Continuing with DN14 at SC 97 it reads:
‘He’s called an sick man …
This should be ‘a’ sick man, I assume.
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DN15 SC 13 starts with a lower case:
‘continued existence is a condition for rebirth’
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DN25 SC 72 is missing a sentence:
When this was said, those wanderers sat silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say, as if their minds were possessed by Māra. Then the Buddha thought: “All these foolish people have been touched by the Wicked One! For not even a single one thinks: [HERE]
Then the Buddha, having roared his lion’s roar in the lady Udumbarikā’s monastery for wanderers, rose into the air and landed on Vulture’s Peak. Meanwhile, the householder Sandhāna just went back to Rājagaha.
As per Rhys Davids translation the paragraph should continue with: “‘Come, let us now live the holy life taught by the Samaṇa Gotama, that we may learn to know it. What does an interval of seven days matter?’”
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Thanks for this, it’s always a pleasure to revisit my translation and look more closely at the Pali. I think you’re right.
Just checking Ven Bodhi’s rendering, he uses “without finding it troublesome”, a wording he has stuck with in MN, SN, and AN. And in the various sets of notes by different scholars I can’t find any discussion of this point. You mention a translation that renders it in the way you suggest: can you let me know which one it is?
I made a note on the idiom when translating it, in which I suggested “without making a problem out of it” as a possible meaning, but I thought it sounded too passive-aggressive!
There is a closely related idiom sace te agaru, which clearly must mean “It is is no trouble for you”. I guess Ven Bodhi and myself assumed that the idiom agaruṃ katvā (also spelled agaruṃ karitvā) was more or less a variation on that.
But the context is always in this specific kind of instance: the monks ask for an explanation, only to be put off by the senior monk. So it seems they’re saying to him, “don’t make it difficult”. It’s a bit tricky to translate this in a way that’s idiomatic English, without sounding rude.
Here is the commentary on MN 18, which appears to be the only place where this idiom is commented. I give a quick and dirty translation:
Agaruṃ katvāti punappunaṃ āyācāpentopi hi garuṃ karoti nāma, attano sāvakapāramīñāṇe ṭhatvā sinerūpādato vālukaṃ uddharamāno viya dubbiññeyyaṃ katvā kathentopi garuṃ karotiyeva nāma. Evaṃ akatvā amhe punappunaṃ ayācāpetvā suviññeyyampi no katvā kathehīti vuttaṃ hoti.
“Not making a problem out of it” means: “Making [us] ask again and again is making a problem out of it. Or relying on your own knowledge born of a disciple’s perfections, teaching in a way that makes it hard to understand, like extracting a grain of sand from the base of Mount Sineru, is also making a problem out of it. Without doing this, without making us ask again and again, please speak in a way that makes it easy for us to understand.” That’s what was said.
I actually think the first explanation here sounds more reasonable. I think the monks are saying, “don’t put obstacles in our way, don’t put us off any further.” I suspect that if the sense was “make it easy to understand”, a different idiom would be used.
I will change this, but I’m still not 100% sure what the best idiom is for it. I’ll give it some thought.
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Hello again Ven Sujato. Ven Ṭhanissaro translates agaruṃ katvā as “without making it difficult” (on Access to Insight). My translation of the commentary is:
Making it less difficult (agaruṃ katvā): making them ask again and again is making it difficult; and also teaching when remaining in his own knowledge of the disciple’s perfections – like someone digging up sand from the foot of Mount Sineru – and making it hard to comprehend is really making it difficult; not making it difficult in this way. What is meant is: without making us ask again and again, please teach, making it really easy for us to comprehend.
I was reading this with Rupert Gethin here in Bristol. We didn’t really understand the reference to digging sand from Mt Sineru though!
The expression sace te agaru would mean ‘if [there is] no difficulty for you’, hence ‘if it’s no trouble’, and perhaps here the difficulty would be for the teacher, whereas in agaruṃ katvā in M 18 the difficulty is for the monks.
Okay, thanks.
Yes, it’s a bit obscure. I think it’s “getting blood from a stone” somehow, but I’m not sure exactly how the idiom works.
Nice, I am glad to hear that. Please give Rupert my respects!
I wonder if it means the opposite of that- it might be really easy to get sand from the foot of a mountain. I assume due to weather erosion mountains crumble and we are left with sand. A mount might be the ‘go-to’ place for sand! 
with metta
Oh, maybe. It could be something like: Since you can rely on your own knowledge of a disciple’s perfections, giving a complicated explanation is as easy as extracting sand from the base of Mt Sineru.
But I’m still not really sure; I’m just not familiar enough with commentarial idioms.
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“One or other of these …” - should be “one or another” DN 1 and 2
“He stayed on in a forest”… should be “he stayed in”
“Ambaṭṭha spoke some polite words or other while walking around or standing.” DN3
“Raiding villages, town, and cities” - should be towns DN5
Lower case “king Mahāvijita”
Last paragraph the renunciates are suppose to say “it would reverend”… instead it is written “it would not” DN6 same with DN7
Random Bhagava avoca at the beginning of a paragraph in
DN9
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Hello Bhante, not sure if this has been reported yet.
I was reading MN 21: The Simile of the Saw…possibly my favorite sutta
I came across this:
So Kāḷī got up even later in the day. Vedehikā said to her: ‘What the hell, Kāḷī!’ ‘What is it, madam?’ ‘You’re getting up even later in the day—what’s up with you, girl?’ ‘Nothing, madam.’ ‘Nothing’s up, you bad girl, but you get up even later in the day!’ Angry and upset, she grabbed a rolling-plin and hit Kāḷī on the head, cracking it open. Then Kāḷī, with blood pouring from her cracked skull, denounced her mistress to the neighbors: ‘See, ladies, what the sweet one did! See what the even-tempered one did! See what the calm one did! How on earth can she grab a rolling-plin and hit her only maid on the head, cracking it open, just for getting up late?’ Blockquote
I’m not an expert in all things ancient India but perhaps it should be rolling pin…not plin?
Wonderful translations Bhante, much appreciated.
With respect and Metta
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Should it? It sounds fine to me.
Fixed throughout.
I’m not sure what the issue is here?
Fixed.
No, the Pali is negative, na kallaṃ, “It would not be appropriate”.
This is a bug in the markup, we will fix it.
Oops! Fixed now.
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I’m not 100% sure if this is a typo or deliberate, but the following from sn42.2 seems terribly odd to me:
‘Suppose a dancer entertains and amuses people in a stage or festival with truth and lies.
‘on a stage’ feels more right to me.
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Yes, I’ve changed it to “on a stage or at a festival”.
There must be a proper grammatical word for this kind of situation. In Pali you have the locative case, which covers “in” “at”, “by” and so on, but in English you have to supply a preposition, gaining specificity, but also creating more fussiness. Anyhoo, at least they’re laughing!
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I believe the grammar is called parallel construction. It can indeed get fussy. Perhaps that’s not the word you are looking for.
I hope it’s OK to make an observation, rather than report an error.
In Bhikkhu Bodhi’s tranlation of SN 35.82 SuttaCentral we have:
“It is disintegrating, bhikkhu, therefore it is called the world. And what is disintegrating? The eye, bhikkhu, is disintegrating, …
Bhikkhu Sujato has SuttaCentral
“It wears away, mendicant, that’s why it’s called ‘the world’.
“‘Lujjatī’ti kho, bhikkhu, tasmā lokoti vuccati.
This initially seemed odd to me, but in Ven Ñāṇananda’s Nibbana Sermon 20 (Nibbana - The Mind Stilled Books Archive - seeing through the net) he comments:
Here the Buddha is redefining the concept of the world, punning on the verb lujjati, which means to “break up” or “disintegrate”. To bring about a radical change in outlook, in accordance with the Dhamma, the Buddha would sometimes introduce a new etymology in preference to the old. This definition of `the world’ is to the same effect.
So, I presume that @sujato has chosen the translation “wears away” to preserve some sense of the Pali pun. It’s starting to grow on me, and perhaps I can propose my own extension of the idea:
The weary world wears away…
This imagery that all that we take to be the World is disintegrating/wearing away, is both inspiring and terrifying…
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I prefer Lujjati to mean ‘fragmenting’ as this is more attuned to the unique experience of vipassana when being mindful of sense bases, and aggregates (Loka) arising and passing away rapidly.
With metta
Well, yes, of course one can relate this to the development of the idea of the insight knowledge of dissolution: The Progress of Insight
But that’s not an EBT… 
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It’s a bit of a strained pun, to be sure: but then, so is the Pali!
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This sutta seems to suggest otherwise! We barely have the meanings of the five aggregates much less their durations!
With metta
It seems a sentence that does not belong crept into MN17 SC 1:
Then the Buddha robed up in the morning and, taking his bowl and robe, entered Kapilavatthu for alms. He wandered for alms in Sāvatthī.