stock phrase about women?

Valerie J Roebuck vjroebuck at MACUNLIMITED.NET
Wed Mar 10 07:49:14 UTC 2004


Ahem.  Could it possibly be referring to the love-bites and scratches
so popular in Indian love literature?  These are generally thought to
be endearing, and the sight of them the next morning makes the lovers
feel amorous again.  If this is not such a common idea in Tibetan
literature, this would explain the confusion over the translation.

Just a thought--

Valerie J Roebuck
Manchester, UK

At 1:51 pm -0800 9/3/04, Martin Delhey wrote:
>--- Jonathan Silk <silk at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU> wrote:
>>  Has anyone seen (other than in the story of
>>  Utpalavarna in the
>>  Mulasarvastivada Vinaya) a phrase, purported to be
>>  canonical ("The
>>  Blessed One said:"):
>>
>>  Women bind men in eight ways: by dance, song, music,
>>  laughter,
>>  crying, appearance, touch [and here's the
>>  troublesome one] questions
>>  (?).
>>
>>  The last item in Tibetan (all we have here) is rma
>>  'byed pa, which
>>  might mean to ask a question, but more commonly, to
>>  wound.
>>
>
>Dear Jonathan,
>
>luckily this canonical passage is cited in the
>Sanskrit text of the samAhitA bhUmiH (belonging to the
>yogAcArabhUmiH), which I have, as you know, edited in
>my Ph.D. thesis (unfortunately, my dissertation has
>not been published yet).
>
>The passage runs as follows:
>... aSTAbhiH sthAnaiH strI puruSaM badhnAti, tadyathA
>nRttena, gItena, hasitena , prekSitena, varNena,
>sparzena, Akalpena, vraNabhaGgena  ca.
>
>
>
>The Tibetan translation of the samAhitA bhUmiH has rma
>'byed pa, too. Quite obviously the Tibetan translators
>have tried to find a literal translation of the
>enigmatic vraNabhaGga.
>I was not able to solve the problem what the exact
>meaning of vraNabhaGga is. The corresponding passage
>in the Pali canon has vanabhaGga, for which, to the
>best of my knowledge, also no wholly convincing
>translation has been offered.
>I have collected some more materials, but they are
>rather difficult to interpret, either.
>I would like to suggest that we discuss further
>details of this problem off-list.
>However, if anyone has found evidence which gives a
>good hint what vraNabhaGga means in this context I
>would be very grateful for a message.
>
>Best wishes,
>Martin Delhey
>
>
>
>
>
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