Good point. I’m still getting familiarized with the commentaries, and I’ve yet to see any in an English. So, I’m definitely no expert.
It seems like at the very least, the commentaries can help us when comparing different translations of a sutta. For example, if our own Dhamma practice and experience causes one translation of a sutta to resonate true with us more than another translation, the commentary may be able to provide another point of reference. Because some Chinese parallels are so similar to their Pali counterpart, it seems like it’s possible that the Pali commentary may be able to still help us in getting a better understanding of the Buddha’s teaching if we compare different translations of a Pali sutta, with its Pali commentary, and its Chinese parallel.
That said, maybe there is not much use in comparing the validity of a Chinese parallel with a Pali parallel, but there does seem to be some use in comparing and thus understanding different translations.
There are cases of Chinese Agamas supporting readings found in the Pali commentaries. It’s more a case of detecting translation issues between Buddhist languages. In one language, there were ambiguities that didn’t exist in the other, and the Pali commentaries sometimes seem to be aware of what the reading was outside of Pali. An example I can think of off the top of my head is SA 1.21. There’s this irony when reading Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation of its parallel SN 22.36 with the Chinese. Bodhi in a footnote describes the Pali commentary reading P. anumīyati along the lines of S. anumṛyate, which he finds absurd. Yet, that’s the way the Chinese translator reads the text in whatever language it was in. It’s quite a difference in meaning: “measure of weight” vs. “follows death.”
I’m not sure how common it is (guessing it’s not?) since I can’t access the commentaries other than fumbling with PTS and not knowing Pali grammar properly …
Thanks @cdpatton for the detailed example. That’s interesting and continues my interest in learning more about the commentaries and how they can help expand my understanding of the EBTs and the various translation of the EBTs:-)
mīyati is a passive form usually in the meaning “dies”. It doesn’t occur (or at least is not in DPD) in the sense “is measured”.
anumaraṇa / anumṛ is found in Sanskrit with the sense “to follow in death” (typically of a wife).
anumīyati occurs one more time in the Pali canon (Pe 5:14.8) in the sense “is inferred”.
The latter supports the sense “measured after”, “inferred”, rather than “dies after”.
The previous sutta is exactly the same, except it omits this phrase, having simply “you’re defined by what you have an underlying tendency for”. The fact that this phrase can be inserted in the middle of this sentence suggests that it has rather a weak meaning, not introducing a radical new concept, but nuancing or expanding the previous.
The obscurity of the term, the existence of the Sanskrit word, and the agreement of the Chinese with the commentary raise the question of whether it was meant as a pun. Without more textual clues, however, I’d be reluctant to read in this way. Usually such puns are hinted at in the form somehow (as a verse or simile, etc.)
So I think most likely the sense is “measured after” and it seems that both the commentary and the Chinese make the same mistake. But it does seem to me an understandable one.
I think it’s more complicated than that. There was a divergence in language. The passages themselves have been written in a way that makes sense of the reading of the keyword. I’m guessing neither really represents the original - or, at least, it’s difficult to tell which is more original. The Chinese parallel doesn’t entirely match the Pali commentary, but it does read the keyword in the same way.
The Pali has two phrases that are close in meaning, anumīyati (measure/die) and saṅkhaṁ gacchati (define by or reckoned as). It seems the Chinese is missing both these terms. It’s a curious situation.
Yes, and there is a pair of these sutras in SA that generally agree with each other, just like in SN. SA might actually have something like anumarati in its versions, but its translated, so it’s hard to be certain about it. I’ve seen quite a few cases like this. I can see why laypeople often want to stick to just one canon to study. When you really dig into the parallels, it can get disorienting because these divergences that aren’t very coherent. They are coherent in their own canons, though. And it’s usually not anything fundamental that breaks the Buddhist teachings in general.
It seems to me that in this particular instance, if we assume that these texts are genuine parallels, the Pali is following its normal practice of guarding against loss of meaning through repetition. In this case it’s not exact repetition, but reinforcement of meaning through near-synonyms.
It’s easy to imagine that saṅkhaṁ gacchati was added to the Pali anumīyati specifically to disambiguate it. Then assuming the Chinese stems from a text that did not undergo such an expansion, it was left only with the one term.
