I’m investigating the historical and textual meaning of vedanā in the dependent-origination sequence: saḷāyatana-paccayā phasso phassa-paccayā vedanā vedanā-paccayā taṇhā. I would be interested in primary-source evidence concerning a specific question. Do pre-Buddhist or early Brahmanical texts contain a comparable model in which contact between a sense faculty and its object leads directly to desire, attraction/aversion, or craving, without vedanā functioning as the intervening condition? If such a model can be established and securely dated, what exactly is distinctive about the Buddhist insertion or analysis of vedanā between phassa and taṇhā? Relatedly, when modern writers describe vedanā as “feeling tone” or “hedonic tone”—the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral quality of experience—is this intended as a complete definition of vedanā, or primarily as a description of its threefold classification (sukha, dukkha, adukkhamasukha)? I am particularly interested in whether the early texts themselves justify identifying vedanā exhaustively with “feeling tone,” given that they also discuss bodily and mental vedanā and classify vedanā in other ways. I’m not assuming a conclusion either way. I’m particularly interested in securely dated primary passages—Brahmanical and early Buddhist—that could clarify the historical development of these ideas.
Not sure about Brahmanical sources, but Jains did use the word vedaniya (adjective form of vedana) to describe karma that results in pleasant or painful experiences. That seems to be the only use of the concept in the Tattvartha Sutra. My understanding is that the word literally meant “experience, sensation, feeling” but in practice these were understood in categories like “pleasant, painful, neutral.” There are passages in which vedana is just to refer to experience without breaking it down into these categories.
There is an analytical way to define vedana as the experience arising from contact of interior (sense organ) and exterior sense fields (object) powered by Consciousness (MN148).
There are experential ways to describe vedana according to its source (body / mind), quality (painful, pleasurable, neutral) etc in upto 108 different ways (SN 36.22).
Do not confuse the definition of the term- which can be as narrow and precise as we want- with the description of its experience - which is bound to be messy and imprecise since it necessarily involves perception and consciousness (MN43).
Hi. This does not look to be something profound; similar to the Buddha’s teaching of “the ear hears sounds” is not profound. It is obvious, before the Buddha, there was the understanding “the ear hears sounds”. In his 1st Sermon, the Buddha says:
This noble truth… in regard to things unheard before… SN 56.11
Therefore, it would be highly probable saḷāyatana > phassa > vedanā > taṇhā was known before the Buddha. However, per SN 12.10, the entire twelve conditions were not known before the Buddha because SN 12.10 says:
That is how this entire mass of suffering originates. ‘Origination, origination.’ Such was the vision, knowledge, wisdom, realization, and light that arose in me regarding teachings not learned before from another
Even if there was some it wouldn’t make much sense. An interpretation like this would disregard feelings altogether in how craving arises, and so there wouldn’t be any base for preference. Craving would be random to any contact. Randomly you are averse to that contact, randomly you are greed towards it. With vedana, when there is unpleasant feeling, there is aversion towards it, greed in trying to get rid of it through sensuality etc., when there is pleasant feeling there is aversion towards its end etc.
Bodily and mental vedana are just “feeling tone” pertaining to the body or mind, although all feelings are felt mentally.
Although much before and after the Buddha humanity talked about feelings, the vedana the Buddha is talking about can only be understood by one with right view. So, even the historical development of this idea is extremely limited in helping clarify what is this vedana the Buddha was talking about.
This cannot be. Pleasant feeling is independent of the mind. Even the stillest mind still experience unpleasant feeling (except for the Arahant, which there is phassanirodha), and the difference is only about the attitude one has towards unpleasant and pleasant feeling.
“Activity” also does not interfere with which feeling is present, and unpleasant feeling is not suffering…
But, yes, vedanā is not a property of any specific physical sensation (because physical sensation is perception), but the general state of an experience (not the reflection of it).