I agree re : translation; but that one just is quite odd in the list; seems misusable, or archaic, in some ways.
Thank you for this discussion.
Well the word used in the Pali is itthiyā (the whole phrase is “malaṃ, bhikkhave, itthiyā duccaritaṃ”).
Here are dictionary entries:
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In the PTS dictionary: “Itthi & Itthī”, and “Itthikā”
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In SuttaCentral’s dictionary: “itthiyā”
I don’t know what may be implied by the “–yā” suffix. (?)
I don’t doubt there are people who see this as a censure of women (so perhaps it is important to revisit the translation).
I don’t see why it’s translated like that; I don’t see what’s in the Pali that requires it, and the message seems to me antagonistic to what I’d expect (which was that you should avoid the stain of your own misconduct).
Why is it translated like that?
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The case of itthiyā is nominative, is it? Does that imply one translation or the other, given there’s no verb?
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Is it because other translations are like that, and translators copy each other?
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Is it because of the commentary or origin story associated with verse 242 of the Dhammapada, which mentions a husband ashamed by his wife’s misbehaviour?
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Is there something in a commentary, associated with AN 8.15?
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Or some other reason? Or is it just mistranslated?
The translation isn’t wrong, exactly, but too easy to misinterpret, IMO.
This dictionary of Suffixes & Derivation suggests the suffix denotes a quality or an abstract idea – so “womanhood”, or “female gender” as you suggest … not “a woman” in particular.
That Suffixes & Derivation above says of the “ya” suffix that it
forms a very large class of nouns, mostly Neuter abstract
If it’s neuter then itthiyā is not nominative – the nominative would be itthiyaṃ.
Instead this Appendix:Pali declension implies that a “ā” ending is the ablative case.
And Syntax of the Cases in the Pali Nikayas says,
The abl. in Pāli is on the whole an adverbal case, there being hardly any adnominal uses. Even the few to be met with in the Nikāyas presuppose some verb which has come to be omitted, probably for reasons of idiom, but still can be understood. As regards syntactical categories, 78 we have placed the abl. [148] of starting point first and treated those of origin and cause as developments of the former. The second is the abl. of separation, third the abl. of distance, i.e. the abl. denoting the point from which distance is reckoned, and finally as fourth the abl. of viewpoint, under which heading have been discussed the abl. of comparison and the abl. implying ‘on what side’. Those ablatives which appear as pure adverbs and are, therefore, classed by local grammarians as ‘indeclinables’ have been dealt with separately though they could still be placed under one (or more) of the above headings according to their specific meanings. In all these categories, however, the unity of the fundamental conception is evident, and sometimes we may account for the same abl. in more than one way.
So is that Q.E.D.?
I think it’s saying literally that “the misconduct originates in association with womanhood” – and it doesn’t assign the stain to the woman.
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I wonder why the word-order of the Pali keeps changing.
The translation gives an identical word order for each item, e.g. …
[something] is the stain of [something]
… but in the Pali the word “stain” (malaṃ) is sometimes in the first part (on the left side), and sometimes in the second (on the right).
A literal translation may be something like:
- Stain-of-not-studying – [is] originated in hymns
- Stain-of-neglect – [is] originated in houses
- Stain – laziness originated in beauty
- Negligence – stain associated with guarding (I don’t know which declension that is of rakkhanta)
- Stain – misconduct originating in association with womanhood
- Miserliness – stain associated with giving (dadato is the same declension as rakkhato above, I suppose)
- etc.
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Here’s a translation of verse 242 of the Dhammapada by the way:
Malitthiya duccaritam
maccheram dadato malam
mala ve papaka dhamma
asmim loke paramhi ca.
Verse 242: Sexual misconduct is the taint of a woman; stinginess is the taint of a giver; evil ways are indeed taints in this world as well as in the next.
Its Preface says they tried to translate close to the text, and (or but) rely on commentary too.
Anyway, there the phrase is shorted to Malitthiya duccaritam – I can see that, translated literally, that Pali may be closer to (i.e. more easily misunderstood as) associating the stain with the womanhood – and the origin story (or commentary) does the same.
I think that (ambiguity in the text) is an artefact of abbreviating it to verse form – the other verses from that chapter of the Dhammapada tell me it’s not intended to find fault in others (e.g. in women).
I am not so sure about that. See:
Consider that the Buddha is talking to bhikkhus. And consider that bhikkhus don’t have houses, so they can’t neglect houses.
But The house itself can be ‘stained’ by neglect - that is to say, if a house is neglected, it gets messy, and we consider it ‘stained’. Oral hyms get stained from not being recited (not sure if that means because eventually they will be forgotten or acquire errors, if it is means ‘not recited [properly]’, but either way.)
Beauty is stained by laziness, perhaps meaning that a beautiful lady for example, becomes less appealing when it is found out that she is lazy!
A guard is stained by being negligent, fairly clear, because if the guard is negligent, they are not a good guard! And a woman who does misconduct, is seen as not a very good woman!
Makes sense to me.
And these were probably well known things. Like perhaps common sayings. So it is putting all these together - look, we have all these things that we consider ‘stains’ in society. All these bad qualities to avoid. But, there is one which is so much worse than all these ones we are so familiar with! And that, is ignorance. As the sutta concludes:
Worse than any of these is ignorance, the worst stain of all.
And that’s why this is the one which is the most important.
It’s basically saying, look, there are all these wordly stains. And they’re bad enough. But put them out of your mind now, they’re bad but we have something far more serious to deal with. So, now, focus on the one stain which is really the worst of all. Let’s uproot ignorance.
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Yes … yes, I do get what you’re saying – you’re saying that it’s the “object” that becomes stained – it’s just that I don’t agree with that.
There are passages like this in MN 101:
‘Living in a house is cramped and dirty, but the life of one gone forth is wide open.
‘sambādho gharāvāso rajāpatho, abbhokāso pabbajjā.
Or this, from MN 36:
‘Living in a house is cramped and dirty, but the life of one gone forth is wide open.
‘sambādho gharāvāso rajāpatho, abbhokāso pabbajjā.It’s not easy for someone living at home to lead the spiritual life utterly full and pure, like a polished shell.
Nayidaṃ sukaraṃ agāraṃ ajjhāvasatā ekantaparipuṇṇaṃ ekantaparisuddhaṃ saṅkhalikhitaṃ brahmacariyaṃ carituṃ.
(On Access to Insight, Thanissaro Bhikkhu tended to translate this as “dusty” – “a dusty life”).
The Buddha himself said that, about his going forth.
I don’t think it’s the house that’s dusty there, stained – it’s the living.
And yes of course the bhikkhus don’t have a house (nor a woman), but they were presumably aware of being (and of avoiding becoming) tainted themselves.
Makes sense to me.
Yes you can make sense of it: that’s plausible given the translation.
However, one of Confucius’ Analects says that “plausible men are dangerous”; and so I wish it were a clearer translation.
Pending any further evidence to the contrary, I think the translation may be wrong, given that’s the sense it makes.
That statement is not consistent with:
Then you say:
In which case your translation does not seem to make sense in this context.
Not by neglecting a house. They don’t have one to neglect.
Bodhi also agrees with Sujato. Are both of these men ‘dangerous’?
Is it greater clarity you are wishing for, or a different meaning? Because yours does not seem to be merely clearer than their’s. Rather, it seems to represent a different meaning, implying that they are wrong. That’s fine if they are. But so far, as I have explained above, yours does not seem to make sense in the context. That doesn’t mean it is necessarily wrong, but it would perhaps be unusual for the Buddha to give a teaching which doesn’t make sense.
What is the precise grammatical reasoning for your view of the meaning of the Pāli? If your grammatical reasoning is valid, then that would be the only reason to consider the possibility of your translation being correct. And then we could only be sure it that theirs is wrong if you can clearly establish that the Pāli grammar does not allow for their translation, making your meaning the only possible one out of the two.
If we are without any clear grammatical argument for an alternative translation, there should be no reason to consider it. So I think we should start there. Sorry if you have already discussed your grammatical reasons and I did not see them.
In which case your translation does not seem to make sense in this context.
Yes I think “You may be stained by neglecting a house” might be a mistranslation too. Later (at the end of the first post) I guessed that might be more like, “the stain of a lack of (spiritual) energy is associated being a householder”.
Bodhi also agrees with Sujato. Are both of these men ‘dangerous’?
I was questioning the translation, not vilifying the translators – a translation might be misleading but still plausible, which (the translation) would be “dangerous” if you believed it.
Sorry if you have already discussed your grammatical reasons and I did not see them.
I think I found (and wrote, above) that:
- itthiya might mean something more like “womanhood” or “female gender” – i.e. it’s an abstract noun – it’s not a concrete noun like “person” or “a woman”
- The word-order implies that it’s the misconduct, not the stain, that’s associated with the “womanhood”
- itthiya is in the ablative case, not the nominative case – so the womanhood isn’t the agent of the misconduct … the ablative case denotes origin, so I guess that’s describing the type of misconduct, e.g. “misconduct that originates from [contact with] womanhood”
Is it greater clarity you are wishing for, or a different meaning?
I was asking a question, i.e. why is it translated that way? For example is it because of the Pali, because of other translators, because of commentary?
I thought it better not to assume I’m right, given that I seem to be disagreeing with experienced translators: I wanted to check, to ask for a second opinion, more expert than mine.
How do you know that? The case ending would be the same also for instrumental; genitive; or locative, right? Would both instrumental and genitive not fit Sujato and Bodhi’s translations?
That sounds good.
I tried to explain that earlier, i.e. my guess was that:
- itthiyā is “Itthi & Itthī”, plus a “-yā” suffix
- “-yā” is this suffix, which “forms a very large class of nouns, mostly Neuter abstract”, and whose nominative form ends “-aṃ”.
- If that declines like the neuter “yānaṁ” on this page, then “-yā” could only be the ablative.
What is your argument for why it cannot be instrumental or genitive? I assume you have one, otherwise it would be strange to say that it is ablative.
The instrumental and genitive of yāna- “carriage” are yānena and yānassa. Only the ablative is yānā (i.e. like itthiyā).
Yāna is neuter, itthi is feminine. Itthi singular instr.; abl.; gen.; loc, = itthiyā. No?
I refrained from posting anything for a bit on this thread because I wasn’t sure how beneficial it would be, but I think there’s a pretty obvious reason why misconduct would be a woman’s stain in an ancient culture.
The misconduct refers to sexual misconduct, e.g. committing adultery. If a woman is having sex with multiple men and becomes pregnant, fatherhood cannot be reliably established, family life breaks down. No traditional man is going to want to raise, especially unwittingly, another man’s offspring.
Misconduct is not a man’s stain because motherhood is easy to establish, the baby’s mother is whatever woman the baby was seen to come out of. Also, ancient India is highly patriarchal.
So, in short, since genetic lineage is ultimately funneled through the woman, it makes sense for traditional societies to make her the ultimate bearer of sexual responsibility. Hence, misconduct is a woman’s stain.
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You’re probably right: so it declines like jāti – Declension of feminine nouns in -i – so the syntax is ambiguous about whether it’s genitive, locative, dative, ablative, or instrumental … and it’s not an abstract noun.
Still the word order, I think, implies that word is qualifying the (type of) misconduct, rather than owning the stain.
Yes, that is an example of reasoning which implies that the current translation is plausible (and misleading, IMO).
Yes.
Grammatically, it is because the word is in the genitive case, indicating possession.
The pattern with all of these phrases is that if this bad thing prevails, it brings harm to the subject. If one is negligent, a house deteriorates. If a donor is stingy, it is bad for their generosity. And so on. If a woman behaves badly, it is bad for her. The text doesn’t specify what kind of bad behavior, although obviously sexual transgressions are at least included. Regardless of what we may think of this, the text is clear.
No, this is not what it means. The grammar simply can’t be read in this way.
Sorry, no, that is not what it says.
No, it is genitive.
Lol no, we are not mindless automatons. Experts love to disagree!
No.
My thoughts exactly!
This is a different ending. The -ya as a secondary suffix denotes an abstractive. For example, we have the verbal root vid “to know” which gets suffixed with -ya to become vidyā “knowledge”, which in Pali is resolved as vijjā .
Itthiyā is genitive singular feminine from the stem -ī. It has nothing to do with the abstractive meaning, it is just a coincidence of forms. Happens all the time.
In Pali, word order doesn’t affect the construal of the sentence (which is determined by the case relations), but is solely for emphasis or rhetorical purposes.
This particular passage is quite unusual. It is expressed as prose, then as verse. Normally in such cases the prose version would use more standard word order and forms, and the verse would mix it up. And typically (in the Anguttara) we would assume the verse is added later. However in this case the forms and word order are virtually identical in both prose and verse. This must be because the passage began originally as verse and was adapted into a prose form.
My guess would be that the series of terms is a kind of traditional axiom or saying, which the Buddha took up to subvert it by adding his own ending. The same pattern is used commonly in the Sagathavagga.
In verses it is almost inevitable that the “standard” word order is mixed up in all sorts of ways. Sometimes this is for poetic effect, other times in order to comply with the metre (metri causa). But of course, it’s poetry, so these choices are largely subjective.
Sorry, no, that’s just incorrect. The text says nothing of “originating”, and the relations between words don’t work that way.
Consider the first line:
Asajjhāyamalā, bhikkhave, mantā
Here the first two terms are compounded, so the case relation between them is not determined. The compound can in theory be rendered a number of different ways. However, while grammatically possible, most such variations are ruled out by the sense of the words. For example, we could treat it as a dvanda compound and say “Not reciting and stains are hymns”. But that can’t be correct. Another possible rendering would be “hymns are the stain of non-reciting”. But again, that doesn’t make sense. So the number of potential renderings is constricted by both grammar and sense. In this phrase, it is not easy to construe it in a way that satisfies both.
The general rule here is this: compounded phrases inherently express less information than the resolved forms. So it is always best to rely on the resolved forms where possible and infer to the compounds.
Now, the first two terms are declined to agree with mantā (nominative plural neuter). This pattern is followed in the next line.
But in the following line, the compound is resolved, and the relation is expressed with the genitive vaṇṇassa. So this is unambiguous: “Laziness is the stain of beauty”.
The following lines also contain genitive forms: rakkhato, itthiyā, dadato. So this is no accident, and clearly the syntax should be construed as genitive throughout. This is obvious from the text, and is confirmed in the commentary, which uses the genitive plural forms in its glosses: mantānaṃ and gharānaṃ. Likewise, genitive forms are also used in the Gandhari parallel (malo malosa kosijo).
Why does the text have the shorter nominative forms? Metri causa. The metre has eight syllables per line, so the forms are shortened to fit. Again, happens all the time. Welcome to the wonderful, wild world of translating Pali verse!
I mean, yes, the mother does have a great affect on lineage. But this is over-interpreting the line. It is merely saying that when a woman transgresses, this is a stain on her. It’s not excusing men from the fault of transgression—indeed, normally transgression is defined from the man’s point of view. Is it sexist to mention women alone in this context? Sure! But it just says what it says. A translator’s job is not to judge, but to transmit.
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Thank you very much, Bhante. 
Your post was, in all ways, an excellent lesson for many. I do not think you quote without being aware of context of "A speculative thought: what if… " but rather spoke to and answer questions quite directly. Well spoken, thank you, imo i can rely on this.
May all being s be happy.
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Thank you, Bhante.
To summarise, I think you said it must be translated the way you did, because the genitive case is used.
Asajjhāyamalā, bhikkhave, mantā;
anuṭṭhānamalā, bhikkhave, gharā;
Given that mantā and gharā are nominative (neuter plural), why translate them as “of hymns” and “of houses”?
Assuming the compounds aren’t dvanda then are they determinate? E.g. in asajjhāyamalā, doesn’t asajjhāya describe the type of malā? So it’s saying, “stain-of-not-studying, bhikkhus, hymns”? How do you get from there to “of hymns”? Shouldn’t the translation say, at most, “[one of the stains is] the stain of not studying hymns”?
My thesis was that the stain or impurity would be “owned” by the negligent/lazy person, not by the object of their neglect.
Perhaps you’re saying we can’t infer anything from the case of mantā and gharā (i.e. their being nominative) because those phrases use compounded nouns? So we look to the next lines, find the genitive vaṇṇassa, and take it that the first two lines might as well as been genitive too?
But then you say …
This is […] confirmed in the commentary, which uses the genitive plural forms in its glosses: mantānaṃ and gharānaṃ. Likewise, genitive forms are also used in the Gandhari parallel (malo malosa kosijo).
malaṃ, bhikkhave, vaṇṇassa kosajjaṃ
Moving on to the third line, given that vaṇṇassa is genitive, how do you deduce that it’s “laziness is the stain of beauty”, rather than, “[another type of] stain is the laziness of beauty”?
Or further (taking “appearance” instead of “beauty”), “laziness of appearance” i.e. “appearing lazy”: so in other words, “it’s a stain (on the perpetrator) to look lazy”?
pamādo, bhikkhave, rakkhato malaṃ
maccheraṃ, bhikkhave, dadato malaṃ
Moving on, rakkhato could be genitive or dative; pamādo and malaṃ are both nominative again.
I see that rakkhato, together with dadato, are the only two where:
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malaṃ is on the right-hand-side, and
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the right-hand-side contains a present participle (“guarding” or “giving”), instead of a noun (“hymns”, “houses”, “beauty”, “a woman”).
These are the (only) two where assigning the stain to the object makes sense to me: it’s staining the action, the guarding, the giving.
You said though that,
In Pali, word order doesn’t affect the construal of the sentence (which is determined by the case relations), but is solely for emphasis or rhetorical purposes.
I assume that means that the case relations are of primary importance (and cannot be contradicted by a translator), but within that constraint the word-order isn’t entirely negligible (it’s of secondary importance, not unimportant) – except in verse, where I’d expect the word order to insignificant because the meter is important instead.
malaṃ, bhikkhave, itthiyā duccaritaṃ
And (having looked at the rest) that leaves only itthiyā, again.
You can’t be sure that itthiyā is genitive, can you, or can you be? That “-yā” ending could imply any of genitive, locative, dative, ablative, or instrumental.
In summary I think you’re saying that:
- It’s right to attribute the stain because the noun is genitive
- If (instead of being the owner of the stain) the noun were the cause or occasion of stain, or just qualifying the type of stain, then the noun would have to be ablative oslt
- The first two nouns (houses and hymns) are nominative, but ignore that, because the others are all probably (some definitely are) genitive … and the commentary interprets them as genitive … and, it’s genitive in the Gandhari
- Assume that itthiyā is genitive too, because the others are: so it is (i.e. she would be) the owner of the stain and the misconduct.
Thank you again for answering my question (and for making all the suttas more accessible).
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I agree with Ajhan Sujato on this. I wanted to add that ‘stain’ here doesn’t have the same connotation as ‘sin’ which I believe in Abrahamic religions, permanent (until forgiven?), to be spent for eternity in hell. It seems more in line with blemish/rust/rot ie somewhat more impermanent. In fact, there are no permanent sins in Buddhism. Also I might add it was a sexist time by the looks of it, perhaps to put it mildly. We shouldn’t try to disguise this fact, but rather distinguish the message from the backdrop, as when we start altering texts to suit political and/or other forces around the message will end up garbled, however bad it sounds, it will do more damage than it will remedy.
with metta
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I read a paper once, The Bahudhātuka-sutta and its Parallels On Women’s Inabilities, which suggests that some “sexism” was added later.
Regardless, I just wanted to ask about the translation: not discuss corruption (of text) and political forces, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to discuss here whether the English fits everyone’s preconceptions of society: only to ask (verify) whether it’s an accurate (necessary and sufficient) translation, conveying the letter and spirit of the original.
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