more on vada / vadin

[Birgit Kellner]

Two additional remarks on the vaada/vaadin-issue -

(1) I suppose Sasaki has taken note of the relevant section (or one of
the relevant sections) in the Mahaavyutpatti, where, judging from the
viewpoint of Tibetan and Chinese translations, an "anything-goes"-style
approach seems to have been taken. MVy 9077 aaryasarvaastivaadaah.
(plural!) has the Tibetan equivalent 'phags pa thams cad yod par smra ba
(In the BHS-dictionnary, Edgerton uses this as evidence for the lemma
"sarvaastivada, m.pl.(!), 'n. of school'"). The plural in MVy 9078
muulasarvaastivaadaah., on the other hand, is translated with Tib. _gzhi
thams cad yod par smra ba'i sde_ (=school!). In each of these cases, the
Chinese has TWO equivalents each, one as "school" and one as "person".
Several other entries of this section have Tibetan translations of _smra
ba'i sde_ for _-vaadinah._ (the Chinese alternates between "school" and
"person); and _sde_ is also affixed to other plural expressions for
persons, e.g. Abhayagirivaasinah., Jetavaniiyaah.,
Mahaavihaaravaasinah., etc. See also S'iks.asamuccaya 148.13
_-vaadaanaam_ (ed. Bibliotheca
Buddhica), where Bendall suggests reading _-vaadinaam._, and gives the
Tibetan as _'phags pa
thams cad yod par smra ba rnams kyi_ ...

Anyway, maybe it would be possible to learn more about Sasaki's
conclusions? (or
should we wait for the publication, in which case - when, and where will
the paper appear?)

(2) On Frauwallner and secondary literature. The following is not
immediately relevant to the issue whether or not "-vaada" can,
grammatically, be used for a person
(I believe this question is settled in the affirmative by now), but
rather to the possibility of Frauwallner (or other scholars) having used
"-vaada" as an adjective, and "-vaadin" as the name of the sect.

J. Silk wrote:
>         Finally, although of course this is much less relevant than
> consideration of the original texts, Kellner has written about Frauwallner,
> but it seems to me his usage is at best ambiguous. See "Studies in
> Abhidharma Literature and the Origins of Buddhist Philosophical Systems"
> (SUNY 1995) <skip>

I should have been more careful when I wrote my last remark. For the
ambiguity, which J. Silk claims, applies NOT to Frauwallner's writing,
but to the English
translation, which (1) gives Sanskrit terms in their stem-form, and not
in the nominative, (this was a decision made by Steinkellner, see the
introduction, p.xii) and (2), as I already mentioned before, does not
give any indication of plural (plural "the" is still "the"; no affixed
-s). It is the combination of these two criteria which creates the
seeming ambiguities, plus (3) the use of one and the same
word both as a noun and adjective in English (e.g. "Buddhist"). This is
not usually done in German. Even more, I believe it *cannot* be done,
for specific morphological operations are required to either form nouns
out of adjectives or vice versa (e.g. the noun "der Buddhist" vs. the
adjective "buddhistisch").

Looking at the German originals of Frauwallner's "Abhidharma-Studien",
the matter is very clear, because (1)
Sanskrit terms are given in the nominative form, (2) number and case are
clearly indicated with the definite article, and (3) nouns and
adjectives are morphologically differentiated by the presence or absence
of certain
suffixes.

See e.g. "Abhidharma-Studien" IV,
WZKS 16, p.138: "im Abhidharma der Paali-Schule und der Sarvaastivaadii"
etc. (where the genitive plural article "der" with "Sarvaastivaadii"
makes it clear that the persons are meant). With "school", Frauwallner
ALWAYS uses "... of the Sarvastivadins" (... "der Sarvaastivaadii");
with other nouns, he also uses "... of the Sarvastivada" (... "des
Sarvaastivaadah."). With "system", he uses both. I could not find any
adjectival use of either form, and, given what I've said before about
the morphological
distinction between German nouns and adjectives, it would indeed be
surprising if such uses
existed. In the Abhidharma-Studien, attribution of ideas, concepts or
whatever else are expressed either as "suchandsuch of the
Sarvaastivaadah./-ins" or (less often) as "the
Sarvaastivaada-suchandsuch", which is a quasi-Genitive-tatpurus.a. (just
like Muulasarvaastivaada-vinayah.).

To make this clear, Frauwallner was either not aware of usages of
"-vaadaah." as a plural for the followers, or did not consider such uses
relevant enough to account for them in his choice of terminology, and
there is no adjectival use of either "-vaada/-vaadin". The same also
appears to hold for Bareau (at least in "sects bouddhiques du
petit vehicule").

Sorry for the lengthy digression,

--
Birgit Kellner
Department for Indian Philosophy
Hiroshima University