[INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta
Nathan McGovern
nmcgover at fandm.edu
Tue May 11 14:56:47 UTC 2021
Dear Caley (but also Aleksandar and Madhav),
The problem posed by the markedly non-pithy discursive Pali "suttas" is
actually a pseudo-problem. Properly speaking, the Pali discourses are
called suttantas (sUtrAnta), and only sutta for short, which implies
that they elaborate upon or complete in some way something different,
called suttas. The word sutta by itself is used within Pali discourses
in particular cases, most notably in various lists of angas, which have
been discussed by Lamotte, von Hinueber, and others. These angas
probably referred to "genres" so to speak of early Buddhist literature.
Sometimes scholars have assumed that the sutta-anga just refers to the
suttantas, ie, the discourses as they come down to us, but this is
almost certainly incorrect. I argue in the JIABS paper that I already
cited that the word sutta referred to the pithy formulations of dhamma
that served as oral formulas for use in performing the larger discursive
suttantas.
Best,
Nathan
On 5/11/2021 9:26 AM, Caley Smith via INDOLOGY wrote:
> 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
> <indology at list.indology.info <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> 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 | aleksandar.uskokov at yale.edu
> <mailto:aleksandar.uskokov at yale.edu>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info
> <mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info>> on behalf of Lubin,
> Tim <LubinT at wlu.edu <mailto:LubinT at wlu.edu>>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 11, 2021 9:22 AM
> *To:* Rupert Gethin <Rupert.Gethin at bristol.ac.uk
> <mailto:Rupert.Gethin at bristol.ac.uk>>; INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> <mailto:INDOLOGY at list.indology.info> <indology at list.indology.info
> <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>>
> *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 <indology-bounces at list.indology.info
> <mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info>> on behalf of
> INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info
> <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>>
> *Reply-To: *Rupert Gethin <Rupert.Gethin at bristol.ac.uk
> <mailto:Rupert.Gethin at bristol.ac.uk>>
> *Date: *Monday, May 10, 2021 at 7:29 PM
> *To: *INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info
> <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>>
> *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: Rupert.Gethin at bristol.ac.uk
> <mailto:Rupert.Gethin at bristol.ac.uk>
>
>
>
> On 10 May 2021, at 21:13, Lubin, Tim <LubinT at wlu.edu
> <mailto:LubinT at wlu.edu>> 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 <indology-bounces at list.indology.info
> <mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info>> on behalf of
> INDOLOGY <INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> <mailto:INDOLOGY at list.indology.info>>
> *Reply-To:*Andrew Ollett <andrew.ollett at gmail.com
> <mailto:andrew.ollett at gmail.com>>
> *Date:*Monday, May 10, 2021 at 3:28 PM
> *To:*Jim Ryan <jim_ryan at comcast.net <mailto:jim_ryan at comcast.net>>
> *Cc:*INDOLOGY <INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> <mailto:INDOLOGY at list.indology.info>>
> *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
> <https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Fdli.granth.87981%2Fpage%2F4%2Fmode%2F2up&data=04%7C01%7Caleksandar.uskokov%40yale.edu%7C988aad0e5b1b4a42373e08d9147ff166%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C637563362017297191%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=A1pgPgLqB0ZEzM7W0xTHl2FiPSACu1hYQIAwDphCObg%3D&reserved=0>
>
> 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
> <indology at list.indology.info
> <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> 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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