Dhammapada 259 my translation and question

Senryu · June 2, 2017, 5:09pm

I’ve been working on Dhammapada 259:
na tāvatā dhammadharo, yāvatā bahu bhāsati.
yo ca appampi sutvāna, dhammaṃ kāyena passati.
sa ve dhammadharo hoti, yo dhammaṃ nappamajjati.

I am unsure of the last line’s meaning, mainly which way around to put the two halves of it. Most translations I have seen put the last half first but the meaning also may change that way. Here are my two efforts - comments appreciated:

One is not a ‘knower of the dhamma’ (dhammadhara) on account of talking a lot.
Anyone who has heard barely anything (barely any teachings), but sees the dhamma with the body,
And does not neglect the dhamma - He indeed is a dhammadhara.

Or:
One is not a ‘knower of the dhamma’ (dhammadhara) on account of talking a lot.
Anyone who has heard barely anything (barely any teachings), but sees the dhamma with the body,
He indeed is a dhammadhara - he does not neglect the dhamma.

Senryu · February 20, 2018, 6:32pm

Never got any feedback on this one from back in June. Anyone have any opinions on my translation? Or which of the two options is more correct? Or of any errors?

Many thanks!

Senryu · February 20, 2018, 6:44pm

Also since @sujato just brought AN 5.26 up today, I notice that these two suttas go very nicely together. If I’m understanding AN 5.26 correctly, it seems to be saying that you can be liberated on the basis of practicing samatha after having studied teachings (options 1~4); or, you can be liberated on the basis of samatha practice without having studied the teachings (option 5).

I’ll paste AN 5.26 here for everyone’s convenience - suttacentral’s Bodhi version, with my highlights:

“Bhikkhus, there are these **five bases of liberation by means of which, if a bhikkhu dwells heedful, ardent, and resolute, his unliberated mind is liberated, his undestroyed taints are utterly destroyed, and he reaches the as-yet-unreached unsurpassed security from bondage. What five?

2(1) “Here, bhikkhus, the Teacher or a fellow monk in the position of a teacher teaches the Dhamma to a bhikkhu. In whatever way the Teacher or that fellow monk in the position of a teacher teaches the Dhamma to the bhikkhu, in just that way he experiences inspiration in the meaning and inspiration in the Dhamma. As he does so, joy arises in him. When he is joyful, rapture arises. For one with a rapturous mind, the body becomes tranquil. One tranquil in body feels pleasure. For one feeling pleasure, the mind becomes concentrated. This is the first basis of liberation, by means of which, if a bhikkhu dwells heedful, ardent, and resolute, his unliberated mind is liberated, his undestroyed taints are utterly destroyed, and he reaches the as-yet-unreached unsurpassed security from bondage.

3(2) “Again, neither the Teacher nor a fellow monk in the position of a teacher teaches the Dhamma to a bhikkhu, but he himself teaches the Dhamma to others in detail as he has heard it and learned it. In whatever way the bhikkhu an.iii.22 teaches the Dhamma to others in detail as he has heard it and learned it, in just that way, in relation to that Dhamma, he experiences inspiration in the meaning and inspiration in the Dhamma. As he does so, joy arises in him. When he is joyful, rapture arises. For one with a rapturous mind, the body becomes tranquil. One tranquil in body feels pleasure. For one feeling pleasure, the mind becomes concentrated. This is the second basis of liberation, by means of which, if a bhikkhu dwells heedful, ardent, and resolute, his unliberated mind is liberated, his undestroyed taints are utterly destroyed, and he reaches the as-yet-unreached unsurpassed security from bondage.

4(3) “Again, neither the Teacher nor a fellow monk in the position of a teacher teaches the Dhamma to a bhikkhu, nor does he himself teach the Dhamma to others in detail as he has heard it and learned it, but he recites the Dhamma in detail as he has heard it and learned it. In whatever way the bhikkhu recites the Dhamma in detail as he has heard it and learned it, in just that way, in relation to that Dhamma, he experiences inspiration in the meaning and inspiration in the Dhamma. As he does so, joy arises in him. When he is joyful, rapture arises. For one with a rapturous mind, the body becomes tranquil. One tranquil in body feels pleasure. For one feeling pleasure, the mind becomes concentrated. This is the third basis of liberation, by means of which, if a bhikkhu dwells heedful, ardent, and resolute, his unliberated mind is liberated, his undestroyed taints are utterly destroyed, and he reaches the as-yet-unreached unsurpassed security from bondage.

5(4) “Again, neither the Teacher nor a fellow monk in the position of a teacher teaches the Dhamma to a bhikkhu, nor does he teach the Dhamma to others in detail as he has heard it and learned it, nor does he recite the Dhamma in detail as he has heard it and learned it, but he ponders, an.iii.23 examines, and mentally inspects the Dhamma as he has heard it and learned it. In whatever way the bhikkhu ponders, examines, and mentally inspects the Dhamma as he has heard it and learned it, in just that way, in relation to that Dhamma, he experiences inspiration in the meaning and inspiration in the Dhamma. As he does so, joy arises in him. When he is joyful, rapture arises. For one with a rapturous mind, the body becomes tranquil. One tranquil in body feels pleasure. For one feeling pleasure, the mind becomes concentrated. This is the fourth basis of liberation, by means of which, if a bhikkhu dwells heedful, ardent, and resolute, his unliberated mind is liberated, his undestroyed taints are utterly destroyed, and he reaches the as-yet-unreached unsurpassed security from bondage.

6(5) “Again, neither the Teacher nor a fellow monk in the position of a teacher teaches the Dhamma to a bhikkhu, nor does he teach the Dhamma to others in detail as he has heard it and learned it, nor does he recite the Dhamma in detail as he has heard it and learned it, nor does he ponder, examine, and mentally inspect the Dhamma as he has heard it and learned it, but he has grasped well a certain object of concentration, attended to it well, sustained it well, and penetrated it well with wisdom. In whatever way the bhikkhu has grasped well a certain object of concentration, attended to it well, sustained it well, and penetrated it well with wisdom, in just that way, in relation to that Dhamma, he experiences inspiration in the meaning and inspiration in the Dhamma. As he does so, joy arises in him. When he is joyful, rapture arises. For one with a rapturous mind, the body becomes tranquil. One tranquil in body feels pleasure. For one feeling pleasure, the mind becomes concentrated. This is the fifth basis of liberation, by means of which, if a bhikkhu dwells heedful, ardent, and resolute, an.iii.24 his unliberated mind is liberated, his undestroyed taints are utterly destroyed, and he reaches the as-yet-unreached unsurpassed security from bondage.

7“These, bhikkhus, are the five bases of liberation, by means of which, if a bhikkhu dwells heedful, ardent, and resolute, his unliberated mind is liberated, his undestroyed taints are utterly destroyed, and he reaches the as-yet-unreached unsurpassed security from bondage.”

Sorry there seem to be issues with copying and pasting from suttacentral - numbers and references muddled into the text. If anyone wants to diagnose, I’m on google chrome, Mac OS 12.6 Anyway hope you get the idea.

Both of these suttas seem to paint the picture of the possibility of being ignorant of teachings, but becoming realised through direct experience in samatha practice. Interesting.

sujato · February 21, 2018, 2:17am

Sorry, I seem to have missed this when originally posted.

The original verse is playing with the idea of dhara in the senses of “remembering” and “bearing, embodying”. In the Vedic tradition, someone who “carries” (dhara) the sacred knowledge (veda) is considered wise. But it is more than just personal wisdom. The Vedic tradition is transpersonal: it is the inherited knowledge of a people. So those who learned the Vedas were vessels for timeless wisdom.

But the Buddha is, as usual, insisting that mere textual knowledge is not enough. Just as a “brahmin” is redefined as a truly holy person, so too one who “bears” the teaching becomes one who literally “embodies” it (kāyena passati). It’s not easy to capture such word play in translation!

As to the last line, the typical prose syntax would place the relative clause first (yo dhammaṃ nappamajjati). But it is of course quite common to mix up the order in verse. I am no expert in metre, but I don’t believe there is a metrical reason that forces this reordering, so it should be understood as rhetorical or stylistic. This is reinforced by the somewhat unusual use of dual relatives (yo ca appampi sutvāna … yo dhammaṃ nappamajjati). So I would try to retain the rhetorical force of this.

I might render the verse something like this:

You’re not a vessel of the teaching just because you talk a lot.
Though they’ve learned but little, one who personally witnesses the teaching
is a true vessel of the teaching—one who does not neglect the teaching.

Senryu · February 21, 2018, 11:56am

Thank you very much @sujato! That helps with the last line, and also deepens my understanding of dhammadhara. I do understand that my literalism with seeing with the body is unusual, and I have reasons for that… I hope to share about that in the future, it’s a deep topic I’ve been working a lot on.

lemon · March 8, 2018, 2:30am

T210 27.4
奉持法者，不以多言，
雖素少聞，身依法行，
守道不忘，可謂奉法。
English:
To be an upholder of the dhamma, is not by speaking a lot,
even who heard very little, but can practice the dhamma with the body,
and does not forget to uphold the dhamma, is truly the upholder of the dhamma.

The other parallels are the same. So I guess Effort One is more appropriate.

Senryu · March 8, 2018, 3:17pm

Thanks! Although, I think since the Chinese came from the Indic anyway, @sujato’s point is not negated.

I cannot understand Chinese. But I am very interested in what the translatoin possibilities are, for “身依法行”. The translatoin you have provided, puts it as “but can follow the dhamma”. And yet, with the aid of google translate, I can see that it seem 身 can mean ‘body’. Does anyone here know the range of possible meanings for “身依法行”?

lemon · March 12, 2018, 3:26am

Yes, you are right.
I should put “body” in the translation, that would be more accurate.

Senryu · March 12, 2018, 3:52pm

OK, so I see you have changed it from:

but can follow the dhamma

to:

but can practice the dhamma with the body

What I find striking is that you have changed the verb from ‘follow’ to ‘practice’. Is there a verb included in the Chinese? And if so, would you mind sharing the possibilities of meaning (even ones which you would not think could fit here)? Thanks!

lemon · March 13, 2018, 2:17am

I changed the verb, because “follow the dhamma with the body” sounds kind of weird.
I can tell you that in all 3 Chinese parallels, the verb here is 行：

T210 身(body) 依(according to)法 (dhamma) 行(practice)

T212, T213 具足(having) 法(dhamma) 身(body) 行(practice)

I translated as “follow the dhamma” is too general. Technically, it should be:

practice the dhamma with the body

or

the body practices according to dhamma

the later one might be more accurate, but as an English-Chinese translator, I was requested to do the translation “more readable”.

My boss told me: whenever you translate anything from English into Chinese, make the sentence into a local Chinese-speaking way, not the way of English.

So, inevitably some key info. would be missing. Thank you for your correction. Next time I’ll be more accurate.

lemon · March 13, 2018, 2:38am

And I’d like to talk a little bit more about the verb 行(practice) here.
In the 3 different Chinese Dhammapadas, the verb here is always 行(practice).

I’d like to mention that these 3 Chinese Dhammapadas were translated from Sanskrit to Chinese in different centuries.

T210 was translated in AD 225.

T212 was translated in AD 383.

T213 was translated around AD 985.

And those translators, including monks from India, were all using the verb 行(practice).

But we can see that this sentence in T212 and T213 are totally the same. So it was actually copy-paste.

I know a little bit of Pali. 行(practice), in Pali, should be carati.

But we can see that, in Pali Dhammapada, the verb here is passati（in Chinese it should be见[see] ）.

And in Udānavarga 4.21, the paralleled verse is:

dharmaṁ kāyena vai spṛśet

I don’t know Sanskrit, so what I am doing is to translate it into Pali:

spṛśet → spṛśati 觸 → phusati=phassati (touch)

Pali Dhammapada: passati (see)
Chinese Dhammapadas: carati (practice)
Udānavarga: phusati (touch)
I have no idea about why the verbs here are all different.
Pali Dhammapada and Udānavarga are closer.
Maybe “passati (paśyati)” was falsely copied into “phassati (spṛśati)”.

Senryu · March 13, 2018, 3:12am

Yes, interesting. I wonder why it is different in the Chinese. And I wonder if similar passages elsewhere, have changed. There are many examples of ‘touching’ dhamma and other things, with the body in Pāli. I think ‘seeing’ with the body is rare though.

For reference, here is what wiktionary has to say on this Chinese verb:

行

(literary or dialectal) to walk
to go; to move
to carry out; to execute
to perform (a salute)
OK; good

    行，就這麼定了。 / 行，就这么定了。  ―  Xíng, jiù zhème dìng le.  ―  OK, it's a deal.

to be good; to work

    我覺得這方法行。 / 我觉得这方法行。  ―  Wǒ juéde zhè fāngfǎ xíng.  ―  I think this will work.

to be good (opposed to bad) (usually in negative sentences, or with 還)

    我成績不行。 / 我成绩不行。  ―  Wǒ chéngjī bù xíng.  ―  I have bad grades.

to be able to do something (usually mentioned before)

Senryu · March 13, 2018, 8:35pm

Sorry I missed this part before. Can I ask, were they all translated from the same school? (Do you know which one?) If so, it may be that that school had the equivelent ‘practice’ in the original. Or also possible that it had ‘see’ or some other word, and it didn’t make sense to the Chinese, so the first translator changed it, and the next two refered to the old translation for clarity on this…? But I find the first more plausible.

If they were translated from different schools, that would be interesting…

Here is a comparison of 4 versions in case anyone is interested:

lemon · March 14, 2018, 1:59am

These 3 Chinese dhammapadas were all from Sarvāstivāda (Pali: Sabbatthivāda).
The different dhammapadas of Sarvāstivāda were all edited by Elder Dharmatrata (lived in 1st century, AD).
The general situation (if we want to be more accurate, we need to do more readings ) was:
By the time of 1st century AD, in the north India region of Sarvāstivāda, Elder Dharmatrata somehow got the Pali Dhammapada (probably not in Pali, but in some other Prakrit language).
He compared the Pali Dhammapada with their own Dhmmapada (probably named Udānavarga), and found that there were so many parallels and differences.
So, he edited this 2 Dhammapadas and made 3 versions:

1 500-gathas Dhammapada (missing), this was the Pali Dhammapada, but translated into Sanskrit, and some other Gathas from Udānavarga was added in.

2 700-gathas Dhammapada (T210), a combination of Pali Dhammapada and Udānavarga, which was based on the Pali Dhammapada, and extended by some verses and vaggas from Udānavarga. So T210 actually includes the whole Pali Dhammapada inside, and some other verses from Udānavarga.

3 900-gathas Dhammapada (Udānavarga/T213), this was the original Sarvāstivāda Dhammapada, also edited by Elder Dharmatrata.
But please note that there’s a major difference between Udānavarga and T213.
In fact, for the name of T212, 出曜经, 出曜 means “udāna”, and 经 means “sutta”. So actually 出曜经=Udānavarga, but there are so many explanatory texts and stories added in T212.
And T213 includes the gathas taken from T212, so it was named 法集要颂经(法集=Dhammapada 要颂=key gathas 经=sutta).
So T213 and Udānavarga are similar but not the same thing.
That’s all I know for now, I need to do more readings and come back.

Senryu · March 14, 2018, 2:25am

This story sound very interesting, thank you for sharing!
You say Pāli but not Pāli. What does the story specifically say? Does it say that he got the Dhammapada from a specific nikāya, for example?

Do you mean BHS? That’s basically a Prakrit with a Sanskritized twang, right?

Do we have a good and complete English translation of this one?

lemon · March 14, 2018, 3:00am

For question 1, actually it’s a story speculated by researchers. Since T210, brought to China and translated by 维只难(Vighna) and 竺将炎(sorry, I really can’t find this monk’s Sanskrit spelling, in Chinese it pronounces “Zhu Jiang Yan”) in 225, was signed as “edited by Ayya Dharmatrata”.
Firstly, Vighna and Zhu Jiang Yan brought 26 vaggas of Sanskrit Dhammapada to China; later, Zhu Jiang Yan brought the other 13 vaggas. In 225, these 2 monks and some Chinese monks translated the whole 39 vaggas of Dhammapada, the T210.
Also, the story of “3 versions (500, 700, and 900) of Dhammapada edited by Elder Dharmatrata” was very famous in Chinese Buddhism at that time, and was recorded by a number of books written by Chinese monks.
After comparison between T210 and Pali Dhammapada, researchers found that Pali Dhammapada was totally included in T210. So they concluded that the first 26 vaggas brought to China by Vighna and Zhu Jiang Yan was the Pali Dhammapada in another Prakrit but already edited into Sanskrit by Elder Dharmatrata.
And the existing 26 vaggas in T210 paralleled with Pali Dhammapada all include more gathas.
So the researchers came up with the story here.

For question 2, I think it would be in standard Sanskrit, not any kind of Hybrid Sanskrit, because Sarvāstivādins are all professional Sanskrit users.

For question 3, I don’t know, probably not, I think firstly we should complete the parallels on SuttaCentral.