Re: Pubbeva me, bhikkhave, sambodhā ...

Dear Ven.,

The Sanskrit parallel has

Pūrvaṃ me bhikṣavo ‘nuttarāṃ samyaksaṃbodhim anabhisaṃbuddhasyaikākino rahasigatasyaivaṃ cetasi cetaḥparivitarka udapādi (Tripāṭhī, p. 89-90).

“Formerly when I was alone and had not achieved unsurpassed perfect enlgithenment, when I had gone to a deserted place, a thought arose in my mind..”

pūrvaṃ here is just an adverb and clearly means “formerly” or “before”. But it does ordinarily take the ablative per MW (former, prior, preceding, previous to, earlier than, abl.), so I think that’s what we’re seeing here with pubbe … sambodhā, meaning “prior to (from) my enlightenment” as you suggest. Pubbe = Skt. pūrvaṃ. I’m not sure why it’s in the locative, perhaps to indicate “In the past, previous to my enlightenment…” MW gives three forms of the adverb, pūrvaṃ, pūrvena, and this looks like a third pūrve = pubbe

Mettā, Bryan

On Wednesday, May 16, 2018, 2:11:21 PM EDT, Bhikkhu Bodhi venbodhi@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear Friends,

Pubbeva me, bhikkhave, sambodhā anabhisambuddhassa bodhisattass’eva sato etadahosi…

The above line occurs several places in the Nikāyas (e.g. at SN II 10, SN III 27), but strangely, the commentaries do not explain the line grammatically. The Aṅguttara subcommentary, Mp-ṭ II 183 (VRI), resolves pubbeva thus: pubbeyeva, that is, “in the past” (with emphatic eva) rather than “before.” In such a case, how does the ablative sambodhā fit into this sentence?

For convenience, I would render the line “Before the enlightenment, monks, while I was just a bodhisatta, not fully enlightened, it occurred to me …” But if Mp-ṭ II 183 is correct, pubbeva is not related grammatically to sambodhā, and in that case, how does sambodhā function here? Is there any case where pubbe occurs with an ablative X, yielding the sense “before X”? Thank you in advance.

With metta,

-- 
Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi
Chuang Yen Monastery
2020 Route 301
Carmel NY 10512
U.S.A.

Sabbe sattā averā hontu, abyāpajjā hontu, anighā hontu, sukhī hontu!
願眾生無怨，願眾生無害，願眾生無惱，願眾生快樂！
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