Well said, Stefan ;-) but is there any unambiguous attestation of such a doublet sutta with the meaning thread, e.g., not referring to scripture?
Re Aleksandar’s remark: One benefit of reading sutta as sūkta is that it is no longer mysterious why Brahmanical sūtras are so economical and Buddhist having so much repetition. Later Brahmanical definitions all associate sūtra with being short and having few worlds and syllables. If we recall that the oldest ritual sūtra in Sanskrit, Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra, while showing other structural features of Brahmanical sūtras, does not show the concision of expression that becomes so characteristic, so that feature may not be intrinsic to the format, but rather a development with Brahmanical circles, perhaps influenced by the Pāṇinian model. TL From: INDOLOGY <[email protected]> on behalf of Stefan Baums <[email protected]> Date: Tuesday, May 11, 2021 at 10:26 AM To: INDOLOGY <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta Dear Tim, But this is not really much to support sutta < sūkta, since the regular Pāli form parallel to sūkta includes the glide -v- yes, in the intentionally transparent formation used in the nibbacana you cite, but maybe that does not on its own exclude an opaque doublet sutta < sūkta. On the other hand, in the first century CE in Gāndhārī (the only MIA language that in principle preserved the contrast between OIA kt and tr), the word is consistently spelled sutra- and always means “canonical Buddhist text” (for some value of “canonical”), and in some third/fourth-century secular documents it refers to literal thread or rope: https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fdictionary%2Fsutra&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cf14c399ccd6e4270c62308d91488c4dd%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C1%7C637563399933199834%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=fwU%2B2QJp3CEEvUj1Dg3bskEMOidsq49eWypQ8F2CIik%3D&reserved=0 There are no discussions about the meaning or etymology of the word in what we have of that tradition, but it contrasts with nideśa- “explanation” in a set of commentaries: https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fcorpus%2Fckm0004&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cf14c399ccd6e4270c62308d91488c4dd%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C1%7C637563399933199834%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=qfbGrQ06IXGr97CbEH%2FKhfWVRAiz4pU%2FZ7pktKOJuqE%3D&reserved=0 https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fcorpus%2Fckm0009&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cf14c399ccd6e4270c62308d91488c4dd%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C1%7C637563399933209830%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=8lsbkkaut1wM9yolruiQqudcok2aM8TVGCR3TOGxAdk%3D&reserved=0 https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fcorpus%2Fckm0011&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cf14c399ccd6e4270c62308d91488c4dd%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C1%7C637563399933209830%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=gAP0rO61htQg0TNoRhNRh%2Fs3RSwptumtWp9chJqlPAM%3D&reserved=0 https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fcorpus%2Fckm0015&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cf14c399ccd6e4270c62308d91488c4dd%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C1%7C637563399933209830%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=pEBpC23YbFAjddmfCTKuFpBjroOXUtjz2bTDtGQNklw%3D&reserved=0 https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fcorpus%2Fckm0020&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cf14c399ccd6e4270c62308d91488c4dd%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C1%7C637563399933209830%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=Uq1PKo51kaFSUvC81ftrA4o3bVpFuk03sUTdfzZupgw%3D&reserved=0 Neither the Pali nor the Gāndhārī evidence rules out reinterpretations in the first four hundred years of the Buddhist tradition, of course, and Buddhaghosa’s passage may preserve an echo. All best, Stefan -- Stefan Baums, Ph.D. Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie Ludwig‐Maximilians‐Universität München _______________________________________________ INDOLOGY mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flist.indology.info%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Findology&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cf14c399ccd6e4270c62308d91488c4dd%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C1%7C637563399933209830%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=LLkknl0%2Brrc77KbJI0t1MglObYJoNhVWCeyKS6O6UpE%3D&reserved=0
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