Dear List members,
I am struggling with the two present participles (lajjamānā and pavadamānā) (and the phrase
jamiṇaṃ (PTSD yam idaṃ, “in other words, viz., so to speak, just this, I mean”) in the following passage from the
Āyāraṃgasutta I, which,which minor variations, is found no fewer than six times (no. 12, 23, 34, 42, 50 and 57 in Jambūvijaya’s ed.):
lajjamānā puḍho pāsa. ‘aṇagārā mo’ tti ege pavadamānā, jamiṇam virūvarūvehiṃ satthehiṃ puḍhavi(udaya, agaṇi, vaṇassati, tasakāya)kammasaṃāraṃbheṇaṃ puḍhavi(udaya, …)satthaṃ samārabhamāṇe aṇṇe va’ṇegarūve pāṇe vihiṃsati.
Jacobi’s translation runs as follows:
See! There are men who control themselves, (whilst others only) pretend to be houseless, because [jamiṇaṃ] one destroyes this (earth-body) by ….
The English translation of Schubring’s German one reads:
Ashamed in (many) individual cases, see, (are) some, and confess: ‘we are houseless ones’. [The
jamiṇam sentence is combined with the next one:] If [jamiṇaṃ] one, now, with tools of different kinds … injures other beings of different kinds, [as can be seen this sentence ends with a comma; the next one, however, starts with capital H:]
Here, then has been pronounced by the Lord ….
As so often, Schubring’s translation is a tour de force. Apart from that,
As I see it Schubring’s translation assumes the presence of the verb saṃti with
lajjamāṇā (Jacobi does so with pavadamāṇā as well). Can the present participle function as a predicate on its own? If so, I know of one possible, similar instance (note the imperative
jāṇa instead of pāsa) from the Āyāraṃgasutta as well (ettha pi jāṇa uvādīyamāṇā je āyāre ṇa ramaṃti, “Know that some people here show attachment, namely those who do not find pleasue in the discipline”, no. 62)
I have have been thinking of something completely different, something like this:
Each by himself would be ashamed when claiming to be houseless ones, while/if at the same time he (they) hurt (one hurts) all kinds of living beings.
This use of lajjamāṇā resembles that of present participles in combination with a conditional sentence as described in Hemacandra IV 351 for Prākrit/Apabhraṃśa (lajjijjaṃtu vayamsiahu jai bhaggā gharu eṃtu). However, one does not order people
to look (pāsa) at people who would be ashamed; should would be more logical. It is just an attempt, and as such clearly much too far-fetched.
What I would like to know is if the function of present participles as assumed by Jacobi and Schubring is common?
With kind regards,
Herman
Herman Tieken
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2515 BP Den Haag
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The Aśoka Inscriptions: Analysing a corpus, New Delhi: Primus Books, 2023.