--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Stephen Hodge" <s.hodge@...> wrote:

> Dear Bhante,


> Yes, I know of the work by Honjo. It is incomplete and apparently
> unreliable.

I'll forward this info to Rod.

>> Additionally, we cannot draw any conclusions from the Chinese MA

about what

> was in or not in the AKO's Diirgha-aagma because it is completely

different

> in structure and probably in some aspects of content.

I'm not so sure about this. It seems reasonable that, generally
speaking, suttas are usually not repeated in more than one
Nikaya/Agama. The only exception in MN & DN is the Satipatthana
Sutta, but there as i have said we are clearly dealing with a very
late, sectarian development. While this cannot, it is true, tell
about the structure of the Sarv DA, nor can it give certainty as to
content, yet i think it still counts as supporting evidence for the
picure of the sarv DA we get from the AKO. The main point here is
that the Digha was, before the Vibhajjavada schism, probably
substantially shorter. Most of the additions were 'padded out'
suttas from the Majjhima, as can be confirmed in the case of the
Satipatthana Sutta, Lakkhana Sutta, i think the Maha Nidana Sutta,
and probably others. More research to be done!

>
> > I still don't quite get the distinguishing features between Sarv

and

> > Mula-Sarv.
> My understanding is that the Sarvastivadins were those based in

Kashmir who

> compiled a vast abhidharmic edice culminating in the Mahaa-

vibhaa.sa, hence

> their alternative name Vaibhaa.sika. The Mula-sarvastivadins were

those

> Sarvastivadins who did not accept the abhidharma / Mahaa-vibhaa.sa,
> originally based in Mathura and also found in Gandhaa and other

places.

> Asanga and Vasubandhu followed the Mula Sarv tradition. It has

been agued

> convincingly that Mula-Sarv is also identical to Sautrantika --

those who

> rejected the abhidharma as a valid independent authority, only

accepting the

> authoity of the sutras.

OK, well this is one theory. I'm more familiar with Warder's theory
(Mula-Sarv were a later development from Sarv, whose main innovation
was literary, in that they recast the Vinaya, etc., in the
new 'vaipulya' style). If Mula-Sarva are really 'Mula' (as the name
suggests - fundamentalist all-existers!) why are their Vinaya, etc.,
so elaborate? And i was under the definite impression (though i
can't quote the source) that the sautrantikas rejected the 'all
exists' theory. It is interesting, as you note, that the essential
difference between Sautrantikas and Sarv seems to be
epistemological. This would seem to give us criteria in assessing
sutta statements on such topics as the authority of the suttas; ie
the Mula-S would emphasize the suttas more than the Sarv. Here the M
Parinirvana S is relevant. It is, i think, also noteworthy that the
Sautrantikas (as the Mahayanists) actually did indulge in a lot of
what we would regard as 'Abhidhamma' (in the broad sense). It seems
that what they rejected was some of the specifics and some
philosophical perspectives of the Sarv. Other schools questioned the
abhidhamma project in more fundamental ways. It is interesting that
a number of modern bhikkhus have suggested they think of themselves
as Sautrantikas, although this is merely in the sense of regarding
the suttas as above the abhidhamma as authority, not in the sense of
actually embracing the details of Sautrantika doctrines.

While we're on the subject, by the way, do you know anything about
the Mula-sarv Saddharmasmrtyupasthana Sutra? I understand a French
translation is available (useless to me!) and the Sanskrit, which i
can't get hold of. Is it a real version of the Satipatthana Sutta?
It is anoter example of the elaborate and poplularist tendency of
the Mula-Sarv (the fragment of it i have seen is interesting, and is
a precursor for some aspects of the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
describing the antarabhava and even the oedipal moment of rebirth.)

> [snip]
> > I want to make a website that will function as a resource base

for

> > all this kind of stuff. Hopefully can get it running next

year.as a basic

> resource.
> Please keep my posted -- I may be able to contribute some material.
>

Fantastic!

> > Indeed. The model I'm working on sees sutta/vyakarana, not as
> > what we find today as distinct samyuttas (as in Asanga, followed

by

> > YinShun, etc) but as discrete vaggas within each main samyutta.
> I would be interested to read your reasoning for this conclsion.

The most obvious evidence is in the Pali salayatana samyutta. The
first 50-ish discourses are virtually all just straight declarative
statements by the Buddha. This is what i call 'suttas'. The second
fifty starts with 'a certain bhikkhu' approaching the Buddha to ask
a question, which the Buddha answers - which is of course the basic
meaning of 'vyakarana'. This kind of pattern is not evident in the
rest of the Pali, but seems to be more evident in SA, and becomes
even more evident in the concordance of SN and SA. For this reason,
and because SA seems to be generally more structurally archaic than
SN, i start with the sequence of suttas in SA. If we analyse each
discourse as either sutta or vyakarana, we find that almost always
suttas tend to be grouped together and vyakaranas tend to be grouped
together.

We can then apply some textual deconstruction to eliminate
artificial suttas - needless repetitions, discourse that obviously
belong together but have been split in two, etc - and also remove
the occasional stray geyya. In fact these methods are complementary -
we find that when we have eliminated the artificial-seeming suttas,
what we are left with is largely the concordance of SA and SN.

The groups of suttas and vyakaranas tend to be in numbers of around
five or around ten. In certain cases a discourse occurs in a
position that seems to have been displaced by (a vagga of) ten. Eg
the Dhammacakkappavattana is 1 in SA, but 11 in SN. Number 1 is
obviously the logical place for this discourse, so it seems that a
vagga of ten was moved in front.

The mechanism for this can be easily explained by a glance at the
current Pali canon. Each discourse is numbered, at the end, with a
simple ordinal number (pathamam, dutiyam...) giving the position
within the vagga. If a discourse or group of discourses became loose
from the bundle of palm-leaves, they could easily be re-inserted
as 'the first' or 'the second', but in a different vagga. (Recent
research in Sri Lanka showed that the clear majority of palm leaf
manuscripts of the Samantapasadika in the monasteries were in fact
disorded). So in trying to correlate the structure of SA with SN we
should bear in mind that discourses can move vaggas while retaining
the same position within the vagga. In other cases the vaggas seem
to have been broken into two 'hands' of five suttas each.

>

In the end we find that, having started our analysis with the
sequence of SA, we end up with substantial runs of texts that have
exactly the same sequence as in SN - say, 8 suttas in a vagga or so.
This was, for me, a startling and completely unexpected finding. I
am still unsure what to make of it, and it all needs much more work,
but the most obvious explanation is that there was a pre-schism
collection, a specific body of teachings on the core doctrines
organized as sutta and vyakarana, that underlies the existing SN/SA.
I would further suggest that we might consider the possibility,
based primarily on the Mula-Sarv Vinaya and the M PariN Sutta, that
it was substantially this collection that was recited in the
Sattapani Cave in Rajagaha....

Well, there's a brief overview of some of my speculations.

mettaya

Bhante Sujato