[INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta

Tue May 11 15:22:27 UTC 2021

Dear Nathan,

Thank you for your reply, which makes sense to me.

Interestingly, on the Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad mention of sūtras as kinds of texts (2.4.10), Śaṅkara comments: sūtrāṇi vastusaṅgraha-vākyāni vede, yathā ātmetyevopāsīta ityādīni. This suggests something very similar to what you describe.

Best wishes,
Aleksandar

Aleksandar Uskokov

Lector in Sanskrit

South Asian Studies Council, Yale University

203-432-1972 | aleksandar.uskokov at yale.edu

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From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of Nathan McGovern <nmcgover at fandm.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2021 10:56 AM
To: indology at list.indology.info <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] The Buddhist term sutta

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 sūktas (from the perspective of the anthologizers of the text and maintainers of the
anukramaṇīs) 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>

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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 perish. 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:

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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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