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?

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 9^th 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