Re: Tathāgata

From: Bryan Levman
Message: 4566
Date: 2016-03-15

Dear Dmytro,

Thanks for the reference to Boucher's work. I have read it,  as it forms part of a study I did on Kumārajīva's transliterations of the Lotus Sutra's dhāraṇīs. It is an excellent piece of scholarship. I ran into Daniel at the IABS 2014 in Vienna, and by the way, IABS 2017 is at the University of Toronto next year (in August I believe), for any thinking of coming.

We probably don't have a good word for the transmission process in English. When goīng from Gāndhārī to Chinese, I would call that a translation (as does Boucher in his article), but from one Prakrit to another, is not properly a translation, but a transformation. Normalization might work, but that suggests that there is a standard somewhere, which really doesn't exist. Just because Pāli survived (probably because it was exported to Sri Lanksa), doesn't mean it was the only (or even the principal) dialect in which the Buddha's teachings were transmitted - in fact, we know it wasn't, but the other dialects by and large didn't survive. The same goes for any non Indo-European languages (like Dravidian or Munda) that the teachings may have been translated into, during or shortly after the Buddha's ministry.

Derivation would be a good word (which Lamotte uses, see below)  or transformation as Bechert uses.

My use of the word "translation" basically follows Norman who uses the word, while others, as you have noted, eschew the term; Bechert calls it "transference of text from one linguistic form to another, either in the form of a deliberate translation or a gradual transformation in the oral tradition" (eine Übertragung der Texte aus einer sprachlichen Form in eine andere mit oder ohne Zwischenstufen, in Form einer bewußt vorgenommenen Übersetzung oder aber durch eine allmähliche Umsetzung in mündliche Überlieferung). I give some quotes below from these scholars, if you are interested in pursuing it.

Best wishes,

Bryan

K. R. Norman (," in Tadeusz Skorupski, ed., The Buddhist Forum, Volume I (London, 1990), 34. Also found in Collected Papers 4 (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1993), 84. ) : “It cannot be emphasized too much that all the versions of canonical Hīnayāna Buddhist texts which we possess are translations, and even the earliest we possess are translations of some still earlier version, now lost.”

H. Bechert
1980. "Allgemeine Bemerkungen zum Thema "Die Sprache der ältesten buddhistischen Überlieferung." In Die Sprache der ältesten buddhistischen Überlieferung, H. Bechert ed., Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, Dritte Folge, Nr. 117: 24-34. English version in Buddhist Studies Review, 8 1-2 (1991): 3-19.
: “Wir können davon ausgehen, daß kein uns erhaltener kanonischer Text die Sprache des Buddha oder auch nur der ältesten buddhistischen Überlieferung genau repräsentiert und daß dementsprechend die uns vorliegenden Textfassungen in irgendeiner Weise auf ältere Überlierferungsstufen in einer abweichenden sprachlichen Form beruhen, so daß wir annehmen müssen, daß eine Übertragung der Texte aus einer sprachlichen Form in eine andere - mit oder ohne Zwischenstufen, in Form einer bewußt vorgenommenen Übersetzung oder aber durch eine allmähliche Umsetzung in mündliche Überlieferung - stattgefunden hat.” Translated in Buddhist Studies Review, 8 1-2 (1991), 6, as “We can proceed from the above on the assumption that none of the canonical texts exactly reflects the language of the Buddha or even of the earliest Buddhist tradition and that accordingly, the various textual versions are based in one way or another on earlier stages of the tradition couched in a different linguistic form. Thus we must further assume that there has been a transference of the texts from one linguistic form to another, with or without intermediate stages, either in the form of a deliberate translation or a gradual transformation in the oral tradition.”

Lamotte uses more neutral terminology:
“Both [the S and P canons] were derived from prototypes in a Magadhan dialect.”                   (History of Indian Buddhism from the origins to the Śaka Era, translated from the French by Sara Webb-Boin (Louvain-la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain Institut Orientaliste, 1958, 1988), 587)


From: "Dmytro Ivakhnenko aavuso@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2016 3:50 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Tathāgata

 
Dear Bryan,

> If you want to look into it in more detail, I have just published an article on "The language of early Buddhism" in the Journal of South Asian Language and Linguistics 2016, page 1-41
 
Thank you for the thoughtful work!

I'd like to share the link to this article:
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jsall.2016.3.issue-1/jsall-2016-0001/jsall-2016-0001.xml?format=INT

IMHO, calling this process a 'translation' can be misleading. Wouldn't it be more to the point to call this 'normalization'?

As Daniel Boucher writes:

"Some scholars believed that this transformation was a real "translation" of texts which at that time already existed as written literary texts. Others think - and I agree with them - that the transposition was no formalized translation. It was another kind of transformation from one dialect into another dialect, that took place in the course of a tradition, which was still an oral tradition, but had already entered the process of being formalized linguistically . . . .

            However, these positions are not necessarily as sharply opposed as they might first appear. Norman has shown that these "translations" were often carried out by scribes who applied certain phonetic rules mechanically. Nevertheless, some of these transpositions led to hypercorrections and mistaken interpretations, suggesting that the movement between these dialects was not always clear even to learned scribes."

http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-EPT/daniel.htm

Best wishes,
                          Dmytro


On Sun, Mar 13, 2016, 9:26 PM Dmytro Ivakhnenko aavuso@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 
Dear Bryan,

> Yes, good question. It does seem unproblematic on the surface. But I think people felt that the surface meaning - tathā gata or tathā āgata, thus gone or thus come (in the way of all previous Buddhas) - was too strained, not natural, and as Norman says (as per Steve Collins' reference), quoting Thomas, "in its use in the scriptures there īs no trace of the Sanskrit meaning contained in tathā and gata". 
 
IMHO, the popular English translation "thus gone" stems from the English translations of Mahayana literature.
Here's a excerpt from Mahaprajnaparamitasastra:

"Why is he called To t'o a k'ie t'o (tathāgata)?
1. He preaches the natures of the dharmas (dharmalakṣaṇa) in the way (tathā) that he has understood (gata) them.
2. In the way that the [previous] Buddhas have gone by the path of safety (yogakṣemamārga), thus (tathā) the [actual] Buddha is going (gata) and will not go on to new existences (punarbhāva).251
______
251 Cf. Sumaṅgala, I, p. 60-62 (second explanation)."
 
The interpretation "thus come" is embedded in the corresponding Chinese term 如來 or 如来 .
 
Careful study of Sutta and Atthakatha helps to sort out such interpretations as later ones. It is the interpretation "tathāni āgatoti tathāgato" which is given repeatedly in Atthakatha, and used in Suttanta.

Best wishes,
                      Dmytro

From: "Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu yuttadhammo@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2016 7:21 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Tathāgata

 
Thanks friends :)
It still seems confusing that the word might have come from Dravidian sources, esp. why Hurvitz seems so sure that it did, when it looks so familiarly Sanskritic. Bryan, why is tathaa gata or tathaa aagata unconvincing? It just doesn't seem like such a problematic word is all.
Best wishes,
Yuttadhammo
 
Dear Pali friends,
 
Here's my small study of explanations of this word in Sutta and Atthakatha, which points to the explanation: tathāni āgatoti tathāgato as the most substantiated,
 

with tathāni in the sense explaned in Tattha sutta:

‘‘Cattārimāni, bhikkhave, tathāni avitathāni anaññathāni. Katamāni cattāri? ‘Idaṃ dukkha’nti, bhikkhave, tathametaṃ avitathametaṃ anaññathametaṃ ; ‘ayaṃ dukkhasamudayo’ti tathametaṃ avitathametaṃ anaññathametaṃ; ‘ayaṃ dukkhanirodho’ti tathametaṃ avitathametaṃ anaññathametaṃ; ‘ayaṃ  dukkhanirodhagāminī paṭipadā’ti tathametaṃ avitathametaṃ anaññathametaṃ – imāni kho, bhikkhave, cattāri tathāni avitathāni anaññathāni.

Best wishes,
                    Dmytro
______________________________________________________________
> Od: "Steven Collins scollins951@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
> Komu: "palistudy@yahoogroups.com" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
> Datum: 13.03.2016 06:41
> Předmět: Re: [palistudy] Tathāgata
>
 
 
On tathāgata see K.R.Norman, Collected Papers IV 162-63.
Steve Collins


From: "Bryan Levman bryan.levman@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: "palistudy@yahoogroups.com" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2016 8:09 PM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Tathāgata



Dear Ven. Yuttadhammo,
The etymology of the word has long been a problem which is why Hurvitz suggests its origin amongst the indigenous peoples of India (Dravidian or Munda, most likely, but we don't know all the language groups that existed at the time of the Indo Aryan immigration).
Hurvitz is only echoing a suggestion made by Schayer in 1935 and Thomas in 1937.
There are indeed a lot of non Indo-Aryan words in theTipiṭaka, some of which I discuss in my article in Buddhist Studies Review (2013: "Cultural Remnants of the Indigenous Peoples in the Buddhist Scriptures", p. 145-80). These are mainly place names and names of fauna and flora unfamiliar to the immigrants which were incorporated into the Indo-Aryan language. But there are also a lot of technical terms. The Buddha's funeral, for example, does not follow a "normal" Indo-Aryan practice but is based on indigenous customs.
In my thesis, I briefly discuss the problem of tathāgāta, which I attach for your info (it also contains the references above). There is also a short summary of the problems with the word in Mayrhofer's Etymological Dictionary (1963) on page 472.
Best wishes,
Bryan
From: "Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu yuttadhammo@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2016 5:23 PM
Subject: [palistudy] Tathāgata

 
Dear Friends,

I have just come across a curious passage in the introduction to a translation of the Lotus Sutra, by Leon Hurvitz:

"Without much doubt, tathāgata is a non-Indic word refurbished to have an Indic appearance long after it had come into current use among India's Buddhists."

I'm wondering if anyone here has any insight on the origin of this word as described in this quote - is the implication that it came from Proto-Indo-European?

Thanks,

Yuttadhammo












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