Oh finally i would also just briefly note that AN3.32 qoutes the parayanavagga, which for those who take that verse to be early and who take commentary on early verse to be evidence of potential lateness, gives such evidence.
Thanks for these interesting details! I have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.
Is the “it” a reference to the word andha or specifically to Andhavana?
This seems to lend support to the idea of blindness, as does the translation at SĀ2. So it seems the Āgamas either transliterate Andhavana or render it as “(forest of) regaining eyes”. So what overall conclusion, if any, can we draw about the meaning of andha from the perspective of the Āgamas?
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In the dictionary of Indo-Aryan Languages it says:
385 andhá ‘blind’ RV., n. ‘darkness’ MBh.
So in the RV it meant ‘blind’ and in the MBh ‘darkness’. Also it comes from the Proto-Indo-Iranian andʰás, where it means predominantly ‘blind’. So I guess the oldest meaning of the word is ‘blind’ and only later it gets the meaning of ‘darkness’.
Fun fact: an ‘Andabata’ was a type of gladiator who fought wearing a helmet without openings for the eyes, so he fought blindly.
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I think andha generally, but the glossaries function like a reading guide, referencing difficult words and giving them glosses as they occur in Buddhist texts like the Madhyama Agama. So, they are referencing this specific usage.
It seems as though andha literally referred to the forest being a gloomy place, but it also had this story attached to it that underpins the literal name.
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In the words of Sita (about a different forest) in the Ramayana: this forest is a strange place, filled with saints and thieves, but nonetheless we must respect the rules of the place.
At least two vinaya narratives which occurred in Andhavana involve theft of some sort, as do at least another two sutta commentarial stories. Which makes me think that Dark Forest is the real name, and any other stories about thieves are just an “edifying etymology” i.e. the sort that are provided for entertainment and to show the linguistic skill of the story teller in using puns and double meanings. Much like if we were to call it the “Shady Forest” in English.
“Regaining Eyes”/Obtaining Sight forest looks like a deliberate attempt at positive rebranding for a place that everyone knew was quite shady and likely to result in you either getting enlightened, robbed or both. I think Xuanzang’s narrative is quite developed/sophisticated, because it shows the various sides of Andhavana in some form- darkness, robbers, sight, the Buddha. It encapsulates something which is psychologically true about Andhavana, but probably not correct in an absolute sense.
The story related by Xuanzang seems to be a very late development in the etymology, even later than the Pali commentarial stories (i.e. because it has the more complex narrative). The Vibhasa explanation that Charles has given is the more straightforward one.
The equivalent Pali commentarial story is worth mentioning:
During the time of Kassapa Buddha, thieves waylaid an anagami upasaka in this forest; his name was Sorata (Yasodhara, according to the Samyutta Cy), and he had been touring Jambudipa collecting money for the Buddhas cetiya. They gouged out his eyes and killed him. Thereupon the robbers all lost their sight and wandered about the forest blind; hence the name of the forest (Blind, usually, but wrongly, translated Dark). It had retained its name during two Buddha periods. The story is given in MA.i.336ff. and SA.i.148.
Which lacks the “regaining sight” motif.
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And at the same time, it must have been rather dark inside that helmet. 
I think the two are in fact quite close together. When my blind friend would speak about her losing the very last (tiny) bit of vision she would say, “I’ll be in the dark then”.
Edit:
Actually, when you are in a very dark room/forest you are blind, whether you have eyes or not. Blind people are in an advantage in such a situation because they are used to it.
The organizations of the blind and vision disabled sometimes organize a “café in the dark” where you can go, have a coffee and eat some cake in a room with no light at all—it’s a challenge, unless you do that every day!
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Thanks @Sujato, @Cdpatton, @Danny, @Suvira, and @Sabbamitta for your input. Looking at the evidence provided from the Āgamas, it seems to me that there is no strong preference for one reading over the other. And Bhante @Sujato’s argument that “Blind Grove” does not make any sense relies on one particular way of parsing the compound Andhavana. An alternative way of parsing it yields the “Grove of the Blind”, which is perfectly intelligible. (This means reading andha as a noun rather than as an adjective, which I believe is perfectly acceptable.) Names are funny things. We cannot just assume that Dark Wood is correct because it seems the most sensible. There might be a million and one reasons why Forest of the Blind is the actual meaning.
So how then to decide? To my mind we just need to decide what is the predominant meaning in the Pali Canon. Starting with the Vinaya, the only meaning there is “blind”. Andha is used for people who should not be ordained, in which case the word “dark” does not work. (And no, it cannot mean dark skinned.) Moreover, both the Vinaya and the suttas contain the common word andhakāra, which in the contexts must mean “making blind”. In other words, it is andhakāra, not andha, that means “dark” in the Canonical literature.
What about the suttas? From a quick review of the evidence, it seems to me that the situation is much the same as in the Vinaya. There are few if any instances where andha must mean “dark”, whereas there as a number of context where “blind” is the only reasonable rendering. For instance, in the phrase andhaṃ acakkhukaṃ, “blind” is the only possible understanding. In the Andha Sutta (AN 3.29), andha must again mean “blind”, since it is juxtaposed with the one-eyed person and the two-eyed person. At MN 81, Ghaṭikāra’s parents are said to be be andha, clearly meaning blind, and at MN 152, andha is again used in juxtaposition with badhira, “deaf”, and so must mean “blind”. And that’s pretty much it as far as the evidence in the four main Nikāyas is concerned.
It is possible that in poetic contexts, especially in the Khuddhaka Nikāya, andha may be used as a short form of andhakāra, thus meaning “dark”. Such poetic licence might also be used in a name such as Andhavana. But we need some solid evidence to accept such a non-standard interpretation. I cannot see that any such evidence has been forthcoming.
I am probably spilling far too much digital ink over such a minor matter. But here we are!
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Well so far I resisted the proposal made by someone else to call it “Schwarzwald” in German 
, but when reading this discussion I might still feel tempted … 
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It makes since to read andha as blind when it refers to people. The fact that the stories justifying the “blind forest” reading are about blind people or people blinded in the forest seem to confirm that, but I don’t know these languages well enough to judge it myself. The meaning of ambiguous words is often resolved by context, which is learned through experience of usage. For instance, if one meaning can only make sense with people, another meaning is automatically understood when it doesn’t refer to people. A tree can’t be blind, but a person can, so the forest must be dark.
But that’s reading words literally. Poetic readings purposefully break those categorical usages. In English, we do use the word blind metaphorically to mean a place where (or that) we can’t see (“blind alley,” “blind attic,” “blind area”). Does this happen with andha in Indic languages? Otherwise, I can imagine that it was be a way to make a literary reference for some Buddhists. Someone who doesn’t know the story asks, “Wait! How can a forest be blind?” “Oh,” the storyteller replies. “Let me stop here and tell a story about that forest …” Then, all is well because the forest is shown to not actually be blind.
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Oh god, now I can’t stop thinking about the Goodies episode where they made a pirate radio station and the only record they had was “A walk in the Black Forest.”
That’s actually a good point.
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And post office. Five miles off shore. All time fav.
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Yes, but not poetically, just as part of the normal use of word “andha”. See article below on the concept of a dark (blind) well (andhakuupa), etc in Sanskrit.
Minoru Hara, A note on andha in Sanskrit
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24664014#metadata_info_tab_contents
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I think this may illustrate why we disagree. It’s a matter of understanding how compounds work.
What you are saying only works if we assume Andhavana is a kammadhāraya compound, that is, adjective + noun. For English speakers this would seem to be a natural assumption, for in English you cannot express a case relationship by putting two words next to each other. “Old house” always means a house of a certain age, never a house for old people. That is, in English two words next two each other have a kammadhāraya relationship, not a tappurisa relationship. For this reason, I suspect an English speaker would tend to intuit that the same applies to Pali compounds such a Andhavana. But this would be a mistake.
I think it might be useful to illustrate what is going on by looking at a parallel from a modern language. My own native language, Norwegian, forms compounds quite freely (albeit not quite as freely as Pali). Just as in Pali, in Norwegian a compound needs to be parsed in different ways depending on context and established usage. For instance, “gamlebyen” (gamle + byen) means “the old town”, that is, it is a kammadhāraya kind of compound. On other hand, a “gamlehjem” (gamle + hjem) means a “home for the old”, never “an old home”. In other words, it is a tappurisa kind of compound, not a kammadhāraya. Only in the former case are we seeing adjective + noun. In the latter case we are seeing a case relation between the two words, much in the same way as we see case relationships between tappurisa compounds in Pali. When you read these words in Norwegian, you instinctively know the meaning. It is established through context and usage.
Similarly, in the case of Andhavana we need to decide whether it’s a kammadhāraya compound or a tappurisa compound. Now according to A.K. Warder, tappurisa compounds are by far the most common kind of compound in Pali. (This matches my own intuition.) Our default assumption should therefore be that any compound is a tappurisa unless there is a good reason to think otherwise. This would also affect our understanding of a word when we hear it, as you do in an oral culture. One would tend to “hear” tappurisa compounds. This is especially true when the first part of the compound is a word that makes a case relationship more likely. In the current case, because “blind” is the common meaning of andha in the Pali, a listener will default to hearing Andhavana as a tappurisa compound, the “Grove of the Blind”.
All of this may seem strange to natives of English. But in fact it is quite natural if you are used to hearing compounds. You “hear” tappurisa compounds just as easily as kammadhāraya compounds. What matters is context and common usage.
So I continue to insist that Andhavana most likely means the “Grove of the Blind”. In the current context the interpretation hardly matters. But there might be other cases where such fine grammatical points may have a doctrinal significance.
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I’d like to just add to this by saying that these types of names are actually common in English as well; we just don’t tend to think about them analytically.
For instance, there’s a cave in Ohio called “Old Man’s Cave.” What old man? I have no idea, nor does anybody else who isn’t educated in the folklore. It’s just what the cave is called, and it’s natural. When I hear the phrase, I just think it’s the name of a cave with some folklore.
Another example is things like “Suicide forest.” A forest does not commit suicide. It’s called this because the forest is associated with suicide in some way. I would not at all be surprised if there were a place called “Blind Grove” in English. For someone to tell me “no, that cannot be the name because a grove is not blind” would sound silly, because it’s just not how names work.
This is not to insist on one reading of the Pāli. Just showing some more examples of how ‘blind’ is not inherently problematic or unusual. Maybe in Pāli the double rendering is part of the conceptual image and folklore people associated with it 
Mettā 
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Indeed, there’s even a “Blind Creek Road” a bit north of Sydney. Presumably said road is not (usually) underwater!
Well, as I’ve show earlier, there were others who know the Indic language who understood it to mean “Dark Forest,” so this is not a matter of my ignorance of Pali compounds. There was clearly two different interpretations. The translators of Chinese texts knew the source languages better than I do.
Thank you @suvira for this article. Yes, so S. andha could mean a place where a person can hardly see. This is probably the same meaning in one Prakrit or another that Chinese translations are reported for us.
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I have no wish to challenge your rendering of the Chinese. I do recognise that sometimes the same term needs to rendered differently depending on the source language. My concern is really just with the Pali. If the meaning of the Pali had been ambiguous - which I do not think it is - it would have been relevant to take the Āgama meaning into account.
I am still intrigued, however, by the situation you describe. It seems from the information you and @Suvira supply that the meaning of Andhavana was ambiguous in the earliest period, that is, in the Āgamas, where we normally just find a transliteration of the term. It then became clearer over time, that is, in the Vibhasas and in dictionaries. Have I got this right? If so, could it be that this apparent shift reflects the shift that @Danny finds in the Sanskrit literature? What I am suggesting is that perhaps the meaning shifted over time in parallel with how the meaning seems to have shifted in the brahmanical culture. The Pali commentaries may have been insulated from this particular change, for whatever reason, whereas the scriptures in Chinese were perhaps not. Any thoughts on this?
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Right. I would translate it according to the tradition’s understanding. This is what I do with Chinese sources. If I can determine a text’s tradition and what that tradition’s interpretation was, then I make an effort to honor that. This is partly to stay sane. Trying to untangle the history of these differences makes my head spin. And It’s partly because I honestly think the kaleidoscope of readings is wonderful sometimes. To erase it with what I think is “original” or “correct” seems sacrilegious to me, even if these are often dead traditions that serve only as historical sources today.
I’ve looked into this issue more because when I looked at my translation of Andhavana in MĀ 9 (MN 24), I discovered I had mistranslated the term as “charnel ground.” I must have been misled by Muller’s Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, which has only an erroneous note by Soothill that it was a synonym of śītavana. I think Soothill must have been summarizing one of the Chinese glossaries that conflates the two words.
My impression after thinking more about it and looking at passages is that this may be more a regional or traditional divergence rather than one based on language. The different readings of Andha probably caused the need to settle on interpretations, and each tradition chose one. Or, perhaps it evolved over time. It’s difficult to say, since there’s only a couple readings here and there than pin down a meaning.
Let me give more detail about what I can find in Chinese sources supporting one reading or another (with textual references):
- Sarvāstivāda Āgamas. MĀ 9: Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana have a conversation in Andhavana. The term is partially transliterated as “Andha Forest” (安陀林 = MC. Anda Forest = G. *Andha Forest). A Chinese glossary (翻梵語) glosses the transliteration as meaning “gloomy” 蔭. (蔭 in this reading often means cloudy or overcast weather rather than complete “darkness.”) (cf. T2130.1046c17) The same transliteration is used in the Saṃyukta Āgama, which was also from a Sarvāstivāda canon.
- A text called the Sarvāstivāda Vinaya Vibhāṣā. This text is mysterious in origin, but it’s written from a Sarvāstivāda point of view discussing various Vinaya issues. It briefly glosses the same transliteration for Andha Forest after telling a story about the nun Utpalavarṇā (P. Uppalavaṇṇā). It says that Andha Forest is the name for “Dark Day Forest.” The forest is vast and dense, such that the sun doesn’t shine under the trees. It’s also the “Forest Lord of Old” (林主長), so it’s called “Andha.” Therefore, it gets this name. (cf. T1440.531c1)
- Another Chinese glossary, the 翻譯名義集, mentions Andha Forest in an entry about Sītavana. The author says that Sītavana means “Cold Forest” and that it was a deep and cold place. He then quotes the Mahasamghika Vinaya, which says that dead bodies were often found there, and people who go into forest are cold and afraid. He says that Faxian transliterates it as “Śmaśāna” (尸摩賒那, I’ve used Hirakawa’s Sanskrit) and that this means “a cemetery where corpses are discarded.” The glossary goes on to say the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya calls it “Fearful Forest,” and “many treatises” call it “Andha Forest” (transliterated). It’s also called “Dark Day Forest.” (cf. T2151.1102a26) This was likely Soothill’s source for his dictionary entry. It equates three or four different names as referring to the same forest.
- The Ekottarika Āgama. In the parallel to MĀ 9, which is EĀ 39.10, the forest’s name is translated as “Dark Day Park” (晝闇園, T125.734b8). In EĀ 17.1 and 18.7, Andha is transliterated in passages that don’t have Pali parallels.
- The Alternate Saṃyukta Āgama. This text, considered to be from the Kāśyapīya tradition, translates Andhavana as “Gained Sight Forest” (得眼林) in its parallels to the Bhikkunī Saṃyutta suttas. (cf. T100.453b28-456a22)
- Xuanzang echoes the translation in the above source in his travelogue, Record of Western Regions (大唐西域記), about the forest. He reports a story that serves as the basis for the reading, which adds a miracle to the story of the blinded robbers being given their eyes back by the Buddha. (cf. T2087.900c8) He was writing during the 600s CE, so he is a later source than the Āgama translations. But he likely heard the story in India while visiting the region, so it’s perhaps the most direct witness.
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A forest lord in Sanskrit is vanaspati, I.e. a tree.
Don’t know if this makes a difference but it jumped at me. Also, I don’t know if 長 refers to the height of the trees here as it could in say, Japanese 長=高? Forest lord of old= the trees are tall?
Please keep on doing what you are doing. I am very inspired by your work.
Doubly impressed that you haven’t gone mad yet.
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It can mean height. I’ve seen texts list the height of beings like people and gods as 長. I always figured it literally means long, as in “a body 6 feet long,” but it’s the same as six feet tall. So, you may be right. The trees are really tall is probably the meaning.
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