On sakkāya, identity, and substantial reality

When I search for 自身見 (svakāya-dṛṣṭi) in CBETA, there are only 32 hits, 16 of which are in Chinese exegesis rather translations of Indic texts. That’s pretty much non-existent usage. Two of those hits are in the Madhyama Agama, which was translated from Prakrit, not Sanskrit. The others are just one hit each in a handful of other texts. It’s so spare that it could be chalked up to typos.

Whereas, 有身見 (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) happens 1,552 times. Guess where most of those 1,552 occurrences are found? In Abhidharma texts translated by Xuanzang from Buddhist Sanskrit.

The way the concept was generally translated in the Agamas was simply 身見 (“kāya-dṛṣṭi”), which doesn’t indicate what the prefix was, if there was any. That term is the standard one for the Dirgha, Madhyama, and Samyukta. The Ekottarika Agama only has one passage that appears to reference it while listing out examples of the 62 views found in the Dirgha Agama.

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