[Buddha-l] Personalists. Was: Are we sick of dogma yet?

[L.S. Cousins]

Dan,

>My Prakrit deficiencies aside, the names Vajjiputtiyas and Vajjiputtakas are
>taken directly from the Aung & Rhys Davids PTS ed. of _Points of
>Controversy_ , p. xlii. Footnote 2 on that page states: "Vatsiipuriitryas is
>merely a Sanskritized form of the Pali."

That is from Caroline Rhys Davids's prefatory notes in 1915 - best ignored !

>But if I understand your objection, it is not simply philological, but the
>claim that these Vajjiputtiyas (a.k.a. Vr.jiputrakas) are to be considered a
>different group than the Vatsiputriyas, and to conflate them would be a
>misidentification.

Vajjiputtaka as a designation of a people occurs some 42 times in the 
Pali Canon.

>Maybe. Maybe not. As we know, Sanskritization of Pali was
>hardly a precise science, with many notable anomalies (sammuti to sa.mv,rti;
>aasava to aa"srava, etc.). In terms of pronunciation, vajja and vaccha are
>not far apart at all, so this is not an inconceivable conflation.

I don't think there is any known case of the development -ts- to -jj- 
anywhere in Middle Indian.

>I guess the moral of the story is to never trust someone else's
>Sanskritization (Priestley's of Ku"sa, Aung and Rhys-Davids of Vajjiputta).
>Since you are also someone else, you may have to join that list. :-)

For the rules, see:
Hinüber, Oskar von, Das ältere Mittelindisch im Überblick, 2nd ed., 
Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, 2001.

>  > This is absurd. I have already cited Lamotte's actual figures. This
>>  is a simple matter of fact which anyone on this list can confirm by
>>  looking at page 543 of the English translation (p. 600 of the French)
>
>His figures:
>Sthaviras: 36,800 religious [i.e., monks and nuns]
>Mahasamghikas: 1,100 religious
>Sarvastivadins: 23,700
>Sammatiyas: 66,500
>Unspecified: 6,700.
>
>Total: 134,800
>
>N.B. 66,500 x 2 = 133,000, effectively half (and the unspecified could
>include Mahayanists).

No, it cannot. Lamotte spells this out as Hiinayaanists 
(unspecified). As I previously mentioned the figures for 
Mahaayaanists are given separately in his article:
Lamotte, Étienne, "Sur le Formation du Mahåyåna," in Asiatica. 
Festschrift Friedrich Weller, 377-396, Otto Harrassowitz, Leipzig, 
1954.

>  > Using Li Rongxi's translation:
>>  Record (T2087) p.174 "There are more than one thousand ruined
>>  foundations of old monasteries, and besides the palace city there is
>>  a monastery inhabited by over three thousand monks, who study the
>>  Hinayana teachings of the Sam.mitiya school."
>
>There is no word for "ruined" in the Chinese, though it might be possible to
>interpret the intent that way. What Xuanzang says is:
>
>"Of sa.nghaaraamas there are more than a thousand ancient foundations, and
>alongside the city wall there is one sa.nghaaraama, with more than 3,000
>monks who practice the teachings of the Hinayana Sammitiya school."

But note that the Biography simply says that:
"Both the country and its capital were deserted and in ruins."
This is T2053  p. 82 with 235a in the margin.

There does not appear to be any mention of any monasteries here, let 
alone a thousand !

Lance