[INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta

Tue May 11 15:12:03 UTC 2021

I mistyped the first part of my last comment.  I know there are plenty of attestations of sutta = literal ‘thread’.  I meant to ask, re Stefan’s suggestion:

… but is there any unambiguous attestation of such a doublet sutta with the meaning sūkta/suvutta, e.g., in a context not referring to scripture?

TL
From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of "Lubin, Tim" <LubinT at wlu.edu>
Date: Tuesday, May 11, 2021 at 10:55 AM
To: Stefan Baums <baums at lmu.de>, INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta

Well said, Stefan ;-) but is there any unambiguous attestation of such a doublet sutta with the meaning thread, e.g., not referring to scripture?

Re Aleksandar’s remark:
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.
If we recall that the oldest ritual sūtra in Sanskrit, Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra, while showing other structural features of Brahmanical sūtras, does not show the concision of expression that becomes so characteristic, so that feature may not be intrinsic to the format, but rather a development with Brahmanical circles, perhaps influenced by the Pāṇinian model.

TL

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of Stefan Baums <baums at lmu.de>
Date: Tuesday, May 11, 2021 at 10:26 AM
To: INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta

Dear Tim,

But this is not really much to support sutta < sūkta, since the
regular Pāli form parallel to sūkta includes the glide -v-

yes, in the intentionally transparent formation used in the
nibbacana you cite, but maybe that does not on its own exclude an
opaque doublet sutta < sūkta.

On the other hand, in the first century CE in Gāndhārī (the only
MIA language that in principle preserved the contrast between OIA
kt and tr), the word is consistently spelled sutra- and always
means “canonical Buddhist text” (for some value of “canonical”),
and in some third/fourth-century secular documents it refers to
literal thread or rope:

   https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fdictionary%2Fsutra&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cf14c399ccd6e4270c62308d91488c4dd%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C1%7C637563399933199834%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=fwU%2B2QJp3CEEvUj1Dg3bskEMOidsq49eWypQ8F2CIik%3D&reserved=0<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fdictionary%2Fsutra&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cc39afdba113f4fbcca4d08d9148cc9b8%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C0%7C637563417177461486%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=oHmgKrCGyXsFtbyeiRl5wMCzjFeYJCkeH1F8bErzTT0%3D&reserved=0>

There are no discussions about the meaning or etymology of the
word in what we have of that tradition, but it contrasts with
nideśa- “explanation” in a set of commentaries:

   https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fcorpus%2Fckm0004&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cf14c399ccd6e4270c62308d91488c4dd%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C1%7C637563399933199834%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=qfbGrQ06IXGr97CbEH%2FKhfWVRAiz4pU%2FZ7pktKOJuqE%3D&reserved=0<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgandhari.org%2Fcorpus%2Fckm0004&data=04%7C01%7Clubint%40wlu.edu%7Cc39afdba113f4fbcca4d08d9148cc9b8%7Cd1a80622a99943e58eb67873905e939e%7C1%7C0%7C637563417177471482%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=K%2F0Dyw7mtFKztoBXxynAsgF1ps8JGP%2BvIr8cb1TRfpw%3D&reserved=0>
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Neither the Pali nor the Gāndhārī evidence rules out
reinterpretations in the first four hundred years of the Buddhist
tradition, of course, and Buddhaghosa’s passage may preserve an
echo.

All best,
Stefan

--
Stefan Baums, Ph.D.
Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie
Ludwig‐Maximilians‐Universität München

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