Hello again,

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> Are you saying that if I am inventing a system or language

I am not quite sure what this is implying: are you suggesting that
the Buddha invented a system or a language? In either case i would
deny that the Buddha did that: he adapted language, not invented it;
and the system-builders came long after the Buddha. In the present
case the Buddha is simply quoting a view which he himself attributes
to pre-Buddhist sages, and it is presented in the context of an
ongoing debate in contemporary religious circles on the nature of
the process of rebirth. This is clear when the sages ask whether it
is known whether that gandhabba is a previously dead khattiya,
brahmana, vessa, or sudda.

and borrow

> a concept from an earlier language or system but use a different

word

> for that concept that the etymology of my choice must be traced to
> the concept in the external system?
>
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>

Not at all. I am saying that when the Pali canon specifically states
that a certain view is a brahmanical one, and when the ideas and
terminology of the view in question (if not the exact view itself)
is clearly traceable in the Brahmanical scriptures, then it is in
those pre-Buddhist texts that we should seek for the background to
the view.

In this case the Pali does not use a different word, but merely the
same word in Pali form.

Etymology, as understood in the West, is the science of the history
of words, and must proceed by tracing the usage of words as they
evolve over time. The various commentarial definitions are not
etymologies in this sense, but are teaching tools designed to bring
out dhammic implications of the term in question. Sometimes this
coincides with the etyomology, sometimes not.

This is clear when we see, for example, that the commentaries (and
this is true not just of the Theravada) are happy to present two or
three or more derivations of a particular term from different roots.
Obviously only one can be the etymological root (although a word can
be influenced by other terms that are not its root). The
commentaries are simply doing a different kind of thing: their
primary function is to teach Dhamma, and linguistics is subordinated
to this goal. This is fine, but it should not be misrepresented.

I wish all who were interested in this debate could read
Wijesekera's article, for it would really dispell a lot of this
confusion. It is quite remarkeable how the Vedic antecedents in this
case parallel the Buddhist usages. The Buddhist texts present us
with a variety of uses of gandhabba, which seem difficult to
reconcile or make sense of, especially the passage with the 'three
conditions'. But with the Vedic background we can easily see how
these concepts are related. The whole web of interrelated ideas is
too complex to spell out in detail but we can note just one
reference: Rig Veda 10.177.2 speaks of the 'gandharva in the womb'.

yours in Dhamma

Bhante Sujato