Re: Kc 1

Hi Yuttadhammo,

The earliest version I know of this story is recounted in the Muulasarvaastivaadin Vinaya. It is with reference to Dhp 113:

yo ca vassasata.m jiive
apassa.m udayabbaya.m,
ekaaha.m jiivita.m seyyo
passato udayabbaya.m
and if someone were to live for 100 years
not seeing rising and cessation
it would be better he lived one day
seeing arising and cessation.

The monk learned the lines as udaka-bakam which, as you say means "water-heron".  Presumably he new the rule that -k- often weakened to an intervocalic consonantal glide -y- (usually written with a dot over the y to indicate that it was barely pronounced), so he back-changed udaya > udaka, thereby changing its meaning.  Also bbaya.m comes from vyaya.m (passing away, with vy > vv> bb as per Pischel 201, 286) and again the monk made the same mistake with the -y- > -k- arriving at baka.m or "heron".

The story does seem apocryphal - i. e. it must be a clumsy translator indeed who would make these mistakes (perhaps he didn't know the dialect?), but it does highlight the importance of getting the sounds right!


Best, Bryan

The story is told in Brough's Gaandhaarii Dhammapada, p. 45-47.




________________________________
From: Noah Yuttadhammo <yuttadhammo@...>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, January 5, 2010 2:39:34 PM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Kc 1

  
Dear Friends,

Sorry to step in a little late, but I've been interested in this sentence
for a while myself, for reasons other than pure grammar.  I am not sure if
everyone here is familiar with the story behind why the Lord Buddha is said
to have originally uttered these words... The story, said to have its source
in the *Kaccaayanava. n.nanaa* of Mahaavijitaavii Thera of Burma, goes that
there was an old monk who had studied meditation under the Lord Buddha and
then went to sit under a Sal tree at the edge of the pond Anodatara
meditating on the arising and ceasing of phenomena, but instead of repeating
to himself "udaya-baya. m" (arising and ceasing), he repeated, "udakabaka.m"
(crane in the water)!  The Buddha realized this was due to poor knowledge of
the Pali language and remarked that the meaning of a word is only to be
known through the sounds that make it up (attho akharasa~n~naato) .  This is
supposedly why Mahakaccaayana wrote the Kaccaayanasutta, based on the
Buddha's brief teaching.

Don't know if that helps with deciding on a meaning for this terse phrase,
but it makes for an interesting support of mantra-based meditation, showing
that even in the time of the Buddha, words were thought to have real
importance for getting to the meaning of the dhamma.

The Thai translation of this passage expands it considerably.  Here is an
example:

In regards to the meaning of all words, that the wise (pandita) might be
able to know them well is through relying on the akhara (Thai: akson).

Sincerely,

Yuttadhammo

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Jim Anderson <jimanderson_ on@... ca>wrote:

>
>
> In message #2767, Dec. 31/09, George wrote:
>
> << (1') "Meaning is known through sounds."
>
> I have eliminated the definite article since this is the first statement in
> the grammar, and there are no specific meanings or letters to which it
> refers. And 'correctly' is redundant (since incorrect knowledge would not
> be
> knowledge at all). We still need to ask exactly what Kaccaayana means by
> (2), but to insist on 'letter' as opposed to 'sound' (for whatever reason)
> still strikes me asmistaken. >>
>
> I'm not so sure if "correctly" is redundant. It's a translation of the
> prefix 'saṃ' in "-saññāto" in the sense of 'sammā' (rightly, properly,
> correctly) based on the following Rūp-ṭ gloss:
>
> akkharehi sammā ñāyatīti akkharasaññāto || -- p. 6 (Be)
>
> I have to admit I don't fully understand the meaning of "-saññāto" and I
> have yet to see a commentary explaining exactly what it means in contrast
> to
> other words also meaning "known". Meaning or the meaning is what is known
> (arīyati ñāyatīti attho -- Rūp-ṭ p. 6)).
>
> In message #2768, Ma Vajira wrote:
>
> << I agree with George in part and appreciate the succinctness of this
> sentence. If we want to go a step further, and say what meaning is known,
> how and by what, we can supply answers to these questions from the vutti:
> Attho—the meaning of every word of a language; akkharasaññāto — is known
> well, is recorded, by means of the letters [sounds, if you must] which make
> up the word. >>
>
> The use of "is recorded" here is interesting and seems related to "saññā"
> where its objects are marked so that they can be recognized again.
>
> Best wishes,
> Jim
>
>
>

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