Dear Robert,

thank you. Allow me to explain my position by replying to your first
two sentences. I do not deny the importance of the a.t.thakathaas
(expositions of the meaning, i.e. commentaries). However, we should
always place the Buddha's teachings before commentaries of His teachings.

While we recognize the significance of the commentaries, we should
remain faithful to the texts when we attempt any translation. Even the
commentary itself does not suggest us to replace any word. For
example, in this sutta, the commentary says "'vajjaani' means 'dosaa
aparaadhaa'". This is an direct inference from the next part of the
sutta, i.e. after reading the next part of the sutta, a reader can
always come back and say "yes, vajja refers to this...". However, the
commentary does not suggest altering the text itself, and we should
leave such discovery to sincere readers of the suttas. This is a
principle we should adopt in our translation exercises.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, rjkjp1 wrote:

I find your comments about the ancient Commenatry worrying. If we wnat
to understand the meaning of the suttas then reliance on ATTHAKATHA
(consider the meaning of the word) is essential.