Re: What's does the "anta" in Suttanta mean?

 

Dear All,

 

I had always assumed that suttanta was formed on analogy with Vedānta which means "end of the Vedas" and usually refers to the Upaniṣads which encapsulates the highest knowledge of the Vedas. Suttanta therefore means "the end of the suttas", meaning that the Buddha's discourses are the highest knowledge of the Indic sutta/sūtra tradition.

However, I have never seen it described in this fashion in the canon.

As for the meaning of sūtra, as Lance has pointed out it is usually taken as derived from  the root siv, "to sew" and is defined this way in the Atthāsalinī:

Atthānaṃ sūcanato suvuttato savanato ’tha sūdanato
suttāṇāsuttasabhāgato ca suttaṃ Suttan ti akkhātaṃ (As 19^15-16).

“Because of pointing out the benefits, because of being well spoken, well-heard, and because of flowing forth, because of the orders in a sutta and because of being like a line of orders on a string, a sutta is called a Sutta.”

 

But if it were derived from the root siv/syū (“to sew”) one would have expected the form syūtra, with the –tra suffix of means or instrument ( as in gātra, means of going = limb; or pattra, means of flying = wing, or pātra, means of drinking = cup). In Vedic, the past participle of syū is syūta (“having been sewn”) and the absolutive is syūtvā (“having sown”), so why should the –tra form be sūtra? with the -y- omitted?

 

I think a more plausible etymology is that the word is derived from the root sū, “to impel, to urge, vivify, consecrate, authorize.” In this derivation sū-tra is the means of urging, impelling, authorizing, etc., or “that by which something is [verbed, i.e. impelled, authorized, etc.],” and by extension, "that which should be followed." These latter definitions are appropriate to both the Buddhist use of the word sutta  (which, as has long been remarked, significantly differs from the Brahmanical use of the term, which refers to a short, pithy aphorism), and the Brahmancial usage.

Walleser made the suggestion that it was derived from su+ ukta ("well said") = sūkta > Pāli sutta in 1914 and Norman also repeated this in his Philological Approach lecture (1997). That is also a possibility.

 

It could also be derived from the Vedic sūtta (= su-datta, “well given”) or the verb root sṛ past participle sūrta (“bright, illuminated”. Sutta is a homynym in Pāli and Middle Indic and could refer to many different roots, as shown above (it also of course means supta > Pālī sutta, "asleep") which we have been discussing in other posts),

 

Best wishes,

 

Bryan

 

 

 

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From: "'L.S. Cousins' selwyn@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 3, 2014 6:57 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] What's does the "anta" in Suttanta mean?

 

Sutta < sūtra in the Vinaya context is a brahmanical term, literally
'thread' but designating a mnemonic aphorism — as in Suttavibhaṅga. So
in effect it refers to a rule of the Pātimokkha. In the context of the
Sutta-piṭaka it is more open to debate and may in fact be from sûkta
'well said' as in Puruṣasūkta. The problem is that early brahmanical
usage of sūtra consists of short sentences (in the plural sūtrāṇi) and
that is not what we find in the Sutta-piṭaka. So we may be dealing with
a homonym that has become confused.

I am not sure that anta at the end of a compound necessarily means
anything. At any rate one view is that it is pleonastic.

Lance Cousins

On 03/12/2014 10:45, Kumara Bhikkhu kumara.bhikkhu@... [palistudy]
wrote:
> The early meaning of "sutta" appears to be
> "thread" and "principle", although now it
> commonly means "discourse". "Suttanta" does seem
> to mean "discourse" though (such as in SN55.53).
> Any idea what the "anta" means? (A parallel: Vedanta)
>
> peace
>
> Kumâra Bhikkhu