NS? (Re: [INDOLOGY] What about thirty-seven?

[Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD]

Dear Matthew Kapstein,

thanks for your comment (and thanks for forwarding Jonathan Silk's 
comment)

Adding one more brain-storming style question, I would be interested 
in hearing from you or from others about the logic hidden behind the 
division of the /Nātyaśāstra/ into 36 chapters or into 
37 chapters.

Is it known who preferred having 36 chapters and who preferred having 
37?

Did the preferrence have anything to do with the religion of the 
"editor/transmitter"?

Sorry if all these questions appear idle but I believe that in some 
contexts the only way to (discreetly) "make a statement" was to chose 
a different number :-)

-- Jean-Luc Chevillard (planet Earth)



On 20/10/2010 14:57, mkapstei at UCHICAGO.EDU wrote:
> In my recent posting on 37 I was subject to
> an error of memory (thanks to Jonathan Silk for
> discretely pointing it out to me). The group
> of Buddhas of contrition according to the
> Triskandhakasuutra numbers 35, not 37, and it
> was this that Wayman sought to explain.
> 
> 37 is nevertheless numerologically important
> in Buddhism: it is the number of the
> bodhipak.sadharma-s, the "factors allied with
> awakening."
> 
> Matthew T. Kapstein
> Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies
> The University of Chicago Divinity School
> Directeur d'études
> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris
>