Kanlayanatam posted on their Facebook page in their album titled พระอาจารย์ชยสาโร (พระพรหมพัชรญาณมุนี) that Ajahn Jayasaro, a very famous disciple of Ajahn Chah, wrote about his conversation with Somdet Phra Buddhaghosacariya (P. A. Payutto) as follows:
"Luang Por has said many times over the years that the Thai version of the Tipitaka has a lot of errors, but not much correction has been done… Recently, there is a project to translate the Tipitaka into English, but the Thai version of the Tipitaka itself still contains lots of mistakes…
There is a critic of Luang Por’s work, saying that the Luang Por was lying… It is about Dhammocracy [Power of the Dhamma]… [The critic said] There was no such thing in the Tipitaka; Luang Por was lying…
Luang Por says… So, I looked it up, and it turned out that he [the critic] was right; it was not in the Thai version of the Tipitaka. The Pali version of the Tipitaka was the original, and Luang Por mainly used the Pali version. The concept existed there. This was an example of people’s misunderstanding that resulted from the wrong or inaccurate translation of the Tipitaka…
Today, there are debates about the Buddha’s words. Those who do not know Pali still insist that the Tipitaka says such and such. They insist so even though they don’t know Pali. This is an issue about the language, the translation…"
I’d like to hear from anyone who has seen a mistake or has experienced/witnessed a debate about the Buddha’s words based on wrong or inaccurate translation.
And, we can see on this chat list constant debates about the Pali Tipitaka in relation to the Buddhadhamma; an attempt to deduce what the ‘original teaching’ was and what is ‘late’, etc etc.
So the debates seem like an infinite regress…
I believe it’s talking about the Thai translation.
contrasted with “the Thai version” in the quote is almost certainly the Pāli edition in Thai script. (It’s not like Thai monks trust the PTS more than the Thai edition of the Pali)
The Page cited Ajahn Jayasaro as saying that Somdet Phra Buddhaghosacariya (P. A. Payutto) said the above. So, Luang Por here is P. A. Payutto, as called by Aj Jayasaro.
The message is that someone criticised P.A. Payutto for lying about dhammo-cracy as it was not in the Tipitika, and that P.A. Payutto, after checking the fact, found that it was not in the Thai version, but it was in the Pali version.
Please note that I just translated what was posted. There should have been quotation marks to make it clear to the readers.
But I’ve seen some mistakes several years ago. and no, I can’t remember what they were, except āvuso, which was translated as ‘elderly’. ‘Elderly’ is one of the two meanings of āvuso in the Thai language, the other one is ‘senior’.
This post interests me coz it is the first time I’ve heard P.A. Payutto’s criticism of the Thai translation of the Tipitika (= he may have said that before this incident, but I’ve never been aware of it).
Ah yes, the classic problem of translating the ancient term to its etymological descendant without considering that the word has changed meaning since then
And the Thai language has lots of Pali ‘false friends’. ( False cognates, otherwise known as “false friends,” occur when a word sounds like a word in another language but has an entirely different meaning.) The main cause of the issue is that we ‘borrowed’ the words from Pali, but the meaning has changed/been added/been narrowed over time.
We can find dhammādhipateyya about 20 times in the suttas, eg. AN 3.40 or AN 3.14 (as a quality of a wheel-turning monarch). It has the sense of someone “who puts the Dhamma in charge”.
I mean, translating āvuso as “elderly” is not correct, but it’s arguably less incorrect than the standard English translation, “friend”.
In this case the context in isolation is misleading. It’s famous for being the word used by senior monks to address juniors, and hence is perceived as being familiar. But it is, rather, a respectful form, just a bit more colloquial than āyasmā, which is from the same root āyu, “age”.
Both Pali forms represent the same Sanskrit word, āyuṣman. It’s just āyasmā sounds more Sanskritic and hence formal-sounding. It’s a really subtle nuance, like in English the difference between “my lord” and “milord”.
In this case, a combination of etymology and context is better than either in isolation.
) of the Pali canon in Thai scripts.
