SuttaCentral
Perfect. I will start translating things from the English version and when we find the French, I will try to confirm what I did, my French is quite rusty, but I guess I can learn again!
I have actually finished the first chapter, I will review a few things with a friend who works in translations before I send it to you.
Hi, thanks again for your effort.
I was reading through Chapter I and I found a few things, I will post them here:
Chapter I
25 -> moun (there is a space here) tains
27 -> renounced (double space here) the bonds of family
34, -> there is a comma, not a period
41 -> old age and death crush him, (that last comma)
I hope it helps 
thanks, Felipe, 
the link in the previous post has been updated
@LXNDR my corrections for Chapter II
Best regards.
Felipe
corrected a few other glitches and misspellings and re-updated the link
my apology for not being able to catch them the first time around
thank you, the discussion suggested the ultimate solution
aha! sounds a bit like ditching notepad might be far easier
Notepad is never a good idea. I don’t use Sublime text, but back in the day when I used Windows I had notepad++ which is free (GPL) and incredibly good for just a ‘simple’ and light text editor. It has a portable version, no install required!
No apologies required. I will update my version and confirm some other things I found in the following chapters, two eyes are always better than one 
and four is better still
Chapter XIV
9 “He affronted me, he insulted me, he overcame me, he offended me”; their animosity is not appeased of those who cling (to that thought).
10 “He affronted me, he insulted me, he overcame me, he offended me”; of those in this world who cling (to that thought), their animosity is not appeased.
the meaning of these two verses is identical, whereas it is opposite with their counterparts in the Pali Dhammapada (Dhp1), so something has been lost in transmission or in translation, i think it warrants a cross-check against the first order texts: the Sanskrit and the French
yes, this is a translation mistake
ākrośan mām avocan mām
ayojan mām ajāpayet /
atra ye hy upanahyanti
vairaṃ teṣāṃ na śāmyati // 9
ākrośan mām avocan mām
ajayan mām ajāpayet /
atra ye nopanahyanti
vairaṃ teṣāṃ praśāmyati // 10
na śāmyati - not become quiet, not come to an end, not tranquilize
praśāmyati - become calm, be allayed
Interesting.
It would be interesting also to cross check with the Sanskrit version of the Dhammapada too.
I have not found the French version, but I asked in the Amaravati library, who knows.
the largely complete Sanskrit text seems to have survived, maybe in another instance than the one used for French translation
Thanks for solving this!
The site you’re linking to has the various versions verse-by-verse, so that’s nice. The English translation there is an old one done from the Tibetan. Mostly it will similar to the Sanskrit, so can be used for checking, but obviously the Sanskrit text is the final authority.
Keep the questions coming, we’ll try to sort them out.
another peculiar verse occurs in Chapter VI
Sara Boin Webb
14 Rain penetrates what is covered, not what is uncovered; it is therefore necessary to uncover what is covered so that the rain cannot penetrate.
its apparent paradoxy, of a koan type, is explained with a footnote (which i removed, since it’s not a part of the original text, but can restore if needed)
[Ed.] The commentarial story alludes to a miraculous occasion on which rain did NOT penetrate the only house without roof in a village. Here rain represents the mist of ignorance which cannot penetrate a mind the cover (roof) on which no longer obscures the Four Noble Truths.
i don’t remember paradoxical passages in the Dhammapada and therefore think they’re unlikely to appear in this text as well
in the translation from Tibetan version the verse sounds more straightforward
14 The rain falls from a sky covered by clouds, it falls not from a clear sky; remove then that which obscures (the mind) and the rain will not fall.
the Sanskrit is
channam evābhivarṣati
vivṛtaṃ nābhivarṣati
tasmādd hi channaṃ vivared
evaṃ taṃ nābhivarṣati
That verse appears in Ud5.5.
https://suttacentral.net/pi/ud5.5/28
“Channamativassati,
vivaṭaṃ nātivassati;
Tasmā channaṃ vivaretha,
evaṃ taṃ nātivassatī”ti.
Translation:
“On what is covered defilement pours down, on what is open it does not pour down,
Therefore what is covered open up, so that it does not pour down on you.”
https://suttacentral.net/en/ud5.5/40
Rain soddens what’s covered
& doesn’t sodden what’s open.
So open up what’s covered up,
so that it won’t get soddened by the rain.
Or: Uposatha Sutta: The Observance Day
Rain soddens what is covered up,
It does not sodden what is open.
Therefore uncover what is covered
That the rain will not sodden it.
Whereas in the Dhammapada:
https://suttacentral.net/en/dhp/14-
Just as rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, so passion penetrates an undeveloped mind.
Just as rain does not break through a well-thatched house, so passion never penetrates a well-developed mind.
This verse, in the pali version quoted below, is a famous one, and it occurs in the Vinaya. The context is the confession or concealment of offences. Despite its frequent quoting, I have never really understood it.
Reading the Tibetan version is the first time it makes sense! But I’m not sure it can be taken in that way. I’ll have to look more closely at it.
@Brahmali, we discussed this verse earlier. Do you have any opinion on the Tibetan version? It makes much more sense, but I can’t justify it grammatically: the rain should fall on the accusative, not from it!
I think the Tibetan versions may be grammatically possible. The accusative can be used to express the “place where” or the “time when” the action of the verb takes place (See “Syntax of the Cases in the Pali Nikāyas”, paragraphs 45+46). The first two lines could then be rendered:
It rains when/where there is cover,
Not when/where there is no cover.
The question is whether the word channa , which usually implies cover from the rain, can be stretched to mean the cloud-cover itself. I haven’t been able to find any convincing evidence one way or the other.
Much is lost regardless of how you translate this. Channa means covered, but it also means concealed, and presumably it is this double meaning that gives the verse its sense. Inadequate as it is, perhaps this will work:
It rains when there is (cloud) cover,
Not when there is no (cloud) cover.
So remove the cover,
and it will rain no more.
But this is incredibly obscure. I mean, no-one has ever heard of a phrase like ekaṁ samayaṁ bhagavā sāvatthiyaṁ viharati. O, wait … </sarcasm>
Thanks for pointing out what I should have recognized immediately!
Perhaps the nuance is to be found in a Sanskrit usage, where it can mean the “obscured” moon. In its current, and perhaps original, context, the verse is set on an uposatha, and earlier in the text we have several references to the sky:
abhikkantā, bhante, ratti; nikkhanto pacchimo yāmo; uddhasto aruṇo; nandimukhī ratti
So it’s not us covered by the clouds, it’s the sky. And we could translate:
It rains when the sky is hidden,
not when it’s revealed.
So reveal what’s hidden,
and it will rain no more.
I doubt if it’s germane to the translation, but it is interesting to note that, if we are correct, vivarati here has exactly the opposite of its ancestral Vedic meaning. One of the primal Vedic myths is of Vritra, the “dragon” (= ahi) who imprisons the waters, bringing drought to the land. Indra slays the dragon (vivarati) releasing the waters. The meaning of vritra as “constrictor” is still felt in the Pali nīvaraṇa.
While this is no more than a side note, it does point to another curious feature of the verse which is usually overlooked. Normally, especially in agrarian cultures, rain is a good thing. But here it seems to be considered a bad thing. However, it is not so straightforward. When Vritra holds back the waters you have a drought. But if he releases them all at once you get floods.
And in one place where ativassati is used with a clear contextual meaning, that’s exactly what it means. In Mil 6.3.1 we have ativassena dhaññaṃ vinassati.
Obviously “too much” is the most common meaning of ati. Equally, it might mean “on or over” as is usually interpreted here.
CPD hedges its bets, giving “excessive rain” for ativassa, but “to rain violently, to rain into or through” for ativassati, attested only in this verse (Cone has more references). It does seem a little unnecessary to posit two senses of a word for one context, when “rain too much” works perfectly well.
Comm. is ambiguous. It says that the positive use of ativassati does indeed mean too much (ativiya vassati), but in the negative form nātivassati the ati is a mere prefix.
The sense of “rain into” seems to be derived from the Ghatikara Sutta:
Atha kho, mahārāja, āvesanaṃ sabbantaṃ temāsaṃ ākāsacchadanaṃ aṭṭhāsi, na devotivassi
But this has variant readings. Perhaps we should read abhivassati with Mil here. (See Cone under ativassati and abhivassati).
In any case, the meaning of “rain on or into” is relevant only when the channa is the covered thing that the rains falls on. If it is, instead, the covered sky, then “rain too much” would seem to be better:
It rains too much when the sky is hidden,
not when it’s revealed.
So reveal what’s hidden,
and it won’t rain too much.
Oh, and I just noticed, that passage from the Ghatikara Sutta is relevant here, too. It says ākāsacchadana, which BB renders “open to the sky”, but literally it is “sky-covered”, i.e “the sky was its only roof”. (cp. English “sky-clad”=naked). This would seem to agree with our interpretation of channa.
Check this one
Vom rechten Leben - Buddhistische Lehren aus Indien und Tibet
Aus dem Sanskrit und aus dem Tibetischen übersetzt und mit einem Kommentar herausgegeben von Michael Hahn
http://www.suhrkamp.de/buecher/vom_rechten_leben-_70003.html
I think there couldn’t be a better translator than Hahn.
Well, German is too important to be neglected, especially for the serious scholars.