[Buddha-l] Pudgalavada #3b

[Stephen Hodge]

L.S. Cousins wrote:

> I didn't put this well. Try again:

Dear Lance,
You under-estimate yourself: your meaning was perfectly clear to me.  Yes, 
the possibility of an underlying Prakrit text had occured to me.   There are 
several other transcriptions in each version which might help determine 
this -- which would not be without intrinsic interest.

> Ku"sa could have become Gusa or very possibly Gosa in some forms of Middle 
> Indian,
Both texts have the same underlying phonetic shape for this name as far as I 
can see.  They both suiggest "go / gau" for the first syllable.   The second 
in both cases is a sibilant, either palatal or, more probably, retroflex. 
The third component of the name in the short text should be "indra" or 
perhaps a prakritized "inda" -- which the long text translates as "king". 
I think the quote at this point is meant as something the Buddha had said, 
referring to a former bodhisattva existence of his, though nothing springs 
to mind, apart from the Prince Ku'sa episode.

> We do not know whether these two texts belong to the same Pudgalavaadin 
> school.
Indeed.  The two texts were translated around the same time, the short T1506 
in 391CE and the longer T1505 some time before 382CE.  As Dan has mentioned, 
the core of the two texts is considered to be the same, but the arrangement 
of the material is quite different.  T1506 seems much more coherent and 
structured as an abhidharmic style inventory.  The passages that Dan 
presented show this quite well.  The shorter passage from T1506 forms part 
of a larger sub-section on the types of ignorance, as you will be aware if 
you have Thien Chau to hand.  The longer version wrenches this from that 
context and presents the account of avaktavya in isolation, thereby rather 
confusing matters in my view.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge