Dear Bhante,
Thank you for your engagement, but I think you may have missed my point slightly in respect of using the 40cm ordinary hattha for the cloth measurements.
There are some other sources in addition to the commentary, too, including the canonical material of other schools, Jain sources, the Chinese travelogues (Yijing is always my favourite), the Chinese commentarial tradition including Daoxuan and Lingzhi, our material culture (our lived tradition), other sources about traditional garment measurements in South Asia, archaeological sites and art. I can’t pin the hattha thing more precisely than India in the 2-3rd century CE on the basis of statues from Gandhara, but I think that 2nd-3rd cent CE in India is still much better than the 19th cent Vinayamukha in Thailand…and similarities to Jainism might be a pretty good indicator of a shared origin. Also. No-one has ever produced any collaborating evidence except for the text of the vinaya itself that the vidatthi has ever been used as the primary measure of robe-cloth in India. It’s suspect.
Sometimes the cmy is better than the Canon. Just look at the Chabbhisodhana Sutta. The canon only gives five purifications, the cmy does much better and gives six, on the basis of Indian sources. “Indian sources” is the key point here.
I also think it’s important to “think legally.” These are maximum sizes. Cutting down your robe is a big deal, nobody wants to do that. It’s not wrong to wear a normal size robe, it’s only wrong to wear an oversize one. If you use a 25cm vidatthi, everybody who wears normal stuff should be incurring a pacittiya, which is not the point of the vinaya, which was presumably meant for normal, reasonable people.
Studying errors in language production is kind of my hobby. It’s been my hobby for a long time (about twenty years). There is no way you can get from vidatthi to hattha, I know that…except for…the listener, the no.1 source of all error. For a listener, mishearing hattha as vidatthi is a tiny, tiny slip, especially given that “datthi” means “hattha”. So I wouldn’t worry too much about what it sounds like. I would worry about what it MEANS.
If the 25cm measurement for the vidatthi is based on anything, it must be the Siamese inch, as the Indian vidatthi is smaller than that, at approx 20cm. It’s not even Indian.
I would suggest using the 40cm hattha as the sugatavidatthi in relation to robes, which is smaller than the carpenter’s hattha as the sugatavidatthi for buildings.
This is the mistake in the Vinayamukha that I was talking about. The cmy isn’t actually asking you to do that except in relation to huts. And definitely not for sitting cloths. The 40cm ordinary hattha should be used for sitting cloths.
So…I have to demolish an otherwise good hut and incur a sanghadisesa just because it’s 2m wide??? For real?
From memory, mine’s about 1.8m tall and it fits on my body, it’s not hurting anyone, cutting it down would be a waste of the donor’s money and time (and my time and sanity).
Sometimes texts…require us to have some assumed cultural knowledge. You aren’t necessarily going to find the carpenter’s hattha in the text of the vinaya itself, but wider reading, say of Arthasastra, would highlight the fact that trade-based measurements were normal for pre-colonial India (and still are). I can’t say for certain that the ordinary hattha wasn’t meant for both, however, which is probably why the commentarial tradition has made the point of disambiguating.
I would say that the best place to start with the measurements is really just by putting away the Vinayamukha. At any rate, it is simply not possible that 25cm was ever meant, as this is too large for an Indian vidatthi. It’s good that people are thinking about these things, anyway.