Perhaps it’s like “You lost X children” answered with “We’ve lost many X children”.
But realistically, it’s probably a mother losing 7 children (or “a hundred children” as an exaggration), replied with “Not just that, but many hundreds.” and a wordplay on seven and hundred.
Thank you for the kind words, Ayya! My pleasure that it’s providing useful and/or curious to others as well.
But it’s the Vāseṭṭhi’s answer that “It’s happened so many times in our past lives” makes the Sujāta say “Oh, that’s a wonderful answer!” Therefore, I think Sujāta was refering to Vāseṭṭhi’s children lost in this lifetime, so again, I think it’s either a literal seven, or an exaggerated hundred.
Was the causitive form of khad actually used in the sense “exposed to be eaten by animals”?
Yes!
Were children exposed in this way as a funeral rite?
This seems strange, and I cannot so far find any evidence for it. It seems to be a specially grotesque method. Perhaps it was reserved for children who died in a plague, as an offering for the goddess of children’s disease, Hārītī, which would explain why there were seven in one day.
So I think I have found another explanation. Check the first few paragraphs and see what strikes you. These are the funeral rites for brahmins as prescribed in the Satapatha Brahmana:
The main thing, the first duty and emphasis, is to make sure the departed are fed. This sense would be included in the causative form, “to make eat”.
Sundari was a brahmin lady, and the text does not shame her for what she does. That would be because she has shown the proper ritual devotion for her children by making sure they have eaten and are sustained on their journey in the next life.
FWIW, this passage confirms that the standard brahmin funeral was cremation, including for children.
I think that’s the most important part. The event is not described as anything out of the ordinary, and if it was an especially gruesome thing, Sujāta would unlikely be rejoiced by the answer.
And just now I realised that even in Turkish & English, “Çocuklarını besledin” would mean both “You’ve fed your kids [with offering]” or “You’ve fed your kids [to the animals]”.
So a rather straightforward translation would cover that; and with footnotes that it’s most probably offerings for the dead, and perhaps a plague related incident.
Also, this looks like an online copy, which I haven’t been able to find and it’s quite difficult to import books to Turkey. If this isn’t from a personal archive could you help me where to find Norman’s edition if I may Bhante?
He systematically makes a bunch of great points, but also i think the framing could be rethought. I believe, in fact, that he makes this point elsewhere (maybe even in that essay, I have just re-skimmed it) but to me the important thing is not that all of his criteria must be met to make a translation, but that each of the criteria offers a way to improve translations, and this is a task to which many people can contribute. No-one can do it all.
After all, even in this one case you brought up, Norman didn’t succeed in meeting one of his own criteria, that things should be interpreted in light of the contemporary texts that give a wider cultural background. He very much emphasizes the linguistic aspects, and here he has, I think, correctly identified the linguistic form, but didn’t notice the extreme unlikelihood of a respected brahmin lady just leaving her children out to be eaten by dogs and jackals.
The solution was, moreover, in the single most likely place to find a solution, namely the primary Brahmanical ritual text in the time and place before the Buddha, right at the start of the section on funerals. To us this seems like an obscure reference, but by the standards of the day this is like looking up Wikipedia.
Anyway, point being, as we work our way down through the ages, little by little, we can identify problems and come closer to fixing them.
Which is why I’m warming up to making two editions, a scholarly (pretty much prose) and a poetic version. After all, sometimes when I’m looking for inspiration & wisdom, having footnotes and commentarial exegesis or the dry language of such direct translations can break immersion. Then again, having access to those scholarly works prove immensely useful. I think it’s a good idea from the get-go to focus on what a translation is trying to achieve and stick to that.
For example, V. Thanissaro walks a fine line trying to meet both. But again, I think committing to one thing (inspiration or education) with one work should yield the best results.
Standing on the shoulders of giants, I hope to be doing my whatever small part!
“When the translator has chosen the text he wishes to translate, and has persuaded himself that he knows what it means, then he comes to the third part of his task…”
This is just golden. There’s some excellent wisdom in this brief essay.
I see you’ve made changes to the Thig 13.4 Bhante.
The third quartet still reads:
“Many hundreds of children,
“Bahūni puttasatāni,
hundreds of family circles,
ñātisaṅghasatāni ca;
both mine and yours, brahmin, Khāditāni atītaṁse, have been devoured in the past.
mama tuyhañca brāhmaṇa.
Is it possible to read this as “have been fed” accordingly?
Finally, done with the draft of Thig 13.4. I shouldn’t say this, but of all the poems so far, this has been… my least favourite. I got weirdly stuck on it, probably due to how repetitive it is.
On a side note, I remembered this post:
For the bit:
hemavaṇṇaṁ harittacaṁ;
Norman has the most dry “Golden-coloured, with golden skin”. Simple!
I think I’m going to go with something like “With golden complexion, divine skin”, using Hari’s Vishnu connonations rather than repeating the gold motive.
This should be fun!
