Does gandhabba mean “semen”?

It’s in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 6.2 The Doctrine of the Five Fires.

Sorry, a version is available online.

Something to make it easy …

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This is mind/body dualism. Buddhism isn’t. As quoted by Ayya below:

It’s in MN 38, as mentioned at the start of the post.

I know that. I think you misunderstood what I was saying. But thanks for making sure I’m not heading in a wrong direction, regardless.

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I’ve done a bit more research. I’m not sure what exactly Analayo is saying, but 香陰 is a translation of gandharva. There’s a much more illuminating passage on the topic - and a better translation of the passage that’s inconsistent in MA - in the older Mahavibhasa translation in Chinese @ T1547.516c1, 517a18, etc. A text search at CBETA will yield the passages. There’s even a gloss of the term:

問曰。何以故說香陰。答曰。以香存命故。中陰名香陰。
Why is it said to be “fragrant intermediate”? Answer: Because it lives on fragrance and it’s in the intermediate (hidden) state, it’s called “fragrant intermediate.”

It seems that because this particular type of gandharva was a spirit in the intermediate existence (中陰), translators thought they would add 陰 to its translation to make that context clear. Sometimes, Chinese translations are frustrating because they mix together literal and functional translations in the same term to capture context. The result can be pretty esoteric.

Another thing that I noticed is that in Sanskrit there’s a figurative expression for pregnancy: gandharvapratyupasthita. Pratyupasthita means things like “present, happened, occurred, arrived.”

Well, that’s pretty much word for word what 香陰已至 means: “The gandharva has arrived.” So, that piece of the original Indic would appear found. That third item means the woman is pregnant. So, the three would be 1. a man and woman get together, 2. they have intercourse/she’s fertile, 3. she becomes pregnant.

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Yes, 香陰 (in MA201) is a translation of gandharva (MN38).

Since the term is not found in SN 12. Nidana Samyutta and its SA version, the issue is why it is used for referring to a being in the intermediate state between death and rebirth.

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Sorry, what five elements are these? I’m not sure what they refer to. Is it the five kinds of sacrificial fire? As to the texts I am reading, I linked in the OP.

I don’t have time to follow this up right now, but IIRC it was I think from Wijesekera, who didn’t provide a reference. We should check it!

Sorry about that. But I still don’t know what you are saying!

This is just the same word as in our original passage. It’s simply a quote from the Divyavadana, and the dictionary is just adding its interpretation. But the passage is the same, so it doesn’t really add anything.

286.011. katameṣāṃ trayāṇām? mātāpitarau raktau bhavataḥ saṃnipatitau/ mātā cāsya kalyā bhavati ṛtumatī ca/ gandharvaḥ pratyupasthito bhavati

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I’ve only been conveying interpretations of the term 中陰 which are already accepted in the Chinese-speaking mainstream and also supported by the gloss given. It goes without saying that 香陰 is gandharva or Gandhari equivalent.

There is just no concept of the antarabhāva (中陰) as meaning a “hidden state” in Chinese sources. It does not exist. :pray: See, for example, this comment by Master Sheng Yen, explaining the concept of this term as it relates to the khandhas:

【何謂「中陰身」?】 聖嚴法師

●五陰和五蘊
「中陰」又叫中蘊、中有,就是五陰和五蘊的意思。

所謂陰和蘊,是指「色、受、想、行、識」五種,乃三界眾生生命的組合元素。陰是唐以前的舊譯,蘊是唐以後的新譯。

三界眾生稱為二十五有,所謂有,就是有五蘊;不出三界是被五蘊所困,解脫生死即是出離五蘊的三界。

It might have been this reading to which Ven. Analayo was referring when he gave the reading “birth aggregates” for variant reading 生陰at footnote 29 on p102. https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/analayo/rebirth-gandhabba.pdf

I will follow up, no worries. By “five elements”, I meant, the four elements (dhātu) we know as Buddhists, as well as space.

I think someone should publish something on the reception history of the Upanishads. It was probably only in the 19th or 20th century that these texts became “animist”…

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The basic idea of “animism” is, as I understand it, that things are “animated” by an inner spirit, a soul or ātman if you will. That this kind of spirit is imminent in the forces of nature, personalized as deities, and found within humans as well. The term is from anima = “breath, spirit, life”, which basically identical with prāṇa, which is found all through the Upanishads.

From Wikipedia:

Animism encompasses the beliefs that all material phenomena have agency, that there exists no categorical distinction between the spiritual and physical (or material) world, and that soul, spirit, or sentience exists not only in humans, but also in other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment: water sprites, vegetation deities, tree spirits, etc. Animism may further attribute a life force to abstract concepts such as words, true names, or metaphors in mythology.

It seems to me that this is a pretty good description of the world view of the Vedas and Upanishads.

But if “animism” is not right, then what term would you prefer?

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Oh, I see now. I think you’re right. The second part seems a little bit botched in MA, but the rest is basically the same. Okay. Just as well, I’ve got other time-consuming things to do these days!

Well, I don’t really keep up on modern Chinese commentary, but if you survey passages that use the term 中陰 in classical Chinese translations, I think you’ll notice that it’s a place or state that a being “enters, remains in, is present in” etc., not a set of skandhas when there’s enough context to tell. Since yin doesn’t seem to mean skandha when I take in its general usage, I filled in something like its native meaning, which would be related to being hidden, dark, or obscure. Since it’s a place where beings go, I added a bit of interpretation “hidden state.”

BTW, there are passages that talk about intermediate state consciousness (中陰識) in the Tachitulun.

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You find this quite often in the Sanskrit dictionaries. You look up some obscure Buddhist term, and there it is in the dictionary, and then, oh, it’s just quoting from the source you’re using. :person_shrugging:

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i think the term means rebirth-linking consciousness

Is it really odd? The Buddha often took brahmanical ideas and adapted them to his system as a way of teaching people in a language they already understood. I thought this was a pretty standard view? (seen in scholars like Gombrich). Im curious as to why you see this as odd.

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When the Buddha did this, he was clear to then define the term so there would be no confusion. “What is ‘the all?’ It is seeing…” Here, he did not give his own definition, suggesting he was accepting the common usage.

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I consider the Buddha did not use the term gandharva/gandhabba as ‘rebirth consciousness’ in the context of ‘conditioned arising’. This is because the term is simply not presented in SN 12. Nidana Samyutta and its SA version (and also not found in the main teachings, such as the five aggregates, the sense spheres, in SN/SA).

It is likely the term was being used in the sense of rebirth linking idea (such as semen or rebirth consciousness) after the first Buddhist council.

That is why the term is used for referring to a being in the intermediate state between death and rebirth in MN38/MA201 (and other later texts).

Yes, so maybe it’s probable we are missing something vis a vis the way the term was used by the Buddha’s audience in this text?

After all, i can see how the idea of virile spirit can morph into rebirth consciousness over time. Or even the same term have a semantic field that comprises both ideas…

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Yup! And Bhante’s essay is precisely a step towards that context :slight_smile:

Right? It’s a pretty compelling hypothesis! :slight_smile:

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It’s possible, although if it was added later, it could not have been much later, since it is widely found in the schools and seems to have definitely been an accepted passage.

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The question is: where does the memory of past lives as well as the past kamma come from? Can it be stored in a man sperm or in a woman egg. If it was the case then men/women are carrying in them thousands/millions of past kamma/memories of past lives as they have that many eggs/sperms in a life time. This does not make sense at all.
So gandhabba cannot mean semen.
The future Buddha is said to have stayed in the Tusita realm before his last life. When his father and mother conceived him “he” joins the fertilised egg thru a process which is still very mysterious.

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Very likely the term and its rebirth linking idea (such as rebirth consciousness) were accepted and eventually developed in a text during the second Buddhist council (as presented in both MN38 and its corresponding MA201).

I certainly don’t claim to remotely know the answer to this but a (likely silly) thought arose in my mind. Since kamma and tanha seem to be inexorably involved in rebirth, and what is reborn isn’t a soul or an entity per se, could it somehow be something within DNA? After all, DNA can lean towards all manner of propensities. Even things like disliking broccoli, various diseases and behavioral tendencies. When awakening, one would have all the links to all past lives right there within one’s body.