Hello Ven Sujato and all. Thanks so much for SuttaCentral, it is a fantastic resource. I have just been studying and translating SF 169 (https://suttacentral.net/skt/sf169). The text there reads
dasatsu ca pratyayeṣu duḥkhāni santīti yasyaivaṃ syād asvayaṃkāraparakārahetusamutpannaṃ duḥkham evam ahaṃ na vadāmi |
However, this should be corrected to
asatsu ca pratyayeṣu duḥkhāni santīti yasyaivaṃ syād asvayaṃkāraparakārahetusamutpannaṃ duḥkham evam ahaṃ na vadāmi |
The mistake seems to have come from the text on GRETIL (http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/nidansyu.htm), where the ‘d’ of the line index marker ‘20.13d’ has been duplicated to create dasatsu rather than asatsu. Comparison with the original printed text (available via Google Books!) shows asatsu to be the correct reading.
Thanks for this Ven Sujato. The translation is part of my ongoing research into paṭicca-samuppāda. I find that making translations is a helpful way to go into a text. The sūtra on Acela Kāśyapa has a tragic ending, whereas the Pāli parallel has a happy ending – quite a difference really. But the main teaching part of the two passages is similar with some small differences which illuminate for me how the Buddha may have presented various kinds of arguments against the four ways in which the samaṇas and brahmaṇas debated the causation of sukha and dukkha at that time, as self-made, other-made, both self- and other-mind, and made by chance. The teaching of paṭicca-samuppāda is of course presented as the Buddha’s alternative to these four ways.
By the way, I enjoyed your and Ven Brahmali’s book on the authenticity of early Buddhist texts. It was timely, as I had just reviewed Christopher Beckwith’s book Greek Buddha, on the possibility of Pyrrho being a Buddhist. He has some fascinating ideas, but he bases some of them on the sceptical arguments of Schopen etc. that the Buddhist texts have little historical value. Your book was a great source of counter argument.
Well, thanks. I hadn’t been aware of this book—kinda out of the loop really—but a google took me straight to your review, which you had perhaps omitted out of modesty. But you failed! Here it is. A nice analysis which gave me some giggles. You very kindly pointed out some of the disasters in his approach.
I wonder if you’ve read McEvilley’s book on a similar topic? It seemed to me—I read it some time ago—that it had a lot of intriguing ideas, but suffered from a woefully inadequate knowledge of early Buddhism.
The utter arbitrariness of relying on Megasthenes as “hard evidence” for the Buddha’s teaching, but the entire Buddhist tradition is not? That’s so blatantly racist.
