Patañjali & Pronunciation

Patañjali
sculpture by Natalia Rosenfeld

Buddhist texts are preserved in a wide variety of languages. However in India for more than 1000 years, from just before the common era, most texts were composed and preserved in a variety Sanskrit. Sanskrit was not only the language of the Buddhist texts during this period, but was the literary language of all India, so that Buddhist exegesis was composed in Sanskrit also. Sanskrit was not restricted to Brahmins for most of the common era. Despite grammars dating back to ca. 4th century BCE, which served as prescriptive models, Sanskrit has always existed in a variety of dialects and there was influence in both directions with Prakrits (or vernacular languages that derive from one or other Sanskrit dialect).

Of course in Sri Lanka and countries under the influence of the Sri Lankan Buddhists, the North Indian mixed Prakrit we now call Pāli was important. And we are beginning to understand the importance of the language of Gandhāra (usually called Gāndhārī) and it's influence particularly in Central Asia and China.

Even in India there are some variations in pronunciation. Buddhists outside of India have struggled with Sanskrit pronunciation. Sanskrit contains sounds that are not part of the Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, or English sound palette. The first three nations settled on standard pronunciations a long time ago. In the individualistic English speaking world the problem of pronunciation continues, with a wide variety of mispronunciations being common. So we may here the syllable saṁ (as in saṁgha) being pronounced like the English words sang, sung, sum, and (the name) Sam. Sometimes all four by one person. 

I have written about pronunciation before in 2009. I've given up trying to correct people's pronunciation in writing. English speakers have a strong tendency to pronounce written words as though they were English - with all the vagaries of English pronunciation. And because we tend to learn our Buddhist vocabulary from written sources we seem to be stuck with the morasse of mispronunciation. In the short term I don't think anything I can say will change things. Certainly nothing I write will change things. Although a few of us make forays into Buddhist canonical languages, I don't know anyone who is familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet that phoneticists use to disambiguate spoken sounds.

But pronunciation is important, and not just for aesthetic reasons. An ancient commentary on the grammar of Sanskrit, the Vyākaraṇa-mahābhāṣya or Major Commentary on Grammar of Patañjali (also credited with composing the Yoga Sūtras), criticises bad pronunciation (mithyā prayukta) in this way:

duṣtaḥ śabdaḥ svarato varṇato vā mithyā prayukta na tam artham āha;

sa vāgvajro yajamānaṃ hinasti yathendraśatruḥ svarato 'parādhāt.

A faulty word, badly pronounced due to a misplaced accent or badly articulated sound does not convey the intended meaning. A word-lightning bolt kills the sponsor of the sacrifice, just as a misplaced accent in 'indraśatru'.

I've not attempted a verse translation here and have crammed in some extra information because much is alluded to this little verse that won't be obvious to readers.

Firstly there are two main ways to make mistakes: in accent (svarata) and in articulation (varṇata). Accent refers mainly to the Vedic pitch accent. Although the use of the pitch accent was changed to a stress accent in Classical Sanskrit, the placing of the accent still provided important information about how to conjugate any particular verb or render a compound as we will see, since this is the important aspect of the story. In English great use of the change in stress was made by the Two Ronnies in their hardware shop sketch: it's not clear whether Ronnie Barker is asking Ronnie Corbett for "four candles" or "fork 'andles" (the London accent drops the h of handles which accentuates the ambiguity). The pronunciation is the same and all that distinguishes them is the stress.

The mis-articulation of a word is a more obvious mistake. Articulation refers to the way the parts of the mouth move in order to create the sounds of speech. A single mispronounced letter can completely change the meaning of a word. This is used to great comic effect in Monty Ponty's Life of Brian in the character of Pontius Pilate who has a speech impediment (though of course we ought not to laugh at other's afflictions). When his friend, "Biggus Dickus", steps in to try and calm the situation, things get out of hand. Pilot remonstrates with the crowd, pointing out that his friend Biggus Dickus "commands a quack legion. He wanks as high as anyone in Wome." The crowd is already rolling on the floor laughing and any hope of regaining control or dignity is now lost.

The story alluded to in the verse relates to Indra and his mortal enemy Vṛtra. Indra is the god of storms and rain, a counterpart of Thor in Germanic myth. Vṛtra is synonymous with 'drought', though literally the name means 'restrainer', i.e. the one who holds back the rains. The two characters of this story seem to be personifications of the annual anxiety over the arrival of the monsoon. Leading up to the monsoon rains, which last for three months, there is no rain at all for nine months. If the monsoon fails there is, even now, widespread famine in India as crops fail for lack of water. Also, as in other river valleys, the annual floods ensure the continued fertility of the soil despite heavy cropping. Since the regular arrival of the monsoon is the natural order, when it fails something must have held it back (vṛta). So each year Indra must do battle with Vṛtra (sometimes envisioned as a dragon) in order to release the rains from Vṛtra's restraint. This story has been assimilated to a much older narrative about a warrior slaying a demon which is found in mythology across Eurasia (associated with the so-called Nostratic proto-language). The story is found, for example, in the Old English story of Beowulf and in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In one of the stories surrounding this mythic pair, Vṛtra prepares a magical rite in which he will kill Indra. Within the rite he pronounces the following mantra: indraśatrur vardhasva! He had intended to say "may Indra's killer (i.e. himself) prosper. However he mispronounces the word indraśatrur and was himself killed. Why?

The word indraśatru is a compound. And as with most compounds it can be read a number of ways. The most obvious reading, where the pitch accent falls on the final syllable of śatru, is that the compound is a tatpuruṣa compound and means 'the killer (śatru) of Indra. However, when he gets the accent wrong Vṛtra makes the compound a bahuvrīhi '[he whose] killer is Indra'.

The magic of the mantra is infallible and so Vṛtra effective ensures his own demise by effectively naming himself 'killed by Indra'. By merely uttering the words in the ritual, which is to say the sacrificial, context, Vṛtra becomes the one who is killed by Indra. The utterance becomes a word-lightning bolt (vāg-vajra) which strikes and kills the sponsor of the sacrifice! The last little cultural detail here is that the Vedic sacrifice is sponsored by a wealthy community member,  who is known as the sacrificer (yajamāna) but by Classical times carried out by a group of priests who are experts in the sacrificial ritual (yājñika). If the priests go wrong it is not they, but the sponsor upon whom the mistake rebounds. Of the four priests taking a central role in the ritual, one, the brāhmaṇa, has the role of silently following the proceedings and repairing any mistakes by chanting special mantras. Presumably it would have been incredibly bad for the priestly business to have one's mistakes killing one's benefactors and sponsors.

Buddhism was initially, and is once again in the modern times, a religion without intercessors. In between the early and most recent periods the Buddhist clergy did (and sometimes still do) act as intercessory priests, performing rituals and prayers on our behalf, but fortunately we have sidelined them to a great extent in modern Buddhism. For modern Buddhists it is our own deeds of body, speech and mind which are important. The onus is on us to practice effectively, which is a very onerous duty. It means we are back to the consequences of our actions rebounding directly onto us. Thus we are like Vṛtra - both the sponsor and performer of deeds and mistakes rebound on us directly.

Coming back to the verse, the problem is that mispronounced words do not convey the intended meaning (na tam artham āha). People who complain about "poor" English grammar, and there are lots of them, make the same point. Part of the difficulty is that spoken language and written language are quite different.

Ideas about when human's acquired spoken language vary but it's generally agreed that we had the vocal apparatus by about 200,000 years before the present, when anatomically modern humans begin to be found in the fossil record. Apart from a very few individuals with severe learning difficulties, more or less every human acquires some form of spoken language. Even the famous Helen Keller acquired language despite being both deaf and blind (and eventually became an author whose books inspired me as a child). Most of us learn our mother tongue effortlessly merely by hearing it spoken and we understand a great deal well before we ourselves can speak. No difficult grammar lessons are required. This has lead some linguists to propose a "language instinct", the idea that our brains are pre-prepared by genetics to absorb whatever language we hear spoken around us. (See Stephen Pinker's book The Language Instinct).

After about age 12 learning a new language becomes a laborious process of rote learning, though each additional language is said to come easier by those who go in for polyglotism. The change is related to changes in the brain around puberty which involve pruning brain connections to optimise for the local conditions. In others words we spend our first 12 years being a generalist and learning whatever we can and then we settle down to specialise in the most common events, actions, etc. Of course the brain remains plastic throughout our lives and learning certainly takes place, but it doesn't have the effortless quality with which we learn our mother tongue.

Writing is a quite distinct process. Left to themselves humans learn to speak, but not to write. Writing emerged only about 3000 years ago. Learning to write is laborious even for children, and most of us never excel at it either in terms of graphic form or content. Indeed those who write well are celebrated in literate cultures precisely because the skill is rare. Writing is not a skill we have evolved directly. It is one that employs a variety of general skills, mostly optimised for other tasks. Many cultures never develop writing. Amongst the thousands of languages in Australia, New Guinea and Melanesia for example, not one was written before contact with Europeans.

To be fair, most English speaking Buddhists come across their first Sanskrit words when they are already adults. And we all tend to fall back on what we know to interpret new stimuli. Presented with new words, most of us rely on habits to try to pronounce them. And even when correction is offered it is ignored. So despite repeated reminders an erstwhile housemate of mine pronounces the tri in tri-ratna as English 'try'. He knows it's wrong because I repeatedly told him so, but he prefers the incorrect-but-familiar to the correct-but-unfamiliar when it comes to language. And most of us are like this. Indeed this is a microcosm of a human problem on a macro scale. Most of us want most things to be settled and stable, with a modicum of novelty to keep it interesting. We think in well worn grooves that are not always helpful.

Very few Buddhists make the effort to learn canonical languages or even make much effort with accurate pronunciation. People I know just shrug and say they don't really care. And making them care is beyond me.

In my book Visible Mantra I've argued that one ought to be concerned with good pronunciation on various grounds (p.15f) , but my book is hardly on the 'Best Sellers' list and I'm not a person whose words have influence. In Malcolm Gladwell's taxonomy of players in change, from The Tipping Point, I am a maven, but not a connector or a persuader. Though of course you, the reader, are reading this and will perhaps be influenced by it. And perhaps you are a connector or persuader?

The general disinterest in our canonical texts and languages is not a new thing. For most of the history of Buddhism most texts were known only to a few cognoscenti. The average Buddhist probably did not know any sutras, or at best might have chanted one or two as a magical charm. Most Buddhists in the past did what Buddhist do now and repeated edifying stories about their teachers and figures of the past (perhaps, but not necessarily, including the Buddha). We like  to tell and hear stories in which principles are personified. Even amongst the monastic institutions the education focusses on commentaries in the vernacular. Texts like the Heart Sūtra might be memorised in Sanskrit, but Sanskrit itself is not studied, so the text is not understood in Sanskrit and the recitation relies on the idea that Sanskrit has magical qualities. Sanskrit has no magical properties - it's just a language like any other. There is ample evidence of Buddhist texts being garbled by scribes who mechanically copied without understanding, or indeed by teachers who were unable to speak the language of the texts. My work on the Vajrasattva Mantra is a good example of the latter problem.

It is sad that the increasing popularity of Buddhism in the West has coincided with a slide towards the new form of libertarianism (sometimes called Neoliberalism, though it is extremely illiberal) and the decrease in funding to the liberal arts (including the study of religion and ancient languages). The decline of Buddhist Studies and Sanskrit and Pāli Studies in the UK has been marked since the 1970s. Pāli and Buddhism have almost entirely disappeared from Cambridge University for example. But given that most Buddhists don't care about Buddhist Studies, and that many Buddhist leaders are openly hostile to academia, it can be no surprise. The down side is that the study of our texts, history and culture is largely in the hands of those with no interest in the practice of Buddhism and even for them funding and opportunities are dwindling.

~~oOo~~

Should anyone be interested in following up the reference to the Vyākaraṇa-mahābhāṣya an English translation, accompanied by a translation of a standard Indian sub-commentary, can be found here.

The use of Negation in Vajracchedikā

Paul Harrison

This essay will reproduce and, to some extent, critique an argument put forward by my countryman, Paul Harrison, in his 2006 English translation of the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā or Diamond Sutra. My thanks to David Welsh for bringing this article to my attention and providing me with a copy of it. 

The Vajracchedikā was first translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva in ca. 402 CE (one also sees the date given as 401 and 403). The text that Kumārajīva translated was somewhat shorter than the one edited by Max Müller in 1881, suggesting that the text continued to change after it was first composed. The dating of the initial composition of Vajracchedikā is now disputed. Conze had argued that it belonged, with the Heart Sutra, to the period ca. 300-500 CE which follows the expansion of the basic text from 8000 to 100,000 lines. We now know that the Heart Sutra is a special case and was composed in the 7th century in China. Some scholars now argue that Vajracchedikā belongs to the earliest strata (see Schopen 1975: 153, n.16; Williams 1989: 42). According to one source cited by Schopen "...the latest date of establishment of the Diamond Sutra will be 200 AD or probably 150 AD" (153, n.16). It may be that, contra Conze, Vajracchedikā predates Aṣṭasāhasrikā (Schopen n.17). Jan Nattier has proposed that the Vajracchedikā was composed in a very different milieu (2003: 180, n. 18) "one of many reasons" is the difference in terminology: where Aṣṭa prefers experiential terms like na saṁvidyate 'is not found' and nopalabhyate 'is not obtained, Vajracchedikā is more confident using the verb 'to be' (asti, nāsti). For Nattier, this suggests that the Vajracchedikā is more at ease with ontology. Another of the quirks of Vajracchedikā is that it never mentions śūnyatā or svabhāva, which is odd for a supposedly late Prajñāpāramitā text.

In his notes to the revised edition of the (partial) Gilgit ms., Greg Schopen (1989) has listed the many problems in Conze's Sanskrit edition of Vajracchedikā (1957), along with previous editions. Conze has been too eclectic with his source materials and paid insufficient attention to chronology. His notes also leave much to be desired. We have reason to be suspicious of Conze's edition and thus of his translation of, and commentary upon, this text.

In 2006, Harrison & Watanabe published a new (partial) edition of the Vajracchedikā based on a manuscript (probably) from Bamiyan, Afghanistan, and held in the Schøyen Collection.  Like the edition by Schopen, this new edition is considerably shorter than previously published editions and close in content to the Chinese translation of Kumārajīva. In the same publication Harrison combined the Gilgit and the Schøyen partial manuscripts to create a single hybrid which represents the text as it circulated in Greater Gandhāra (roughly Northern Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan) in the 6th or 7th centuries. This hybrid manuscript was then the basis of a new translation (Harrison 2006). The text and translation (sans Harrison's extensive notes and comments) are available online via Biblioteca Polyglotta at the University of Oslo.

In his notes, Paul Harrison tackles the vexed subject of paradox. His very interesting contribution is to provide a detailed argument for reassessing the idiom which is so particular to the Vajracchedikā, which he sums up as "X is non-X; hence it is called X." In particular, Harrison cautions against reading "some kind of mystical subversion of language" into this idiom. Richard H. Jones also resists the conclusion that the text was illogical or not meant to be understood, an idea which he says is "...frankly baffling and insulting to the ingenuity of the authors of this and other Perfection of Wisdom texts" (190, 220-3). I go along with this.

The mystification, even obfuscation, of Perfection of Wisdom texts has been actively pursued in some quarters. Correcting such misreadings will no doubt take time and will probably be resisted by those who enjoy the status quo. I put Harrison's case here, slightly modified with insights from Jones, in the hope that it will cause the more thoughtful amongst us to reconsider the Perfection of Wisdom. My own agenda is to try to demonstrate that the Vajracchedikā is another text which makes more sense when read using what I have called the hermeneutic of experience.


Negation

Buddhists will be familiar with the idea that prefixing a- (or an- for words beginning with vowels) to a noun or adjective negates it. (However, I have argued against the popular perception that this is the function of the syllable 'a' that gives it a central place in Prajñāpāramitā. See The Essence of All Mantras). Harrison begins by pointing out that such negated words can be treated as compounds of either of two types: as a karmadhāraya (not-X, no X, non-X) or as a bahuvrīhi (X-less, Lacking X, having no X). In his example the word aputra can be read as describing a person who is 'no son', with the possible implication of being unworthy of his parents; or the person might be 'sonless' or 'have no children'. Either reading is possible and only context can tell us which reading applies in any given case.

English translations of Vajracchedikā and other Prajñāpāramitā texts almost always opt for the karmadhāraya reading. Thus in Conze's (1975) translation we find:

And this world-system the Tathāgata has taught as no-system. Therefore it is called a 'world system'. (52; §13c)

I think everyone agrees that this is nonsense, even if we disagree on the significance of such nonsense. See, for example, Shigenori Nagatomo (2000) for an attempt to make "make intelligible the logic that is used in this Sutra in which a seemingly contradictory assertion is made to articulate the Buddhist understanding of (human) reality" (213).

There exist at least four Sanskrit variations on this sentence, 8 Chinese translations, and one Tibetan. The Gilgit Sanskrit manuscript reads:

yo 'py asau lokadhātur adhātuḥ sa tathāgatena bhāṣitas tenocyate lokadhātur iti | (Harrison 137)

We've mentioned that the English practice is to treat the compounds as karmadhāryas ("no-system"). Harrison points out that the Chinese also read karmadhārayas, because they negate the terms using 非 fēi rather than 無 wú (cf the negations in the Heart Sutra which all use 無). What interests Harrison is that the Tibetans treat the compounds as bahuvrīhi (X med pa or X ma mchis pa) and that this seems to be the better reading. In the case of lokadhātu/adhātu we might, with the Chinese, construe this as 'the world system (or realm, sphere, element, etc.) is not a system'; or '...is a non-system'; or '...is no system at all.' However, we may also read it as saying that lokadhātu lacks a system or that there is no system in it (138). Harrison translates:

"Any world system there is has been preached by the Realized One as systemless. Thus it is called a world-system" 

The obvious question is whether we can chose either option arbitrarily? Harrison thinks not. He thinks we must chose to read these compounds as bahuvrīhis, i.e., as adjectives of the unnegated term. In this case, adhātu is an adjective describing the substantive lokadhātu. In order to show this, he first lists all thirty of the terms that are negated in the text. In each case what is negated is the second part of the compound: where we have a compound of the form XY, the negative is almost always aY, though sometimes aXY with an implied negation of Y. For example, lokadhātu > adhātu; puṇyaskandha > askandha; ātmabhāva > bhāva and so on.

Reading the Negations in Vaj

The key to understanding this idiom, according to Harrison, is in the phrase nirātmāno dharmā 'dharmas are selfless', which is found in the Vajracchedikā (17h) but echoes an Āgama phrase. It's also expressed anātmakāḥ sarve dharmāḥ, 'all dharmas are selfless'. The Pāli counterpart of this phrase, sabbe dhammā anattā, is more ambiguous and is frequently read as 'all dharmas are not-self'. However, Harrison argues that the ambiguity is not present in Sanskrit, so that a term like nirātma must be read as a bahuvrīhi (i.e., as self-less, rather than non-self).

"Thus nirātmāno dharmā means that all dharmas lack a self or essence, or to put it in other words, they have no core ontologically, they only appear to exist separately and independently by the power of conventional language, even though they are in fact dependently originated" (139)

I'm largely in agreement with Harrison. One of the key features of Prajñāpāramitā thought is a trenchant critique of substance ontologies which became a feature of Buddhist Abhidharma thought in North India around the beginning of the common era.

However, I differ from Harrison in attributing the problem to "appearance" and "conventional language". Clearly, we do have experiences. This is not a matter of appearance or convention. The use of the term "illusions" (indicating that experience is not real) is itself an aspect of the shift of attention from dharmas qua experience to dharmas qua reality. The latter leads to the necessity to split reality into relative and absolute (or conventional and real). If we do not go down the path of real dharmas the issue of conventional vs real language does not arise. In other words, the split of language into conventional and real is dependent on framing the discussion in terms of real or unreal. The early Buddhists deny the validity of this dichotomy with respect to experience (e.g., Kaccānagotta Sutta SN 12.15) and thus imply that the conventional/real split is not valid, either. Thus, if we accept the early Buddhist argument, and I do, then we need not invoke conventional language and illusions. 

The Buddhist model of cognition itself shows why this is so: cognition (vijñāna) is always sense-object, sense-faculty and sense-cognition working together. "Direct knowledge of objects" is simply not possible in this model as sense-cognition is always part of Buddhist knowledge production. "Reality" gets crowbarred into Modern Buddhism, but in early Buddhism there seems to be no concept that corresponds to our concept of reality. Early Buddhists accepted no noumena behind phenomena. The Buddha was always concerned with experience and understanding the nature of experience.  

Thus, the problem is not one of "appearance", but one of interpretation. The naive realist feels themself to be in direct contact with reality. And, as part of this interpretive framework, the sense of self is also interpreted as real (giving rise to a number of false notions such as disembodied consciousness; pure subjectivity; a true self; i.e., a substantial entity behind what feels like subjective experience; and persistence of consciousness after death). When we understand that these ideas were meant to be applied to the domain of experience, rather than the broader domain of reality, then we eliminate a great deal of confusion both in language and in metaphysics. 

This difference aside, Harrison's proposal to read negated compounds like adhātu in the Vajracchedikā as bahuvṛhis is very interesting and useful. In the case of a term like prajñāpāramitā we get the negated term apāramitā. As he says, prajñāpāramitā "does not contain any perfection [pāramitā] within itself, it is devoid of perfectionhood, so to speak, which would constitute its essence."

So the form of the first part of the argument is now: Any X kind of Y is Y-less according to the Buddha. In other words, just because we can talk about various kinds of dhātu (loka-dhātu, dharma-dhātu, mano-dhātu etc) does not make dhātu a thing; does not make dhātu real; does not imply a substantial entity. There is no dhātutva or dhātu-ness, no noumena lurking in the background to give our experiences the qualities of permanence, satisfactoriness or substance.

Final Affirmation

Harrison's explanation of the final affirmation ("thus is it called Perfection of Wisdom") I find less convincing, precisely because I'm unconvinced by the arguments about so-called conventional language.

"If there was perfection in the perfection of insight, then perfection would exist apart from the perfection of insight, and we would have two things, not one, and we could no longer speak about anything as the perfection of insight... However, there is no perfection existing as an entity in and of itself apart from the perfection of insight..." (139-40).

This approach echoes discussions in Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, and does draw out an important aspect of the critique in the sense that it is critical of essence or noumena. However, I think Jones does better. The form of the affirmation in Sanskrit is:

tenocyate lokadhātur iti; i.e., (without sandhi) tena ucyate "lokadhātuḥ" iti.

Jones points out that the tendency of previous translators to render tena as 'hence, thus, that is why' introduces a paradox. He argues that in fact no paradox is implied (222). What translators, including Harrison, it seems, are doing here is making the final statement a direct logical consequence of the previous: XY is Y-less, therefore it is called XY. But as we have already observed, this inference is not logical. The fact that a world-system is not a system does not logically infer that we should call it a world-system. In this case the word "therefore" seems out of place, to say the least, and this raises the question of how we translate tena.

Conventionally, tena in this position can be translated as "therefore". Apte's dictionary sv. tad has "...tena the instrumental of tad is often used with adverbial force in the sense of 'therefore', 'on that account', 'in that case', 'for that reason.'" Jones is arguing that tena does not have adverbial force here. Jones construes the sentence as being in the form: "XY is not a (real) Y. The word 'XY' is used this way." 

The iti following lokadhātuḥ is equivalent to putting the word in quotes. The Sanskrit: lokadhātur iti corresponds to English [the word] 'World System'. The verb ucyate is a third person singular passive from √vac, 'to say, to speak'. Here, the passive requires the weakest grade of the root vowel and √vac undergoes samprasaraṇa to become uc; and ucyate means 'it is said, it is spoken'. And here we understand that it is the word lokadhātu (in the nominative) that is being spoken. With a passive verb the agent will be in the instrumental case and tena is the only word in the instrumental case. Thus, here we can take tena 'by him' to be the agent of the verb rather than an adverb. The use of the pronoun tena would usually refer to a previously mentioned agent, in the previous phrase i.e. tathāgatena 'by the Realised'.

So the phrase reads: 

tena ucyate lokadhātuḥ iti
by him / is said / "lokadhātu"
The word 'lokadhātu' is said by him [i.e., the Realised].

Jones argues that this means that the Tathāgata uses a word like lokadhātu always keeping in mind that there is no substantial, really existent kind of 'dhātu'. This is emphasised later in the text: a bodhisattva perceives no ātma, satva, jīva, or pudgala, which here translate roughly as 'substance, essence, soul or homunculus' (Vaj §6 ). Or, to put it another way, the names we give to persistent and repetitious experiences cannot hide the truly ephemeral, unsatisfactory and insubstantial nature of experience. I've argued before that this is only true (or only straightforwardly true) when the domain under consideration is experience. Hence, I see a continuity here with one of the most important threads of early Buddhist thought that is epitomised by the Kaccānagotta Sutta (SN 12.15) and the Sabba Sutta (SN 35.23).


The Role of Translator

I think what both Harrison and Jones are getting at is that the translator is also an interpreter. A translator assumes that the text made sense to the author and tries to understand the sense and communicate it in another language. Conze's interpretations unconsciously colour every line of his translations. However, he frequently choses unclarity precisely because it suits his interpretation (this was, for example, how I understood his misreading of the first sentence in the Sanskrit Heart Sutra resulting in a simple grammatical error). Faced with a sentence that presents a difficult reading, the translator's job is to try to get across what they think the author was getting at. Slavishly sticking to a literal rendering of the words is seldom helpful, especially if one also uses the foreign syntax. Buddhist authors use both the Sanskrit language and sectarian Buddhist idiom to convey ideas; the text is embedded in the context of a worldview. It's not sufficient to translate an idiom literally because idioms are not used literally. Consider English idioms like "I'm going to see a man about a dog", or "he'd lose his head, if it wasn't screwed on". Literalism only leads us astray and yet Conze admits he has translated as literally as possible to the point of reproducing the Sanskrit syntax. This approach has marked Conze as a leading exponent of what has been called Buddhist Hybrid English.

Of course, for Conze, perhaps influenced by Suzuki and late Buddhist commentators, the quotient of nonsense in his texts seemed to give him a certain amount of pleasure. It gave him scope to play the gnostic and insinuate that he understood this text in a nonconceptual way through (deep) meditation, whereas his academic readers, approaching Buddhism intellectually, had to be content with illogical nonsense. There are constant digs at the plodding intellectual non-meditator in Conze's commentaries. As his memoirs make plain, Conze felt, with some justification, deeply aggrieved at his treatment by the academic establishment of the UK and USA and was contemptuous of most of his colleagues. Conze is thus a complex figure and his work is complicated by such factors as well.


Conclusions

Thanks to Harrison and Jones, we now have two possible interpretations of this and similar passages: one which conveys nonsense and implies occult profundity; and one which conveys some sense and is no less profound but in a more obvious way.

Taking the whole sentence again:

yo 'py asau lokadhātur adhātuḥ sa tathāgatena bhāṣitas tenocyate lokadhātur iti |  

The Tathāgata taught a world-system that is without a [noumenal] system, the word 'world-system' is used this way by him.

I think it's worth repeating that this statement is not less profound than Conze's gnostic interpretation or more mystical readings. That fact that we can understand the statement does not make it less valuable.

Of course, whether we can experience a "world-system" is moot. With cosmological terms like lokadhātu we are in an abstract realm. Even in modern cosmology everything we know about the universe is inferred rather than experienced. The object of the senses here is an abstraction formed in the mind on the basis of sense data; i.e., it is an object of the mind-sense (manas). The Vajracchedikā is, in fact, equivocating on this element of Buddhist cosmology. "OK," it is saying "even if you believe in a world-system (or any other cosmological or metaphysical entity), your experience of it is still subject to the laws of experience: impermanence, disappointment and insubstantiality." Whatever categories, abstractions, ideas, entities you can come up with, your experience of them is subject to these constraints because it is only through experience that you know anything at all. Here the relatively unsophisticated Buddhist approach to psychology has distinct advantages. By lumping all mental experience under the heading of manas we are less likely to get caught up in finessing the details of the aspects of humanity that make us feel special. Our ability to think abstractly is remarkable, but to Buddhists it's just another kind of experience about which we make epistemological mistakes. 

Whatever ontology we might subscribe to, there are always these epistemological constraints that leave us off balance. Though we might make apparently valid ontological inferences, commitment to any particular ontology as an individual is always premature because knowledge proceeds from experience, not from reality, and experience is always a co-creation (pratītya-samutpāda) of objects, our sensory apparatus and our mind. This is directly contradicted by Buddhist mystics, who sometimes claim that direct knowledge of reality is the goal of Buddhism, but it is what the Buddhist texts say over and over; and it is also what my friends who go deep into meditation also say. In this view the problems of human existence are due, in effect, to epistemological errors which can be corrected by careful observation of experience under controlled conditions and the guidance of an experienced mentor. The problems addressed by Buddhist practice are, on the whole, not caused by ontological errors. With some caveats, what we experience is not an illusion, but we do have illusions about what we experience. Of course, we do make ontological errors, but the Buddhist texts do not seem overly concerned with this type of error, which is relatively easily corrected.

I've said that ontological commitments based on individual experience are always premature. However, we can get around this by pooling our resources. One of my frustrations with philosophy and, in particular, Buddhist philosophy, is that it always seems stuck in the point of view of an absolutely isolated individual and takes no account of our collective endeavours. In fact, we social primates almost always work in teams. We can have reliable knowledge about the world around us through comparing experiences, though even when this collaborative effort is coordinated and formalised (as in the sciences) most knowledge is still considered provisional, because there is always the possibility of a "black swan event". Most importantly, by communicating with others we do know that objects exist apart from our perception of them, even though we might be slightly fuzzy about the details of that object. One only has to watch the heads at a tennis match - turning this way and that as they follow the action - to know that the ball is not something that we alone are perceiving. The only way to maintain that objects do not exist, is to artificially disallow the evidence of others.

But the whole focus of the Buddha's teachings is away from the objects and on the experience itself. And in experience neither 'real' nor 'unreal' apply. Even if the object were permanent, the experience itself would still change because it relies partly on us - our sense organs and sense cognition. These simple facts can be used to direct our practice of Buddhist techniques in an effective direction. The Prajñāpāramitā teachings continue this focus.

As a final aside aside, Jan Nattier has an interesting take on this type of negation: "[In the Aṣṭa and the Vajracchedikā] the initial negations are directed not at 'dharmas' or at things in general, but at the bodhisattva and the practices in which he is engaged. It is my strong suspicion that this 'rhetoric of negation' first emerged as a tactical attempt to undercut the potential for bodhisattva's arrogance, and was only later generalized to what came to be considered to be a new (anti-abhidharma) ontology" (2003 135-6, n.62). Hopefully in the future Nattier will collect her thoughts on the Vajracchedikā and publish them.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Conze, Edward. (1957) Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā. Serie Orientale Roma XIII. Roma. 

Conze, Edward (1975) Buddhist Wisdom Books: The Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra. 2nd Ed. George Allen & Unwin.

Harrison, Paul. (2006) 'Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā: A New English Translation of the Sanskrit Text Based on Two Manuscripts from Greater Gandhāra', in Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection (Vol. III). Hermes Publishing, Oslo, p.133-159.

Harrison, Paul & Shōgo WATANABE (2006) 'Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā.' in Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection (Vol. III). Hermes Publishing, Oslo, p. 89-132.

Jones, Richard H. (2012) The Heart of Buddhist Wisdom: Plain English Translations of the Heart Sutra, the Diamond-Cutter Sutra, and Other Perfection of Wisdom Texts. New York: Jackson Square Books.

Shigenori Nagatomo. (2000) 'The Logic of the Diamond Sutra: A is not A, therefore it is A.' Asian Philosophy, 10(3): 212-244

Nattier, Jan. (2003) A few good men : The Bodhisattva path according to the Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā). University of Hawai'i Press.

​Schopen, Gregory. (1975) 'The phrase ‘sa pṛthivīpradeśaś caityabhūto bhavet’ in the Vajracchedikā: Notes on the Cult of the Book in Mahāyāna.' Indo-Iranian Journal. 17(3-4): 147-181.

Schopen, Gregory. (1989) 'The Manuscript of the Vajracchedikā Found at Gilgit,' in Studies in the Literature of the Great Vehicle: Three Mahāyāna Buddhist Texts, ed. by L. O. Gómez and J. A. Silk, Ann Arbor, pp. 89-139.

Williams, Paul. (1989) Mahāyāna Buddhism: the Doctrinal Foundations. London, UK: Routledge.

Moral Metaphors

George Lakoff

From time to time I mention the work of George Lakoff. He is primarily a cognitive linguist, but applies linguistics to a broad range of domains. Lakoff is particularly known for his work on metaphors. His book, co-written with Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By is on my list of non-fiction books everyone should read. Lakoff, like another well known linguist, Noam Chomsky, has ventured into the world of politics. He is perhaps less successful in this, though also less trenchant and less controversial. One of his important contributions is to analyse the linguistic frameworks that politicians of the left and right (or liberals and conservatives) use in their rhetoric.

Lakoff is a liberal and is concerned that conservatives have stolen a march on liberal politicians, especially in the USA. Part of the problem seems to be that liberals don't understand that they are often debating on and in conservative forms which only serves to reinforce conservative norms. A similar thing has happened in the UK. Lakoff's analysis is set out in various publications, but an easily accessible and apoposite version can be found in:

Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust. (1995). http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html

In this essay I want to outline the basic framework of morality that Lakoff presents because I think it offers general insights into morality, but also specific insights into Buddhist morality. Part of my project with respect to Buddhist morality is to examine the claim that Buddhist morality is substantially different from other forms of morality. I've been attempting to undermine this idea in a desultory way for a few years now. In particular I have sought to show that karma is distinct as an agent of morality only in that it is not personified. I've also tried to show that post-mortem judgement and reward/punishment is a feature common to various forms of morality including both Christian and Buddhist. The function of karma is just the same as moral gods, it's only the user-interface that is different. Lakoff's moral framework shows this in greater relief, but it also gives a sound basis for thinking about morality. 

In Lakoff's account of metaphor there are two important concepts:

1. consciousness is embodied
2. the experience of embodiment provides the source domain for most metaphors

Embodied consciousness is fast becoming the consensus view of consciousness. It argues from a variety of viewpoints that what we call consciousness is an emergent phenomenon of the maintenance of bodily states in the brain through layered models that are used primarily to regulate and optimise both internal states and external behaviour. Lakoff and Johnson have argued for this view from language and philosophy, Thomas Metzinger, Antonio Damasio and many others from neuro-scientific evidence. This view is radically non-dual in the sense that the mind/body duality is completely broken down - the mind is embodied, embodiment is a necessary condition for having a mind (though we must keep in mind that there are powerful reasons that naive realists do believe in disembodied consciousness - such as the classic out-of-body experience). 

Lakoff takes experience as the source domain for metaphor and abstraction. So whereas philosophers will often discuss causality in abstract terms, Lakoff looks to the experience of an infant gaining control of their limbs and becoming able to move things about according to their conscious will. In this view causation as an abstract metaphysical notion is rooted in the domain of willed actions. Those interested in Kantian accounts of causality may find this interesting since it may well account for a priori structuring of knowledge as well (I don't know this branch of Lakoff's work well enough to comment: see Philosophy in the Flesh).

Such conceptual metaphors are central to Lakoff's account of morality. A conceptual metaphor is:

"an unconscious, automatic mechanism for using inference patterns and language from a source domain to think and talk about another domain."

In his discussion of morality Lakoff highlight's two metaphors

• well-being is wealth
• moral arithmetic

In the former the source domain is wealth. Wealth is something which can be gained or lost. Wealth is also involved in transactions - I can give something of value to enrich you, or take something from you to impoverish you. I can also give something of negative value which impoverishes you. Clearly wealth is itself a metaphorical concept. If I can give and take it, clutch it and hoard it, make it, lose it etc., then we are employing a more fundamental metaphor that wealth is an object (that can manipulated with (metaphoric) hands). Other metaphors help to structure the concept. For Lakoff, our abstract thought is structured by a series of interdependent metaphors that are rooted in our experience of being embodied and our physical interactions with the world. This ability to think of one domain in terms of another (i.e. to use metaphors) makes our thinking very flexible and adaptable.

In this view metaphors of wealth and wealth transactions can be applied to the domain of well-being (so that by association we may treat well-being as a object as well). Thus by making noise I can give you a headache and undermine your well-being. By giving love I can make you happy, though this may require an exchange of tokens. Many events can rob us of our well-being, none more so that any kind of physical assault. With respect to wealth one must acquire a certain level of wealth in order to have well-being. We're using wealth in a very general sense here, not necessarily as an economist might define it. And we are not placing restrictions on the kinds or number of metaphors that relate to well-being. The selected metaphors are only one dimension chosen because they highlight a facet of morality.

Morality then, is, at least in part, the book-keeping of such transactions; or what Lakoff calls "moral arithmetic". The ancient Egyptians conceptualised judgement in the afterlife as a weighing up of good and bad deeds. This notion of a final reckoning (i.e. tallying or counting up) is widespread. The tally maybe kept by a god (such as Anubis, Ahura Mazda, Mitra, or Jehovah) or in the case of Buddhism it may be a natural law (karma, dharmatā), but fate is seen as hanging in the balance of actions with a moral dimension (i.e. good and bad). In Indian terms if the accumulation of merit (puṇya) outweighs the accumulation of evil (pāpa) then one goes to a good destination (sugati) and if not then one goes to a bad destination (durgati). The very word for friend in Sanskrit (mitra) originally meant "contract". A contract sets out the expectations of two parties in a transaction, whether substantial or abstract. If the consequences of actions are minimal we say someone "got off lightly"; or if caught out, a judge may "come down hard". Buddhists use this bookkeeping/balance metaphor in terms like 'weighty karma'.  

The moral accounting scheme operates on several main principles.

Reciprocation.

If I give you something of positive value then you owe me something of equal value. There is an element of obligation here that Lakoff does not discuss, but which I think was especially important in the ancient world. The Indian word mitra now means 'friend' but was originally both a contract (which spells out obligations) and a god, Mitra, who oversaw the fulfilment of obligations. Mitra's counterpart Varuṇa had a similar but broader purview in that he oversaw the obligations of the devas to maintain the cosmic order, ṛta. Even now people can be reluctant to accept help for the obligation this places them under. If my well-being  is enhanced by your actions there is often an expectation of quid pro quo. Two principles of morality emerge (and here I extent Lakoff's definition a little):

1. Do no harm. Moral (in the positive sense of good) action is (willingly) giving something of positive value or (willingly) taking something of negative value; immoral action is giving something of negative value or taking something of positive value, in both cases against the will of the recipient.   

2. Debts must be paid. Failure to pay debts is immoral. Thus if a criminal is deprived of liberty for a period, they are said to have "paid their debt to society". We always want to repay kindness. Revenge is payback.

Retribution or Revenge.

Harm is a reduction in the wellbeing of the recipient. Either something of negative value is given (e.g. a disease; a blow, an insult); or something of positive value is taken (e.g. prestige; property). In the case where harm is done a dilemma is created in the application of the principles of reciprocation.

On one hand we might insist that the first principle dominates. So if I harm you settlement of the debt, then on balance I have not acted morally because causing harm is not moral.

On the other hand we might insist that debts must be paid no matter what. Thus if you harm me, then it is immoral not to harm you back in some way to settle the debt, even though causing harm is immoral.  

Lakoff calls the first position the Morality of Absolute Good and the second the Morality of Retribution. With respect to the death penalty, for example, liberals tend to adopt the Morality of Absolute Good (the principle of the debt must be paid cannot justify the immoral action of killing as retribution); while conservatives tend to adopt the Morality of Retribution (the repayment of the debt over-rides the immorality of killing). In Christian terms we obviously also have a contrast between New Testament Morality ("turn the other cheek") and Old Testament Morality ("an eye for an eye"). 

We see that the same set of metaphors are used, but they are employed in different ways. In my own account of morality the different aspects of the metaphor are given different salience by different people. For liberals it is more salient not to do evil; for conservatives it is more salient to pay off debts. 

A feature of both Buddhist and Christian morality is the principle of passivity. In Christian terms "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans 12.19)". Buddhists texts argue that we should never react to harm. "Anger is never soothed by anger." (Dhammapada 3-6). If we genuinely believe in karma then all actions will be paid out according to their deserts and no further action is required when someone harms us. Indeed the worse the harm the more horrific the consequences for the person doing the harm. Retributive action on our part will only cause more harm, since the principle of paying off debts is taken out of our equation. The Buddhist moral imperative is to focus on our own actions and to purify our motivations so that we ourselves do not cause harm. 

In a Buddhist world where we do not believe in karma there is a reversion to the moral principles we were raised with, which often tends to be the Morality of Retribution. In fact I think we can say that most Western Buddhism is underpinned more by Christian morality, as echoed in our laws and social rules, than by Buddhist morality. 

Restitution.

In the retributive model of morality we aim to balance things out: good for good and harm for harm. But it's possible to create balance by offering positive to counteract the negative, that is to make amends or restitution. In my early research on Buddhist morality I showed that making amends is not possible in the early Buddhist ethos (See Did King Ajātasattu Confess To The Buddha?). Since the consequences of any and all actions must be experienced, making amends cannot change the balance retrospectively. Or in other words karma cannot be wiped out, though it can be mitigated by conditioning oneself to bear painful vedanā (through learning to bear small discomforts, one can bear greater discomforts equanimously). Of course this changed and Buddhists soon began to allow for making amends to karma through rituals and purification (which is the subject of a forthcoming article). However even this was abstract and unrelated to making amends to the person harmed by our actions. The sense of Buddhist texts is that Buddhists are expected to live in isolation until they are able to operate skilfully in the world. Buddhist (monastic) morality is focussed on restraint, guarding, controlling and protecting the sense faculties so as not to stir up negative emotions.

We often hear about Buddhists 'burning up karma' but this is not a feature of early Buddhism. It is a feature of early Jainism. The Jains practiced painful austerities in order to balance the moral ledger. If pain is the result of bad actions, then by pursuing painful sensations one pays off the debt incurred. This principle was also taken up by Buddhists though they still had an effective injunction against the extremes of asceticism, they invented ritual ways of counteracting bad karma.

Altruism

Altruism is a special case amongst the other forms of moral accounting. Altruistic behaviour seeks to do good without creating a debt, i.e. with no expectation of a return. Cancelling debts in this way, though builds up "moral credit" [Lakoff's term]. In Buddhism we call this moral credit puṇya. Of course we do benefit from altruistic behaviour because everyone benefits. Generosity is often repaid with generosity, even when, or especially when there is no obligation.

Lakoff separates out the other side of the altruism coin - cancelling a debt created by harm - calling it "turning the other cheek". But I think that structurally it belongs with altruism. 

Cancellation of Debts

One aspect of morality that Lakoff doesn't mention is the scapegoat, which is a special form of debt cancellation. The scapegoat was an old Jewish custom which we can see as relieving the tension that can be created by the build up of moral debts. Each year a sacrificial goat was consecrated and imbued with all of the moral debt for that year. It was then sent out into the wilderness, that is banished from the tribe, which in that climate meant certain death. It reminded people that they needed each other to survive and that allowing moral debts to build up or remain for long periods of time tended to divide loyalties. At the same time another goat was sacrificed to God to reinforce the moral covenant. 

Now "scapegoating" has largely negative connotations these days - blaming someone else for our misdeeds. But in essence it involves ritual forgiveness of moral debts. Interestingly the Jews also practiced the cancellation of financial debt every fifty years (known as a jubilee) for just the same reasons. Allowing financial debt to continue building up indefinitely seriously weakens a society. Many economists argue that private sector debt, especially household and non-finance sector debt, was at the root of the global financial crisis initiated by the bursting of the sub-prime mortgage bubble and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Bank in 2008. 

Forgiving debt, whether financial or moral, is an emotive issue in the West and I don't think we'll see any change away from the gestalt in which paying debts over-rides doing harm, even though great harm continues to be done by the unwise build up of financial debt. However one of my economic inspirations, Ann Pettifor, successfully led a campaign to have billions of dollars worth of debt in Africa to be forgiven in the Jubilee 2000 Campaign. That debt was never going to be repaid anyway. It had been imposed on poor African countries by the IMF and World Bank in an ideologically driven fervour and simply created the conditions for ongoing misery. I'm an advocate of a modern debt jubilee, as proposed by Professor Steve Keen. But perhaps we need to think in terms of moral debt jubilees as well? 

Conclusions.

This, then, is how I see Lakoff's metaphorical approach to morality. I find it an elegant and useful approach because it allows us to get beneath the trappings of morality in various settings and see the mechanisms - i.e. to see the way our thinking is structured by metaphors. In particular it shows that the mechanisms are similar in most cases. While groups might evaluate the salience of the various aspects differently we can see that the same principles apply across a wide spectrum. 

My case that there is nothing very special about Buddhist ethics is advanced. The distinctive features of Buddhist ethics are on the surface. Beneath the surface we see the same currents moving: i.e. concerns with group membership and group norms; narratives which ensure compliance with norms (especially post-mortem judgement); metaphors such as wellbeing = wealth and moral accounting; and preventing attempts to balance the moral books tearing a society apart by placing the balancing in the hands of an impartial supernatural accountant (e.g. Anubis, Jehovah, Varuṇa, Ahura Mazda). Many societies separate the metaphysical 'judiciary' from 'punishment and corrections', but some combine them, along with legislative and executive branches in what I have called a "swiss-army-knife god". Where rules directly affect the physical survival of individuals or the group they will tend to be the same since humans have fundamentally similar requirements for survival; and where they are concerned with local conditions and etiquette they will tend to be different. 

Of course Buddhists will say that morality has a higher purpose in Buddhism - it forms the foundation for transcendent knowledge gained via meditation. In Lakoff's terms such knowledge seems to have the main effect of removing a person from the necessity of moral accounting. The adept is characterised as a person who only acts for the good. Attenuating or eliminating self-preoccupation changes the equation - we may act and be acted on without any need to reciprocate (śīlapāramitā and kṣantipāramitā?). If we do not incur moral debts or hold others indebted to us, then the principle of do no harm comes to the fore in all relationships. We see here that behaviour is both the foundation for liberation, but also the most obvious sign by which we perceive someone as liberated. One who is liberated from greed and hatred must perforce operate with a different set of moral metaphors, but seen in terms of the standard metaphors they ought to exemplify morally good behaviour. 

I haven't gone further into Lakoff account of the political spectrum because it is less relevant to discussions of Buddhist ethics and would have taken too long. But I do recommend reading the essay referred to above, or Lakoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant. Even if it does nothing to change your political sympathies, it is as well to understand the other point of view a little better. For a good summary of left and right values as they manifest in various spheres of life, I recommend the infographic by David McCandless.

~~oOo~~

The 'Act of Truth' in Relation to the Heart Sutra

I've now mentioned the saccakiriyā (Skt. *satyakriyā) or 'act of truth' several times in relation to the Heart Sutra and its protective function. The text itself claims that the efficacy of prajñāpāramitā comes from samyaktva and amithyātva; i.e., from truth and non-falseness or from rightness and non-wrongness. It has long been my intention to write something on the saccakiriyā for this blog, because I think it sheds important light on the ancient Buddhist worldview that is hidden from modern Buddhists of all stripes. In this essay I'll provide an outline of the saccakiriyā and try to show how it might inform the Heart Sutra, in particular, and Buddhist sūtras, in general.

There have been a number of articles on saccakiriyā over the years, though mostly they are quite old now. They cover the subject in some breadth and depth, but I have never been entirely satisfied with their account of the saccakiriyā because, on the one hand, the key authors describe the saccakiriyā as 'Hindu' when they mostly use Buddhist sources; and, on the other hand, they try hard to link it with Vedic attitudes to truth without finally acknowledging that the saccakiriyā is primarily a Buddhist phenomenon that has no Vedic counterpart.


The Power of Truth

In his 声字実相義 Shō ji jissō gi [= The Meanings of Sound, Word, and Reality], Kūkai quotes  a passage from the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā that, for him, shows that the speech of the Buddha, i.e., mantra, has five characteristics: "it is true, real, tells things as they are, does not deceive, and is consistent"(Hakeda 241). The Chinese version, produced by Kumārajīva (T 8.235) in 403 CE, reads:

如來是真語者、實語者、如語者、不誑語者、不異語者。(0750b27-28)

Rúlái shì zhēn yǔ zhě, shí yǔ zhě, rú yǔ zhě, bù kuáng yǔ zhě, bù yì yǔ zhě.

The Tathāgata is a speaker of reality, a speaker of truth, a speaker of things as they are, an honest speaker, and not a deceitful speaker.

The passage in Vaidya's Sanskrit is more or less identical (Vaidya 1961: 81. Section 14f):

bhūtavādī subhūte tathāgataḥ, satyavādī tathāvādī ananyathāvādī tathāgataḥ, na vitathavādī tathāgataḥ ||

Subhūti, the Tathāgata is a speaker of reality, a speaker of truth, a speaker of things as they are, an honest speaker, and not a misleading speaker.

Here 語 means 'speech' (Skt vāda) and 語者 means 'a speaker' and corresponds to Sanskrit vādin. A vādin (masculine nominative singular: vādī) is someone who speaks a particular way, a professor, or someone who holds a particular view or ideology. We find the same term at the end of sectarian names like Theravādin (the ideology of the elders) or Sarvāstivādin (the ideology of ultimate existence).

Combined with this we firstly have 真 zhēn and 實 shí which were discussed in a previous essay in relation to samyaktvāmithyātvāt and yathabhūta-jñānadarśana. They mean 'real' and 'true', respectively and here correspond to bhūta and satya, respectively. Next comes 如 rú, where 如 rú corresponds to tathā, 'thus', which is related to tathātā, 'thusness'. The word tathā is a compound of tad (the stem form of the neuter third-person pronoun 'it, that') with the modal suffix -thā and as a particle means 'so, thus, accordingly'. Note the same Chinese character appears in the epithet 如來 rúlái, i.e., tathāgata. Then 不誑 bù kuáng. The basic meaning of 誑 kuáng is deceit, and 不 bù is, like Sanskrit a-, a negative particle, so 不誑 means 'not deceitful' or 'honest', corresponding to ananyathā (i.e. an-anya-thā 'non-other-wise' from anya 'other'). Lastly 不異 bù yì where 異 yì means 'different, weird, other' [as in other than true] and 不異 corresponds to na vitatha which derives from vi + tathā (and thus means 'not-not-thus' i.e. na vitathā = tathā).

The five qualities are: bhūta (real), satya (true), tathā (thus), ananyathā (un-false), na vitatha (not incorrect). It's debatable whether there is any real distinction here as these terms are all synonyms. Buddhist texts initially seem to list synonyms for emphasis, only to have later exegetes tease out distinct meanings for each synonym.

We again see here the distinction between truth and non-falsehood: both qualities are important to Buddhists. Of course, what is true is, ipso facto, not false, but Buddhists value both sides of the equation.  This distinction was made in an earlier essay contrasting satya and mṛṣā discussed alongside samyaktva and mithāyatva. Here what is false is not-true (vi-tathā) or other than true (anya-thā), and what is true (bhūta, satya, tathā ) is also not-false (na anyathā) and not-not-true (na vitathā).

This is how Kūkai understood the efficacy of mantra. Mantra is potent because it is the direct speech of the Dharmakāya, which is truth itself. Indeed, the Chinese/Japanese translation of mantra is 真言 (Jap. shin gon; Chin. zhēn yán) 'true words' which in Sanskrit would be bhūtavācana. However, there is a general principle here as well. Buddhavācana is powerful because it contains the speech (vācana) of the Buddha which is always true (bhūta, satya, tathā, etc). Words in Buddhist texts are considered by Buddhists to be true in the sense that they align with the nature of reality (though here I would substitute "experience" for "reality"), and this is what the term samyañc (Pāli sammā) is getting at. Thus we say samyag-dṛṣti means 'right-view'. A view that is samyañc conforms to the way things are (or how experience is), and seeing clearly how things are causes us to alter our behaviour to 'go with' (samyañc) instead of 'going against' (mithyā) this vision. In the first instance, it may well involve getting your facts 'right', but right-view reorients the viewer; it changes our gestalt, and our relationship to sensory experience and to the experience of selfhood. The difference might be likened to a sailor in a storm who is being buffeted by huge waves and turns their boat to head into waves. Side-on, the waves constantly threat to roll the boat over, from the rear they threaten to 'poop' the boat (i.e., over-flow the rear of the boat and cause it to founder) but, heading into the waves a small, but well-designed, boat can survive even the huge waves of a storm on the open ocean.

Thus, reciting a Buddhist scripture is always a multi-layered experience for a believer. At one level they simply rehearse the teachings in order to learn and remember them. At another level, the words begin to guide their gaze towards the nature of experience and, perhaps, help to gain glimpses of that nature. On yet another level, they participate in the true nature of experience, because they enunciate the truth of the nature of all experiences (which importantly includes the experience of selfhood). Such words are Holy, a word which comes from Old English and means 'healthy, whole, inviolable'. It was adopted as a translation of Biblical Latin sanctus, hence the connection also to 'sacred'. The saccakiriyā is a special case of this Holiness.


The Truth Act or Saccakiriyā

In brief, the textual examples saccakiriyā (an extensive list of examples is found in Burlingham, 1917) involve stating aloud something which is is true about oneself (usually a virtue that one possesses or exemplifies) and making a request on the basis of this truth that something in the world changes. The change that is accomplished is almost always secular, or in Buddhist terms is not aimed at the goal of awakening. The saccakiriyā typically aims at using truth to gain mastery over nature and/or one's fate.

Most authorities follow Burlingame (1917) in placing the locus classicus in the Milindapañha (See Horner 1963: Vol.1, p.166ff). This post-canonical text has the most extensive explanation of the way a saccakiriyā functions and what can be achieved by it (the list includes rain-making, extinguishing fires, and detoxifying poison). In the Milindapañha, Nāgasena uses a variety of traditional stories to illustrate the workings for the King. For example, the Jātaka story of King Sivi, who gives his eyes to a beggar but is presented with divine eyes (dibbacakkhu) by Indra as a reward for his selflessness. Nāgasena says:

Yathā, mahārāja, ye keci sattā saccamanugāyanti 'mahāmegho pavassatū'ti, tesaṃ saha saccamanugītena mahāmegho pavassati, api nu kho, mahārāja, atthi ākāse vassahetu sannicito 'yena hetunā mahāmegho pavassatī'ti? 'Na hi, bhante, saccaṃ yeva tattha hetu bhavati mahato meghassa pavassanāyā'ti. 'Evameva kho, mahārāja, natthi tassa pakatihetu, saccaṃ yevettha vatthu bhavati dibbacakkhussa uppādāyāti.' 

Just as, your Majesty, some adept* recites a truth [then says] 'let the clouds shed their rain' and by that recital the clouds shed their rain. So, Majesty, is there a cause for rain already existent in the sky that causes the rain? No, Bhante, the truth itself is the cause for the cloud shedding its rain. Just so, Majesty, there is no ordinary cause (pakatihetu) for that, the truth itself (saccam yeva) is the ground (vatthu)... 

*CST has sattā but the PTS edition has siddha which fits the context better. Cf Horner (1963: 168 n.3).

There are saccakiriyā's in the Nikāyas and, of all of them, I think Aṅgulimāla deserves close attention. Aṅgulimāla is a wonderfully ambivalent figure. The mass-murderer who becomes an arahant. The arahant who is confronted by his own unripened evil karma. And, in this aspect of his narrative, the speaker of truth who has to carefully consider just what is true in order to help someone in distress.

Returning one day from his alms round, Aṅgulimāla sees a women having a difficult childbirth (itthiṃ mūḷhagabbhaṃ vighātagabbhaṃ. MN ii.102). On reporting this to the Buddha, he is instructed to  go back to her and say:

'yatohaṃ, bhagini, jātiyā jāto nābhijānāmi sañcicca pāṇaṃ jīvitā voropetā, tena saccena sotthi te hotu, sotthi gabbhassā'ti 

"Noble woman, since my birth I am not aware of ever having intentionally deprived a living being of life; by this truth may you and your baby be well."

Apparently, the Buddha has forgotten that he is speaking to a mass murderer and Aṅgulimāla has to point out that he has indeed harmed many beings. The Buddha amends the statement to:

'yatohaṃ, bhagini, ariyāya jātiyā jāto, nābhijānāmi sañcicca pāṇaṃ jīvitā voropetā, tena saccena sotthi te hotu, sotthi gabbhassā'ti.

"Noble woman, since my aryan birth I am not aware of ever having intentionally deprived a living being of life, by this truth may you and your baby be well."

Authorities are divided on whether 'from my noble birth' (ariyāya jātiyā) represents Aṅgulimāla's ordination or becoming an arahant, though I think the latter must be intended. In any case, he goes to the woman and says this, and all was well with the woman and her birth/fetus was well. (Atha khvāssā itthiyā sotthi ahosi, sotthi gabbhassa). The word 'well' is Pāli sotthi, equivalent to Sanskrit svasti (compare the svastika symbol) which comes from the phrase su asti 'it is good'. Svasti refers to good luck, fortune or auspices. It is fundamentally a superstitious concept. It is concerned with maṅgala or luck, and the people who relied on such means were sometimes referred to by the Buddha as maṅgalikā 'superstitious' (e.g., Cullavagga, Vin V.129, 140). Of course, it is said that bhikkhus ought not to be maṅgalikā, but the story of Aṅgulimāla shows the Buddha encouraging Aṅgulimāla to use magic to create good fortune. On the other hand, we can see Buddhists attempting to redefine the concept of maṅgala in terms of the values and abstract ideals of Buddhism in the Mahāmaṅgala Sutta of the Suttanipāta (Sn 258-269). So, at best, the early Buddhist texts are ambivalent about magic, sometimes seeming to want to suppress or downplay it, sometimes trying to redefine it, and other times openly embracing it. It is significant that in the Buddhist parts of Sri Lanka, the Aṅgulimāla will be chanted for mothers in childbirth for their protection. The protective function of suttas is an important aspect of the history of Buddhist ideas.

As we know, many Mahāyāna Sūtras spend considerable time saying that reciting or copying the sūtra brings practically infinite benefits to the pious. Indeed, in some cases, there is so much of this extolling of reciting and copying that it seems as though this is the whole message of the text - just copy the words saying "copy me" and you will be protected from misfortune (like a bizarre chain letter). Some also contain more explicit references to saccakiriya, though in slightly different terms (see below). 

The key words that make a saccakiriyā are 'by this truth' (tena saccena) or 'by this truth-speaking' (etena saccavajjena). This is accompanied by a verb in the imperative, a command essentially. The saccakiriyā is used for a variety of recorded purposes including: healing, rescuing, overcoming obstacles, and protection. It is a also apparently used for showing off, as when Binudmatī, a prostitute, demonstrates to Asoka that she can use a saccakiriyā to make the river Ganges flow backwards in the Milindapañha. Her saccakiriyā depends on her even-handedness with those who pay for her services. She acknowledges no differences in those who can afford her price. There is a subtext here which seems to have been lost on previous commentators. Failing to make social distinctions based on class is an implicit criticism of the hierarchical social order of the Vedics. Like the Buddha himself, Bindumatī does not acknowledge the hierarchy imposed on India by Brahmins. And it is precisely in rejecting caste that Bindumatī, portrayed as a rather lowly and despised figure, aligns herself with reality and gains the power to make the Ganges flow backwards. The miracle is dependent on the Buddhist rejection of caste, and the fact of Bindumatī's being a prostitute is probably a rhetoric slap in the face to Brahmins.

The Perfection of Wisdom tradition also contains truth acts. For example, in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā (Skt. Vaidya 1960: 189-190; trans Conze 1973: 228-9) and the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras (Skt. Kimura 5:3; trans. Conze 1975: 433), the bodhisattva is able to use the saccakiriya to test a prediction (vyākṛta) to Buddhahood delivered to him in a dream. If he takes a stand on the truth (satyādhiṣṭhāna) and is able to, for example, extinguish a fire in a town by speaking the truth truthfully (tena satyena satyavacanena), then he can be sure of eventual Buddhahood. If, however, the fire continues to consume the town then he must have some residual karma (karmopacitaṃ) blocking his progress. The bodhisattva is also able to exorcise ghosts in the same way (this episode follows on from the previous one in both Aṣṭa and Pañcavimśati). This is one of many continuities with pre-sectarian Buddhist thought that is found in Prajñāpāramitā texts. (For other Mahāyāna references and relationship to mantra see Chisho).


Studies of the Saccakiriyā

Burlingame had already identified that many of the saccakiriyās in his catalogue relied on virtue for their efficacy. The saccakiriyā often relies on truthfully stating that one possesses a virtue, as in the case of Aṅgulimāla. However, he struggles to fit all of his examples into this framework. Bindumatī, for example, is deliberately portrayed as lacking in virtues (she is a thief, a cheat, etc.), though from a Buddhist point of view rejecting caste distinctions is a virtue! Burlingame also notes one or two non-Buddhist sources: one in the Mahābhārata and one in the Rāmayāna where stories cross over Jātaka stories. Had Burlingame distinguished Buddhism from Hinduism, he might have pondered how a story could appear in both traditions and explored the provenance. However, he did not. Given that the great majority of saccakiriyā are Buddhist, the most likely scenario is that they are a Buddhist form that was carried over into the Epics along with a few other fragments of Buddhist narrative. 

Unfortunately, the next scholar to take a major interest in saccakiriyā, W. Norman Brown (1940), also crudely conflates Buddhism and Hinduism. His main idea is that saccakiriyā can be understood as an extension of the Vedic focus on ṛta (cosmic order) and satya (truth) which are at times almost synonymous. This argument is hampered by his failure to find a single credible example of a saccakiriyā of the Buddhist type in the Ṛgveda. The Sanskrit equivalent of Pāli word saccakiriyā, i.e., satyakṛiyā, is not found in any Sanskrit text. If the idea is Vedic then, as he says, it must be "well concealed" (42). However, note that even in Buddhist Sanskrit texts the key word becomes satyādhiṣṭhāna. Brown's main contribution is to highlight common features which had escaped Burlingame, thus giving a common basis for all saccakiriyā. To do this, he invokes the idea of socio-religious duty (dharma) which is so central to Hinduism. Here, we have cause for dissatisfaction, since dharma as "duty" is never particularly important in Buddhism. Virtue (sīla), purity (suddha) and merit (puññā) are all far the more important concepts with respect to obligations imposed by the religious life. Brown's citation of a passage of the Bhagavadgīta which states that "it's better to do one's own duty badly than to do the duty of another well" is completely at odds with the spirit and the letter of Buddhism. Technically, Buddhist monks walk away from class (varṇa) and caste (jāti) and all the associated notions of duty when they are ordained (cf comments on Bindumatī above). Brown takes two more bites at the saccakiriyā apple in 1968 and 1972, but he never manages to distinguish Buddhism from Hinduism and thus does not explain saccakiriyā in Buddhist terms, even though the vast majority of his texts are Buddhist. 

However, Brown's error contains some truth and points us in the right direction. According to any social code of conduct, Aṅgulimāla's mass murder is reprehensible. And when he joined the saṅgha he repudiated his dharma in the sense of social duty in the Vedic or Brahmanical use of the term. He cannot be said to meet Brown's criteria of fulfilling his duty in any sense. But in becoming an arahant he has aligned (samyañc) himself with dharma in the Buddhist sense. Thus, Aṅgulimāla's ability to use a saccakiriyā only makes sense within a Buddhist framework and specifically does not make sense in a Hindu or Brahmanical framework. 

George Thompson (1998) takes up the theme of saccakiriyā in light of Pragmatics (an application of Philosophical Pragmatism to language). Thompson goes as far as to say that the saccakiriyā is "a central Vedic institution" (125) despite still failing to find a single straightforward example of a saccakiriyā in a Vedic text. Thompson's approach to Brown's analysis is hampered because he only cites the last of Brown's three articles on this subject; the importance of the first article cited above is thus lost. Thompson's analysis of saccakiriyā is in the Pragmatic terms of J. L. Austin and his interpreter John Searle. There are certainly arguments for this approach. As a performative or "illocutionary" speech act, the saccakiriyā is at least taken seriously by Thompson. However, his approach remains reductive and never really comes to grip with the magical aspect of saccakiriyā. Though the Pragmatic approach is more interesting than, say, the Semantic approach of the late Frits Staal, in the end it does not give us insights into the Indian Buddhist mind. We may come to understand saccakiriyā in Pragmatic terms, but the people who composed the texts did not think in these terms, so it does not shed light on the emic understanding of saccakiriyā, i.e., on the worldview of ancient Buddhists who used magic (On emic/etic see this explanation).

Of course, my own application of Glucklich's work to understanding Buddhist magic, and mantra in particular, suffers, to some extent, from the etic/emic problem. Glucklich's framework is etic. However, as I hope I have shown, the crucial concept of interdependence is also part of the Buddhist worldview and, thus, Glucklich's approach enables us to build bridges that make for understanding in emic terms without a commitment to the emic worldview. 

Thompson, like many recent scholars of Buddhist mantra (e.g., Lopez 1990), makes reference to the series of essays presented in a volume called Mantra, edited by Harvey Alper (1989). There is no doubt that the essays in this book are fascinating, and they open up new ways of thinking about the Vedic approach to mantra, especially by employing Pragmatic paradigms (though Staal is highly critical of the Pragmatic approach in his contribution to the volume). If they mention Buddhist mantra, they do so only in passing, and Buddhist mantra seems to be a different topic, which employs an entirely different paradigm. So we not only have the problem of an approach which is determinedly etic, but also one which ignores Buddhism as a distinct tradition. The same applies to Jan Gonda's oft cited 1963 classic The Indian Mantra. It is a highly useful and insightful study of mantra in the Vedic/Hindu context that almost entirely leaves Buddhist mantra aside. So little effort has gone into the study of Buddhist mantra on Buddhist terms that there is precious little research to refer to. In my opinion, the best guide to Buddhist mantra is the works of Kūkai, translated by Yoshito Hakeda in Kūkai: Major Works. Referring to this book, we can see that the understanding of mantra in the Buddhist milieu went in entirely different directions from the Vedic/Hindu milieu. A thorough study of Buddhist mantra in Buddhist terms is an urgent desideratum for Buddhist studies. My own book Visible Mantra only scratches the surface.

This is an all too brief overview of this often overlooked magical tradition within Buddhism. I think this framework of truth-magic is integral to understanding the value and power of the Heart Sutra and, especially, the dhāraṇī within the sūtra. As almost every work which discusses the Heart Sutra will remind the reader, this text is chanted daily in monasteries, temples and shrine-rooms across the Mahāyāna Buddhist world. But none of these sources really gets to grips with why this is so. That magic might play a part is obscured by modern bias: we don't want to see the magical side of Buddhism.

The text is also studied and commentaries continue to be produced from a variety of worldviews and viewpoints. One of the things that fascinates me is that the Sanskrit text has been established for so long and yet has received so little critical attention. Nattier makes some comments, almost apostrophes, regarding the Sanskrit, but the most popular Mahāyāna Buddhist text has not been studied in anything like enough depth. Recent important contributions From Lopez, Nattier and Silk have made little impact in the world of Buddhist practice.


Saccakiriyā as Magic

One last task remains, which is to tie the saccakiriyā in with Glucklich's views on magic. In Indic languages the root sat means both true and real. Thus, to say that an utterance is satya (Pāli sacca) 'truth', is also to state that it is reality and not merely as a reference, but reality itself. Similarly, for words like bhūta and tathā. In ancient India one knew that the eyes were not always trustworthy, so the ears were the gateway to reality: hence, Buddhists are śravakāḥ 'hearers' and the learned are  described as 'śrutavat' 'possessing what was heard'. Hence, also, the sūtras begin evaṁ maya śrutam... "I heard it this way". In the Buddhist worldview I'm describing (spanning the Pāli nikāyas, Milindapaña and the main Sanskrit Prajñapāramitā texts), words that conform (samyañc) to reality have the power to invoke real-world changes. The underlying metaphysic here is that what is real on one level is real on every level and there are connections (bandhu) between levels (despite my earlier comments, this worldview comes from the Vedic milieu). In Glucklich's terms, if we have lost the sense of interconnectedness that is vital to our well being, then we can restore it by partaking in some aspect of the real on another level. Because of universal interconnectedness, we can access macro or cosmic interconnectedness via micro or local interconnectedness, with the right attitude. In this view reciting a sūtra, dhāraṇī or mantra does precisely that.

In the saccakiriyā one states a truth or reality or, in fact, one states that one is, oneself, in harmony (samyañc) with truth (satya), in order to restore order external to oneself. And this has often been the main use of the Heart Sutra. Legend tells us that Xuanzang, for example, recited the text to ward off evil spirits while crossing the Gobi desert. Certainly, a feature of Mahāyāna Buddhism in East Asia has been the belief that chanting sutras is a valid response to misfortune, whether personal or national. Japan was (and still is) highly vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunami, typhoons, floods, and fires (in towns built from wood). One early Japanese Emperor effectively bankrupted the Japanese economy in a frenzy of temple building and the sponsoring of monks to chant texts in his response to repeated calamity.

Chanting texts for protection seems to date from very early in Buddhist history. The paritta ceremony is mentioned in the Milindapañha and continues down to the present, and most Mahāyāna texts promise protection to anyone who propagates them. And, interestingly, this has a direct parallel in the medieval monasteries of Christian Europe. The cycles of daily prayers were central to the existence of the monks, and these were kept up to try to ensure the wellbeing of king and country.

The saccakiriyā allows one individual who is samyañc (in tune) with respect to the nature of experience, to restore samyañc for another who is mithyā (at odds) with respect to the nature of experience.

I think Brown and Thompson are right in detecting a relationship with Vedic metaphysics here, but the form of expressing that ability to exploit samyañc when a protagonist says etena saccavajjena... hotu 'by [the power of] this truth-speaking... may [something]  be!' to change reality is simply not found in Vedic contexts. The saccakiriyā allows one individual who is samyañc (in tune) with respect to the nature of experience, to restore samyañc for another who is mithyā (at odds) with respect to the nature of experience. This is what Aṅgulimālā does, for example. In many Jātaka stories featuring a saccakiriyā, the restoration of samyañc often allows a protagonist to complete their task in the face of some obstacle. Thus, the saccakiriyā throws light on the importance of the distinction between samyañc and mithyā, which is at the heart of the Eightfold path. And note that, though the eightfold path as a substantial existing entity is denied in the Heart Sutra, the quality of samyaktva/amithyātva is affirmed. As far as I can tell, no one uses a saccakiriyā in order to break out of saṃsāra. The magic is primarily a secular cultural phenomenon which has been incorporated into the Buddhist mix because it is part of the milieu in which Buddhist writers lived. The parallel is modern Buddhist writers incorporating the attitudes and jargon of psychotherapy into their descriptions and expositions. However, in the Prajñāpārmitā literature the bodhisattva can use the saccakiriyā to test their progress towards bodhi.

We might also see this principle at work in other contexts. When we practice transferring our merit (pariṇāmanā), for example. The more we are samyañc, the more merit (puṇya) we have. And, being samyañc, we are able to have a positive influence. Giving our merit away only makes us more samyañc. Similarly, to the extent that our kalyāna-mitras are samyañc, they influence us to be less mithyā.


Conclusion

So this is the saccakiriyā or truth act. In some ways this is an obscure branch of Buddhist lore that may seem to have little relevance to modern Buddhism. Though plenty of Buddhists are credulous about magic in a broader context, it is generally excised from modern accounts of Buddhism so that superstition and magic are never seen as central to modern Buddhism. So we should not be surprised to find no mention of it in popular introductions to Buddhism or in the curriculums of modern Buddhist schools. However, it might interest my fellow Triratna practitioners to know that, though we never speak openly of it, we regularly recite a saccakiriyā in our version of the Tiratana Vandana (also widely used in the Theravāda)

N'atthi me saraṇaṃ aññaṁ
Buddho me saraṇaṃ varaṁ
Etena saccavajjena
Hotu me jayamaṅgalaṁ

There is no other refuge for me.

The Buddha is the best refuge for me.

By this truth-speaking,

May I have victory and good fortune! 

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Alper, Harvey., Ed. (1989) Mantra. State University of New York Press.

Brown, W. Norman. (1940) 'The Basis for the Hindu Act of Truth.' The Review of Religion, V. 36-45.

Brown, W. Norman. (1968) 'The Metaphysics of the Truth Act (*Satyakriyā).' Melanges d'Indianisme a la Memoir de Louis Renou. Paris 170-177.

Brown, W. Norman. (1972) 'Duty as Truth in Ancient India.' Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 116(3): 252-268.

Burlingame, Eugene Watson. (1917) 'The Act of Truth (Saccakiriya): A Hindu Spell and its Employment as a Psychic Motif in Hindu Fiction.' Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 28: 429-467.
Chisho Mamoru Namai. On Mantranaya [sic]. http://ibc.ac.th/faqing/node/46 

Conze, Edward (1973). The Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 Lines and its Verse Summary. San Francisco: City Lights.

Conze, Edward. (1975). The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom: With the Divisions of the Abhisamayālaṅkāra. Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass: 1990.

Gonda, J. (1963). The Indian Mantra. Oriens (Leiden). 16, p.244-297.

Hakeda, Y.S. (1972) Kūkai : major works : translated and with an account of his life and a study of his thought. New York : Columbia University Press. 

Lopez, Donald S. (1990) 'Inscribing the Bodhisattva's Speech: On the Heart Sūtra's Mantra.' History of Religions. 29(4): 351-372.

Takayasu Kimura: Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā V. Tokyo: Sankibo Busshorin 1992. http://fiindolo.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/psp_5u.htm

Thompson, George. (1998) 'On Truth-acts in Vedic'. Indo-Iranian Journal. 41: 125-153.

Vaidya, P. L. (1960) Aṣṭasāhasrika Prajñāpāramitā. Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute, 1960. http://fiindolo.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/bsu049_u.htm

Vaidya, P.L. (1961) Mahāyāna-sūtra-saṃgrahaḥ, Part 1. Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute.