Perhaps I found the impetus for Jayarava’s challenge. Even though this was a 2023 OP, it’s obviously gained renewed interest.
I, for one, have been happily following it (whereas I missed it in 2023). For example, it’s how I found Meggers’ reference to Mathieu Boisvert’s book The Five Aggregates: Understanding Theravāda Psychology and Soteriology – I am finding this short gem-of-a-book wholly satisfying and educational, especially knowing some pāli now.
If I’m mind-reading too much, Jayarava can certainly let us know. But I was puzzled a bit by the OP challenge until I noticed a potential linkage as follows.
In Jayarava’s recent paper Revised Editions of the Prajnaparamitahrdaya and Xīn jīng (see this thread Attwood, Jayarava - The Heart Sutra Editions), he drills down on translations of rūpa:
The names of the individual skandha—rūpaṃ, vedanā, saṃjñā, saṃskāra, vijñāna—are typically translated along the lines of “form, feeling, perception, volitions, consciousness.” All of these translations are problematic. I have adapted the approach to translating the individual skandhas developed by Sue Hamilton (2000) and with input from Tilmann Vetter (2000)… In ordinary Sanskrit, rūpa never means “body” or “matter”. Rather, the basic meaning of rūpa is “appearance”, or more specifically “outward appearance”; this is reflected in the standard Chinese translation: sè 色 “hue; form, appearance, complexion; visual surface quality”.
So, the first point he makes is that he finds “form” problematic as a translation for rūpaṃ (Sanskrit) although he goes on to suggest he finds it problematic for the pāli as well.
Or maybe I’m conflating with this OP. Anyway, in the paper he establishes “appearance” as the revised translation.
He goes on:
We are told that rūpa has a completely different meaning in the compound rūpaskandha (sèyīn 色陰 or sèyùn 色蘊 ), that is “the body” or even “the physical world”. Words certainly can and do change their meaning according to context and we have to be sensitive to this. And Buddhists do make liberal use of “Humpty Dumpty” definitions (words like vedanā or dhāraṇī mean what we say they mean, and that meaning is unrelated to etymology). That said, and in the context of Hamilton’s understanding of the concept of skandha, I am at a loss to explain, in semantic or pragmatic terms, how rūpa came to mean “body” and/or “matter” in one compound when it does not, and cannot, mean “body” or “matter” as a standalone word. In my view, rūpa in rūpaskandha retains its basic sense of “appearance” but is used metonymically. In other words, we can read rūpa here as rūpam ādi, i.e. rūpa-śabda-gandha-rasa-spraṣṭavya-dharmāḥ “appearance, sound, odour, taste, tangible, and phenomena”. In other words, rūpa is the branch of experience concerned with “appearances” (the impact of sensory impressions on sensory organs across sensory modalities).
So, this morning I searched the SuttaCentral translations for rūpakkhandho. It’s not an exhaustive search, for certain, but I’ve only found one English-language translation of rūpakkhandho (including declensions) as “body-aggregate”. This occurs in MN109 (Mahāpuṇṇamasutta) in Ven. Suddhāso Bhikkhu’s translation.
Throughout the suttas, for example, Bhante Sujato translates rūpa as “form” and doesn’t distinguish between the compound and non-compound forms:
“Sir, are these the five grasping aggregates:
“ime nu kho, bhante, pañcupādānakkhandhā, seyyathidaṁ—
form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness?”
rūpupādānakkhandho, vedanupādānakkhandho, saññupādānakkhandho, saṅkhārupādānakkhandho, viññāṇupādānakkhandho”ti?
Again, this was not an exhaustive search.
That aside, not rendering the compound, technically, as a compound in the translation makes sense to me. It also de-conflicts the translation of rūpa as one thing as a stand-alone term and another thing in a compound. This makes a case for translating things into the least obtuse manner possible, for the sake of the reader, at the risk of a technically correct translation that loses the listener’s interest.
Maybe a corollary is from playing music. Recently I learned to play an old English ballad Greensleeves on my mandolin. Every time I got to a certain place in the music, it told me to play a natural “F” but I kept wanting to play F-sharp F#. I surmised with my music teacher that modern (American) renditions always render that note F#, hence my insistence to do so.
She said, Do what makes sense! Well, it makes sense to me not to introduce dissonance to the listener – haha, just me right now – at the expense of their appreciating the whole song.
OK – I’m not a translator and may be totally misrepresenting a whole bunch of stuff.
Anyway, I think I can appreciate Jayarava’s challenge, now that I’ve read his latest paper.
And I conclude that the English-language translations for rūpa across the SuttaCentral translations – including its compound form rūpakkhandho – largely adhere to “form” and not “body”.
This aside from the fact that Jayarava proposes rūpa should read as “appearance” in revising Conze’s Heart Sutra translation as well as pāli suttas (see this thread).
I highly recommend Boisvert’s book, if you can afford to buy it. That’s a thorough accounting of the pāli used in reference to pañcakkhandhā as well as paṭiccasamuppāda. It also helps with validating Jayarava’s rationale for his revisions to Conze’s Heart Sutra translation. (Jayarava and Boisvert reference some of the same sources.)
