Re: Kc 2

Dear Jim,

Yes, Ashin Janakābhivamsa also calls this a saññāsutta in his Basic Grammar.

He says that Attho akkharasaññāto raises the question, "What are these
akkharā by means of which meaning is known?"  To answer that question,
Akkhara p'ādayo ekasattālīsaṃ provides an answer: there are 41 akkhara
beginning with a.  The udāharaṇa beginning taṃ yathā lists them.  This is
the set of sounds/letters used in the tipiṭaka (suttantesu sopakārā).

As far as this sutta establishing the use of akkhara as a name, he notes
that there is no such sutta establishing the use of akkhara and vaṇṇa as
names in a Pali grammar text predating the Kaccāyana (called the kalāp kyan
in Burmese, sorry, I don't have the Pali spelling ready at hand).  That, and
the fact that the word "nāma" is not present in the vutti, leads him to
think that akkhara was already known as a term for the sounds/letters of a
language, hence no need to define it as such, despite what is said in the
Nyāsa and elsewhere, and that tena kvattho was probably added by later
authors.  He gives the analogy that when a child is born, we can call him or
her "child" without having to establish the use of the word "child" as a
name or term.  Its meaning is evident.

with metta,
Ma Vajira

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 9:12 PM, Jim Anderson <jimanderson_on@...>wrote:

> In my previous message I wrote:
>
> >The Nyāsa commentary on this sutta is about 8 pages long and I haven't
> seen
> > any explicit mention by the author of this sutta being a saññāsutta
> > although he does treat akkhara as a  technical term (saññā).
>
> As my proofreading of the Nyāsa progressed through page 14, I came to the
> following codanā and parihāro which addresses the very question of what
> kind of sutta is Kc 2:
>
> athavā | idaṃ pana suttaṃ saññādhikāraparibhāsāvidhi suttesu katamanti
> codanā || catubbidhaṃhi suttaṃ || ivaṇṇuvaṇṇā jhalāti eva
> mādīni saññāsuttāni || itthipumanapuṃsakasañkhyamiccevamādīni
> adhikārasuttāni || ayuvaṇṇānañcāyo vuddhīti evamādīni paribhāsāsuttāni ||
> vamodudantānamiccevamādīni vidhisuttāni || tesu panidaṃ saññāsuttanti
> parihāro ||
>
> The aurhor definitely identifies this sutta as a saññāsuttaṃ. There is
> quite
> a lot of subcommentary on the Nyāsa commentary on Kc 2 which I have hardly
> touched. The Thanbyinṭīkā has 16 pages and the Niruttisāramañjusāṭīkā has
> nearly double that at about 33 pages. I would expect to find a detailed
> explanation of the four types of suttas in those ṭīkās.
>
> Jim
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
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