Could somebody be pleased to assist in giving the parallels of the ‘najīra sutta’ of SN—Sagāthā Vaggo-Devatā Samyutta from Mahayana/Sanskrit/Chinese Tripitakas.
The issue here is rūpa and nāma are easily understood, but, what is ‘gotta’ has to do here? The explanations given in aṭṭhakathā and tīkā are not convincing.
Yes, the rūpa gets decayed, the nāma do not, because the nāma consist of vedanā, saññā, cetanā, phasso, and manasikāro, and they just get changed, vipariṇāmadhammā.
But ‘gotta’, how does not it get changed. As per aṭṭhakathā it is applicable only to the Tathāgata. Then how about gotta of lesser human beings?
I’m not 100% sure I’ve understood what you’re after correctly, so apologies if I’m off the mark, but the SuttaCentral site already indicates known parallels for a given sutta. It can be seen by the number in the green circle at the bottom right of a sutta card:
If we can substitute ‘nāmagocchakaṃ’ for ‘nāmagottaṃ’ then it denotes the ‘cluster’ of nāma which consist of ‘vedanā, saññā, cetanā, phasso, and manasikāro’.
Please feel free to criticise in whatever the way you feel.
I’m not sure I’m understanding your question, and I’m not a Pali expert, but here is the passage that you are referring to:
3.1 “The physical form of mortals gets old,
“Rūpaṃ jīrati maccānaṃ,
3.2 but their name and clan don’t. nāmagottaṃ na jīrati; SuttaCentral
I don’t see any reason to take nāma and rūpa as technical Dhamma terms in this case. Here it seems that they just mean physical form and name. Presumably, in a modern context, nāmagottaṃ could be translated as “given name and surname”. The name “John Smith” is constant, even as his body changes with age…
Also keep in mind, though, that lack of a parallel in the present age, does not actually mean that X or Y sutta has never had substantiating parallels.
The Sanskrit EBTs are very fragmentary, and AFAIK the Chinese EBTs generally used to be parts of even larger collections of Buddhavacana.
Many otherwisely-considered sectarian, late, or even Mahāyāna treatises and Abhidharma texts quote sutta-layer Buddhavacana that may well be EBT materially , but the quotations themselves don’t seem to correspond to anything. And it seems to happen too frequently (I am think in particular of Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma).
This means that a fair amount, unknown in quantity, of Buddhist scriptures have been lost to time.
jīrati is, in reality, getting decayed. This, the jīrana, happens in two stages. First getting old while the being is still living. Then after death the body gets decomposed.
While living, John Smith can become a mendicant and he lets go of his lay name and adopts a name like ‘Subaddha’ or ‘Jinawaṃsa’. No more John Smith relating to that body.
Once dead, no more John Smith nor Subaddha or Jinawaṃsa.
Of course, this never was my thinking. With whatever little bits of lapses, I read the Dhamma as declared by The Samma Sambuddha, with utmost respect to all those Sangha who had made great efforts to protect, preserve, and transmit the Texts from generation to generation.
The other places in the Suttas where nāmagottaṃ is used it is simply talking about name:
MN 150 SuttaCentral
Then the brahmins and householders of Nagaravinda went up to the Buddha. Before sitting down to one side, some bowed, some exchanged greetings and polite conversation, some held up their joined palms toward the Buddha, some announced their name and clan, while some kept silent. The Buddha said to them:
Dear Gentleman,
Thanks a lot for following.
About lay name and Bhikkhu name…
I abandoned my lay life with all its attachments, together with the lay name, and now, neither me, nor anybody else identify me in my lay name. It is like a name in one of my previous lives. It’s gone for good. Of course, the body too have got older and consumed.
Similarly, the names of my ancestors and some of their clans, surnames, etc are no more.
So, the names and clans…are they not changed? Have they not got unusable? Have they not got perished?
Yes, in many suttas, I too noticed, the mentioning of nāmagottaṃ. That is the real reason why I was looking for a parallel of this particular sutta.
If Bhante Sujato’s translation is accurate, then I read this as one of those relatively few suttas in the canon that deal mainly with worldly moral wisdom, rather than the spiritual path. In this case, part of the topic is how to avoid dissipating one’s wealth and reputation. In this casa, “nama” is literally name, not a term for mental aggregates or the process of conceptualization. The speaker is reminding the listener to reflect on what is required to preserve one’s own good name, and the good name of one’s clan, which will survive the death of one’s own body.
