Thanks, yes, I can read that, albeit poorly.
In addition to my remarks above:
- The essay is mistaken in saying Saccaka was a Jain, as I pointed out some time ago. This is an understandable mistake, given the confusion among scholars. Indeed, the argument of the essay supports this, and he concludes that the argument could not be Jain. However, the implication is that the text is corrupt, which lends credence to the idea that the passage on not-self is also corrupt. Once we drop the assumption that Saccaka was a Jain, this argument no longer applies, and we longer have a compelling reason to see this text as a source of the corruption of the philosophical idea of not-self.
- He goes on to argue that on doctrinal grounds Saccaka is more likely to be Ājīvaka than Jain. This may be so, but I am reluctant to follow this, still less to draw any conclusions from it. It seems to me just as likely that Saccaka was simply an independent thinker. Not everyone has to belong to a school.
- He argues that a corrupt pericope could propagate through the texts. Indeed it could, but that is not an argument that it in fact did in this case. It seems to me unlikely that the passage in MN 35 was so influential. In any case, it is just as likely for such propagation to occur in the other lineages, or indeed in the Chinese translations.
- He also argues on the basis of translations in SA. This gets a little involved, so I will move that to its own thread.