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.

What is Buddhism?

Mahāpajāpatī (right) assists at the birth of the Buddha, seen emerging from his mothers side. Gandhāra sculpture.

This post is my response to something posted on Smiling Buddha Cabaret, which has become one of my favourite Buddhist blogs since I stumbled on it late last year. In "an open letter to the owner of Buddhism", NellaLou seeks permission to be the kind of Buddhist she wants to be, since it seems she has been criticised by other Buddhists about it (reading between the lines). The internet world is full of well-read censorious one-track fundamentalists who seem more interested in what Buddhism is not, and like nothing better to denounce ideas and attitudes as not Buddhism, and those putting forward these ideas as not Buddhist. It has always struck me as a tedious thing to do. Having fallen foul of these twits I'm in sympathy with NellaLou and thought I'd contribute to the cause in my own way.

Once when the Buddha was living in the gabled hall in the large grove outside Vaiśālī his maternal aunt and foster mother Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī came to visit him. [1] She was about to set off on a solitary retreat and asked the Buddha for something pithy to reflect on. The Buddha gave her eight pairs of antonyms which he told her define what the Dhamma is and is not. These were:

1. sarāga/virāga - passion/dispassion
2. saṃyoga/visaṃyoga - attachment/detachment
3. ācaya/apacaya - accumulation/divestment
4. mahicchatā/appicchatā - ambition/satisfaction
5. asantuṭṭhi/santuṭṭhi - discontentment/contentment
6. saṇgaṇika/paviveka - society/solitude
7. kosajja/vīriyārambha - idleness/invigoration
8. dubbharatā/subbharatā - burdensomeness/helpfulness

Then he said. Gotamī: if a teaching causes you to move towards (saṃvattati; lit 'converges') the former then you can be sure that this is not the teaching, not the discipline, not the instruction of the instructor; but if the teaching causes you to move towards the latter then you can be confident that this is the teaching, it is the discipline, it is the instruction of the instructor.

While I do understand the nature of irony, allow me to give a slightly earnest answer to NellaLou. I think this kind of text shows that as well as trying to pin things down, there is a trend in Buddhism which holds the doctrines and practices loosely. Here we have the Buddha saying basically "anything that works is the Dharma". I would qualify 'works' here with the caveat that it has to definitely lead to the positive side of the equations given.

We could also see the fundamentalist cant in the light of the obvious borrowings throughout the history of Buddhism - from Vedism, from Jainism, from Hinduism, from Śaivism, from Taoism, from Shamanism, etc. We have historically been able to reform, innovate and incorporate because conservatives and fundamentalists have not always held sway. However I think it's easy to overstate the influence of online fundamentalists - I find the real Buddhists and Buddhologists I meet tend to be friendly and open. It's probably worth pointing out that our central doctrine in Buddhism is that EVERYTHING CHANGES! I think conservatives and fundamentalists lose sight of this, and perhaps even fear change.

Now although there are eight terms a number of them are synonyms - it can be quite difficult to see whether an entirely different concept is intended, or if a synonym is being used for reinforcement (a very common Pāli rhetorical strategy). Although I've gone for a single word in each case, it should not be assumed that the English precisely conveys the Pāli - far from it. Take the word rāga in sarāga/virāga 'with/without passion'. What's intended here is something like 'uncontrollable excitement'. It is not passion in the contemporary sense of 'positive enthusiasm' for something, but in the archaic sense of a strong emotion or event which overtakes us against our will - the Passion of Christ refers to his torture and horrible death on the cross for instance; and the passion of various saints refers to their martyrdom. So rāga is passion in this negative sense.

The pairs saṃyoga/visaṃyoga and saṇgaṇikā/paviveka are related: they value independence and individuality over dependence and groups. Following Sangharakshita we tend to use this word 'group' pejoratively in the Triratna Buddhist Order - it represents the lower evolution, the herd, the mob, the submerging of the individual will rather than it's sublimation. "The group is always wrong"... "the couple is a group of two" etc. The Buddha certainly valued individuality and emancipation from the herd mentality. He often encouraged his followers to leave behind family, status, career and social groups and to pursue enlightenment alone in the wilderness. There is only misery in those kinds of attachments (cf From the beloved). We can of course take this too far because the spiritual community can come together on a different basis, which I discussed in my post on the Russian term sobornost.

Similarly there are some pairs dealing with our hedonic response to sense data: mahicchatā/appicchatā; asantuṭṭhi/santuṭṭhi. The first two revolve around the word iccha 'wish, desire' as an abstract noun icchatā 'wishfulness'. The negative side has much (mahā) of this, while the positive has little (appa). Similarly the second pair revolve around the word tuṭṭha 'pleased, content'. The negative is dissatisfaction, the positive is satisfaction - both appicchatā and santuṭṭhi could be rendered as 'contentment'.

Lastly we have kosajja/vīriyārambha and dubbharatā/subbharatā. These relate to how we contribute to society. The pair of idleness (kosajja) or invigoration (vīriya-ārambha) is fairly obvious. The last pair are more difficult. The base is bharatā from the root √bhṛ 'to bear' (and related to English words ending in -fer/-pher e.g. aquifer 'water bearer'; Lucifer 'light bearer'). The word is an abstract noun that only seems to occur in these two compounds. In this context it refers to being easy (su) or difficult (du) to support, probably with reference to bhikkhus who may require little or much from their supporters. In The Life of the Buddha Ñāṇamoli renders the pair as 'luxury' and 'frugality', [2] while Thanissaro opts for 'burdensome/unburdensome'. [3] I've gone for helpful as the opposite of burdensome because it coveys an active rather than a passive value: why stop at just not being a burden and when one can do something helpful? One who is idle is a burden so these terms are to some extent synonymous.

A small point of interest about satthusāsana which I have rendered as 'the instruction of the instructor'. Both parts of the compound (satthu and sāsana) derive from √śās which has a range of senses from 'chastise, punish'; through 'control, rule, order, command'; to the more benign 'instruct, teach'. From it we also get the word śāstra 'a text for instruction' (as distinct from śruti 'what is heard, a sacred text'). So we could have rendered it 'the command of the commander', or the 'teaching of the teacher'. In the case of Aśoka's edicts (i.e. sāsanā) we might go for 'the dictates of the dictator'.

This is a strange text in some ways. It is unusual that there is no response to the teaching from Mahāpajāpatī. We would expect her to have something to say, and it would not be unusual for her to disappear for a week or two and come back and report that she had 'done what had to be done' (i.e. become an arahant), though she does later become an arahant. Indeed this is a strange meditation practice and it feels like we're missing some important piece of the story. Mahāpajāpatī asks for something concise that she might dwell on alone, secluded, vigilant, ardent and resolute (ekā vūpakaṭṭhā appamattā ātāpinī pahitattā vihareyyaṃ). And the Buddha responds in a very abstract way. It's hard to see this would be helpful unless she had a problem of being too narrow in defining the Dharma, or was struggling to interpret conflicting interpretations (and as NellaLou has pointed out these issues are endemic in Buddhism). According to the Dictionary of Pāli Names this story occurs after her ordination (and the creation of the bhikkhunī saṅgha) when she is already a stream-entrant (sotāpanna).

What ever we make of the context, the attitude displayed in the sutta is a useful antidote to narrowness, conservatism and fundamentalism. 'Buddhism' is anything that genuinely leads to positive results as defined by the Buddha, i.e. anything that leads to: dispassion, detachment, divestment, satisfaction, contentment, solitude, invigoration, helpfulness. Of course we don't really need a text to tell us this, or to justify our practice to others if we feel we are genuinely practising, but I find it useful to show that even the conservative Theravādins preserved a tradition of openness and innovation.


Notes

1. I'm working from the Saṃkhitta Sutta, AN 8.53, PTS A iv.280. Pāli Text from www.tipitaka.org.
   
2. Ñāṇamoli. The Life of the Buddha. Buddhist Publication Society, 1984. p.107-108.
3. Access to Insight. Gotami Sutta.

The Rhinoceros Sutta in Three Parallel Versions

My friend Dharmacārin Dhīvan (aka Dr Thomas Jones) was recently invited to give a series of lectures at Cambridge University and he told me that he included three parallel versions of the Rhinoceros Sutta partly to demonstrate the relationship of the canonical languages, but mostly to give a feel for the early (i.e. pre-sectarian) Buddhist world. I was taken by the idea of presenting three versions of the same text and so I asked for a copy of his handout and have used it to create this blog post. These three versions of the text can be found together in Richard Salomon's book A Gāndhārī Version of the Rhinoceros Sūtra.

Pāli (Sn v. 36, 53, 73) nāgo va yūthāni vivajjayitvā sañjātakhandho padumī uḷāro, yathābhirantaṃ vihare araññe eko care khaggavisāṇakappo. saṃsaggajātassa bhavati sneho snehanvayaṃ dukkham idam pahoti ādīnavaṃ snehajaṃ pekkhamāno eko care khaggavisāṇakappo mettaṃ upekhaṃ karuṇaṃ vimuttiṃ āsevamāno muditañ ca kāle sabbena lokena avirujjhamāno eko care khaggavisāṇakappo

Gāndhārī: Kharoṣṭi mss ṇāgo vi yusaṇi vivajaita saṃjadakaṃdho patumaṃ uraḍo +++++vi+[ṛ]+++ +++++++++++ sa(*ṃ)s(*evamaṇasa siyati sneho) s̄eha(*ṃ)vayaṃ dukha(*ṃ=idaṃ prabhoti) +++++++++++ (*eko care khargaviṣaṇagapo) metra uvekha karuṇa ya bhavae asevamaṇa mutita e kalo (*sarveṇa loge)ṇa a(*virujama)ṇa eko care khargavi(*ṣaṇagapo)

Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit: Mahāvastu [no equivalent for this verse] saṃsevamānasya siyātisneho snehānvayaṃ dukham idaṃ prabhoti saṃsevamānaṃ tu jugupsamāno eko care khaḍgaviṣāṇakalpo …upekṣāṃ karuṇāṃ ca bhāvya āsevamāno muditāṃ ca kāle maitreṇa cittena hitānukaṃpī eko care khaḍgaviṣāṇakalpo

(+ indicates an unreadable character on the manuscript; * is a conjectured reading;)

Dhīvan also provided his students with an English translation of the Pāli (based on K.R. Norman's):

As an elephant with massive shoulder, spotted, noble, leaving the herds might live as it pleases in the forest, one should wander alone like a rhinoceros (horn).

Affection comes into being from keeping company; following on affection, this suffering arises. Seeing the danger that comes from affection, one should wander alone like a rhinoceros (horn).

Cultivating at the right time love, equanimity, compassion, liberation and gladness, unimpeded by the whole world, one should wander alone like a rhinoceros (horn).

The three versions of this text are in three important languages for the transmission of Early Buddhist texts. It is interesting to see these languages side by side. It's doubtful to me whether they would have been mutually intelligible. Unlike the Vedas which were rigidly transmitted in a single language that gradually became unintelligible too many of those involved in the transmission, the Buddha encouraged his followers to pass on the Dharma each in their own language.

We know that even among speakers of languages descended from Vedic that there must have been considerable linguistic variation. Compare the situation in Europe where we have languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Romanian all descended from vernacular Latin. It was some time before Sanskrit was a adopted as a lingua franca, not for many centuries. Some scholars think that Pali might have been an attempt at a lingua franca.

As well is the evidence of texts in several Indian languages, there are two stories in the Pali Canon which tell us that this was more than just a drifting apart. One of these, Vin ii.139, is now somewhat infamous because of the competing interpretations of it. In this story to Brahmins attempt to persuade the Buddha to allow them to translate the Buddha's teaching into 'chandaso' The competition arises because scholars have attempted to use this passage to show what language the Buddha might have spoken, by interpreting the word chandaso in at least three different ways. My understanding is that all we can draw from this passage is the notion that the Buddha did not want everything standardised linguistically.

The other story is found in the Araṇavibhanga Sutta (MN 139). Here the Buddha explicitly says that one should not insist on using the local dialect, nor override local usage. he points out that the same vessel is called different things in different places: pāti, patta, vittha, serāva, dhāropa, poṇa, pisīla (ie the Buddha in this text possibly knows of at least seven distinct dialects). The text is an instruction on how to avoid conflict, and in this case it doesn't really matter what we call the thing we are eating from as long as it does the job it's designed for.

So although we preserve scriptures in a relatively small number of languages, as English-speaking Buddhists what we strive for is to convey the Buddha's insight, and our own to the extent that we have it, in the language of the people we are speaking to. Clearly I believe that having reference to the traditional canons is helpful. I have certainly found that learning Pāli, even to the limited extent to which I have, has enriched my practice.

One of the consequences of this translation process is that not only is the language translated, by which I mean the words; but the cultural references also change. So the Buddhism of any given culture gradually becomes distinctive as it orientates itself to that culture. This gives rise to differences that aren't necessarily easy to understand and doctrinally terms. If we only use doctrine as a frame of reference for understanding Buddhism then we may fail to understand the way that some Buddhists practice. This opens up the wider question which I hope to address in the future essay: who is a Buddhist? What is Buddhism? Specifically is Buddhism not simply what Buddhists say and do; or is Buddhism only what it says ancient texts?

~~oOo~~

Salomon, Richard with Glass, Andrew. A Gandhari Version of the Rhinoceros Sutra: British Library Kharosthi Fragment 5B. University of Washington Press, 2001.

Addition 20 May 2010. If you are interested in parallel versions of texts then there is a Comparative version of the Dhammapada compiled by Bhikkhu Anandajyoti. He compares four main texts: the Pāli Dhammapada, the Gāndārī Dhammapada, the Patna Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dharmapada, and a Sanskrit text Dhammapada style text called Udanavarga. In addition he includes parallel verses from other texts where they are known about.

7 March 2015. Dhivan has subsequently published an article on the difficult term khaggavisāṇa: 'Like the Rhinoceros, or Like Its Horn? The Problem of Khaggavisāṇa Revisited.' Buddhist Studies Review. Vol 31, No 2 (2014). 

The Stream of Life

I was reading through Rune Johansson's Pāli Buddhist Texts and came across this little verse [1].

accayanti ahorattā
jīvatam uparujjhati
āyu khīyati maccānam
kunnadīnam va odakaṃ

Days and nights elapse
Vitality declines
Mortal life is exhausted
Like water in streams

We are used to using rivers as metaphors. We understand the idea of the ever changing stream of the river, flowing from head waters to the sea, especially if we come from moist temperate climates. But in North India there is another phenomena which may not be so familiar.

In Feb 2009 I was in Bodhgaya for the convention of the Triratna Buddhist Order. One day I took the time to walk a little out of town to cross the long bridge over the River Falgu (called the Nirañjana in the Buddha's day) to the little village of Senani (also called Sujata in association with the young women who is said to have offered the Bodhisatta some milk-rice after he gave up self-torture). In Senani the farmers still pull a wooden plough behind bullocks despite the fact the iron age began about three millennia ago and resulted in the original clearing of this land. However the fields looked green and productive on this side of the river, where there was only brown dry fields around Bodhgaya. On the edge of the village is a stūpa which was built to commemorate Sujata.

The accompanying image from Google earth [2] shows Bodhgaya and the Falgu/Narañjana, the Mahabodhi Temple complex, the bridge and Suajata's stūpa. Although the bridge is about 600 meters wide, as I walked accompanied by one of the ubiquitous 'school children' [3] of Bodhgaya, I saw only sand. The mighty river had completely dried up, and this was not even the hot season, this was during the coolish winter. This is what this image shows - the brown colour is sand, not water. At higher magnifications one can see the patterns and cart tracks in the sand, as well as the little hut next to the bridge that Śaiva sadhus occupy when it is dry. Pulling back even more one sees that the river peters out in both directions, though I think it probably forms a tributary of the Ganges during the monsoon. There is even a word for this phenomena in Sanskrit: vārṣikodaka 'having water only during the rainy season [varṣa]'.

Certainly I am not used to such contrasts. It occurred to me that the verse above had to be understood in this context - this cyclic flooding and then complete drying up of even substantial rivers. I could not have imagined life becoming exhausted like a small stream because I've (more or less) always lived on islands with abundant rainfall all year round. But in this region when even a large river can completely dry up, what chance does a small stream have? And the verse is saying that life is like a small stream in this region - it may flood, but soon is will disappear. The verse is much more compelling when seen in this context.

The use of the word jīvata is interesting. It begins as a past-participle of jīvati and therefore means 'lived', but comes to mean the life-span, or 'vitality' (itself from Latin vita 'life' and probably cognate with jīvata). The noun jīva is an important technical term in Jainism where it denotes a kind of soul which moves from life to life. The verse makes a contrast by choosing another word for life: ayu (Sanskrit āyus). We find this word in āyurveda which means something like the 'knowledge of life' i.e. a literal rending in English would be biology (though they do not quite mean the same thing!). Āyus is related to the Greek word æon, and to English 'eternal, always'. So buried in the history of these words is the notion of eternity, the belief or wish that life will go on and on.

The Canon records that these words were spoken to Māra in the Squirrel Sanctuary near Rājagaha in the heart land of the samaṇa movement. I've noted before that Johannes Bronkhorst has argued that the idea of rebirth came from this region from amongst the samaṇa groups of whom the Jains were pre-eminent in the Buddha's time [Rethinking Indian History]. Māra here argues that the jīvata rolls along like the chariot's wheel, he literally denies that days and nights pass and that life ends. The verse above is the Buddha's rely. The status of Māra is a long story - was he 'real', allegorical, metaphorical? One way we could take this story is as a psychodrama with Māra representing that part of our psyche which coined these words for life which has 'eternal' as a connotation. Māra is our refusal to face up to our own impending death. The refusal to face death is quite a common theme and I have dealth with it at least once before in my essay: From the Beloved.

However we read the verses I find it very helpful to have walked in that landscape when trying to get into the mindset I find in the Pāli texts.


References

1. The reference is Saṃyutta Nikāya i.109 - pg 201-202 of the single vol ed. of Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation. [I'm tempted to offer a prize for anyone who knows what a 'felly' is without looking it up!]
   
2. If you want a closer look at Bodhgaya on Google then the coordinates are: Latitude: N 24° 41.75, Longitude: E 84° 59.49
   
3. The 'students' scam money out of tourists and pilgrims by asking them to buy school books for them, which they immediately sell back to the shop. This scam has a second level in which the dupe is invited to visit the school where the headmaster informs them that the child is out of school because they haven't paid their fees, which the generous dupe pays for them - 0nly to see them on the street again the next day. (It happened to a friend of mine!)
   

A Lecture on the theme of Illness

Antiochus and Stratonice

I first came across this story from the vinaya (Vin i.301) and Sangharakshita's book A Guide to the Buddhist Path, and then later a fuller version in his talk: "A Case of Dysentery". I've always found it extremely moving. This is no allegory, and it is not ambiguous. Quite simply the Buddha requires that members of his community care for each other, most especially when they are ill. To not do so is a wrongdoing (dukkaṭa) - wrongdoing here is quite a literal translation. The text speaks for itself, so rather than saying much more, I'll simply give you my translation and add one or two comments at the end. 

The Pāli title of this passage is Gilāna-vatthu-kathā 'A lecture on the theme of illness', hence my title.

Lecture on the Theme of Illness

Once there was a monk who was afflicted with dysentery. He lay on the ground covered in his own shit and piss. The Lord was out on walkabout with Ānanda as his sidekick, when he approached the dwelling of that monk. He saw the monk lying in his own filth and went up to him.

"Monk", he asked, "what is wrong with you".

"I have dysentery Lord".

"Is there no one to care for you?"

"There is not Lord."

"But why not?"

"I don't do anything for the other monks, so they do not care for me," he told the Lord.

Then the Lord asked Ānanda to go and fetch some water so they could bathe the monk. Ānanda agreed and soon returned with water. The Lord sprinkled water over the monk, and Ānanda washed him. Then, with the Lord at his head and Ananda at his feet, they lifted him up and put him to bed.

Then the Lord called the monks together and questioned them.

"Monks", he asked, "is there a sick monk in that dwelling there?"

"There is Lord" they replied.

"And what illness does he suffer from?" asked the Lord.

"He has dysentery, Sir."

"Is there no want to care for him?"

"No, Sir."

"Why is that?"

"Well, he is useless, Sir. He does nothing for us, so we don't care for him", the monks explained.

"Monks," said the Lord, "you have no mother and no father to care for you. If you don't care for each other, then who will care for you? If you would care for me, then tend to the sick."

He went on to say: "If a preceptor is present then they should care for you until you are well, and remain with you until you are on your feet again. Or if an instructor is present; or a fellow practitioner; or a pupil; or someone with the same preceptor, or the same instructor, they should care for you until you are well and remain with you until you are on your feet again. If none of these are present then you should be cared for by the community. If you are not cared for it is an offence of wrongdoing."

My translation is a mix this time - at times I go for modern idiom, at times I'm more conservative. The Pāli is not very fancy, and only gives the bare bones. I've tried not to elaborate on it too much, though I think it could stand a dramatic retelling.

The passage continues on to describe the ideal kind of patient and the ideal kind of nurse. There is a full translation on the Access to Insight website. Bhikkhu Thanissaro his chosen to entitle the passage in Pāli Kucchivikara-vatthu (lit 'on the theme of dysentery') and in English 'The Monk with Dysentery'. In his reference to this text Ven. Thanissaro has "Mv [i.e. Mahāvagga] 8.26.1-8; PTS: Horner vol. 4, pp. 431-34" - normally the abbreviation PTS points to the Pali Text Society's Pāli version, but in this case it refers to the Miss Horner's English translation (which mixed up the order of the texts making Mv vol 4.). The correct citation should be: PTS Vin i.301.

One small point to make here is that though there is a clear ecclesiastical hierarchy in the milieu of the Vinaya, no one is exempted from caring by their status within that hierarchy. You may be a preceptor or an instructor, but you are no less responsible for caring for the members of the spiritual community than the juniors. Perhaps we may say that the preceptor or instructor has a greater responsibility, because not only must they participate in caring, they must set an example for the others. The great danger of more senior members of the spiritual community being seen not upholding the values and virtues of the community, is that it can be used as a rationalisation for laziness, or otherwise ignoble behaviour on the part of others. Of course there is no excuse for ignoble behaviour, but we are apt to find rationalisations.

Sangharakshita gave a talk on this passage in 1982 as part of a series on incidents from the Pāli Canon. It's available from freebuddhistaudio.com: A Case of Dysentry [sic]. There is also an edited transcript of the talk (with correctly spelt title). An extract from this talk forms the section entitled 'Unfailing Mutual Kindness' in Sangharakshita's excellent introduction to Buddhism: A Guide to the Buddhist Path, p.121f. Note that Sangharakshita relied on the translations from 'Some Sayings of the Buddha', translated by F.L. Woodward (Buddhist Society, London, 1973), which now seem very dated.

Pain & Suffering

When we talk about suffering in Buddhism we often make a distinction between various 'types' of suffering. In the Arrow Sutta* the Buddha makes an important distinction which I like to think of in terms of physical pain, and emotional (or mental) suffering. This text is fairly well-known, and there are already several translations of it available. The translations that I'm aware of all seem to suffer more or less from the phenomenon which Paul Griffiths has called "Buddhist Hybrid English", that is English which preserves the syntax of Pāli and therefore sounds peculiar. What I've tried to do is read the text in Pali in order to understand it, and then render it into contemporary English. I've retained the overall structure of the Pali text, including the verses at the end, though I've made no attempt to turn them into English poetry, not being a poet. I hope the result is both readable and informative.

The Arrow

The ordinary person feels pleasant feelings, unpleasant feelings, and vague feelings. Likewise the insightful person feels the same kinds of feelings. So what is the distinction, what is the difference between the two?

The ordinary person touched by pain is upset and miserable, they are aggrieved and confused. They have two experiences: one physical (kāyika), and one emotional (cetasika). It is like someone being pierced by an arrow, and then immediately pierced by a second arrow, and feeling the pain of both. When they experience pain they immediately feel aversion, because they have an underlying predisposition to aversion in relation to pain. Coming into contact with painful sensations they seek out pleasure, because they don't know any other response to pain. They don't understand the reality of the origin and passing away; the sweetness and the bitterness; the outcome of those experiences because of a predisposition to ignorance.

Feeling a pleasurable or a painful sensation they are caught up in it. Or if there is vagueness about sensations they are caught up in that. The ordinary person is caught up in birth, old-age, death; in grief, crying, misery, dejection, and trouble.

By contrast the insightful person touched by pain is not upset and miserable, they are not aggrieved and confused. They feel only one sensation: the physical; not the mental. They are not pierced by the second arrow, and so feel only one feeling.

Coming into contact with painful sensations there is no aversion, because they do not have an underlying tendency to aversion in relation to pain. They do not seek out pleasure because they know another response to pain. Not having a predisposition to ignorance they understand the reality of the origin and passing away; the sweetness and the bitterness; the outcome of those experiences.

When they have a pleasurable or a painful sensation, they are detached from it. When there is vagueness, they are not caught up in that. So the insightful person is not caught up in birth, old-age, death; in grief, crying, misery, dejection, and trouble.

This is the distinction, this is the difference between the ordinary person and the insightful person.

The big difference between
The insightful and the ordinary.
Is that on feeling pleasure or pain,
The wise-one is not reactive.

For the well-versed examiner of mental processes,
Seeing through this world and beyond.
Objects of desire do not disturb their mind
And the undesired is not resented.

For them satisfied and obstructed desires,
Are scattered and destroyed.
Having known the faultless sorrowless state,
They understand perfectly, and transcend, becoming.

Comments

I need to say one or two things about my translation. The phrase that I have translated as 'ordinary person' is assutavā puthujjano. Assutavant means 'one who has not heard' (suta) with an implied reference to the Buddha's teachings. The word puthujjana is translated in different ways, 'worlding' is common; while puthu means 'separated, individual; numerous', and while jana means 'people or person'; so the overall sense is of the majority, the crowd, especially those people who are not interested in religion. Compare puthujjana with the Greek word 'idiotēs' which referred to an individual who could not, or would not, participate in public life (from which we get the word 'idiot'. Juxtaposed with this is the sutavant ariyasāvako - the learned disciple of the noble one which I have translated as 'insightful person'. The phrase is something of a tautology because suta and sāvaka come from the same root √śru 'to hear', and mean 'heard' and 'one who hears'. Saying of someone 'they have heard much' is equivalent to contemporary English 'learned' because an ancient India one did one's learning by listening.

I've translated cetasika as 'emotional' in this case. A more typical translation might have been 'mental', but the context clearly shows that what is intended here is our emotional reactions to pain. In the Buddha's time there was no clear distinction between mental and emotional. Interestingly neuroscience has showed us that physiologically there is often very little to distinguish between emotional states. We have states of arousal or excitation which are similar across a great range of what we usually think of as different emotions, such as e.g. fear and anger, and what really distinguishes between these is the thoughts that go with them.

The phrase 'caught up in that' translates saññyutto naṃ. Saññyutta (also spelt saṃyutta) may be familiar as the name of the Nikāyas in which we find this text and means 'yoked together': yutta 'joined' being a past-participle of √yuj 'to join' (from which also yoga); and saṃ- suggesting togetherness or completion. It has the sense of 'yoked to', or 'bound together' - so the ordinary person is bound to be caught up in their emotional responses.

Newcomers to Buddhism, and sophists, like to ask questions such as 'did the Buddha feel pain?' This sutta is one of many which make it clear that anyone with a human body feels pain. However not everyone feels the anguish, the aversion that goes with it. As the verse at the end of the sutta says the big difference (mahā viseso) between someone who is insightful and someone who is not, is that the insightful person is not reactive towards feelings pleasure or pain. It is possible to feel physical pain and yet not to experience that as suffering. This does not mean that it is not painful. In another sutta the Buddha's foot is pierced by a stone sliver and it is excruciating, but again he is not caught up in that pain, he never loses his mindfulness or composure.**

I've repeatedly emphasised that the Buddha's teaching is mainly to do with the mind. I take the Salla Sutta to be a confirmation of this. Yes, we do have physical sensations. However we share these with the enlightened ones. What distinguishes an insightful person from us, is the mental and emotional side of the equation. Buddhist practice does not make us invulnerable to pain, but it does help us to bear that pain. This is where I find it useful to make a distinction between pain on the one hand, and suffering on the other. From this point of view enlightenment is the lack of reactivity towards vedanā or sensations arising from contact between us as subject, and objects of the senses (whatever they might be).


Notes

* Salla Sutta. SN 36.6, PTS iv.207 (aka Sallatha Sutta). Not to be confused with another Salla Sutta in the Sutta-Nipāta, Sn 574ff. See also Access to Insight.
** Sakalika Sutta. SN 1.3, PTS: S i 27.

image: Painting by Il Sodoma (c. 1525) depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. Wikipedia.

Knowing

I stumbled upon a website recently that quoted Bill Bryson's book about the English language: Mother Tongue. He points out that some languages have different words for the knowledge that comes from recognition (French connaître; German kennen), and knowledge gained from understanding (Fr. savoir; Gm. wissen). If we trace the roots of these words they lead us in several directions - I'll aim to highlight links to English and Sanskrit.

French connaître is, I think, related to the English word 'cognition' (from Latin co + gnōscere 'to know'). The Indo-European (IE) root is sometimes given as *√gn-, sometimes *√gno [1] from which comes the Sanskrit root √jñā. The IE gives rise to many English words. Via the Greek we get 'gnosis'. From the Latin nōscere (dropping the g) we get 'noble' which original meant '(well) known', from L. nōbilis via Old French noble; similarly 'note' and 'notorious'. 'Quaint' derives from the Old French coint, from L. cognitus, which also gives us 'cognition' and 'recognise'; French variations on L. cognōscent (present participle) give us 'connoisseur', 'cognisance', and 'reconnaissance'. The Sanskrit equivalent of 'cognition' is saṃjñā (sam- and co- both signifying 'together'), though saṃjñā in Buddhist usage often means 'to recognise' or 'apperception'.

Kennen must be related to the English 'ken' from Old English cennan (via Scots dialect) which is again ultimately derived from *√gno. Compare this with the Anglo-Saxon equivalent: cnāwan. The word ken 'to come to know' is also related to the Germanic *kuntha which became Old English cūtha and this gives us the word 'uncouth' which originally meant 'ignorant'.

Savior and wissen however are not cognate, that is they derive from different roots despite having a similar meaning. Savior derives from the Latin sapare 'to taste, have taste, be wise', from which we also get the words 'savant', 'sapient', and our species name 'Homo Sapiens'. Words such as 'savour' and 'savoury' are from the same root. The IE root is *√sep and I have not identified a Sanskrit cognate.

Wissen by contrast is clearly related to words such as 'wise' and 'vision' from Latin visione. The Greek is oida. All are clearly related to the Sanskrit √vid from which we get the cognate vidyā 'knowledge (especially esoteric), science etc'. The idea here is that what we see, we know. Related words are veda 'knowledge', vedanā 'that which is made known'.

The link between knowledge and vision is explicit in Sanskrit and Pāli and they often occur as synonyms. As well as √vid we also find the root √dṛś is used in this way. From √dṛś especially we get the words darśana 'to see' but also 'an opinion', and dṛṣṭi 'seeing, notion, doctrine'. Presumably savior 'to taste' must be being used in a similar sense here. Note that in Buddhism the knowledge associated with views and doctrines is suspect, but this is a sectarian view and does not emerge from philological concerns.

The word 'understand' (the sense of savior and wissen) means 'to stand in the midst'. From IE *√sta (Sanskrit √sthā) and 'under' not used in the usual sense of 'beneath', but deriving from IE *nter 'amidst, among' (cf Sk antar 'between'; and Latin. inter-). The word 'interest' comes from the Latin inter est 'it is among'; compare also 'interior'. By contrast the Sanskrit antargacchati simply means 'to go between', though adhigacchati 'to go over, to approach' can figuratively mean 'to understand'.The Greek for understanding is epistamai 'I stand upon'. Spatial metaphors using 'in' and 'on' are often interchangeable: for instance we can say "in his view", but equally "on this view" (the latter seems more common amongst American academics).

There is another important Sanskrit verb √budh 'to perceive, notice, understand, to awake'. From this word we get the important Buddhist technical terms buddha 'awoken, understood' and bodhi 'awakening, understanding'. We also get the verbal noun buddhi 'intelligence, reason, mind'. The only trace of this word in English is in the word 'bid', as in "do as I bid you" which is related to the causative form bodhaya- 'to inform' via the Anglo-Saxon bēodan 'command'.

The Sanskrit root √jñā is used with a number of affixes: abhijñā 'direct knowing'; prajñā 'wisdom'; saṃjñā 'awareness, apperception', vijñāna 'consciousness'. Not all combinations produce expected results however, compare: anujñā 'allow, permit' (anu = along, with); avajñā 'insult, disrespect' (ava = down, under).

The dictionaries I regularly consult for this kind of essay offer a surprising range of English equivalent for Sanskrit and Pāli words meaning 'to know' indicating the breadth of the concept: 'perceive, apperception, conceive, apprehend, comprehend, understand, cognition, recognise, ascertain, discern, distinguish, discriminate, experience, investigate, discover, intelligent, judge, observe, conscious, aware'.

Note that all the words with -ceive relate to the Latin capere 'to seize'; and those with -hend relate to Latin hendere 'to take hold of'. All the -cern words (including discriminate) are from Latin cernere 'to sift, separate'. Dis- as a suffix means 'apart'.


Notes

1. Words preceded by an asterisk * are hypothetical or reconstructed by philologists based on triangulating between the various Indo-European languages using what they know about how sounds change in order to propose the underlying word that gave rise to all of the known variations.
   

The Parable of the Tortoise

I present here a translation of the Kummopama Sutta along with Buddhaghosa's commentary. The former is a very tasty teaching on the benefits of guarding the gates of the senses (indriyesu gutta-dvāratā). The latter is not of huge interest, but those who are unfamiliar with the Pāli commentaries may be interested to see the kind of thing that they contain. Often it is simply synonyms, sometimes commentary in the sense of interpretation or exegesis. The commentaries can be invaluable when translating obscure passages.

As far as I know this is the only translation of this text on the web (I offered it to Access to Insight and they didn't want it).


Kummopama Sutta (SN 35.240; PTS: S iv 177)
With the Pāli Commentary from the Saḷāyatanavagga-aṭṭhakathā (SA 3.29)

Once, monks, a tortoise was intent on grazing along the banks of a river in the evening time. At the same time a jackal was also intent on foraging along the river. The tortoise saw the jackal in the distance. Seeing the jackal, the tortoise pulled his head and limbs into his shell, and stayed silent and still. The jackal also saw the tortoise in the distance, and went over to it. He thought: ‘when this tortoise pokes out its head, or one of its limbs I will grab it and pull it out and eat it!’ However the tortoise did not emerge from his shell and the jackal did not get an opportunity. So, becoming bored, the jackal went away. 

In the same way, monks, you should be ready because evil Māra is always waiting. He thinks ‘perhaps my opportunity will come from the eye, or the ear, or nose, or tongue, or body, or the mind.’ Therefore, monks, dwell guarding the gates of the senses. Seeing a form with the eye, do not grasp the appearance, nor the associations. Because dwelling with the eye-sense unrestrained leaves you open to attack by covetousness and grief, to wicked, unhelpful mental states. So exercise restraint, protect the eye-sense, and practice restraint of the eye. Similarly having heard a sound with the ear… smelled an odour with the ear… tasted a flavour with the tongue… touched a thing with the body… or experienced a mental state with the mind, do not grasp the appearance, nor the associations. Because dwelling with the senses unrestrained leave you open to attack by covetousness and grief, to wicked, unhelpful mental states. So exercise restraint, protect the senses, and practice restraint of the senses. Therefore, monks, dwell guarding the gates of the senses. Then evil Māra, finding no opportunity, will become bored and leave you, like the jackal left the tortoise. 

The tortoise, limbs in his own shell,
Drawn up. The monk, steady mind,
Not given to oppressing others,
Completely calm, he abuses no-one.

Commentary

‘kummo’ is just a synonym for ‘kaccahapo’ [tortoise]. ‘Anunadītīre’ means along the bank of the river. ‘Gocarapasuto’ means ‘if I locate any sort of food, I will eat it’; for the sake of grazing it is intent, eager, always [doing it]’. ‘Samodahitvā’ means ‘having put [it] in something like a box’. ‘Saṅkasāyati’ is ‘sit still’

So this is what is said: "just as the tortoise pulls his limbs into his shell and does not give the jackal an opportunity, and the jackal could not overcome him; so the bhikkhu pulling his turning mind back to the object of meditation does not give the taints or Māra an opportunity, and [Māra] cannot overcome [the monk]."

‘Samodahaṃ’ means remaining tucked up. ‘Anissito’ refers to not being attached [nissito] to the foundations of craving and views. ‘Aññamaheṭhayāno’ means not oppressing [aviheṭhento] any other person. ‘Parinibbuto’ means the complete calming [parinibbuto] associated with the extinguishing of the taints.’ Nūpavadeyya kañci’ means he should not insult [upavadati] another person, by moral transgression, failure of manners, longing for self-aggrandisement, desire to deceive another – surely having produced five subjective states: ‘I will speak at the proper time, not at an inopportune time, I will naturally not unnaturally, I will speak kindly not harshly, I will speak profitably not uselessly, I will speak with the loving thought, not bearing illwill’ that is how to dwell with a helpful disposition.


My Comments

Clearly the commentary makes better sense when read along with the text in Pāli - which I got from tripiṭaka.org (scroll down to find sutta 240). I have a typed up version with everything linked up by foot notes, but it's a bit complex for this format (it's on my other website as a pdf). The second paragraph which sums up what is being said comes after paragraph one of the text.

In the case of a word like anunadītīre it can be quite helpful to have someone point out how to interpret it. The break down is anu-nadī-tīre: nadī is river, tīre is bank, and anu a preposition meaning 'along'. Nadītīre is a tatpuruṣa compound meaning the bank of the river which is relatively easy, but role of anu- did take a bit of thinking about (I'm still not sure how to describe the construction) and I was glad of the hint.

In the sentence in which the tortoise pulls in his head the sentence is a bit awkwardly phrased. The Pāli goes:

Disvāna soṇḍipañcamāni aṅgāni sake kapāle samodahitvā.
Seeing the jackal, the tortoise pulled his head and limbs into his shell, and stayed silent and still.

The commentary explains the verb samodahitvā. It is a gerund of samodahati which literally means 'to put together'. So the sentence appears to say that the tortoise put together its limbs (aṅgāni) with its head (soṇḍi) as a fifth (pañcama) [i.e. its four limbs and his head] in its shell (kapāle). Buddhaghosa helpfully explains:

Samodahitvāti samugge viya pakkhipitvā.
‘Samodahitvā’ means ‘having put [it] in something like a box’.

Of course if you haven't seen a tortoise pull it's limb and head into it's shell this might be quite confusing and one might be glad of a little hint. It's much easier to say in English because we have the verb 'to tuck'!

These are relatively trivial examples, but they do give an idea of how the text and commentary work together.


Notes

A similar parable is found in the Bhagavadgīta (Bhg 2.56-58):

duḥkheṣv anudvigna-manāḥ sukheṣu vigata-spṛhaḥ |vīta-rāga-bhaya-krodhaḥ sthita-dhīr munir ucyate ||56||

yaḥ sarvatrānabhisnehas tat tat prāpya śubhāśubham |nābhinandati na dveṣṭi tasya prajñā pratiṣṭhitā ||57|| 

yadā saṃharate cāryaṃ kūrmo 'ṅgānīva sarvaśaḥ |
indriyāṇīndriyārthebhyas tasya prajñā pratiṣṭhitā || 58 ||

Hīnayāna reprise.

Abandoned Bicycle now defective
(a hīnayāna). Jayarava

I've mentioned my view that the pejorative term hīnayāna has intimations of caste prejudice to a few people and several have expressed doubts over my interpretation. In this essay I want to reprise my earlier, in fact my first ever, rave 'Don't mention the H word' with a closer eye on the philology of the world hīna and particularly how it is used in compounds. That previous essay was a bit reactionary and the argument not very sophisticated. The argument here is more rigorous and searching. I will follow this with a brief look at how the word is used in the context of Saddharmapuṇḍarika or White Lotus Sūtra.

Hīna is a past-participle from the verbal root of the 3rd class: √hā - which forms stems by reduplication. "hahā" is disallowed, so the reduplicated 'ha' becomes 'ja'. The 3rd person singular present is jahati or jahāti (in both Pāli and Sanskrit) - the rules for reduplication apparently leaving room for ambiguity. The basic meaning is 'to leave, desert, abandon, renounce, forsake'. The past-participle then means 'abandoned, deserted, forsaken.' In practice it also means 'to fall short of, be deficient, or defective'.

Roots in 'h' are often abbreviated from gha and PED suggests a comparison with an Indo-European root *ghē from which we get the Greek words khēros (void), khēra (widow), khora (open space), and khorizo (separate). Compare this with the word kha in Sanskrit which means a space, or aperture; and it seems likely that words 'hole' and 'hollow' from this same root. It is from kha in the sense of 'the hole in the wheel through which the axle goes', that we get the two important terms sukha and duḥkha: the metaphor is a contrast between smoothly (su 'good, well') running cart' and one which gives a lumpy uncomfortable (dus) ride.

Monier-Williams gives more than two dozen compounds using this word. About half of them relate to social grade, or a social role; while the other half relate to something which is defective or absent. In the first category we have hīnakula and °kuṣṭa (low status family), °ja/jati/yoni (low birth), and °varga/varṇa which specifically refer to the śudra caste.

The second category we find °karman/kriya/kratu (someone who neglects the sacrifice), °guṇa/carita/vṛtta (of inferior virtue, base conduct) both of these clusters reflect the Brahminical prejudice against non-Brahmins who did not participate in their sacrificial religion. Another term for a non-believer was hīnapratijña (faithless). A drama with an anti-hero is hīnanāyaka ('whose leader is corrupt'). Finally those who associate with inferiors might be described as °sakhya (friends of the low people) or °seva (an attendant on low people).

The third category refers to something which is missing or defective: hīnakosa (empty treasury), °cakṣu/darsana-sāmarthya (blind), °bala (feeble), °buddhi (stupid), °rūpa (ugly), °roman (bald), hīnaṇga (crippled), hīnāṃsu (dark [an insult in the Brahmin lexicon]); °dagdha (insufficiently burned), °pakṣa (unprotected), °mūtya (a low price), °vāda (defective statement, contradictory evidence), °vyañjana (indistinct consonants), °svara (discordant or silent), hīnārtha (fallen short of his goals, [opposite of siddhartha]). Used abstractly we find: °tva (defectiveness), hīnātirikta (defective), hīnādhika (too few, too much, i.e. the wrong amount), °krama (in diminishing order), °tara (worse, worst).

On this basis of this survey I must temper my statement about hīnayāna and caste. However since there are several related terms which clearly are caste related, we can say that a connotation of caste prejudice cannot be ruled out. Clearly none of the other compounds with hīna as a first member have a positive connotation, and most are related to ways in which people or things fail to live up to (especially Brahmanical) ideals.

The compound mahāyāna is clearly a karmadhāraya compound meaning 'big or great vehicle'; so we could expect hīnayāna to be intended as the same type of compound. From this point of view it would mean 'defective vehicle'. However hīnayana could also be read as a tatpuruṣa - 'vehicle of the defective', or 'vehicle of the abandoned'. Read as a bahuvrīhi we could take is referring to someone who has 'abandoned the way'. Clearly English translators have fudged this term by translating it as "lesser" vehicle, but to be fair it is likely that they were following the influential translator Kumārajīva, who rendered hīnayāna into Chinese as 小乘 'hsiao-sheng, little vehicle'. (See Nattier p.172, n.4). Kumārajīva's translation of the Lotus Sūtra (for instance) is the preferred translation, and except for Kern's translation from the Sanskrit, all of the English translations are from Kumārajīva's Chinese translation (despite there being later, arguably better, Chinese translations).

The Saddharmapuṇḍarika Sūtra (SP) is a locus classicus for the use of 'hīnayāna' as a pejorative. In chapter two after the Buddha announces that he will give a new teaching, a new yāna, a group of 5000 men and women, monks and lay leave before the sermon is delivered. After which the Buddha says to Śāriputra (taking my examples from the verse section):

śuddhā ca niṣpalāvā ca susthitā pariṣanmama|
phalguvyapagatā sarvā sārā ceyaṁ pratiṣṭhitā||41|| 

Pure and free of chaff, my assembly is well established
The worthless have retreated and all the strong are steadfast

Hīnayāna does not seem to apply to the people themselves, though they are 'chaff' and 'worthless'. Curiously the text seems to use the term hīnayāna quite vaguely. Later in Chapter 2 the Buddha says:

ekaṁ hi kāryaṁ dvitiyaṁ na vidyate
na hīnayānena nayanti buddhāḥ ||55|| 

There is only one method, not a second,
The Buddhas do not lead by a defective way.

I think the definite article would be out of place here - it is 'a' not 'the' defective way. If we were to use the definite article it would imply that "the hīnayāna" was not something taught by the Buddha, and this would contradict everything we know about the history of Buddhism. Two verses on, the Buddha continues:

yadi hīnayānasmi pratiṣṭhapeya-
mekaṁ pi sattvaṁ na mamate sādhu||57|| 

It would not be good if even one being
Were to become established in a defective vehicle.

Again my sense here is of 'a defective vehicle', not 'the defective vehicle'. And actually it's not that clear what is being criticised here. It is curious and not at all what I expected to find, but this essay is already quite long, so I will have to explore it more at a later date. I will mention that SP uses the term hīnābhirata which Kern translates as 'low dispositions'. Abhirata means pleased or satisfied, as well as practising. There's every chance that hīnābhirata means 'dissatisfied' or 'lacking contentment' here. There is one other mention of a 'defective way' in chapter 6, but it doesn't add much to the picture. It almost seems as though the association of the people who leave the assembly and the 'defective way' is accidental. I don't see a direct connection between them in the key chapter. I'm reminded of the accidental identification of Lucifer ('the light bearer', an epithet of Nebuchadnezzar) with the Christian Devil based on a misreading of Isaiah 14:12 by Origen.

The argument over a suitable replacement term continues with some (me) using "Early Buddhism"; some opting for "Pāli Buddhism" (since the best known texts are in Pāli); and some "Mainstream Buddhism". All of these are problematic for a variety of reasons. My current favourite comes from Wikipedia and is "pre-sectarian". I'm going to adopt this and suggest other people do as well - it avoids the temporal problems (unlike "early"), it is neutral (unlike Pāli and Hīnayāna), it is a fair description of the subject (unlike "mainstream").

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Vaidya, P. L. Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtram. The Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning, 1960. Online: Digital Sanskrit Buddhist Canon. 

Kern, H. Saddharma-pundarika or The Lotus of the True Law. 1884. Sacred Books of the East, Vol XXI. Online: Internet Sacred Text Archive. 

Nattier, Jan. A few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path According to the Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā). University of Hawai'i Press, 2003.

Extra Notes 

10 Oct 2010: In the Alagaddūpama Sutta, hīnaṃ 'rejected' is contrasted with paṇītaṃ 'exalted'.

3 Aug 2014. Dhammapada, Chapter 13, vs 167

hīnaṃ dhammaṃ na seveyya pamādena na saṃvase
micchādiṭṭhiṃ na seveyya na sīya lokavaddhano 

Don't associate with a defective teaching,
Don't dwell heedlessly,
Don't embrace wrong views,
Don't indulge the world.

hīnaṃ dhammaṃ - a defective teaching. 

24 Jan 2015. In Pāḷi there is a phrase hīnāya āvattati meaning "to go back to 'the low' [way of life]" (Vin I.17, MN I.460, SN II.231, IV.191) or in the past-tense hīnāyāvatta (MN I.460, SN II.50). The phrase is used to refer to someone who has abandoned being a bhikkhu and gone back to being a householder.

5 Jul 2015. See also Anālayo (2014) The Hīnayāna Fallacy. JOCBS. 6: 9-31.