Re: How to explain the ablatives uppādā and anuppādā?

Dear Venerables,

In this case the apādāna kāraka (ablative case) is not used due to a detachment or physical separation. The ablative case has many other uses. The usage in this famous Dhammaniyāma quote that you mention implies independence. I'll describe below a few of the uses often found which are outside of the two that Ven. Paṇḍita mentioned along with some references in the Canon.

Dependency

It is common to use the ablative case to imply dependence on a condition. For example:

ahārā jātāni jīvanti

(beings that are born live off of food/sustenance)

In the Pāli Sutta one of the most famous use of ablatives that gives an example of dependence is from the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta:

yasmā ca kho bhikkhave rūpaṃ anattā, tasmā rūpaṃ ābādhāya saṃvattati...

Notice the ablatives yasmā and tasmā which mean "due to whatever reason" (or "dependent on whatever reason") and "for that same reason" respectively. The reasons that are being talked about are in the immediately preceding sentence:

rūpañca hidaṃ bhikkhave attā abhavissa nayidaṃ rūpaṃ ābādhāya saṃvatteyya, ...

Another very famous usage of the ablative case is in the 12-fold dependent co-origination sequence:

avijjāpaccayā saṅkhārā, saṅkhārapaccayā viññāṇaṃ...

Afterwards

One more case where the ablative is mandatory is with the indeclinable paraṃ meaning "after". The most famous usage is in the phrase parammaraṇā, which is actually, paraṃ + maraṇā. This occurs a lot in the Abyākata Saṃyutta where the Buddha lists the 10 unaddressed philosophical questions.

Independence

There is actually also a use of the ablative case to imply independence. Now, you could ask "if ablative case is used to show dependence on a condition, how could it be used to imply independence?" And that is indeed one of the beauties of Pāli and Sanskrit that I think leads to interesting puzzles and riddles. But it mainly comes due to a very common case of omission of an inconvenient word in Sanskrit. The Sanskrit word is ṛte. In conversational/spoken Sanskrit, this indeclinable is usually dropped. Its meaning is roughly parallel to the indeclinable vinā. For example:

udakaṃ vinā nadī na tiṣṭhati

The above sentence means exactly the same as this:

udakāt ṛte nadī na tiṣṭhati

OR

udakāt nadī na tiṣṭhati

The most famous example of such a usage in the Pāli Suttas that I can readily recall is the Dhammaniyāma Sutta:

upādā vā bhikkhave tathāgatānaṃ, anuppādā vā tathāgatānaṃ...

(independent of the arising of the tathāgatas, or the non-arising of the tathāgatas...)

One other famous example where this sort of usage occurs is in the Kaccanagotta Sutta (SN 12.15):

...dukkhameva uppajjamānaṃ uppajjati, dukkhaṃ nirujjhamānaṃ nirujjhatīti na kaṅkhati, na vicikicchati, aparapaccayā ñāṇamevassa ettha hoti.

Notice the use of aparapaccayā there, meaning "independent of others". When you compare this to the famous avijjāpaccayā saṅkhāra you can clearly see that here the ablative is being used in the sense of independence from some other condition, whereas in the dependent co-origination, it is used to imply dependence.

One might question how one is expected to know whether the ablative implies dependence or independence. The answer in both Sanskrit and Pāli is that it is most easily discerned through regular conversational usage. There is no perfect grammatical rule about this as far as I know.

Thanks,

Balaji

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 9:03 AM Soe Naung ashinpan@... [palistudy] <palistudy@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Dear Bhante Bhikkhu Bodhi,

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 6:15 PM you wrote:

 

Uppādā vā, bhikkhave, tathāgatānaṃ anuppādā vā tathāgatānaṃ, ṭhitāva sā dhātu dhammaṭṭhitatā dhammaniyāmatā. Sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā.

This is a famous passage with which you all must be familiar. It is always translated along the lines of "whether there is the arising of Tathagatas or no arising of Tathagatas, that element (principle) stands ... All conditioned things are impermanent."

My question concerns the ablatives uppādā and anuppādā. I consulted several grammars in search of an explanation of the ablative that fits the usage here, but did not succeed in finding one. I skimmed Wijesekera's book on the Pali cases, too, but did not find a fitting explanation of this ablative. It is obviously not the ablative of separation or the ablative of causation. So what aspect of the ablative is involved here? Are there other examples of the ablative used in this way?

The ablative case here is what the classical grammarians call apādāna, which is usually translated as "detachment." And there are several kinds of detachment:

1. Physical detachment. E.g., puriso gāmā gacchati "The man goes from the village." In this example, the ablative of gāmā shows physical detachment.

2. Mental detachment. E.g., puriso corā bhāyati  "The man fears `from' the thief." In this example, even though the man may be physically together with the thief, the former's mind is detached from the latter, i.e., shrinks from the latter.

Then, in our case also, the element (dhātu) stands (ṭhitā) detached from (i.e., irrelevant to) the arising or non-arising of tathāgatas. This is why the ablative is justified here. We may call it "natural detachment."

This is just my two cents.

With respect and metta,

Ven. Pandita (Burma)