Re: vibhuta in AN 11.10

Dear Khristos,

Thank you for interesting further discussion.

> So, in general, the 'negative' sense of vi-bhū is in effect *already
> there*,
> long before the Mahāniddesa; and so it seems to me that it should hardly
> have required great effort of explanation or justification to connect
> 'vibhūta' with certain (apparenly rather Buddhist) 'negative' senses of
> vi-bhū. But I don't think that's what the author of the Mahāniddesa is
> actually doing, here. I think that perhaps he's doing something else with
> his interpretation/argument: e.g., attempting to integrate a certain
> concept of 'vibhūta' into early Buddhist doctrine in a theoretically
> consistent and elegant way (and his attempt at this seems to me quite
> eloquent, as I've already remarked; and even quite phenomenological, in a
> certain sense (so a second thanks also for this)).
>
I think your point is reasonable and plausible. But to me, we are in a so
remote time to justify with certainty what the author had in mind at the
time of his writing. My statement was based on his ample use of vibhūta in
positive sense, while that in the negative sense are comparatively
rare, that it led me to make a conjecture in such a way. Also the
sequential usage of different senses seems supporting. Roughly, starting
from a huge number of vibhūtaṃ katvā in the sense of 'clarified', he
then came to the discussion regarding 4 types of vibhūta, following by his
use of vibhūta in negative sense. After that, went back to his common use
in positive sense again. It thus appears natural to me that the explanation
of four types of vibhūta was possibly a preparatory explanation leading to
his use of the term in negative sense. The use of the term in postive sense
without any explanation also led me to think that probably this usage
was commonly known to his audience. I could be wrong.

> (2) On the historical question, as pointed out, the Niddesa is already too
> late to have a role in the apparent change of meaning of vi-bhū from the
> 'positive' Vedic sense to include also a certain 'negative' sense in the
> Buddhist suttas, in the kinds of derivations and contexts previously
> indicated.
>
You are right. I do not think that the Niddesas had played a role in
changing the semantic senses from that of the Vedic period to the Nikāyas
period. But the cited Niddesa passage provides an example of a changing
meanings of the term. Also, it seems to me that the development of
different meanings of a term does not necessarily go in a linear fashion.
For example, when ṭīkācariyas re-interpreted the canonical texts, they
could possibly have thought that they were providing the ideas closer to
the original intent of the texts than did the aṭṭhakathācariyas, rather
than intending to provide a 'newly developed ideas' or interpretations of
the texts. In thus seems to me that the recurrence of old usages could
occur at a later date.

With mettā
Chanida


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