Dear Tzung Kuen,

> PED (681) lists three meanings for sabhaava:

> 1. state (of mind), nature, condition Miln 90, 212,
> 360; PvA 39 (ummattaka°), 98 (santa°), 219.
> 2. character, disposition, behaviour PvA 13, 35
> (ullumpana°), 220 (lokiya°)
> 3. truth, reality, sincerity

> Does't essential characteristic just fall into the
> second meaning? And, sabhaava could means reality or
> state?

This third sense 'truth' seems a bit unusual or special. I'd need to see how it's actually used to be able to say. However the sense 'own nature' is by far the most obvious and natural sense of sabhaava (skt sva-bhaava). And usually words used to gloss other words, are used in their normal senses (while the word being glossed can be in one of it's more obscure senses).

By way of an example, here is the entry for svabhaava in Apte's _Practical Sanskrit English Dictionary_:

svabhaava:
1. own state
2. an essential or inherent property, natural constitution, innate or peculiar disposition, nature

Here are the entries for dharma. What we are looking for are places where the two semantic fields overlap, since the sabhaava is being used as a 'pointer' to indicate which of the many meanings of dhamma is intended:

dharma:
1. Religion
2. Law, usage, practice
3. Religious or moral merit, virtue
4. Duty, prescribed course of conduct
5. Right, justice,
6. Piety, propriety, decorum
7. Morality, ethics
8. Nature, disposition, character
9. An essential quality, peculiarity, characteristic property, (peculiar) attribute
10. Manner, resemblence
11. A Sacrifice
12. Good company, associating with te virtuous
13. Devotion, religious abstraction [i.e. ecstasy]
14. Manner, mode
15. N. of an Upanishad
16. N. of Yudishthira
17. N. of Yama, the god of death
18. A bow
19. A drinker of Soma juice
20 (in astrol.) N. of the ninth Lunar Mansion
21. An arhat of the jainas
22. The soul

Senses 8 and 9 here match 2 in the previous list too well not to be a very strong candidate. Of course I'm aware that this list of meanings of skt 'dharma' doesn't take into account its Buddhist technical senses, such as 'doctrine' and 'phenomenon'. But I'm working under the assumption that the commentator is explaining 'hard words' (meaning by that archaic or technical ones), by means of 'easy words'. So the normal 'sanskritic' meaning of a word like svabhaava would be expected when it is glossing a passage in the Pali.

Since sabhaava is the 'explaining' word, I'd expect it to be used in its most natural or obvious sense. That's just part of the praxis of commentaries. I'm also under the impression that commentarial Pali tends to be semantically closer to Sanskrit, and subcommentarial Pali even moreso, than canonical Pali. So based on all those reasons, in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, I would expect sabhaava in the Pali commentary to mean 'essential nature' and hence 'dhamma' to mean the same in the original passage.

>
>
>In Nikaya, khayadhamma, vayadhamma etc. are used to
>describe the five aggregates and their like.

Another approach is that if you find in the original context something like /saññaa khayadhammaa, where the compound has taken the feminine ending, then you can be sure it's a bahubbiihi (possessive) compound. I don't have the sa.myuttanikaaya handy, otherwise I'd check. Do you know of a parallel passage in the majjhima or diigha? Or could you post the original sentence here?


best regards,

/Rett