SuttaCentral
imāyapime āyasmanto ratiyā acchissantī
Thinking about this a bit more, could this also be rendered as: “In this way, even these venerables will be happy to stay put”?
Disregarding the issue of body builders vs. gregarious monks, gossips are likely to wander about the camp to visit their fellows…
The verb acchati just means “to be” or “to remain” and ratiyā functions as an adverb, meaning “happily” or “with delight”, or something to that effect. So the most straightforward meaning is “to be happy”. “Stay put” adds an additional element that is not immediately derivable from the Pali and would thus need some supporting evidence to be acceptable.
To my mind the broader context of monasticism points in the same direction. There is no real motivation for Dabba Mallaputta to wish them to “stay put”, rather the contrary, if anything. Someone in charge of dwellings is responsible for their distribution, but is unlikely to worry too much about whether the inhabitant stay for a long or a short time.
‘Stay put’ is probably a little colloquial, but I notice that the primary meaning given for acchati in several dictionaries is to sit, sit still, to remain or be in/on a place. The more general meaning of ‘live’ seems to occur primarily in combination with another verb (according to the CPED). Something like ‘to happily remain (in place)’ or ‘stay put’ seems in line with the meanings suggested from CPD, PED, and CPED where ‘be (on a place)’ and ‘sit’/‘sit still’ seem to be the primary meanings. All of them suggest remaining in a location, rather than the more general idea of dwelling or living.
As to the context and motivation, in the Visuddhimagga the problem given about this type of monk (in the discussion of unsuitable meditation companions) is that they create disruptions. If the last group of monks are monks who tend to be talkative and disruptive (as the tiracchānakathikā certainly would be), putting them in one place means that they won’t interrupt the monks who are engaging in proper monastic activities. If they were scattered around the vihara and gardens, presumably they would be going from place to place to socialize and gossip and potentially disrupt or annoy the other monks. Whether the kāyadaḷhibahulā are ‘athletes’ or ‘swellers and multipliers of crowds’, keeping them and the tiracchānakathikās away from the more studious monks is probably the best scenario for everyone, and since they like company keeping them together best accomplishes this.
In the description of Dabba’s organizing scheme, each of his reflections are specific to the types of monks he is grouping together- vinaya monks will debate the law, meditators won’t disturb each other, sutta monks will recite together, etc… If the last sentence is referring to disruptive monks (as the other Vinaya and the Visuddhimagga suggest), then the idea of them being content to stay together in one place gives a sensible rationale, just as occurs in the other four situations.
Maybe @cdpatton can help giving us an idea of how this term was translated into Chinese in ancient times? 
It’s funny that you ask. Just the other day, I drafted a Madhyama sutra that had a term meaning “forming cliques” in it. It was in a gloss of what duplicity means in a discourse about the ten bad deeds.
I looked up the eighth saṃghâvaśeṣa in the Chinese Dharmaguptaka vinaya, and it has the same story, but there aren’t any gossipers, body-builders, or clique-formers in that list of types of monks. There’s a bunch of other vinayas in Chinese, so it’d a project to look up all the parallel passages.
Is there something like the Chinese in Pali passages about duplicity? The Madhyama text reads “forming cliques, enjoying cliques, and commending cliques” at the end of the definition of duplicity.
That’s very interesting. Thanks for your reply! 
I wonder what could have been the cultural context which resulted in either the Chinese translators removing it or the Sinhalese/Indian Pali compilers including it then!
I stick to my uninformed guess that the term refers to those wearing the robes “just for the free lunch” of the almsfood.
I wouldn’t assume it’s the translators. Looking at the other vinayas, I can see a fair amount of variation in the story. For example, the Dharmaguptakas don’t mention Dabba’s age when he became an arhat; the Mahīśāsakas say he was 16. The Mahāsāṃghikas don’t even mention he was an arhat. The older Sarvâstivāda vinaya translation is equally terse about Dabba.
The list varies between them the way lists usually vary between sectarian canons. It’s the same basic idea: different monks have different interests or specialties. Some recite sutras, some are vinaya experts, some are meditators, some are dharma teachers, and so on.
But the list is different from one vinaya to the next. One of them even has stream-entrants, once-returners, non-returners, and arhats in the list. I don’t see any of them mention anything like “gossipers and body-builders.” One does tack on the end something like “those without proper deportment.” That’s about the closest that they get.
I think it’s safe to assume this is something specific to the Theravāda vinaya. I often run into this problem translating the Agamas. I try to look up a parallel in the Pali for a Chinese expression that makes me scratch my head, but then the Pali won’t have anything like it.
Greetings in Dhamma!
Although your interpretation of the issue makes intuitive sense, the Pāḷi tradition and modern scholarship do not support it. As noted earlier here, the important Western dictionaries say that kāyadaḷhibahulo means something to the effect of “bodybuilder.” I also looked up the available Burmese dictionaries, and they follow suit (U Hoke Sein, for example: ကိုယ်၏ မြဲမြံခိုင်ခံ့ခြင်းကို ပြုခြင်းများသည်။ – “By making your body firm and strong” – Google Translate).
The commentaries takes it in the same way. See, for example, these passages from the Theragāthā commentary:
For one who esteems heftiness of the body : […] the meaning is: for one with abundant strengthening of the body, being occupied with the nourishing of the body, in the capacity of someone not possessing the wisdom about the escape [from saṃsāra] (Theragāthā-aṭṭhakathā) – Kāyaduṭṭhullagarunoti […] anissaraṇappañño hutvā kāyaposanappasuto kāyadaḷhibahuloti attho.
A certain bhikkhu lives […] as one with abundant strengthening of the body, fond of sleep, conversations, of having company (Theragāthā-aṭṭhakathā) – asuko bhikkhu […] kāyadaḷhibahulo niddārāmo bhassārāmo saṅgaṇikārāmo viharati.
The last point shows that kāyadaḷhibahulo is contrasted with one fond of having company with others and thus rather speaks against taking kāyadaḷhibahulo itself also to mean “formers of cliques.” There are other passages that would corroborate the above. So, based on this alone and as an aside, we can assume that this image of the Buddha is not based upon his actual appearance:
