Does the term idappaccayatā really only occur in Pali texts? What are implications of this?

I have just read a recent article by @jayarava (link below) and there he says:

“It seems that idappaccayatā only occurs in Theravāda texts and may be a late insertion. I could find no early Buddhist texts in other languages that contain this word, even when there are translations that seem to be direct parallels.”

So, I decided to create this topic and ask the following questions:

What would be the reasons for idappaccayatā only occurring in Pali texts? What are the implications of this?

Does anyone with a good knowledge of Chinese confirm his findings as found in the article? (@cdpatton?)

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I think this part of the author’s conclusion may have been hastily written, for the Sanskrit idampratyayatā is in fact found in the Turfan fragments and Jayarava has noted this himself.

I suspect what he meant to say is:

“I could find no early Buddhist texts in other languages that contain this word in their parallels to the phrase ṭhitāva sā dhātu dhammaṭṭhitatā dhammaniyāmatā idappaccayatā.”

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Jayarava was here about two years ago and we had a conversation around SA296.

It’s possible that 此緣性 is a word like idaṁpratyayatā. It’s also possible it can hide in plain sight as something like 是因緣, which would look like “this is causality” instead of “this causality.”

If you Google "此緣性" idaṃpratyayatā you can find a few mysterious Japanese and Korean sources identifying constructions like that as translations for the term, but without fluency it’s hard to read those sources. There’s nothing on the term in Chinese written in English AFAIK.

Well, there’s “something” in the Sanskrit, just not in the right place:

iti yātra dharmatā dharmasthititā dharmaniyāmatā dharmayathātathā avitathatā ananyathā bhūtaṃ satyatā tattvatā yāthātathā aviparītatā aviparyastatā idaṃpratyayatā pratītyasamutpādānulomatā ayam ucyate pratītyasamutpādaḥ |

(SF 163)

It this one of the Turfan fragments he talked about, bhante? I wouldn’t know.

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If this is indeed one of those particular fragments, would a SuttaCentral user have any way of identifying it? That might be some interesting data to add. I don’t know if it would be useless though. I suppose people who already know the Turfan fragments already know them and there isn’t a need to identity which “find” different manuscripts came from. It would be cool to be able to see where in the world a certain Sanskrit document was found and when.

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There are only two that contain the word, the Vadeta Sūtra:

Gaṃbhīram idaṃ sthānaṃ yad uta idaṃpratyayatā pratītyasamutpādaḥ. Idam api sudurdarśataraṃ padaṃ yad uta sarvopadhipratiniḥsargas tṛṣṇākṣayo virāgo nirodho nirvāṇam.

and the Pratītyasūtra:

Iti yātra dharmatā dharmasthititā dharmaniyāmatā dharmayathātathā avitathatā ananyathā bhūtaṃ satyatā tattvatā yāthātathā aviparītatā aviparyastatā idaṃpratyayatā pratītyasamutpādānulomatā ayam ucyate pratītyasamutpādaḥ.

He quotes from the latter.

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SA 296 has an expression very similar without idappaccayatā, though not in the same place in the sutra. It’s in the explanation of “dharma arisen conditionally”:

[0084b16] 「云何緣生法?謂無明、行。若佛出世,若未出世,此法常住,法住法界,彼如來自所覺知,

The bolded bit is more or less parallel to “ṭhitāva sā dhātu dhammaṭṭhitatā dhammaniyāmatā.”

I notice that AN 3.136 has a similar situation:

Uppādā vā, bhikkhave, tathāgatānaṃ anuppādā vā tathāgatānaṃ, ṭhitāva sā dhātu dhammaṭṭhitatā dhammaniyāmatā.

There’s no idappaccayatā there, either. So, it’s not a Theravada issue; it’s a specific text that has this added word that occurs in later texts.

The only other places I find “法住法界” is in later works like Abhidharma and Mahayana texts. Xuanzang’s translation of the same expression is

若佛出世。若不出世。安住法性法住法界。

Which is found commented upon in the Yogacara-bhumi (T1579.327b27) and the Saṃdhinirmocana (T676.710a17). Notice that the main difference is that Xuanzang has “securely abiding” (安住) instead of “always abiding” (常住) and 法性 (~dharmatā) has been inserted. Otherwise, it’s the same expression as SA 296.

So, it seems like SN 12.20 is the odd text that added idappaccayatā.

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Thanks for this observation. I will amend anything I write about this in the future.

TBH I proposed the former, not the latter. Clearly, I did not cast a wide enough net in this case. But it’s only a blog post and no one can expect too much from that format (they are not edited or peer-reviewed prior to publication).