But to respond to your basic point regarding the Chinese:
Coemgenu:
The Chinese appeares to read 此法, meaning “these [many] dharmāḥ”
I don’t think this is correct. The DDB gives the meanings “here” or “this” for 此. Here it corresponds with the Indic ayaṁ, which is singular. In any case, the Sanskrit text clearly does not apply the ideas of stability, etc., to the phenomena, only to the principle.
[/quote]My apologies, I was not sufficiently clear in the text that you quoted. I had meant to say that I believed the dharmāḥ being spoken of and insignified by the marker 此法, were just that, dharmāḥ, in the plural, because of the description of the dharmāḥ here “此等諸法”. I am not sure if there is sufficient precedent, within the text itself, to argue that this particular instance of 此等諸法 is a different dharma spoken of than the other instances of 此法, especially considering that the first line of Buddhavacana: [quote]「云何為因緣法？
To-say how because-of causality [are] predestined [the] dharmāḥ?[/quote]
Lacks the differentiation in the Indic recensions between dependent origination and that which is dependently originated phenomena/dhammā. That is an interesting omission in this text.
此法 technically means “this dharma”, however, that English-rendering betrays an Indo-European bias, that is, to encode singularity and plurality into speech by way of inflection-based grammars. In Indo-European languages, “this dharma” means one particular specific dharma, and “these dharmāḥ” means a particular specific set of multiple dharmāḥ. However this distinction does not exist in Classical Chinese, 此法 equally simultaneously means “this dharma” and “these dharmāḥ”, and neither particularly, until more specification is given, if at all.
I think the specification for the plurality of the subject can be found in the descriptive phrase 此等諸法, meaning “this plural-marker many dharma”.
I don’t mean to imply that I am saying this is a faulty text, or inauthentic Buddhavacana, or anything extreme like that, as that sort of extreme discourse is often common on the internet, it is just an interesting textual curiosity.
Also, just because a pseudo-Sarvāstivāda interpretation of dhamma-theory can be read into a text, does not a Sarvāstivāda treatise make.
Is the Sanskrit recension also Sarvāstivāda?
Also this:[quote=“sujato, post:5, topic:4508”]
We should not draw any doctrinal conclusions from these variations, however.
SuttaCentral