In SN 9.3 we have a story of a monk who tries to educate a cheta. he is admonished in sharp terms by a local deity, who repeatedly says the cheta has no intelligence, no capacity for understanding, and the monk is a fool for trying to teach it/him.
What exactly the cheta is is hard to say, since it occurs nowhere else, and so far as I can see has no parallels in Sanskrit.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Asian_cheetah.jpg/640px-Asian_cheetah.jpg
The PTS Dictionary, and Dhammikaâs, take it to mean âcheetahâ. This is tempting. If it was correct, it would be by far the earliest occurence of the word. Mirriam Webster derives cheetah from Hindi/Urdu, from the Sanskrit citra in the sense of âspottedâ. Itâs attested around 1600.
The relation of this to the Pali cheta is, however, problematic, as they prefer flatlands to take advantage of their speed, while the sutta is set in the deep mountains. Still, it could have meant a related big cat. But itâs also hard to see how cheta would relate to citra, although there is a variant ceta.
The commentary, followed by Ven Bodhi, takes another tack entirely, saying the cheta is a deer hunter. This interpretation has a significant advantage, in that it makes the monk seem several degrees less foolish. Itâs one thing to try to teach an idiot who is not interested, quite another to teach a wild beast.
Still, this is not unproblematic. There are plenty of perfectly good words for hunter, why not use them? And the tone of the sutta strikes me as odd. Normally when hunters are spoken of, it is emphasized how wild, violent, and dangerous they are. And indeed, thatâs exactly the kind of language that the commentary uses in telling the story of the hunter (mige vadhissÄmi; sattiyÄ naáš paharissÄmi).
Here, however, there is no mention of anger; it is all about stupidity. Itâs not surprising that a hunter would be considered not particularly wise. But it seems extreme for a deity to be telling a monk off just for trying.
Coneâs DoP is much less certain about the word. She gives the main reading as ceta, even though this is apparently only attested in one manuscript. It seems she does this to include it together with the references to ceta found in the Vessantara Jataka. There, however, the text speaks of the nation of Ceta as a wealthy and prosperous place. This can hardly be the same; surely it is just a variant for the kingdom otherwise known as Cetiya/Cedi/Ceti, etc. She acknowledges the possible sense of âhunterâ, but with a question mark.
Perhaps more relevant might be the term ceáša, which is found occasionally in the sense of âservant, menialâ.
But perhaps we should leave all these interpretations aside. Since we have no other guide, we can ask the question: who makes most sense? What kind of meeting might there be in the middle of the wild mountains, where a monk would be enthusiastic about trying to teach and convert someone, while the local deity, who knows the area better, knows itâs a waste of time?
It sounds to me like an uncontacted tribesman. To this day there are multiple people or groups of people in the Indic sphere who have little or no contact with the outside world. They must have been far more common in those days. Such isolated tribes have been seen and contacted by monks in Thailand and Burma. It is hardly surprising that a monk would encounter someone from such a tribe, and attempt to convince them to give up their ways. To those from an Indo-European culture, they would have appeared primitive, not understanding civilized language. And of course, this does not contradict the commentary as such, since they would likely have been hunter-gatherers.
In this sense we might connect the term with ceáša, as a term for a tribe or tribespeople in general. Or it might be a past participle of chindati in the sense of âcut-off, isolatedâ; but this form is not attested elsewhere. Or it might be an unrelated dialectical term.