Dear Jayarava,


Good question; I can't find anything either. The Chinese Āgama translate it as 鶴 (he) which means "crane" and indeed a stork, I believe is a kind of crane or heron, but none of the standard Pāli words for crane or heron come close to sithila-hanu "slack-jaw."  It looks like a loan translation (calque) from another language or a colloquial term for the bird, which was translated literally, as the "loose-bill" is one of the characteristics of this bird.

So Nanamoli and Bodhi's translation is probably just an inference from the bahubbihi.

"Slack-jaw" is an English word menaing "tiresome and impertinent talk" and there is always the possibility that it had a similar meaning in Middle Indic, and it is just being used as a synonym for "etc." (as it comes last in the list). In the context it would make sense ("don't take out the arrow until I know what kind of feathers the shaft was made with - vulture, heron, hawk, peacock, or other irrelevant hypothesizing ), although a stretch...

Perhaps someone else has some suggestions?

Bryan





________________________________
From: jayarava <jayarava@...>
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 8:13:57 AM
Subject: [Pali] sithilahanu


 
In M 63 Nanamoli and Bodhi translate sithilahanu as 'stork'. Piya Tan also 'stork'. However I can find no authority for this. I have checked PED, including electronically searching for 'stork'; the Dictionary of Pali Names; Buddhadatta's P-E and E-P dictionaries (sv. stork he gives 'bakavisesa'. I've tried Sanskrit equivalents in MW and Apte, and Apte's S-E dictionary sv. 'stork' (nothing similar). I checked the VRI dictionary that comes with their electronic tipitika. I even checked Childers!

Other translators Thomas (1913) and Gethin (2008) leave the word untranslated. Horner (1954-9) "some other bird".

As far as I can make out the word sithilahanu occurs only once in the Canon (M i.429); then once in the commentary on this passage (where it just says eva.m naamakassa pakkhino); and once in the sub-commentary (Sithilahanu naama dattaa ka.n.no pata"ngo [= ear bird?]). Neither of which translate to 'stork' (do they?).

sithila-hanu would translate as something like 'slack jawed', and the only other reference I can find on the web is Shravasti Dhammika's blog where he says "Open-billed Storks, sithilahanu in Pali."(http://sdhammika.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/konch.html).

Can anyone point me to a dictionary or other source where sithilahanu is defined as 'stork', or explain why Bodhi/Piya Tan translate it this way?

Many thanks
Jayarava




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