DC Wijeratna: "I am talking of the teaching of the Buddha and not about
Buddhism. Teaching of the Buddha is one. It can't have many
interpretations. On the other hand what is referred to as Buddhism
comprises all manner of interpretations of the Teaching of the Buddha
from Theravaada down to the present day."
This gets at what I originally thought when I started listening to this
debate.
There are a lot of words that have translation problems like this, for
instance, "micchaa-ditthi," usually translated nowadays as "wrong view,"
but when I first encountered the phrase in Burmese in a historical work
describing events in the 16th century, it was translated as "heretical"
which conjures up images of burning people at the stake, well this
image was definitely wrong, but the word was used in the context of
forceful military conquest and religious conversion, so perhaps the
translation is not so innappropriate, but it clearly is inappropriate for
conveying the "teaching of the Buddha" to people nowadays.
Words have a tremendous ability to morph to new meanings which they
probably have done pretty extensively in Pali since Pali has been
translated into so many different languages over hundreds of years,
Thai, Burmese, Sri Lankan, English...perhaps these dictionaries should
be consulted too.
Also, strangely enough, the opposite problem of perhaps innappropriate
Pali words being used to convey 19th century Christian meanings can be
seen in the dictionaries and bible translations of Adoniram Judson, which
is where I learned the translation of "micchaa ditthi" above. All of his
works are available for free on the internet nowadays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoniram_Judson
http://slipperybannanapeel.blogspot.com/2007/12/judsons-burmese-
dictionary-free-at.html
Sincerely,
Jon Fernquest