Thanks so much Prabath, this is a really excellent paper, and I’ll be sharing it with some academic colleagues.
I have always suspected that the “etymologies” of the school stem from a claimed patisambhida, but this is the first time I have seen it confirmed.
As background for those not familiar with this rather esoteric nuance in Buddhism:
The patisambhidas are a set of four qualities that are mentioned occasionally in the Suttas, and especially associated with Sariputta:
They have been translated as “discriminations” or “analytical knowledges”, but from the beginning it is clear they have been closely associated with the critical analysis of texts. They are:
- attha = meaning
- dhamma = text
- nirutti = terminology
- paṭibhāna - eloquence
The idea seems to have been that certain people had a specially gifted form of intelligence that allowed them to understand and analyze texts with precision. Over time, this evolved to being a quasi-magical ability to intuit the original and “true” form of language. Of course, this is not how language works: language arises by agreed convention in a community.
From an early date, this minor set of Dhammas was emphasized and made central in Theravada in a way that is quite different to other schools. An early Theravada book was even named after them: the Patisambhidamagga.
As a simple search will show, they rapidly became a standard feature of Theravadin texts, despite their rare appearance in the Suttas.
The first schism, according to the Dipavamsa, was with the Mahasanghika, on the question of the quality of textual analytics. This shows how important they were in defining the nature of the school. Historically, there is truth to this, as the Mahasanghika texts in Hybrid Sanskrit are far less precise and consistent than the Theravada.
Thus the Theravada has always favored the letter of the text and the correct interpretation of the meaning, which was doubtless one of the reasons why the commentarial literature was developed to such a degree.
It is standard in Theravada to describe prestigious arahants as possessing the patisambhidas, an epithet rarely if ever found in northern texts.
In modern times, Ajahn Mun specified that he did not possess the patisambhidas; thus he staked his tradition on personal experience rather than textual precision and authority.
By invoking—implicitly or explicitly—the patisambhidas, the Waharaka group is drawing on a deep archetype in the Theravadin sense of self-identity, a strand that is especially strong in Sri Lanka. It is this, I believe, that explains why their message is so persuasive to some, while being gibberish to anyone with a linguistic backgroiund.