[Buddha-l] Pudgalavada

[Dan Lusthaus]

Stephen, Lance and whoever remains interested,

Like Lance, I don't think fangbien in the long version should be taken as upaaya, although usually, in other Buddhist texts, fangbian is used for upaaya. Similarly some of the other "attested" uses of Chinese equivalents that Stephen is trying to employ may also be off the mark.

One of the things that makes these texts (and quite a few other early translations) so difficult is that many of what became standard equivalents a short time later were not yet established. Translators were freer in their efforts. The Chinese began to become aware of these problems around this time (Dao'an was a reformer, reacting againsts the lack of clear standards and readability in translations). Kumarajiva arrived in China a short time after these translations were made, and a new (and better) age of Buddhist translation began. That we have two versions of the core passages (with all sorts of differences of vocabulary and organization, as Stephen has commented) gives us additional clues that would be lacking if we had only one or the other version surviving in Chinese. Everything is made more difficult, of course, by the fact that we have virtually no Pudgalavada literature surviving in the original Indic language(s) with which to compare and analyze.

In terms of the specific questions Lance raises -- what was the Indic original for "appropriation" in the first prajnapti, and what underlies Stephen's "upaya" [my "metaphorical device"; Priestley offers "approaches"] for the second, let me offer a few comments.

1. The translator of the long version, Jiumoluofoti = *Kumārabuddhi, is otherwise unknown as a translator. No other texts, as far as I can tell, are attributed to him. So we cannot look any other exemplars to help us gauge his translation style. 

The translator of the short version, on the other hand, Sengjiatipo = *Saṅghadeva, is also associated with T.26.1543, the Chinese translation of the root Sarvastivada Abhidharma text, (Abhidharma) Jñānaprasthāna-śāstra (upon which the Mahaaviha.sa is considered an extended commentary). I am not aware of his having participated in any other translations.

2. Kumarabuddhi's use of Chinese "equivalents" is odd, and not to be trusted when compared with the short version. Upaya is just such a case. The short version has "prajnapti of the past" in the second position, which fits its later examples of this type of prajnapti. The long version introduces fangbian, which usually signifies upaya, but, according to the expanded examples it gives, has added the future to the mix, so that this would be a prajnapti of past AND future. We don't know if he had a text with an different term here, or whether he is adjusting his terminology to accomodate his expanded discussion, nor even the extent to which the expanded discussion reflects, on the one hand, a different version/recension of the text, or, on the other hand, his own glosses and translator's license. As is often the case with such minor translators, we are unsure of how much Chinese he actually knew, and to what extent what we are looking at is the result of the (mis-)understandings of his Chinese assistant(s), who tried to turn oral translations and expressions into written texts. We don't know the background of his assistants, or how they thought about Buddhism, how they would have filtered Kumarabuddhi's exposition, etc. All we have is the text.

3. Both versions use shou for the first prajnapti. Shou has a variety of meanings: when used, e.g., as a name for a skandha or one of the 12-fold links of pratitya-samutpada, shou = vedanā (pleasure, pain, neutral sensation). The Chinese term itself generally means "to receive," "to experience." In addition to vedana, Muller's dictionary gives the following Sanskrit attested equivalents (from Hirakawa): upādāna, bhoga, udgrahaṇa, adhivāsanā, adhivāsaya, adhivāsayati, anubhavana, anubhavanatā, anubhūta, anubhūyate, anuyoga, abhinirvartayati, abhipatti, abhiṣvaṅga, abhyāgama, abhyupagata, abhyupagama, abhyupapanna, avinodaka, avinodana, āgraha, ādāna, utpādayati, utpādita, utsoḍhavya, udgahaṇatā, udgṛhīta, udgṛhītavat, udgraha, udvahana, upagata, upabhoga, upasaṃhāra, upasthita, upātta, upādāya, kriyamāṇa, gṛddha, gṛhīta, gṛhṇat, graha, grahaṇa, grāhin, grāhya, dhara, dhārayati, parigṛhīta, parigraha, parigrāhaka, paribhukta, paribhoktavya, poṣin, pragṛhya, pratigṛhīta, pratigṛhītṛ, pratigṛhya, pratigrahītṛ, pratigrāhaka, pratipanna, pratilambha, prativedayate, pratiśrutya, praitsṃvedana*, pratisaṃvedayati, pratisṃvedin, pratīcchana, pratyanubhavana*, pratyanubhūtavat, pratyeṣaka, pratyeṣemahi, pravid, prāpta, prāpti, prekṣin, bhuj, bhoktṛ, bhogin, marṣaṇa, lābhin, vitti, vid, veda, vedanīya, vedanīyatā, vedayati, vedayita, vedita, vedin, vedya, saṃvṛtta, saṃvedayati, saṃgraha, samarpita, samātta, samādatta, samādānatā, samāpatti, samāpadya, samāpadyati, samāsanna, saṃpratīcchana, saṃpratīcchanatā, saṃpratyeṣaṇa, saṃbhoga, sahiṣṇutā, sevitavya, spṛṣta.

4. I suspect the underlying term for shou in this case is something like upādhi, often taken as an equivalent for upādāna (cf., e.g., Sthiramati's Trimsika-bhasya). Lance's nuances (upanidhaa paññatti, upaadaa[ya]) are helpful, but we have no assurance that the pudgalavadins were using such terms in the same way that the Pali tradition did, especially since one of the main contentious issues between them revolved around different understandings of terms such as pudgala and prajnapti. Theravadins may have employed these terms in a deliberately differentiating manner from their Pudgalavadin usage.

(to be continued)
Dan Lusthaus
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