond" and vajracchedikā as "a cutter of diamond", but we have to footnote this with a reminder that the diamond in question is an imaginary magical diamond, not an ordinary carbon diamond. In other words, we can translate vajra as "diamond" it but it doesn't get us any closer to what is meant by the title since the quality being described doesn't exist in reality. 

The situation is a little worse, however, since the idea that vajraccheda attempts to convey is "cutting the uncuttable" and a diamond is eminently cuttable. Go to a jeweler and all their diamonds are cut. I gather that uncut diamonds are somewhat fashionable at present, but most people have probably only ever seen cut diamonds. Cutting diamonds is completely routine. And diamonds, while still expensive, are commonplace. So the title doesn't have much meaning when translated in a simplistic fashion. The idea of the title Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā is obviously that prajñāpāramitā cuts the uncuttable. What this means is a mystery, however, because the text never explains it. If we stipulate the meaning, the next problem is how to meaningfully convey this in English? 

Funnily enough, actually we do have an English word that means "uncuttable" which is, atomic, from the Greek temnein "to cut". And, of course, it was a big deal when the irreducible atom was split by my countryman, Ernest Rutherford, at Manchester University in 1917. Though I quite like the sound of the Atom Splitting Sutra, in fact splitting atoms is almost as routine as cutting diamonds these days and there is a veritable zoo of subatomic particles. Also "atomic" is inescapably entangled in connotations of radiation and bombs.

My own habit has been to refer to the text as the Vajracchedikā and just leave it at that. It has the advantage of being unique. I note that although we can infer what the title means, it is never explained in the text itself. When Subhūti asks what he should call the discourse, the answer is "The name of this way of talking about the Dharma, Subhūti, is Gnosis Perfected" (prajñāpāramitā nāmāyaṃ subhūte dharmaparyāyaḥ 13b). On the other hand, the colophon of 7th Century Gilgit manuscript ends with vajracchedikā prajñāpāramitā samāptāḥ. "Here endeth the Gnosis Perfected that Cuts the Uncuttable". Note that the text does not refer to itself as a sūtra.  

I'll finish with a few words about the Chinese translation. Since Kumārajīva first translated it into Middle Chinese ca 402 CE, the Vajracchedikā has been known as the 金剛般若波羅蜜經 (Jīngāng bānrěbōluómì jīng). The part that interests us us 金剛 which is a binomial and means "diamond". It's a made-up term that translates vajra. 金 primarily means "metal" and sometimes more specifically "gold". It can also convey the typical properties of metals (of which gold is an exception), i.e. hardness, durability, etc. My Middle Chinese dictionary (Kroll) has a sub-entry for 金剛 "hardness of gold, i.e. diamond". But, of course, gold is known for being a soft metal in its pure state. It is, for example, the last thing you'd make a weapon out of. As we might suspect from the previous, 剛 means "rigid, unyielding, inflexible" and in a nice twist Kroll includes "adamantine" in his definitions; on its own the character is also used for "steel".

If we translate 金剛般若波羅蜜經 fairly literally it is the Diamond Gnosis-Perfected Sutra in Kumārajīva's rendering. And this is probably why the name Diamond Sutra was popularised. We may never know if the absence of a reference to "cutting" is a deliberate omission, or if the reference that we take for granted is a later affectation that was absent from Kumārajīva's source text. In my research for this essay, I didn't find any information on how the Chinese viewed diamonds.

In the end most people are just going to keep calling it the Diamond Sutra no matter what. Still, it is interesting just to reflect on how words function and change over time. The dictionary is not the last word on what any given term means in a text because many terms are defined pragmatically. As fascinating as etymology can be, it doesn't always capture how a word is used at any given time and how that use changes.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Apte, V. M. (1956). 'Vajra in the Ṛgveda'. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 37(1/4): 292-295. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44082929

Dahlquist, Allan. (1996) Megasthenes and Indian Religion: A Study in Motives and Types. Motilal Banarsidass.

Gorelick, L and Gwinnett, A. J. (1988) 'Diamonds from India to Rome and beyond'. American Journal of Archaeology, 92(4):547-552. https://www.jstor.org/stable/505249

Jamison, S.w. and Brereton, J.P. (2014) The Rig Veda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India. Oxford University Press.

Kroll, Paul. W. (2015). A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese. Brill.

Linrothe, Rob. (1999). Ruthless Compassion: Wrathful Deities in Early Indo-Tibetan Esoteric Buddhist Art. Serindia Publications.

Mayrhofer, Manfred. (1956) Kurzgefaßtesetzmologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.

Whitaker, Jarrod. (2016) 'I Boldly Took the Mace (Vájra) for Might: Ritually Weaponizing a Warrior's Body in Ancient India.' International Journal of Hindu Studies, 20(1): 51-94. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44983842

Note: 29 May 2024. 

Slaje, Walter. (2024). "A Stone of Contention: Afterthoughts on the Rigvedic vájra – and Why a Mace is not an Option." Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 29.2

Abstract: The present study deals with the widely held view that the vajra was conceived by the Rigvedic poets as a club or mace — the translation terminology of the target languages is not uniform. This is largely due to a change of mind on the part of Karl Friedrich Geldner, who revised his earlier view of the vajra as a wedge (“Keil”, 1907-1909) to the translation “club” (“Keule”, 1929) without giving any reasons. The great influence of his authoritative translation, only published in 1951, is demonstrated by the fact that, with very few exceptions, his later view of the vajra as a club was unquestioningly adopted by most later Rigvedic translators and interpreters, even though no dictionary gives such a meaning for vajra. This continuous practice has strengthened the unwavering belief in its correctness to the extent that it has spread as a firm conviction to all areas of research in Indology and related disciplines. In defence of my thesis that the criteria for a mace are not answered by what the Rigveda says about the vajra, and that a vajra should therefore have been some other kind of weapon, such as a biface-like sling projectile made of stone or lead, the history and rationale of the mace theory is examined and the plausibility of both assumptions (“stone” and “club”) discussed and compared. 

This article may or may not be an interesting contribution, frankly it is so verbose, so very slow to get to the point, and so prone to digressions and taking pot shots at other scholars, that it is difficult follow the argument presented. There is no simple presentation of the author's thesis or the relevant passages. I gave up. But I am still intrigued because the sling was a devastating longish-range weapon which could be wielded with high levels of accuracy. In the David and Goliath conflict, for example, David weilding a sling had the more deadly weapon. 

Removing All Suffering

The Heart Sutra is less than 300 words (in any language) and I have been studying it in detail for eight years now, though I first met it 25 years ago. And yet I still find new things in it. Yesterday, I noticed a new oddity concerning the phrase after the epithets, i.e. after the part where prajñāpāramitā is described as a superlative kind of vidyā (if you're not familiar with this see my article on the epithets). I'll cite it with the opening phrase and give a word for word translation

故知般若波羅蜜多... 能除一切苦

Therefore 故 know 知, gnosis 般若-perfected 波羅蜜多 ... can 能 remove 除 all 一切 suffering 苦.

This is a well formed Chinese sentence: 除 "remove" is a verb, qualified by 能 "can, able to"; 般若波羅蜜多 is the agent of the verb (or subject) and 苦 is the patient of the verb (or object). There is nothing remarkable about this.

Electronic searching allows us to quickly show that this phrase does not occur in Kumārajīva's Large Sutra translation (T.223) but that it does occur in some other pre-7th Century Chinese translations. Unfortunately, there are no Sanskrit source texts to consult.

• T.397 大方等大集經 Mahāvaipulya-mahāsannipāta-sūtra. (414~426 CE.)
• T.410 大方廣十輪經 Daśacakra-kṣitigarbha-sūtra. (397~439 CE)
• T.1421 彌沙塞部和醯五分律 The Five Section Vinaya of the Mahīśāsaka School. (423~424 CE)

The third passage is a poem about fully understanding the conditioned links of the nidāna chain (T 1421; 22.103.a2-7; if you use Facebook, I posted a translation of the poem on my Facebook Heart Sutra group). It uses the exact phrase: 能除一切苦.

The first two occurrences seem a little more apposite.

此陀羅尼有大勢力猶如電光，速能破壞一切欲事，能大利益能盡一切欲貪，乃至能除一切苦擔，(T 397; 13.241.c19-24).
This dhāraṇī has great power like like a bolt of lightning; it can quickly destroy all sexual passion, it has the great benefit and advantage that it can end all coveting resulting from passion, up to... it can relieve all the burdens of suffering...

此呪利益能除一切苦惱繫縛。(T 410; 13.685.b19)

"This dhāraṇī has the benefit and advantage that it can remove all suffering, distress, and attachments."

It's not clear if the phrase was borrowed from any of these sources, but it was clearly in circulation from the early 5th Century onwards, probably a little after Kumārajīva died. And in two texts it's associated with a dhāraṇī. Although it is in Chinese, this kind of syntax where "something is able to do something", immediately brings to mind a particular Sanskrit grammatical construction: the infinitive combined with the verb śaknoti "able, capable". The actual Sanskrit translation of the Heart Sutra does not use this idiom, however, and opts for:

tasmāj jñātavyam prajñāpāramitā... sarvaduḥkha-praśamanaḥ...

Therefore (tasmāt) it should be known (jñātavya) [as] gnosis-perfected (prajñāpāramitā)... pacifying-of-all-suffering (sarvaduḥkha-praśamanaḥ).

The word praśamaṇa is an adjective meaning "tranquillizing, pacifying, curing, healing". Adjectives take the case, number, and gender of a noun or pronoun that they describe. Here it is declined in the masculine nominative singular, but there is no nearby noun or pronoun in the masculine nominative singular.

One of the quirks of Sanskrit is that it frequently uses adjectives, especially compound adjectives, as nouns. One example is calling Śiva, and later Avalokiteśvara, nīlakaṇṭha "blue throated". More literally, "the one whose throat is blue".

So we might read this as saying prajñāpāramitā... sarvaduḥkha-praśamanaḥ asti "gnosis perfected is easing all misery". But this doesn't seem satisfactory either. It looks like praśamana is the wrong derivative to use here or the grammar is wrong. But something is wrong.

Conze's (not 100% reliable) critical apparatus only lists one variant reading, i.e. sarvaduḥkha-praśamano mantraḥ; however, we know from my study of the epithets passage that this is a mistake. No prajñāpāramitā text uses sarvaduḥkha-praśamana as an epithet. Worse, no prajñāpāramitā text even uses the word praśamana.


Capability

If you don't know Sanskrit, it will be difficult to get a sense of how odd this phrase is. What I'm thinking at this point is, "how was this overlooked for decades?" Here is how I would translate the last part of the Chinese. Let me restate it for comparison and then offer a Sanskrit translation

Ch : [it] can 能 remove 除 all 一切 suffering 苦.
S : tad sarvaduḥkaṃ nāśayitum śaknoti.
E : It is able to remove all suffering.

This is a common Sanskrit idiom. In Chinese "can" is a qualifier for the verb "to remove". In Sanskrit we put the main action in the infinitive (with the -tum ending) and employ the finite verb śaknoti to indicate capability, so that nāśayitum śaknoti means "is able to remove". The implication here is not hypothetical; rather, when it is put into practice prajñāpāramitā does remove all suffering, i.e. there's no doubt about the outcome.

However, when we look at the Pañcaviṃśātisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra this idiom seems to be used only to indicate negative capacity. Looking at Kimura's edition, we find the Buddha explaining that Māra is "not able to make an obstacle" (na śaknoty antarāyaṃ kartum PPS 4.26). Or: "Just as, Subhuti, a wingless bird is not able to move through the sky..." (tadyathā subhūte 'pakṣaḥ pakṣī na śaknoty ākāśe kramitum PPS 6-8.137). Again, note that these are not hypotheticals.

What about other possibilities? Are there other ways that Pañcaviṃśātisāhasrikā talks about "all suffering"? There are one or two. For example: "The burdens of all beings should be removed by me" (mayā sarvasattvānāṃ bhāra āhartavyas P 5:26). Conze translates "I, who ought to remove the suffering from all beings" confusing the issue by translating bhāra "burden, load, weight" as "suffering" the usual translation of duḥkha.

Another example: "for, having awakened to the unsurpassed perfect awakening, I should cause them to be liberated from all suffering" (tathā hi te mayānuttarāṃ samyaksaṃbodhim abhisaṃbudhya sarvaduḥkhebhyaḥ parimocayitavyāḥ. P 5:27).

In these examples āhartavyas and parimocayitavyā are future passive participles. And the FPP is more hypothetical; hence "ought to remove " and "should be liberated". This construct lacks the definite quality that I read in the Chinese.

If the infinitive + śaknoti idiom is too obscure, my next choice would be to state the outcome directly using a finite verb, i.e. tad sarvaduḥkaṃ nāśayati "it removes all suffering". I don't see this in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā and this raises the question of what verbs the text does use in relation to duḥkha.


Duḥkha in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā

I did not do the kind of comprehensive survey (noting all the variants) that I'd do for a publication, but I did skim through every occurrence of sarvaduḥkha; but this turns out to be a rare word in Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā. I can find only one passage which uses the expression:

2-3:44 tathā hi kauśika prajñāpāramitā sarvadharmāṇam upaśamayitrī na vivardhikā, katameṣāṃ dharmāṇām?.. sarvaduḥkhaskandhasya... upaśamayitrī na vivardhikā.

"For here, Kauśika, gnosis-perfected is a extinguisher of all mental phenomena, not an enhancer... is an extinguisher of the whole mass of suffering, not a enhancer."

Although upaśamayitrin in a nominal form is used, the verbal root is upa√śam "to cease, become extinct". Used verbally we might expect to use the causative, i.e. prajñāpārmaitā sarvaduḥkaṃ upaśāmayati "gnosis-perfected causes all misery to cease". But the fact is that Pañcaviṃśātisāhasrikā doesn't use the expression sarvaduḥkha more than once and it uses the word duḥkha hundreds of times. Note that praśamana is from the same verbal root but with a different prefix, i.e. pra√śam.

So we can broaden the search out to see what verbs have duḥkha as a patient (duḥkham). This makes the number of items to check more manageable. Again, I skimmed through every occurence of the word. The vast majority of mentions of duḥkha are related to denying the applicability of the twin terms sukha and duḥkha to Absence.

As far as I can tell the single passage quoted above is the only one in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā that even comes close to suggesting that prajñāpāramitā can help get rid of suffering.

In fact, one does find the idiom with nāśayitum śaknoti here and there in Sanskrit literature, but it tends not to be Buddhist. So creating a more idiomatic translation of 能除一切苦 is quite problematic because it does not seem to be a Prajñāpāramitā idiom. And we don't have Sanskrit sources for the few texts that we do find the words in.

Dukkha in Pāli

So if we cannot find the phrase in Sanskrit, perhaps if we start from Pāḷi and then look for Chinese parallels? I found something promising in the Aṅguttara Nikāya:

‘Anattani anattāti, asubhaṃ asubhataddasuṃ;
Sammādiṭṭhisamādānā, sabbaṃ dukkhaṃ upaccagun ti (AN 4.49; II.52)

They have seen the selfless as selfless
And the ugly as ugly;
Through acquiring rightview,
They have overcome all suffering.

Now we can use the wonderful Sutta Central site to look for Chinese parallels to this text. And, after some work we strike gold, because the Ekottarikāgama (EA2 5; T150A) does not have this verse, but it does have the phrase: 便見是法除一切苦 "directly seeing this teaching eliminated all suffering". Here 除chú corresponds to upaccaguṃ which is a 3rd person plural past tense of the verb upātigacchati "to surpass, overcome"). This is helpful.

We also find in the Suttanipāta (and here I rely heavily on Roy Norman's translation and commentary):

Ye ca dukkhaṃ pajānanti, atho dukkhassa sambhavaṃ;
Yattha ca sabbaso dukkhaṃ, asesaṃ uparujjhati;
Tañca maggaṃ pajānanti, dukkhūpasamagāminaṃ. (Sn 726)
Cetovimuttisampannā, atho paññāvimuttiyā;
Bhabbā te antakiriyāya, na te jātijarūpagā’’ti. (Sn 727)

Those who know misery and the origin of misery;
And where misery is completely stopped, without omission;
And who know the path leading to the easing of misery.
Endowed with freedom of mind, i.e. release through gnosis;
They are capable of making an ene. They do experience birth and old age.

"Leading to the path of easing of misery" (dukkhūpasamagāminaṃ) leads us to an idiom that is repeated a few times in Pāli.

Yato ca ariyasaccāni, sammappaññāya passati;Dukkhaṃ dukkhasamuppādaṃ, dukkhassa ca atikkamaṃ;Ariyaṃ caṭṭhaṅgikaṃ maggaṃ, dukkhūpasamagāminaṃ. (SN 15:10; II.185)

"Yet when one sees with perfect gnosis these four truths of the nobles
Misery, the origin of misery, the transcendence of misery
The noble eightfold path leading to the easing of misery..."

And a similar phrase at SN 22.78, 56.22; AN 4.33, 4.49; Dhp 191. So it seems that in Pāli the standard phrase for "easing of suffering" dukkhūpasama. Where upasama (Skt upaśama) is an action noun. Leading to is gāmin. And we've seen that EA2 除一切苦 corresponds to sabbaṃ dukkhaṃ upaccagun (upa-atigam).

If we now plug 除 into the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, we see that it has been used for a ridiculously wide range of Indic words, but does include some target words that look good for us: upaśama, upaśānta, vyupaśama, śama, śamana, saṃśamana. Notably praśama, praśamaṇa are absent.

Conclusion

The opening proposition in this essay was that tasmāj jñātavyam prajñāpāramitā... sarvaduḥkha-praśamanaḥ... was a poor translation of the Chinese 故知般若波羅蜜多... 能除一切苦,

What we want is some way of indicating that easing suffering is an activity of prajñāpāramitā, and not simply a hypothetical activity but one with some certainty behind it. In Pāli, in relation to the four noble truths, we saw easing suffering associated with magga; we saw this expressed as maggaṃ dukkhūpasamagāminaṃ "the path that leads to the calming of misery".

It seems that the standard word was not praśamana (adjective) but upaśama (action noun). Missing this kind of detail is quite typical of the monk that translated the Heart Sutra into Sanskrit. I think we have to assume that they were not Indian. And probably did not learn Sanskrit from an Indian because they seem to make very odd choices of vocabulary and inflection.

We have one Sanskrit example in the Large Sutra: prajñāpāramitā sarvadharmāṇam upaśamayitrī where the action is expressed using an agent noun, i.e. "gnosis-perfected is an extinguisher of all dharmas". So we could adapt this to say: prajñāpāramitā sarvaduḥkhāṇam upaśamayitrī "gnosis-perfected is an extinguisher of all miseries."

Or if we adapt the phrase related to the four noble truths: prajñāpāramitā sarvaduḥkhopaśamana-gāminaṃ "gnosis perfected leads to the easing of all misery".

Or there is my original suggestion: prajñāpāramitā sarvaduḥkaṃ nāśayitum śaknoti."gnosis-perfected can eliminate all misery".

Any of these would do. No doubt there are many other ways also.

My observations are nowadays framed as if the Chinese origins thesis is true. I plan to publish a long article showing the very many reasons for believing this (this essay has added a 23rd point of comparison). There is a pervasive pattern of similarities and differences that all point towards a single conclusion: the Sanskrit Heart Sutra was produced by a Chinese monk struggling with limited Sanskrit. Trying to explain the oddities that we find in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra if it was composed by an Indian monk, who probably spoke a related Middle Indic language, takes us well beyond what is credible. There are too many Chinese idioms and too many odd word choices for Indian origins to be plausible.

~~oOo~~