Hello fellow Pali geeks,
Ud8.10 contains an interesting verse, of which I want to discuss the linguistics with you here:
Venerable Sujato translated (edit: this is an old version, see posts below):
This is similar to Venerable Ānandajoti (in Exalted Utterances), who I strongly suspect was an inspiration:
The bracket “[of that heat]” is in the original translation. This heat may be implied somehow, but grammatically speaking, Ānandajoti takes the object for which there is no known destination to be ‘iron bar’, which renders ayoghana. Sujato also added “heat” the second time, for which there is no Pali equivalent.
In the early discourses, the term ayoghana is unique to this verse. Does it mean ‘iron bar’? Ghana generally means a solid lump, so ayoghana would indeed be ‘iron lump’, i.e. ‘iron bar’. But all Pali and Sanskrit dictionaries I consulted interpret ayoghana as an iron hammer. I won’t list them, but it’s about 5 or 6 in total, including the Critical Pali Dictionary.
Venerable Thanissaro accordingly has (in The Mind Like Fire Unbound):
But Ireland has yet another idea. He separates the iron from the hammer, reading ayoghanahata as ‘iron struck by a hammer’. He also adds a few words not in the Pali, which I will put in brackets for clarity:
In both these translations something is struck with a hammer, which I think makes a lot more sense than something being struck by fire. AN7.55 uses the same verb hanati in a similar simile: “when an iron bowl has been heated all day and is struck, a chip might fly off and be extinguished”.
The object that is struck is different, however. For Thanissaro fire is struck; for Ireland iron is struck. The former make little sense to me as a relatable metaphor. Who would hit a fire with a hammer and why? An early scene from A Space Odyssey springs to mind…
Ireland is similar to Sujato and Ānandajoti in that the iron is not of the hammer but of the thing that is heated and cools. But for him the thing that is heated is not an iron lump (ayoghana), but just iron (ayo), as ghana already renders ‘hammer’. A problem with this is that ghana doesn’t seem to mean that anywhere else in early Pali, but always ‘mass/solid’, as in Dhp81.
It seems all interpretations have something going for them—and against them—in the commentary:
Gāthāsu pana ayoghanahatassāti ayo haññati etenāti ayoghanaṃ, kammārānaṃ ayokūṭaṃ ayomuṭṭhi ca. Tena ayoghanena hatassa pahatassa. Keci pana ‘‘ayoghanahatassāti ghanaayopiṇḍaṃ hatassā’’ti atthaṃ vadanti. Eva-saddo cettha nipātamattaṃ. Jalato jātavedasoti jhāyamānassa aggissa. Anādare etaṃ sāmivacanaṃ. Anupubbūpasantassāti anukkamena upasantassa vijjhātassa niruddhassa. Yathā na ñāyate gatīti yathā tassa gati na ñāyati. Idaṃ vuttaṃ hoti – ayomuṭṭhikūṭādinā mahatā ayoghanena hatassa saṃhatassa, kaṃsabhājanādigatassa vā jalamānassa aggissa, tathā uppannassa vā saddassa anukkamena upasantassa suvūpasantassa dasasu disāsu na katthaci gati paññāyati paccayanirodhena appaṭisandhikaniruddhattā.
I’m no expert in commentarial Pali, so anybody please correct me if necessary, but it says something like this:
And in the verses, ‘ayoghanahatassa’ means ‘iron is struck with this’. The iron hammer (ayoghana) is a smith’s iron mallet and iron club. It is struck, beaten, with this iron hammer. But some say the meaning is: “‘ayoghanahatassa’ means an iron lump is struck [with a hammer, ghana?]'.” The word ‘eva’ here is just an indeclinable. ‘Jalato jātavedaso’ means of a burning fire. Regardless [of the -so ending], this is in the genitive case. ‘Anupubbūpasantassa’ means progressively subsided, quenched, ceased. ‘Yathā na ñāyate gatī’ means no destination where it goes is known. It is said: Struck, struck together, with a great iron club, mallet, and such—with an iron hammer—is the burning fire that has “gone to” [gata??] a metal bowl and such. Or likewise the arisen sound [of the hammering?] progressively subsides and stills. Not anywhere in the ten directions is a destination discerned after its cessation, because of the state of irreversible cessation.
We can clearly neglect the suggestion of the subsiding sound, which is also omitted when the Ṭika to DN14 quotes the above with a few other alterations. It uses not jhāyamānassa but jalayamānassa for example. It also omits the “some say” sentence.
The other suggestion seems to be that the fire goes (gata) into the bowl and then cools and ceases there. Of course, we can neglect modern physics here. It basically means the iron bowl itself cools down, and the fire/heat disappears.
I think the commentary is correct that jātavedaso is a genitive, given that it is surrounded by three other genitives (or datives, potentially): ayoghanahatassa, jalato, and anupubbūpasantassa. It would be a genitive/dative if jātavedas were the stem form, which I think it is in Sanskrit. We can compare the genitive jātavedasah in Rig Veda 3.11.8. A Thai variant reading is jātavedassa, which is also a genitive/dative, but jātavedaso should be preferred by lectio difficilior. Either way, this goes against ‘struck by fire/heat’, which would seem to require an instrumental.
Jātavedas literally means “knower/possessor of all who are born” and was originally a name of the fire god Agni, when used in rites. The word is also taken to mean just ‘fire’ in a non-religious sense, like in the Quail’s Protection chant of Ja35, although that is a request for the fire to depart, so I’d say it still has Agni-like connotations.
It also happens in Ja262, Ja507, Ja532, and Ja547 (at Pts vi.578) all with meaning ‘fire’, and the latter in the phrase jātavedaṃ namassati, ‘to venerate the fire’. I’m not sure how early these verses are.
Otherwise, it’s rare in early Pali. Outside of Ud8.10, it is only found in SN7.9 and Snp3.4, in an identical verse line: “Fire (jātavedo) is indeed born from any wood.” (Bodhi) Or “for any kindling can kindle a flame (jātavedo).” (Sujato) In each sutta the context is a fire sacrifice, so a connection with Agni Jātavedas may again be present. Perhaps the Buddha is echoing some then-familiar Vedic idea.
Maybe jātavedaso can also mean ‘heat’, as Ānandajoti seems to think. That would also have been an aspect of Agni.
Jalato means ‘burning’ or ‘glowing’. It is a genitive/dative present participle of jalati. I’m not sure how Sujato and Ānandajoti arrived at, respectively, “heat and flame” and “fire and heat” for jalato jātavedaso, but maybe they don’t take jātavedaso as a genitive. Thanissaro’s “glowing fire” seems more apt.
Anupubbūpasantassa means ‘gradually subsided, cooled, faded, extinguished’. The verb upasammati also describes the extinguishment of fires elsewhere, so this is not a unique instance. It is used as a synonym for ceasing. Compare dukkhūpasamagāminaṃ in AN4.49; rāgadosamohānaṁ upasamo in MN140, and sankhārūpasamo in Iti43; and probably many other instances.
There are two Chinese parallels to the sutta, and, you guessed it, these have different interpretations as well!
Venerable Anālayo translates SA1076 (in Dabba’s Self-cremation in the Saṃyukta-āgama) as:
Bingenheimer translates SĀ2 15 (in Studies in Āgama Literature) as:
Neither text mentions an iron hammer, and the former doesn’t even have anything struck at all, let alone with a hammer.
The latter has sparks, which would align more closely with the simile or the struck bowl at AN7.55. Anālayo also notes at his translation: “The corresponding stanza in Ud8.10 [the verse we’re concerned with] seems to be about a blazing spark that comes off from a hammer, presumably used by a smith who is beating a heated piece of iron on an anvil.”
The Chinese parallel to AN7.55 at MA6 is, in the BDK translation:
It is just as when [a slab of] iron that is all ablaze, intensely hot, is hit with a hammer, a burning splinter flies up into the air, but on moving upward, becomes extinguished immediately.
Charles Patton (@cdpatton) at Dharmapearls.net has a bit more compassionate English, but the essence of his translation is the same:
It’s like striking an iron that’s glowing and flaming hot with a hammer, and a spark flies off and goes out after rising.
Here iron is hit by a hammer, while in the Pali parallel a bowl is hit by an unnamed object.
From all these parallels I think we can conclude that there was confusion about the verse already at an early age.
I’m not completely sure what to make of all this. However, I am pretty convinced we can dismiss the “struck by fire” idea. Also, “fire and heat” seems incorrect, as we need a present participle for jalato, probably ‘glowing’ instead of ‘burning’.
Of the rest I’m less sure, but despite the agreement between the dictionaries, which often just copy the interpretation of the commentaries or each other, I think we aren’t dealing with an iron hammer but with a piece of iron, whether that is referred to as ayo (as Ireland) or ayoghana (as Ānandajoti & Sujato).
Is this iron struck by a hammer (ghana) like Ireland has it? Grammatically, this seems a bit more demanding, though it could perhaps work. But again, the problem remains that ghana by itself doesn’t seem to mean hammer. The Digital pali dictionary says there is one instance of this meaning in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, but I couldn’t find it.
Anālayo’s idea of a spark would make sense in light of striking something (whether with an iron hammer or not) which otherwise serves little purpose in the metaphor, and it would be similar to AN7.55 and SA2 15. It could work if jātavedaso referred to the spark, which is perhaps not impossible. Rig Veda 8.19 talks of a spark of Agni, and lots of the Agni rites in the Vedas invoke him, getting a fire started, which is also the general purport of producing jātavedo from kindling in SN7.9.
OK, that’s a lot of info, I’m sorry! But we then arrive at something like this, very literally:
A bit more freely, accepting ‘heat’ for jātavedaso and applying ‘glowing’ to the iron, since that semantically makes little difference:
Or, accepting ‘spark’ for jātavedaso:
I would like this interpretation to work, partly because of the close connection with AN7.55—but mostly because, as I said before, the striking now actually serves a real function in the metaphor.
A funny byproduct is that now the iron is no longer heated—not necessarily, anyway. You can also cause sparks by whacking a cold piece of metal. That is a way to “give birth” to fire as well, having Agni-like connotations again.
The verse above in translation is half a sentence, by the way, but that’s a matter of English. In Pali it is a complete sentence, like almost all verses are. It is followed by:
The grammar of this verse is a lot less complicated, so let’s not discuss it. 
If any of you have any thoughts on the other verse, I’d love to hear them. (Dear Bhante @Sujato, any ideas?)
However! I hope we can stick to the linguistics and not talk about the doctrinal implications of these verses here. You can open another thread for that, if you want.
And… of course, 
after I finished writing all this offline I decided to have a quick look at Woodward’s translations, which I didn’t have offline. And he has:
So he interprets jātavedaso as “spark of fire”, and has no hammer. Ayoghana is an “anvil”, which is an interesting suggestion.
. Sorry bout that, Bhante. I hope you don’t mind I keep the old version in the above post, so I don’t have to rewrite it all. I’ll edit in a note.
