Thanks all for a very interesting discussion.
I was wondering Nathan, if you might say a bit more about your
critique of the sūkta hypothesis, or perhaps send me your article.
I kind of favor it myself, but I want to know your take as your book
has been so influential on my more
recent thinking of the web of LateVedic/Renouncer/Householder webs of
conceptual reinvention.
The reason I was partial to the /sūkta /model, is I think Rigvedic
/sūkta/s (from the perspective of the anthologizers of the text and
maintainers of the
/anukramaṇī/s) are conceptually animate. That is the reperformed
speech act of a figure of memory, who could be a legendary human, god,
or even a river.
Figures like Atri and the "Atris" that followed him. Whatever their
vision-experience was (/dhī/) it was wrought into the form of a poem,
frozen in verbal amber, and thus the oral tradition is preserving not
just the words of legendary figures but their perspective, breath,
mind, etc. (the components of the self in the later Vedic tradition
that frequently enter and exit the figure of Prajāpati). In the
Rigveda itself, we see /satyam uktam, /but I don't think it's until
the Khilāni that we get /sūktam vacas /with the explicit noun the
adjective modifies before its history of adjective substantivization
takes its course. It is not just "well" said, I think but "truly"
said. The re-performance of something imagined to have been an
original first performance once upon a time. When Atri found the Sun,
or when Vasiṣṭha aided Sudās, when Indra turned the Maruts into his
entourage, when Viśvāmitra cajoled the rivers Vipāś and Śutudrī, etc.
In other words a kind if impersonation and re-enactment is, I will
argue in my book /the Invisible Mask /baked into much of the Rigvedic
sūktas (of the inner maṇḍalas at least) as an exponent of a particular
kind of textuality. In an oral tradition you will never encounter a
"dead text" like a book that merely contains information, you will
encounter a person, a father, whose voice is laden with the voices of
an unbroken succession of fathers, going back to a legendary
forerunner. An animate voice, an active intelligence, who embodies
generations of poetic intelligences going back to an imagined First
(most of my thoughts on all of this are in my book ms /The Invisible
Mask/).
Compare this to the earliest text we think of as a sūtra, the
/Baudhāyanaśrautasūtra, /is not like this at all. They are stage
directions that only refer to the actor's script when necessary.
Personal identity is extremely understated, the assumed subject of the
verb is often just whoever is the acting /adhvaryu/ or if not him then
it's just the /yajamāna/ but these are offices not individuals. Their
textuality, their performativity, is very different than that of the
/sūkta/.
So, I suppose it's worth asking: which of the two is the
/buddhavacanam/ more like? Is reciting the /buddhavacanam/ a kind of
impersonation? Speak like the Buddha to be more like the Buddha? Does
it have this kind of re-enactive/impersonation component in the way I
think the mantra-period /yajña/ did? Or are they more like stage
directions? Or perhaps they are nothing like either of these and
wholly dissimilar to Vedic textualities. Not knowing the Buddhist
materials nearly as well as the other contributors to this thread, I
am extremely curious about your thoughts on this.
Best,
Caley
On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 9:52 AM Uskokov, Aleksandar via INDOLOGY
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Interestingly Śaṅkara gives a similar illustration in his BSBh
1.1.2: vedānta-vākya-kusuma-grathanārthatvāt sūtrāṇām;
vedānta-vākyāni hi sūtrair udāhṛtya vicāryante; "The sūtras ae for
knitting the flowers that are the Upaniṣadic passages; for, the
Upaniṣadic passages themselves are examined through the sūtras."
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.
Best wishes
Aleksandar
Aleksandar Uskokov
Lector in Sanskrit
South Asian Studies Council, Yale University
203-432-1972 | [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* INDOLOGY <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Lubin,
Tim <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
*Sent:* Tuesday, May 11, 2021 9:22 AM
*To:* Rupert Gethin <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>; [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Subject:* Re: [INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta
But this is not really much to support /sutta/ < /sūkta/, since
the regular Pāli form parallel to /sūkta/ includes the glide -v-,
as Skt /ukta/ ~ Pāli /vutta/ and similarly in other MIA languages,
which all seem to preserve the initial v- of the verbal root
/*vac/- (Pischel §337), despite the vowel change a > u before a
labial (§104).
And anyway, Buddhaghosa here is offering multiple exegetical
“etymologies” (an old technique beginning already in the Vedic
/brāhmaṇa-/prose), which are alternative or mutually
complementary. The last of the six offered here relies on the
“thread” meaning, explained using _two_ distinct analogies which,
if anything about the author’s sense of the basic literal meaning
of the term is to be inferred from that fact, would point rather
to a stronger awareness of /sutta/ as connected with threads:
/… suttasabhāgañ c’etaṃ yathā hi tacchakānaṃ suttaṃ pamāṇaṃ hoti
evaṃ etam pi viññūnaṃ, yathā ca suttena saṅgahītāni pupphāni na
vikirīyanti na viddhaṃsiyanti evam etena saṅgahītā atthā./
The trans. of the whole passage:
This Scripture shows, expresses, fructifies,
Yields, guards the Good, and is unto the wise
A plumb-line; therefore /Sutta/ is its name.
For it shows what is good for the good of self and others.
It is well expressed to suit the wishes of the audience. It has
been said that it fructifies the Good, as crops fructify their
fruit; that it yields the Good as a cow yields milk; and that
it well protects and guards the Good. *It is a measure to the*
*wise as the plumb-line is to carpenters*. And *just as flowers*
*strung together are not scattered nor destroyed, so the Good*
*strung together by it does not peris*h. Hence it has been said,
to facilitate the study of the word-definition:
This Scripture shows, expresses, fructifies,
Yields, guards the Good, and is unto the wise
A plumb-line; therefore /Sutta/ is its name.
(tr. Maung Tin, /The Expositor/, v. 1, PTE (1920), p. 24
Best,
Tim
_________________________________________
Timothy Lubin
Jessie Ball duPont Professor of Religion and Adjunct Professor of Law
204 Tucker Hall
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, Virginia 24450
American Council of Learned Societies fellow, 2020–21
National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, 2020–21
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*From: *INDOLOGY <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of
INDOLOGY <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Reply-To: *Rupert Gethin <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Date: *Monday, May 10, 2021 at 7:29 PM
*To: *INDOLOGY <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Subject: *Re: [INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta
Oskar von Hinüber suggests here that the Theravāda tradition
offers no support for a derivation of /sutta/ from /sūkta/. (In
der Theravāda-Überlieferung findet die Annahme, daß /sutta/-
eigentlich /sūkta/- entspräche, nirgends eine Stütze, wie die
lange Erörterung zu sutta-, As 19, 15–26 mit aller Deutlichkeit
zeigt.)
However, the Atthasālini passage cited here (= Sp I 19 = Sv I 17)
quotes and explains a mnemonic verse that offers 6 ways of taking
/sutta;/ the second of these is precisely /sūkta/ (Pali /suvutta/):
"As revealing benefits, as well spoken (/suvutta/), as productive,
as yielding,
as sheltering well, as a universal measuring cord, it is called
/sutta/.”
"For a /sutta/ reveals various benefits for ourselves and others.
And in it these benefits are spoken well (/suvutta/) since they
are spoken in accordance with the disposition of those who are to
be trained …"
atthānaṃ sūcanato suvuttato savanato ’tha sūdanato |
suttāṇā suttasabhāgato ca suttan ti akkhātaṃ ||
taṃ hi attatthaparatthādibhede atthe sūceti. suvuttā c’ ettha
atthā veneyyajjhāsayānulomena vuttattā ...
Rupert Gethin
--
*Rupert Gethin*
Professor of Buddhist Studies
University of Bristol
Department of Religion and Theology
3 Woodland Road ● Bristol BS8 1TB ● UK
Email: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
On 10 May 2021, at 21:13, Lubin, Tim <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Oskar von Hinüber (1994: “Die Neun Aṅgas,” p. 132) approvingly
cites Mayrhofer’s judgment (EWA III/ 492) that the derivation
from/sūkta/is “entbehrlich”; he cites a long discussion of the
term in Buddhaghosa’s/Atthasālinī/19.15–26 as evidence against it.
Tim Lubin
*From:*INDOLOGY <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of
INDOLOGY <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Reply-To:*Andrew Ollett <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Date:*Monday, May 10, 2021 at 3:28 PM
*To:*Jim Ryan <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
*Cc:*INDOLOGY <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Subject:*Re: [INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta
Dear Jim,
See Max Walleser's 1914 book, footnote on p. 4:
https://archive.org/details/dli.granth.87981/page/4/mode/2up
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K. R. Norman and Gombrich accepted this suggestion. I suppose
Pollock got it from Gombrich.
Andrew
On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 2:22 PM Jim Ryan via INDOLOGY
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear all,
Sheldon Pollock in/The Language of the Gods in the World
of Men/(p. 52) suggests that the Buddhist term “sutta”
does not derive from the Sanskrit/sūtra,/ but rather
from/sūkta./Sanskrit double consonant clusters do show
regular assimilation, regressively and progressively, in
Prakrit, where two different consonants become a double of
one of them. I’m interested in hearing learned opinion on
Pollock’s suggestion. I had not noticed this interesting
detail, when I first read this book some years ago.
James Ryan
Asian Philosophies and Cultures (Emeritus)
California Institute of Integral Studies
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