Re: Dīpavaṃsa

Dear Ven,

My name is Bryan, not Brev (although that's a nice name too!). The Law translation is not available digitally at University of Toronto where I work. It is available at Google Books at

http://books.google.ca/books?id=K3Cg9f6PygkC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=Bimala+Churn+Law+translation+of+the+Dipavamsa&source=bl&ots=dp1ylnqhxw&sig=HFwWRRcMA9V9JFYGUe-Vfgd95P4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WmeLUuasEueU2wWlk4HABg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Bimala%20Churn%20Law%20translation%20of%20the%20Dipavamsa&f=false

but I don't know if this is complete or just a sampling. Please check it out. If some pages are missing and you can't locate them elsewhere, I can scan them for you.

Childers refers to d'Alwis for his definition although it is not a direct quote, but Childers' interpretation of d'Alwis, I assume (unless Childers also knew that parikkhāra was derived from Skt. pari(ṣ)kara and that it had a rhetorical, textual based meaning).

Yes, I can see there are two interpretations. My own feeling is that the author, aware of the polysemous meaning of parikkhāra, was using the word in both senses, its primary sense of the monk's robe and requisites and the secondary sense of additions to the canon (rhetorical adornments and additions to the text or whatever the Mahāsaṃghikas were supposed to have added). In effect then both traditions might be correct.

However I am not that familiar enough with the Dīpavaṃsa or the author's style and whether he was erudite enough to be punning. Perhaps that is something that you can judge,

Best wishes,

Bryan

On Tuesday, November 19, 2013 6:24:14 AM, Nyanatusita <nyanatusita@...> wrote:

Dear Brev,

I was at the library today and found another English translation of the Dīpavaṃsa by Bimala Churn Law (The Chronicle of the Island of Ceylon or the Dīpavaṃsa, published by the Ceylon Historical Journal vol. 7 July 1957 to April 1958, nos. 1-4 and as a book in 1959.

Good to know that there is another translation. I thought that there was none. However, it is long out of print. Is it online somewhere as a digital file?

He translates the verse in question on page 163 as

"Giving up the original state, name, characteristic, decoration and decent acts, they made it differently."

The sentence refers to the texts in the previous verse.

He has a footnote on decoration (parikkhāra) referring to Childers' definition of as "The furniture of nouns and their genders, niceties of composition"

But how did Childers' come to this definition? Did he get it from Oldenberg?

There are two interpretations, one modern one which links it to the preceding verses about texts, and takes it to refer to grammar, and the other, traditional medieval Pali commentarial one, taking it to refer to the emblems, decorations, and deportment of sects, which makes some sense too, from the perspective of forming a new nikaya or sect.

Nāma I will discuss in my next mesage.

BW,
Bh Nt

Hope that helps,

Best wishes,

Bryan

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