Greetings John, I shall be able to attend Pali class this afternoon, but will just listen. This week I have had an ordination, a Kathina, and Covid … now on light duty with time for class. With metta - Ayya Sobhana
I wanted to revisit the ‘ambiguous’ sentence we discussed:
Evaṃ so sunakho tasmiṃ paccekabuddhe balavasinehaṃ uppādesi
In his NCRP course, Bhikkhu Bodhi translated it as: “Thus the dog aroused strong affection in regard to that Solitary Buddha.” While he did not explicitly state that the dog had affection for the Solitary Buddha, he explained that paccekabuddhe balavasinehaṃ functions as a locative of reference, akin to rūpesu rāgo (craving in regard to forms). From this, I gather that since the paccekabuddha is the object of sineha in this context, the affection should be understood as directed from the dog toward the Solitary Buddha, not the reverse.
What do you think about this? If this understanding is correct, how then to express in Pāli the reverse situation: “The dog aroused affection in the Buddha” (toward itself).
I had misunderstood the Pāli sentence in the reverse sense. So I would like to ask how to translate back to Pāli this (reverse meaning) sentence ‘Thus the dog aroused strong affection inside that Solitary-Buddha’ (the affection is from the Solitary-Buddha towards the dog). Can we just do some minor tweaks to the ‘Evaṃ so sunakho tasmiṃ paccekabuddhe balavasinehaṃ uppādesi’ [like ‘Evaṃ so sunakho tassa paccekabuddhassa balavasinehaṃ uppādesi’ (?)], or do we have to change the whole structure of it?
Can we say in Pāli the same way as ‘The dog evoked strong affection in the Buddha’ (the dog made the Buddha affectionate toward itself), so to keep the dog as the subject of the sentence? From your explanation, I understood that maybe we’ll have to use another verb, not uppādeti?
Very good to see you back in the discussion, Stephen, after a long absence from our classes. Especially as I’ve been very busy with other things and have not had any time to involve myself in it, and have only just skimmed through the posts this morning.
Far be it from me to argue with Ven Bodhi! His interpretation is surely correct.
BTW, is there anywhere where his translations from the NCRP exercises are available on the web in written form? That would be handy.
Glad to be able to join, John.
The best place to look for his translations are his published Nikayas, as you know, but only some of that is available on line.