Philological odds and ends III

Many words have interesting stories associated with them. This is a third set of terms which have caught my eye as having some interest, but which did not rate a whole essay on their own.

In this post: Bodhisattva, anagārikā, samyak/mithyā (Pāli sammā/micchā)




Bodhisattva

The typical explanation of this word tells us that sattva is the Sanskrit word for 'being', an abstract noun from sat 'true, real', ultimately from the verbal root √as 'to be' (cognate with English 'is'). Sanskrit used the notion of 'being' in much the same way we do in English: being 'a state of existence (or realness) and; a being 'a living entity'. Sat (and its derivative satya) was a very important term in Vedic metaphysics, and is still important in contemporary Hindu metaphysics. Adding the -tva suffix gives 'truth' or 'reality'.

It's plausible enough, however the Pāli commentaries take the Pāli equivalent satta as related to either sakta 'intent on' (the past-participle of the verb √sañj 'clinging'); or from śakta meaning 'capable of' (pp from √śak 'strong, capable, able'). The suggestion then is that sattva is a hyper-sanskritisation similar to sūkta > sutta > sūtra as discussed in Philological Odds and Ends I. In this case Sanskrit satka, śakta and sattva all become satta in Pāli and other Prakrits. The option of 'intent on' (satka) would fit the way 'bodhisattva' practitioners are described in very early Mahāyāna Sūtras (e.g. the Ugraparipṛccha - see Jan Nattier. A Few Good Men).

A bodhisattva, then, is 'intent on bodhi' and perhaps should be spelt bodhisakta (though centuries of tradition weigh against such a correction). The word is an adjective used in the sense of someone aspiring to, or about to, attain bodhi and become a Buddha. Both buddha and bodhi deriving from the same root √budh 'to understand, to wake up to' - buddha is the past-participle meaning 'awoken', while bodhi is verbal noun meaning 'knowledge' (c.f. buddhi 'intelligence').

Note the spelling 'satva' (with a single 't') seems to have begun as a scribal error - inadvertently leaving off the extra 't'. There is a word satvan which is literally 'one who possesses sat', and which is used to mean 'living, breathing' and 'powerful, strong, a warrior'. The nominative singular is satvā, and it is purposefully used in some cases to describe the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas - they are described as mahāsatvā 'great heros' in the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha Tantra for instance. Cf the use of mahāsattva which is commonly used in Mahāyāna sūtras.

Anagārikā

Someone asked me about this word. The Sanskrit is anāgarikā (fem) meaning 'homeless'. The word is not in PED, but it does occur 3x in the Cullanidesa (a commentarial text included in the Canon): once as anagārikassa (the dative - to/for the homeless), and twice in the compound anagārikamitto (friend of the homeless). This seems to be the only use in Pāli and I deduce that the word is masculine or neuter in Pāli 'anāgarika' (short final 'a'). Given that is doesn't occur in the Canon per se it seems unlikely to have been used in the same sense as we think of it, i.e. it's not a technical term. The Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary suggests that the Pāli equivalent is anāgariya. PED points to the entry for agāra/agāriya. Agāra (same in Sanskrit) just means 'house'. Under agāriya it notes that it is usually used in the (feminine) negative: 'anagāriyā'. It is used in the context of going forth (pabbajita) into the 'homeless' life - so is the same technical term (PED notes agāriya = agārika). An agārika is a layperson - i.e. someone who dwells in a house (as opposed to a paribbājaka or vagrant).

samyak/mithyā (Pāli sammā/micchā)

This pair of adjectives find frequent use in Buddhist terminology. For instance there is samyagdṛṣṭi (P. sammādiṭṭhi) and mithyādṛṣṭi (P. micchādiṭṭhi), that is right-view and wrong-view. Samyak/samyag are forms demanded by sandhi, and the base form of the word is samyañc. The root here is √añc 'to bend'. The prefix saṃ- here makes it mean 'to bend with', and the 'y' being a euphonic insertion. In common parlance we might even say that it means 'to go with the flow or grain'. There is an applied meaning which is to pay respects to - i.e. to bow to or with. I often think that Indian metaphors owe a lot to the early Indo-Europeans having lived in places where rivers where very important. Samyañc 'to bend with' comes to mean, via bending the right way, or going with the natural order, 'correct, right' and perhaps even 'perfect' (i.e. getting everything right). Mithyā on the other hand is a contracted form of mithūyā and means 'inverted', or 'contrary'. The root here is √mith meaning both to 'alternate' and to 'altercate' (a nice summing up by William Dwight Whitney!) From this root we get the indeclinable particle mithu which indicates 'an alternate', or some kind of conflict; as well as similar sounding word, mithuna, meaning 'a pair'. So samyakdṛṣṭi means 'to have a world-view which is in accordance with the natural order; to be seeing things as they are'; while mithyādṛṣṭi means ' to have a world-view which is contrary to how things are, which goes against the grain'.

See also

• Philological Odds and Ends I: tathāgata, sūtra, śramaṇa, loka, gahapati/gṛhapati.
• Philological Odds and Ends II: cakravartin, cintāmaṇi, yoniso manasikara, pāramitā, etymology.
• Philological Odds and Ends IV: vrata, mitra, kavi

"As if it should be necessary either to offend or to be offended"

And thus the desire of defending liberty caused each to prevail [raise itself] in proportion as they oppressed the other. And the course of such incidents is, that while men sought not to fear, they begun to make others fear, and that injury which they ward off from themselves, they inflict on another, as if it should be necessary either to offend or to be offended.

Niccolò Machiavelli.[1]

Machiavelli identified this problem in the sixteenth century. His solution was that states ought to limit the power of individuals. As we will see the Buddha looked at this same problem very differently.

I'm writing these words in the middle of a UK election campaign which is characterised by character assassination attempts by members of all three parties on each other. Media pundits happily join in this schadenfreude-fest. It's not enough to shine, one has to tarnish one's opponents. Of course our elections are a zero-sum game, i.e. win-lose is the only possible solution (hung parliaments not withstanding). During the second live leader's debate I watched the live blog comments on The Times website for a while. It was almost as if the comments were being randomly generated. "Love politician X; hate him. He makes sense; he doesn't make sense. He is sincere, he is insincere." People watching the same debate, and hearing the same speeches, were coming out with radically polarised views - and given that The Times is famously right-wing the reader/viewer comments were surprisingly evenly spread across the spectrum of possible reactions. In effect the comments were incoherent and irrational. And this is how we choose our government! (One can only hope that Winston Church was right and this is less worse than other forms).

Note that Machiavelli's observation is of people concerned with "defending liberty". We so often make war for peace, don't we? The US and UK take out Saddam Hussein (unerringly referred to by politicians and the media by his first name 'Saddam' which I think reflects a kind of ongoing ritual humiliation and infantilisation) because his of (fictitious, as it turns out) weapons of mass destruction and failure to abide by UN resolutions made him a danger to world peace (meanwhile other states with nuclear weapons have become untouchable!). In our long history of defending liberty our governments have invaded countries, toppled legitimate governments and installed puppet dictators whenever it suited them and they thought they could get away with it; and ignored atrocities and injustices when that suits them; and more recently they have even knowingly tortured prisoners. Having read about history of interference by UK/USA governments in Iran recently I found myself sympathising with their pursuit of the one weapon that they see as preventing them being at the mercy of the cynical West ever again! [2] Isn't it funny that the media never seek to contextualise the hostility of Iran towards the west by pointing out why the Iranians legitimately distrust our governments?

Machiavelli observed "that injury which they ward off from themselves, they inflict on another, as if it should be necessary either to offend or to be offended". "AS IF IT SHOULD BE NECESSARY" Why do we think like this? I've pondered this question over many years. Scholarly debates tend to reduce this question to one of "nurture or nature". I suspect that something in our make-up as humans (especially as humans living the way we do - see Why do we Suffer?) makes us tend towards a zero-sum approach. On the other hand, whatever our make-up it is clear that conditioning plays a part in the person we become. When all of our role models behave a certain way we are apt to ape them. When they say one thing and do another we learn not to trust them (incidentally this theme is addressed brilliantly in the BBC TV sit-com Outnumbered).

So. Some combination of nature and nurture instils in us the idea that life is a zero-sum game. Or at least that in defence of ourselves it is permissible to injure another. One of the great ironies of our age is that the USA puts "in God we trust" on their money when they patently do not trust in God, but are constantly second guessing him and meting out what they think is his will (to the point where George Bush appeared to say that God spoke directly to him). So as Buddhists how can we operate in this kind of world? Human nature/nurture being what it is, nothing much has changed since the Buddha's day and he did leave some comments behind to contemplate. Compare for instance Machiavelli to this verse from the Dhammapada (v.201):

jayaṃ veraṃ pasavati dukkhaṃ seti parājito
upasanto sukhaṃ seti hitvā jaya-parājayam

Conquering gives rise to hatred, the defeated dwells in misery;
Abandoning victory and defeat, the peace-lover dwells in bliss.

The Buddha sees the same behaviour around him, but rather than seeking to limit individual power the Buddha's radical solution to the zero-sum game is simply not playing the game of conquest and defeat at all. I would venture that few of us give serious consideration to not playing. Most Buddhists, including me, flirt with it, or take it on partially. This is not intended as a criticism - the Buddha lived a lifestyle almost unimaginably different from anything we see around us now - having no family ties, no home, no possessions, no safety net other than what his good reputation provided (and we need to be clear that the Buddha and his followers were a minority and not universally admired despite what the Buddhist texts tell us). We stay in the game, I think, because we see not playing as a kind of loss, or letting other people win. As I've said before [Martyrs Maketh the Religion] being homeless, for instance, is seen as a very low fate indeed.

If we take Nietzsche's metaphor of man being a tightrope stretched between animal and übermensch (over-man) then, stretching the metaphor, most of us don't believe we can operate without a safety net. Which brings to mind the recent movie "Man on a Wire" - it's possible to operate without a safety net only with dedication, excellent preparation, intense self-awareness and focus. Which is not far from what the Buddha said about life.

It's interesting to note the declining interest in our Order for the more radical forms of living and working arrangements pursued in the 70's and 80's; and the rise of having families, developing careers and saving for pensions. I suspect that playing the win-lose game is a bit like casino gambling. The house always wins. By playing the game at all, one tends to lose to the establishment.

So if we play this game we generate hatred which will eventually come back to bite us. We cause other people to live in misery, or we ourselves live in misery. As I've already observed there is no shortage of food in the world - it's just that some of us are greedy! The Buddha's solution is to go beyond just saying it isn't necessary. He calls 'time' on the game itself. He simply does not play any more. His advice was to not get entangled in the world, in families, in careers, in politics. Focus on what's important (Dhp 183):

Sabbapāpassa akaranaṃ kusalassa upasampadā
sacitta-pariyodapanaṃ etaṃ buddhānaṃ sāsaṇaṃ

not doing any evil, doing the right thing
purifying your own mind, this is the edict of the Buddhas.

1. Niccolò Machiavelli. The Discourses on the first Ten (Books) of Titus Livius. 1.46. www.intratext.com.
2. See for example: Wheen, Francis. How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions. HarperPerennial, 2004.

image: Machiavelli, detail of an oil painting by Santi di Tito; in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence Alinari.