Dear Matthew and Aleksandar,
Matthew, you say: “Once more, SŪC, and nothing to do with thread, …” But we should remember that
sūc- is also (indeed, most literally) connected with piercing (with a needle) and sewing.
Sūcī/sūcaka = needle, sūcita = pierced, sūcika = tailor,
sūcitā = needlework.
So a double-entendre is involved here: the sūtras have “indicated meanings” but also “stitched meanings,” and so, paradoxically, the
nirukti deriving it from sūc- is still an indication of a basic meaning of ‘thread’.
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
https://lubin.academic.wlu.edu/
http://wlu.academia.edu/TimothyLubin
https://ssrn.com/author=930949
https://dharma.hypotheses.org/people/lubin-timothy
From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of INDOLOGY <INDOLOGY@list.indology.info>
Reply-To: "Uskokov, Aleksandar" <aleksandar.uskokov@yale.edu>
Date: Friday, May 14, 2021 at 11:09 AM
To: INDOLOGY <INDOLOGY@list.indology.info>, Jim Ryan <jim_ryan@comcast.net>, "mkapstei@UCHICAGO.EDU" <mkapstei@uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Buddhist "sutta"
Dear Matthew,
Thank you for sharing this. The same idea appears as part of the definition found in Vācaspati’s Bhāmatī on BSBh 1.1.1 (and I imagine elsewhere) –
yathāhuḥ
laghūni sūcitārthāni svalpākṣarapadāni ca |
sarvataḥ sārabhūtāni sūtrāṇy āhur manīṣiṇaḥ ||
I have been thinking for a while about the best way to render this sūtrāṇi … sūcitārthāni in English and am currently leaning towards “sūtras are statements that index their meaning.” I wanted
to avoid “indication” because of possible confusion with figurative meaning, but perhaps that is too cautious? What would you (the forum) suggest?
Best wishes,
Aleksandar
Aleksandar Uskokov
Lector in Sanskrit
South Asian Studies Council, Yale University
203-432-1972 | aleksandar.uskokov@yale.edu
From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of Matthew Kapstein via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2021 2:25 AM
To: INDOLOGY@list.indology.info <INDOLOGY@list.indology.info>; Jim Ryan <jim_ryan@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Buddhist "sutta"
Dear friends,
Without wishing to prolong too much what has already been a very long (though highly informative!) thread (so to speak), I thought
that this might be of some interest:
In the early 9th century Tibetan work, the “Two-Volume Lexicon” (sgra sbyor bam po gnyis pa), which was compiled
by a team of Tibetan translators working under the guidance of a group of monastic scholars from Aparāntaka (Kashmir/Gandhāra/Bactria) and provides
nirukta-style explanations of several hundred key terms in Sanskrit with Tibetan commentary, sūtra is glossed
arthasūcanād sūtra [read, of course, arthasūcanāt sūtram].
Once more, SŪC, and nothing to do with thread, was prominent in the Buddhist understanding of the term.
Matthew
Matthew Kapstein
Directeur d'études, émérite
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris
Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies,
The University of Chicago
From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of Jim Ryan via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2021 12:42 PM
To: INDOLOGY@list.indology.info <INDOLOGY@list.indology.info>
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Buddhist "sutta"
Dear all,
Thanks to all of you who contributed to this robust and quite informative “thread” (sūtra!) on the proper derivation of the Buddhist term sutta
from the Sanskrit. I tossed a pebble in the pond, I thought, which made
ripples beyond expectations. A thorough treatment of the issue that leaves open, perhaps, a fillip of sorts (this said without having yet read Nathan McGovern’s article.) Of course, the philological question rather quickly
leads to deeper issues regarding the conceptualization of types of text among traditions. I hadn’t even considered Jain notions of
sutta/sūtra, comments on which emerged along the way.
Best wishes,
Jim Ryan
California Institute of Integral Studies