Why is "Khattiya" being translated as "Aristocrat?"

Translations
25

That’s true, for the varna-system in the Rgveda at least. With the term kṣatriya it’s exactly as you say, it’s still fluid in the Rgveda - the term appears, but as a ruling quality of deities, not yet as a solidified attribute of people. Same in the Atharvaveda. And after that we find the varnas more often…

The passage seems to make a point in describing idealized khattiyas - just, wise, and of course good-looking :). Based on that the translation as aristocracy (which literally means ‘rulership of the elite/best’) would be justified.

I just wish we had a term that sounded less like they were sitting in their castles slurping wine. But our words have developed in the European context, and the Indian city-states at that time were neither like Athens, Sparta, or Rome. And ‘gentry’ doesn’t fit either.

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26

@Gabriel @stephen @Moonlit_Pond

What do you think the substantive value difference is between leaving khattiya untranslated when used as a proper noun denoting a caste verses matching it to an English word?

Bhikkhu Bodhi translates caṇḍāla, but of course leaves brahmin (brahmana/brahmjacca) because if you translate it you run into a whole host of problems that brush up against aspects of the manner and context in which Buddha Gotama related his insights to his audience. Doing that would create a clearity problem. Keeping in mind he probably didn’t actually say brahmana: “br” should be a no-no, but even if the Prakrit equivalent had survived later Sanskritization, brahmin would still be used since it is broadly understood among English speakers.

Khattiya seems to have no significant value in elucidating the teaching which is the sole purpose of the suttas, much like caṇḍāla. Considering that only a few references use it in regard to qualities of a warrior to expound on proper effort; there appears no real doctrinal implication that I can see which would justify this level of scrutiny. Translating it as (noble) warrior, aristocrat or leaving it untranslated seems inconsequential.

Where is the gain? What is the tangible value manifesting for readers?

Do we think the readers are dumb-dumbs?

The reply I made earlier addressing this quote above was hidden within a few minutes after I posted it🤔

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27

That’s purely subjective. If it has no value to you, that’s fine. But it’s not the job of a translator to declare portions of the text as irrelevant. Meditators are not the only people reading the texts. It’s not a tailor-made translation for you specifically but for a wide range of people, so the trans-latio needs to be made responsibly.

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Quite right. But isn’t the translator tailor-making it to their own preferences in very important ways?

And an English translation isn’t?

Where is the line being drawn? Is it where people are most comfortable? Or is it about clout and grandstanding on fundamental inflection points?

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As often is the case, finding a single suitable english word to describe a complex Pali word is nearly impossible. Considering the caste system of the Buddha’s time and who was considered a Khattiya, I find warrior to be a bit more restrictive than aristocrat. Unpacking the Kattiya class might lead to a better definition. For instance, did a warrior earn a place as a patrician and/or landowner/ruler?

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30

Hey Friend, like I said earlier. It is good to leave some words left untranslated because it allows us learners to relate them back to other suttas where they are used and It allows us to get an idea of what the Buddha is saying on a deeper level.

Khattiya probably isn’t a super important one, but one like mettā surely is as one could always link it back to the “mettā sutta.”

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31

As @Lokantara pointed out, there may be no gain in translating Khattiya to define it, much like Brahmin.

I’m a big fan of not translating dukkha, as unlike Khattiya, the ramifications of misunderstanding dukkha has great consequence and Khattiya doesn’t.

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32

It’s quite simple - you write a book, produce a movie, make a translation - you decide. If it pains you so much, download the whole thing and replace the words you don’t like. You must acknowledge that most readers aren’t as bothered as you, so no need to involve the world committee of translation ethics.

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35

It seems to me the role of a translator is to convey the meaning of the entire text into the target language. Sometimes, if a word in the original language is well understood by the readers, it can be left untranslated. That does not seem the case with 'khattiya ', many would have no idea of the meaning. So either a translation needs to be made or explanatory notes need to be added.
I don’t think it’s the translator’s role to decide what the most important part of the text to be understood is, but rather to render all of it as clear as possible in the target language.

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36

I’m not an expert, and I think even experts would say this is all speculative, but I was taught that around this time, in the so called axial age, Indian society was experiencing a period of "class conflict” between the varnas (which likely had looser boundaries than today) due to the change to an urbanized agriculturalist society.

It is roughly hypothesized that all Indo-European peoples had a common idea of a three class society from the original social context of a non-urbanized pastoralist society. This probably divided people roughly into those with family traditions of craftsmanship, family traditions of lore, and family traditions of martial leadership. Or maybe the categories were different, it’s all hypothetical. But what’s clear is that in the new context of urban civilization these roles, and their relationships changed.

The secular view is that the 16 Great States of the Buddha’s time were probably only ~200 years old at most, and nothing like them had ever before existed in their culture (India’s first urbanization having been done by dravidians).

So, Indian society at this time is still struggling to come to terms with what it means that there are now people like Anathapindika and Bimbisara, people with wealth and power far beyond what was ever possible in prehistoric, pre-urban times. Meanwhile, there had been no proportionate change in spheres that were culturally coded as “brahminical”.

Realistically, there probably wasn’t anything like a universal set of caste laws everyone followed consistently. Rather, brahmins had an oral tradition that placed them at the top (we can be fairly confident it was mostly the same as what we have in the three main Vedas today) and then people made their own decisions based on particular social context.

So what the Buddha does in that sutta, is essentially match legend for legend, and then point out a lot of social realities. “Ok, you think your varna is the best, but what would happen in the following situations?"

It’s a little loose, but imagine as analogy the following hypothetical dialog between a wealthy industrialist and a landless hereditary aristocrat in the west during the industrial revolution

Aristocrat: God blessed my ancestors and decreed they rule
Industrialist: God predestines all things and my commercial success is indicative of his divine favor
Aristocrat: traditionally, my social group is above yours
Industrialist: But wealthy men are able to petition and be granted peerages, while peers cannot simply petition to be granted wealth. Wealth is also respected in all nations, while your noble rank is only respected within a few nations. Wealth can buy things, while nobility cannot. Practically, wealth is superior to nobility.
Aristocrat: I suppose you are right.

Prior to the conversation, there was cognitive dissonance, where one party simultaneously held the view that “my group is the highest” but also knew all of these practical social truths. It’s only when they’re explicitly drawn out and contrasted that the cognitive dissonance is resolved and the old prideful view has to be abandoned.

Then historically what happened in India is aristocratic power was consolidated more and more in through the Mauryan Empire. The Mauryans went so far as to outlaw vedic animal sacrifice, showing that in their time, khattiya’s were clearly supreme over brahmins. But in turn they were overthrown by a brahmin general (an example of why khattiya =/= warrior) to form the Shunga empire, which patronized a lot of critical Hindu cultural and religious works that helped develop and enshrine a solid position for that varna moving forward, even after their empire fell.

However, we can’t be confident exactly how this went, because of issues common to Indian historiography. For example, the puranas (important Hindu holy texts) make the claim that under the Shunga empire four million Buddhists were killed. C.f. The Holocaust / Shoah, where, with the advantage of higher populations, advanced technology, and sophisticated organizational structures, Hitler was able to systematically murder ~ six million Jewish people. It is generally considered implausible that this Shunga genocide of Buddhists actually happened as described. But when events that are that enormous are totally unclear, it’s impossible to accurately and precisely understand what happened. Imagine trying to describe how European society has evolved if you have no idea whether or not the Holocaust happened.

Somehow, eventually, we end up in a situation where, contrary to the Buddha’s examples, all inter-varna marriages are forbidden (but still happen), there’s a stricter sense of jatti, and probably a somewhat novel idea of gotra, with an associated ‘incest’ prohibition that forbids marriage between two persons with the same ‘gotra’ (patrilineal family line) which would have made his Sakyan origin story disgraceful. But how and when that happened is totally unclear. There’s no “anti-varna mixing law of 400AD” to point to.

So, tl;dr the history of the caste system is mysterious and likely involved a lot of changing and redefining over time, including at the time of the Buddha. So it’s not that weird that the arrogant brahmin had some cognitive dissonance going on.

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37

Hey thanks, nice analysis!

Lol, if only it were this easy!

Good point, I’d forgotten.

That whole episode is really a sad one. It seems pretty obvious that the Buddhist accounts of persecution are at best wildly exaggerated or at worst total fabrications. You get the feeling that it only took a few generations under the Mauryans for the Buddhists to get rich and decadent, and to get outraged at any setback. It’s an important historical backdrop for textual formation as well: this is when some of the later books of the Tipitaka were formed, and the shift to an exaggerated devotional cult was well under way. Such emotional extremes, so unlike the world of the suttas, express an underlying insecurity.

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38

In India in vedism, hinduism , people were divided in to four varnas or castes, Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra.
Brahman were priests, Kshatriyas were warriors, Vaisyas were traders. Sudras or shudras were the labourers, artisans .
Contrary to the belief the varnas or castes were decided was not based on ones occupation, but was inherited. A kshatriya’s children would be Kshatriyas, irrespective of whether one has the ability or not.These castes are even prevalent now. In todays times the caste may only indicate the caste lineage from one descended.
Its more likely that the king would be from kshatriya or a warrior caste. But it is not necessary that every kshatriya would be a king…some may be low rank soldiers.
Basically it means of belonging to a warrior caste

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39

What’s really interesting to me is not just that the Theravada accounts of being persecuted are exaggerated, but that the Theravada accounts of persecuting others are likely exaggerated (e.g. the supposed 2nd-council era crackdown on sham buddhists), as are the accounts by others of persecuting Theravadins. Again, it’s the Hindu holy texts that paint a portrait of the Shunga empire that resembles a high-fantasy Nazi Germany (instead of SS death squads, kshatriyas conjured from a sacrificial fire are said to have killed the four million Buddhists).

I think everyone should reflect more with gratitude on the heroes of the 20th century who so indelibly marked our culture with the understanding that genocide is shameful and evil. Those who survived and told their stories, those who had no direct experience but investigated the evidence after the fact, and those who promulgated these stories so that none of us can credibly claim unwilling ignorance.

Before that happened, before every schoolchild in America was expected to read two holocaust accounts in English class and spend several months on the subject in history class, there was a quite prevalent attitude that genocidal mass killing sounded cool (or, for whatever other reason, was worth making up and attributing to your “side” in legends). So far as I am aware, the apex of this is the Farvardin Yasht, a Zoroastrian prayer that talks about killing “non-Iranian nations” by the “100,000’s of 100,000’s” or tens of billions, more people than have ever been alive at once, likely authored at a time when humanity numbered less than 10 million.

It’s very challenging, coming from a context where, if anything, people try to conceal the extent of real genocidal massacres perpetrated by “their side”, to understand the previous popularity of wildly exaggerating or even inventing these acts. But it is quite widespread.

Partially circling back to the main topic of this thread, we have the legend of Vijaya, which ties the ruling families of Sri Lanka to the ruling families of mainland India and also features the destruction of a native city called Sirisavatthu. To my understanding historians generally agree that this part of the Mahavamsa is just legend, with about as much historical value as the Odyssey. The Sinhalese people, collectively, made up a story where their ruling families are the nephews of a genocidal demi-human warrior colonialist from India because somehow that was an appealing idea at the time. But that warrior legacy is fiction.

I’m less clear on the various origin stories of the khattiya - I’m vaguely aware that some clans claim(ed) descent from the sun and others from the moon, which is obviously implausible. It is likely that other aspects of their legendary origins, including some aspects of their warrior legacy, are fictional, coming from a time when being descended from someone who personally killed a lot of people was considered something to be proud of.

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That’s an amazing point, I’d never really considered that before.

Well, both Hindu and Buddhist texts speak of persecution.

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