Dear Stephen and friends,

yes, perhaps a better word is recluse. You are right about samano
being a person part of the samanic movement, and not necessarily a
buddhist. However, in this sentence and most of the others, I find
the word (buddhist) "monk" quite appropriate, since we are not so
much into the content here.

metta,
Yong Peng

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Hodge wrote:
> 10. Dhamma.m ugga.nhitvaa sama.no bhavitu.m aaka'nkhamaano
> amacco aacariya.m pariyesamaano Buddha.m upasa'nkami.
> dhamma / having learnt / monk / to become / wishing /
> minister / teacher / seeking / Buddha / approached
> Wishing to learn the dhamma and become a monk, the minister
> seeking a teacher approached the Buddha.
>
I notice you translate "sama.no" here and elsewhere as "monk" but it
seems to me that this is not very accurate and is possibly
misleading. "Sama.no"s, as the derivation suggests, are [ascetic]
wanderers -- a generic term not limited to Buddhist persons -- in
fact, often quite the opposite. Also, I would suggest that the
term "monk" itself here is anachronistic -- a monk in English refers
to somebody who lives in a settled community (i.e. a monastery),
though curiously the word is derived from the Greek "monakhos"
meaning "solitary".