Curious verse in Kd 6, Snp 3.7 and MN 92

[sam-sg]

Dear Sangha,

Thanks to Ajahn Brahmali’s explanations last week here in Singapore, prompting us to refer to Snp 3.3, I started reading the Suttanipata sequentially and came across a rather interesting verse in Snp3.7 Selasutta.

The setting is at the ascetic Keniya’s hermitage. Keniya has just served the Buddha and the Sangha with a meal. The Buddha eats, washes his hands and his bowl, and expresses his appreciation:

Aggihuttamukhā yaññā,

Sāvittī chandaso mukhaṁ;

Rājā mukhaṁ manussānaṁ,

Nadīnaṁ sāgaro mukhaṁ.

… …

This verse appears in a few other places in the Suttas and the Vinaya, e.g., Kd 6 Bhesajjakkhandhaka, and MN 92 Selasutta.

Ajahn Sujato interprets the first two lines as follows, and Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation is close:

https://suttacentral.net/snp3.7/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=linebyline&reference=main&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin#34.3

The foremost of sacrifices is the offering to the sacred flame;

the Sāvitrī is the foremost of prayer;

Ajahn Brahmali interprets the same lines from Kd 6 as follows:

https://suttacentral.net/pli-tv-kd6/en/brahmali?lang=en&layout=linebyline&reference=main&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin#35.8.1

Sacrifice is the best fire worship,

Sāvittī the best meter;

First:

The contrast between the two translations is very interesting and curious. Ajahn Brahmali’s take on the first line seems to flip Ajahn Sujato’s interpretation, to elevate the value of sacrifice over making ritual offerings.

With the second line, Ajahn Sujato’s translation and commentary specifically talk about the Savitri or Gayatri mantra or prayer that’s taught and recited to this day in the Vedic tradition, while in Ajahn Brahmali’s interpretation this line is about the meter or the rhythmic pattern of the verse, a point that could potentially apply to verses from any school, or even any other religion.

Reading the passages as a whole, the translation and commentary from Bhikkhu Bodhi and Ajahn Sujato feel like the Buddha is endorsing the Vedic yajna (yañña) practices and the Gayatri mantra as being valuable. However, Ajahn Brahmali’s translation provides a very different flavour with a distinctly different meaning.

Since these verses appear in many Suttas and even in the Vinaya, I wonder if there is something more to these that I’m missing here.

Second:

This is simply my conjecture and could be completely off the mark. The word “mukha” appears in every line of these verses. Ajahn Sujato comments about the use of the word “mukha” in MN 92:

Mukha means originally “mouth”, hence “opening”, “entrance”; but also “face”, hence “front”, “foremost”.

However, I’m imagining the Buddha chatting with the people, perhaps joking to make the conversation more memorable, punning on the word “mukhya” [with a y] which means chief, foremost, or important. https://dictionary.sutta.org/browse/m/mukhya/

In fact, the word “mukhya” is commonly used today in the Indian languages that some of us speak, and means the same thing.

Thanks in advance for any insights. Thanks again to Ajahns @Brahmali and @sujato for the explanations.

[Ravi]

Sharing my thoughts:

1. Bhante Sujato’s rendering seems more accurate/apt for the two lines you have quoted. The first refers to the ‘Agnihotra’ ritual which is very ancient, and was considered very important. The second refers to the ‘Gayatri Mantra’ which is in Gayatri meter but is dedicated to the solar deity ‘Savitr’. So it is called the ‘Savitri mantra’ also. It is an important Vedic prayer and the term ‘Chanda’ can refer to the Vedic corpus - not just to a ‘meter’.
2. I have my doubts if this really goes back to the Buddha. It could have been composed by later monks who wanted a saying which would sound pleasing to brahmins, encouraging them to donate to the sangha.
3. Alternatively: ‘Agnihotra’ does not involve animal sacrifice - so it is possible Buddha or later monks may have considered this (comparatively) the best among the sacrifices. If we take the second clause as referring to the meter in which the Savitri mantra was composed, and not to the prayer, we can call it foremost among the meters because it is the shortest Vedic meter and the first usually listed.

[Brahmali]

@sam-sg

The contrast between the two translations is very interesting and curious. Ajahn Brahmali’s take on the first line seems to flip Ajahn Sujato’s interpretation, to elevate the value of sacrifice over making ritual offerings.

Thanks so much, Sam, for bringing this up! I am always looking to update my translation based on perceptive feedback.

One of the problems I had in rendering this is that I do not have sufficient understanding of Indian culture, including the norms held 2,500 years ago. Our main source of knowledge for this are the Upanishads, some of which I have read, but my understanding of these texts is superficial at best.

Given this lack of cultural understanding, I have instead focussed on the structure and content of the verse, including the broader context. So let’s have a look at these factors, starting with context.

The overall context concerns a non-Buddhist fire-worshipping ascetic called Keṇiya offering a meal to the Buddha and the Sangha. This might explain why our current verse does not express particularly Buddhist ideas, but rather seems to present ideas from the broader Indian culture, e.g., that sāvittī is the best meter. Now coming to your first point, Sam, that

@sam-sg

Reading the passages as a whole, the translation and commentary from Bhikkhu Bodhi and Ajahn Sujato feel like the Buddha is endorsing the Vedic yajna (yañña) practices and the Gayatri mantra as being valuable. However, Ajahn Brahmali’s translation provides a very different flavour with a distinctly different meaning.

Given that this probably concerns the broader Indian context, I am not sure whether there is all that much difference between rendering sāvitti as “metre” or “prayer”. We are dealing with a broad understanding of this term, and I think both renderings are acceptable. In fact, I suspect both renderings are implied simultaneously. Still, I do agree with you that “metre” is likely to be broader in its connotations and therefore in the end preferrable, given the inter-religious context.

At the same time, Keṇiya has just made an offering to the Sangha, and it would make sense that the Buddha praises this as superior to fire worship. It is here that I think the verse comes the closest to expressing a particularly Buddhist perspective.

Let’s look more closely at some of the details.

Each line seems to state that “A is the chief of B”, where B is in the genitive plural case. In the latter three lines this structure is easy to discern, but in the first line it is obscured by the compounding of the word aggihutta with mukhā. However, if we assume, reasonably enough, that the first line has the same structure as the last three, then it must read as A = yaññā and B = aggihotra, and thus we get: “Sacrifice is the chief of fire worship.”

The second point to make is that the relationship between A and B is not the same for all the lines. In lines 2 and 3, A is a subset of B, that is, Sāvitthi is a kind of metre, a subset of it. The same goes for kings: they are part of the group humans, a subset of humans. In line 4, however, the ocean is not part of the group rivers, that is, it is not subset of rivers. Here the idea of chief must therefore be somewhat different. Most likely the ocean is the chief of the rivers because they all merge into it. What, then, is the relationship between A and B in the first line? Yaññā, “sacrifice”, is broader than aggihutta, “fireworship”, and so yañña is not a subset of aggihutta. From this it seems likely that line 1 should be understood along the lines of line 4. Again, we get something like “Sacrifice is the chief of fire worship.”

So, for the time being I stand by my rendering.