A small problem with SN 1.2

Essays
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There seems to be a textual corruption in SN 1.2. Only the first two lines of the “verse” are metrical, and it seems as if the remainder, while treated as verse in the MS edition, should be prose. But the flow of the prose is not entirely clear either. The line “Due to the cessation and stilling of feelings” seems awkward and does not have a parallel (?) Perhaps it is extraneous or garbled?

Now, there are two Chinese parallels, and I’m wondering if @cdpatton can help me out here. I think that in the SA 1268 parallel, it seems like it is translating the first two lines of verse? And the other parallel seems less clear?

I’m wondering if it’s best to change the HTML so that it would be something like:

“But how is it that you understand liberation, emancipation, and seclusion for sentient beings?”

“Because I have ended relish for rebirth,
and finished with perception and consciousness.

Due to the cessation and stilling of feelings, that, good sir, is how I understand liberation, emancipation, and seclusion for sentient beings.”

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It is not a verse (I translated it to Sanskrit as follows, applying no sandhi to keep word-boundaries clear):

vimokṣasūktam (The discourse on vimokṣa/release)

śrāvastīnidhānam .

atha anyatamā atikrāntavarṇā devatā atikrāntāyām rātryām kevalam api jetṛvanam avabhāsya bhagavantam upasaṁkrāntā . upasaṁkramya bhagavantam abhivādya ekānte asthāt .

ekānte sthitā sā devatā bhagavantam etad avocat –

jānāsi no tvam mārṣa sattvānām vimokṣaḥ pramokṣaḥ vivekaḥ iti

jānāmi aham āyuṣman sattvānām vimokṣaḥ pramokṣaḥ vivekaḥ iti

yathā katham punar tvam mārṣa , jānāsi sattvānām vimokṣaḥ pramokṣaḥ vivekaḥ iti

nandībhavaparikṣayau , saṁjñāvijñānasaṁkṣayau , vedanānām nirodhāḥ upaśamāḥ – evam aham āyuṣman , jānāmi sattvānām vimokṣaḥ pramokṣaḥ vivekaḥ iti .

The last two sentences mean:

"In what way do you, my good sir, understand the terms vimokṣa (release), pramokṣa (liberation) and viveka (seclusion) of living beings?

The exhaustion of enjoyment (nandī) and birth/becoming (bhava), the disappearance of notions (samjñā) and conceptions (vijñāna), the restraint (nirodhāḥ) and calming (upaśamāḥ) of feelings (vedanāḥ), respectively, venerable sir — are how I understand the vimokṣa, pramokṣa, and viveka of living beings."

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In both of parallels in SA and SA-2, the Buddha’s answer is in prose. There is only a verse said by the deva praising the Buddha afterward.

SA 1268 is very close to SN 1.2. The Buddha’s answer is:

「愛喜滅盡，我心解脫；心解脫已，故知一切眾生所著、所集，決定解脫、廣解脫、極廣解脫。」
“Delight being completely ceased, my mind is liberated. My mind being liberated, I therefore know the certain, broad, and very broad liberation of all sentient beings [from] their attachments and formations.”

It’s more explanatory than SN 1.2, and the three synonyms for liberation are different. But it’s like SN 1.2 in that the Buddha says he knows liberation because of the cessation of delight. But SN 1.2 has added the word bhava to the expression. Whereas, SA 1268 has added the attachments and formations (or origins) of sentient beings to the Buddha’s answer.

SA-2.179 is nearly identical to SA 1268 except that it changes the Buddha’s answer a little:

「我盡觀見有，汝天當知，今我 之心得善解脫，得解脫故，能知眾生之所縛 著，得解脫、盡解脫、淨解脫，亦悉知之。」
I ended contemplation and views of existence. God, you should know, my mind now is well liberated. Because I’ve gained liberation, I know that sentient beings gain liberation from their bondage. I know their complete liberation and pure liberation, too.

In this version, bhava is mentioned, but not delight. This is a pattern I’ve seen before - the Pali version in a set of parallels often seems to combine other versions to arrive at a version that straddles them. Here, SN 1.2 mentions both delight and existence, but the two SA sutras are one or the other.

The concluding verse in both of the Chinese versions is a standardized verse of praise like the last verse in SN 2.18. It’s repeated over 50 times as the conclusion to sutras in which a deva asks the Buddha a question.

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Thanks so much to both of you for the response.

I’m not so sure. The first two terms can be read as Vatta metre, and similar phrases to the first line (Nandībhavaparikkhīṇaṁ, etc.) are found several times in Pali, always in verse. Also, the feel of these compounds is unlike Pali prose, which would prefer to use resolved forms. And see Ven Bodhi’s remark, with which I agree:

It would be more plausible, however, to construe this three-term tappurisa as an inverted compound placed in irregular order probably owing to the exigencies of verse. This interpretation is confirmed by Pj II 469,14 and Dhp-a IV 192,7-8 in their gloss on the related bahubbīhi compound nandībhavaparikkhīṇaṃ as tīsu bhavesu parikkhīṇataṇhaṃ; “one who has destroyed craving for the three realms of existence.”

So you take the three answering phrases as each corresponding to one of the terms in the question? Hmm.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems you’ve translated as nominative, whereas the Pali is ablative?

The commentary glosses the ablative with instrumental, which I take as implying a causative sense (since both cases overlap in that sense), but Ven Bodhi translates the instrumental directly, “by the utter destruction …”

I understand that that is the explicit presentation, but does it not feel like the first phrases could be a rendering of verse?

愛喜滅盡，我心解脫

Or not!

So this establishes a logical relation between the phrases, which agrees with the ablative construction, but in the Pali it seems as if all three ablate to the conclusion, if you will, that is, the ablative sense is “Because of (these three things) I speak of liberation …”

Oh okay. So it could easily have been the case that a similar verse was originally included in the Pali, then it was abbreviated away, then the editors took the Buddha’s answer as verse.

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It’s hard to say. Classical Chinese tends to use four character phrases in prose composition, so it’s not so strange to see this. If you look at Chinese punctuation, you might notice that very often the clauses are in multiples of four characters …

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I read the Pali too as nominative plurals (which I have put in nominative dual in Sanskrit, except for nirodhāḥ & upaśamāḥ for which I have used nominative plural as they pertain to the vedānām which is plural).

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Reading nandībhavaparikkhayā, saññāviññāṇasaṅkhayā & vedanānaṁ nirodhā upasamā as ablative or instrumental doesnt make sense as the question is asking for the Buddha’s definition of those terms, the ablatives and instrumentals (“because… and due to… and due to…”) would not grammatically complete the sentence and they would leave the questioner guessing what the completion of the sentence is. To me nominative plurals offer the most straightforward reading of the Pali.

The words “Evaṁ khvāhaṁ āvuso jānāmi” shows that he was offering definitions for those terms (in the immediately prior phrases) in the nominative.

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Some remarks on interpretation, which seems as unclear as the form. Bodhi translates the commentary, so that’s worth checking out, but doesn’t resolve the problem for me.

  • Since the first line refers to the ending of desire for rebirth, it is safe to assume that the whole teaching is pitched for the arahant.
  • That being so, the ending of the three aggregates explicitly mentioned—perception, feeling, consciousness—must mean the Parinibbana of the arahant’s death (rather than, say, the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling).
  • That being so, the Buddha cannot be referring to himself (because he is not dead!).
  • Therefore, the argument in the Chinese—that it is because of the Buddha’s liberation that he can understand the liberation of others—cannot apply to the Pali.
  • The Buddha is explaining how he understands whether or not other beings are liberated.
  • That means the ambiguous sattānam must be rendered as genitive rather than dative; in other words, the Buddha is not explaining the means by which there comes to be liberation for beings, but rather, the criteria by which he knows there is the liberation of beings.
  • This also implies that Bodhi’s rendering of the ablative as the instrumental of means (“by which”) works well.

Yes, I considered this, but it’s not idiomatic. Pali doesn’t speak of the “cessations” of the two things, it speaks of the “cessation” of the two things. And elsewhere we have Nandībhavaparikkhīṇo and Nandībhavaparikkhīṇaṁ, both of which are singular.

So we should render as something like:

By the ending of relish for rebirth, by the finishing of perception and consciousness, by the cessation and stilling of feelings—that, good sir, is how I know the liberation, emancipation, and seclusion of sentient beings.

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Just a tiny detail: Since it’s not verse, perhaps “the liberation” should be moved from segment 5.4 to segment 5.5 now—there is no reason to keep lines in a certain length any more now.