Gāndhārī cadurag[h]ulu in context

Dear Professors and Dear List-Members,



In the 2008 edition of the *Anavataptagāthā* by Prof Richard Salomon, the
Gāndhārī word analogous to *caturangula* / *caturaṅgula* is
*caduraghulu*‘four fingers (long/width)’, present in contexts rather
similar in several
canonical works in Pali or Sanskrit (as well as Chinese and Tibetan). As
Prof Oskar von Hinüber writes in his review (*JAOS* 130.1, pp. 90-94,
published December 2010, here 93; please excuse the very rough copy below):



[…] the same recitation of Srona preserves one of the very few references to
the old Indian concept that hair grows on the bottoms of the feet of
particularly tender people: caduraghulu ya me lumu/jadu padatale rmidu, vs.
21 (p. 214) "And soft hair, four fingers long, grew on the sole(s) of (my)
feet" (Salomon): compare Sono Koliviso ... sukhumalo hoti, tassa padatalesu
lomani jatani, Vin I 179,5 (cf. 182,2; 185,14) and hesta padatalabhya ca
romabhuc caturangul(i), SHT <http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/SHT>
*sht* - server-parsed HTML IV p. 309 (Kat. Nr. 187 = K 1081) = Bechert,
Bruchstucke, p. 125, in a Srona-Avadana, which is compressed into four
verses. The same idea concerning the feet of extremely tender people is also
found in the Jaiminiya Brahmana: cf. Willem B. Bollee, "Folklore on the Foot
in Pre-modern India," Indologica Taurinensia 34 (2008): 39-145, esp. nn. 24
and 477: lomasau hasya adhastat pddav asatuh, JB II 270.



It is of course very hard to supplement Prof von Hinüber’s enlightening
references to the ‘hair of the soles’ (W. Caland: “this quality [...] is not
noted anywhere else”, cited in W. B. Bollée 2008 p. 104 n. 477; for Sk/Tib *
Anavataptagāthā*, see Marcel Hofinger ed. 1954/1982, p. 208). It is I assume
also difficult to understand why such people are seen as belonging to a *m**
ṛdu*-category (no Āyurvedic references found so far), as there are so many
restrictions and taboos as regards hair in Buddhist texts, also one
identification as ‘Evil’ in immediate JB II 269. One possible explanation, I
would suggest, is to consider the connection of several different Indic
expressions and ideas here conflated, more typically: 1. soles’ hair (even
if strongly contradicting the *mahāpuruṣalakṣaṇa*); 2. soles’ four fingers
distance from earth; 3. Earth’s capacity (especially as flat, levelled earth
- one locus classicus being *Lv* 57 Vaidya), to rise and subside under
specific circumstances no more and no less than four fingers, in an equally
rare instance of ‘seismic waves’, in dozen of passages associated in fact
with the manifestation of earthquakes; 4. some *āyurveda* and
*kāmaśāstra*interdiction to directly touch the earth; 5. other
occurrences of ‘four
fingers breadth’ related to earth: e.g. special herbs as in *Vess* 534 or
special rice as in the *Supriyāvadāna*.



As among the list-members are not only several masters of Pali but at least
one, Professor Allon, of Gāndhārī also, I would like to ask:



-          how to explain the presence of two forms, in two different
Gāndhārī contexts and collections, for *caturangula*, as Bajaur Fragment 2,
part 5, line (I. Strauch 2008 fig. 36) has a rather legible (checking with
some tables of flawless Dr Glass) –*gu*- instead of –*ghu*-.

-          would you consider this a very genuine stock-expression, as it is
now attested by the oldest MSS? Are there some solutions for detecting its
origin and explain their varieties?



I would also like to sum up (from a paper still in progress) the analogous
handling of ‘four fingers’: *caturangula* is the strict measure of hair
(from a special foot); the strict measure of rice foliage (from a special
earth, in *Divy* 120); the strict measure of bodily size (of a special
individual: Nanda’s tallness [only] four fingers less than the Buddha, seen
as a most positive fact; including in some Central Asian fragments); the
strict measure of the Buddha’s opening of his robe (MN I 233,36); the strict
measure of ‘levitation’ above the earth (again, of the most unique airborne
beings); the strict measure of earth’s aptitude — reputedly, *mah**ā**pṛthiv
**ī* is from early narratives to later Abhidharma seen as *acal**ā* — to
become ‘elastic’. It seems these are by no means the single types of a
rather autonomous, ‘floating’ and ‘[quite systematically] intruding’
expression. Do you perhaps know a special study already devoted to this
topic which escaped my attention?

Even if far away from Gandhāra, I am pleased to add this ‘survived’ up to
Handel’s *Messiah*, in an opening aria just titled ‘Ev’ry valley should be
exalted’, which is a rephrase by his Brit benefactor Jennens of similar
passages from Isaiah and Luke, but is present as well in different Christian
apocryphal gospels, in the French carol ‘Baissez-vous, montagnes; plaines,
haussez-vous’, etc.



Thanking you in advance for your observations,



With kind regards,

E. Ciurtin


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