DN 3. Ambaṭṭha Sutta

Me again :slight_smile:

This time I’m translating DN 3 and in parallel consult Bhante @sujato translation. So I came to this paragraph:

“ekamidāhaṃ, bho gotama, samayaṃ ācariyassa brāhmaṇassa pokkharasātissa kenacideva karaṇīyena kapilavatthuṃ agamāsiṃ. yena sakyānaṃ sandhāgāraṃ tenupasaṅkamiṃ. tena kho pana samayena sambahulā sakyā ceva sakyakumārā ca sandhāgāre uccesu āsanesu nisinnā honti aññamaññaṃ aṅgulipatodakehi sañjagghantā saṃkīḷantā, aññadatthu mamaññeva maññe anujagghantā, na maṃ koci āsanenapi nimantesi."

Which in Bhante Sujato’s translation is:
“This one time, Master Gotama, my teacher, the brahmin Pokkharasāti, went to Kapilavatthu
on some business. He approached the Sakyans in their meeting hall. Now at that time several
Sakyans and Sakyan princes were sitting on high seats, poking each other with their fingers,
giggling and playing together. In fact, they even presumed to giggle at me, and didn’t invite me to a seat.

Since agamāsiṃ is an aorist form, 1st person singular, it seems that the fist part of the sentence is wrong. Not the brahmin Pokkharasāti, but Ambaṭṭha, sent by the brahmin to do some business, went to Kapilavatthu.

What do you think?

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Oh yes, quite right, that was a bad oversight! The verb in the following segment confirms this, and I have in fact switched to first person narrative later, without noticing. Thanks so much, please let me know if anything else pops up.

Change to:

I went to Kapilavatthu on some business for my teacher, the brahmin Pokkharasāti.

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Thank you, Bhante. I’m glad for this small contribution to make the translation better.
Will signal if I spot anything else.

All in all, I want to thank you for making all four Nikayas new and very readable translation. It helps me too a lot when translating into Serbian.

Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu. :pray:

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