217 Spk: It is degrading (ohārina) because it drags one down to the four realms of misery; supple (sithila), because unlike iron bonds it does not constrict one’s physical movement but holds one in bondage wherever one goes; hard to escape (duppamuñca), because one cannot break free from it except by supramundane knowledge.
218 The sutta is also at Ud 64-66, but with a different verse attached. The Eastern Park is the monastery built by Visākhā, the Buddha’s chief female patron, who was called “Mother” by her father-in-law Migāra because she skilfully led him to the Dhamma.
219 The jaṭilas were matted hair ascetics; the nigaṇṭhas, the Jains, followers of Nātaputta.
220 All eds. of SN read this sentence as a declarative (ye te bhante loke arahanto), but Ud 65,22-23 (Ee) reads it as an interrogative (ye nu keci kho bhante loke arahanto).
221 This condensed fourfold statement is expanded upon at AN II 187-90.
222 Ete bhante mama purisā carā (Se: cārā) ocarakā janapadaṃ ocaritvā āgacchanti. Some SS read corā (= thieves) in place of carā, and the same v.l. appears in many eds. of Ud. Uda 333,18-24, commenting on the passage, explains why the king’s spies can be considered thieves, which indicates that even Dhammapāla had accepted the Ud reading corā. Spk, however, treats ocarakā and carā as synonyms, glossing both as heṭṭhacarakā, “undercover agents,” those who move below the surface (for the purpose of gathering intelligence). Spk-pṭ says: “The expression ‘undercover agents’—which is what is meant by carā—refers to those who enter amidst (other groups) in order to investigate the secrets of others.” The expression carapurisā occurs too at Dhp-a I 193,1, Ja II 404,9-18, and Ja VI 469,12, in contexts where it can only mean spies.
223 Be and Ee1 & 2 read osāpayissāmi, Se oyāyissāmi. Texts of Ud and Ud-a record still more vv.ll., even up to nine; see Masefield, The Udāna Commentary, 2:918, n. 195. NeitherSpk nor Spk-pṭ offers any help. Ud-a 333,25 glosses paṭipajjissāmi karissāmi, “I will enter upon it, I will act,” which seems a learned way of admitting uncertainty. If we accept Norman’s reasonable suggestion (at EV I, n. to 119) that we should recognize in Pāli a verb oseti, “to deposit” (< Skt *avaśrayati), osāpeti can then be understood as the causative form of this verb (< Skt *avaśrāyati, as pointed out by Norman in the same note). Here it is the first person future used metaphorically to mean “I will make them deposit the information with me.” See too n. 542 and n. 657. Its absolutive, osāpetvā, occurs at Spk III 92,2, meaning “having put away.”
224 Spk does not identify the other four kings. The fact that they are designated rājā does not necessarily imply they were rulers of independent states on a par with Pasenadi, though the mutual use of the address mārisa suggests they enjoyed parity of status with him.
225 The Pāli uses the plural ekacce with each assertion, but it is evident from the context that each assertion was made by only one king.
226 Manāpapariyantaṃ khvāhaṃ mahārāja pañcasu kāmaguṇesu aggan ti vadāmi. My rendering expands slightly on the compressed Pāli idiom. Spk glosses manāpapariyantaṃ by manāpanipphattiṃ manāpakoṭikaṃ. Spk-pṭ: Whatever a person cherishes, being in his view the chief, is presented by him as the culmination, as the ultimate.
227 Paṭibhāti maṃ bhagavā, paṭibhāti maṃ sugata. The same verb paṭibhāti is used by both the interlocutor and the Buddha (by the latter, as the imperative paṭibhātu), but I have varied the rendering slightly in each case as befits the speaker’s situation. This type of exchange occurs repeatedly at 8:5-11 below; 8:8 (I 193,3-4), which contrasts ṭhānaso paṭibhanti with pubbe parivitakkita, “premeditated,” indicates the exact nuance of the verb in such a context; see too n. 143. The lay follower Candanaṅgalika is not met elsewhere in the canon. Apparently he had been inspired because he had seen how the Buddha’s glory surpassed that of the five kings.
228 Spk: Kokanada is a synonym for the red lotus (paduma). The Buddha is called Aṅgīrasa because rays issue from his body (aṅgato rasmiyo nikkhamanti). A parallel including the verse is at AN III 239-40. See too Vism 388,1-4 (Ppn 12:60) and Dhp-a I 244 (BL 1:302), and cp. v. 752.On Aṅgīrasa Malalasekera remarks (DPPN 1:20): “It is, however, well known that, according to Vedic tradition, the Gautamas belong to the Aṅgı̄rasa tribe; the word, as applied to the Buddha , therefore is probably a patronymic.”
229 Be: doṇapākakuraṃ; Se and Ee1: doṇapākasudaṃ; Ee2: doṇapākaṃ sudaṃ. Spk: He ate rice cooked from a doṇa of rice grains along with suitable soups and curries.The doṇa is a measure of volume, perhaps a “bucket,” obviously far more than the capacity of an ordinary person’s stomach.
230 The kahāpaṇa was the standard currency unit of the period. See Singh, Life in North-Eastern India, pp. 255-57.
231 Spk says that the nāḷika, which I render pint-pot (after Burlingame), is the proper portion for a man; I could not find any source specifying the relation between doṇa and nāḷika . Spk explains that the Buddha had instructed Sudassana to recite the verse, not when the king began his meal, but when he approached the end. In this way each day the king gradually left aside the last portion of food until he reached the proper measure.A more elaborate version of the story is at Dhp-a III 264-66, where it serves as the background to Dhp 325; see BL 3:76-77. In this version the king’s advisor is Prince Uttara rather than the brahmin youth Sudassana.
232 Spk: The good pertaining to the present life was the slimming of the body; the good pertaining to the future was virtue (sīla), one aspect of which is moderation in eating. See 3:17 below.
233 Ajātasattu was Pasenadi’s nephew, son of his sister and King Bimbisāra, ruler of Magadha. While still a prince Ajātasattu was incited by Devadatta to usurp the throne and have his father executed; soon afterwards his mother died of grief. War broke out when Pasenadi and Ajātasattu both laid claim to the prosperous village of Kāsı̄, situated between the two kingdoms, which Pasenadi’s father, King Mahākosala, had given to his daughter when she married Bimbisāra (see prologue to Ja No. 239). The four divisions of the army are elephant troops, cavalry, chariot troops, and infantry, enumerated in the next sutta.Spk explains the epithet Vedehiputta: “Vedehi means wise; he was so called because he was the son of a wise woman.” This is almost certainly a fabrication. Videha was a country in north India, and the epithet suggests his ancestry was from that land. Since Ajātasattu’s mother was from Kosala, Geiger surmises that it must have been his maternal grandmother who came from Videha (GermTr, p. 131, n. 3). See too II, n. 288.
234 Spk says Ajātasattu has evil friends such as Devadatta, Pasenadi has good friends such as Sāriputta. Pāpamitta and kalyāṇamitta are bahubbīhi compounds meaning respectively “one with an evil friend” and “one with a good friend.” They do not mean, as C.Rh.D translates at KS 1:112, “a friend of that which is wicked” and “a friend of that which is righteous”; nor do they mean “a friend of evil people” and “a friend of good people” (though this is entailed). The rare word ajjatañ (as in Se and Ee1; Be has normalized the difficult reading to ajj’ eva) seems to mean “for today, for this day,” with the implication that the sit situation will soon change.
235 Spk: Jayaṃ veraṃ pasavatī ti jinanto veraṃ pasavati, veripuggalaṃ labhati; ʺThe victorious one breeds enmity: one conquering breeds enmity, begets an inimical person.” Spk thus interprets jayaṃ in pāda a as a nominative present participle functioning as subject. At EV II, n. to 26, Norman suggests it might be a ṇamul absolutive, i.e., a rare type of absolutive formed from the -aṃ termination (see too EV I, n. to 22). While at v. 407 we do find jayaṃ as a participle, the word also occurs as a neuter nominative at v. 619c, and thus there should be no reason not to interpret it in the same way here. See the discussion in Brough, Gāndhārī Dharmapada, pp. 238-39, n. to 180.
236 I read pāda d with Be and Se: so vilutto viluppati, as against Ee1 & 2 vilumpati. Spk glosses the line, in its occurrence
at v. 407f, with a passive verb: so vilumpako vilumpiyati. To preserve the logic of the verse it is really necessary to accept the passive verb and to understand the passive past participle as active in sense. The BHS version at Uv 9:9 is more intelligible, with an agent noun in place of the past participle: so viloptā vilupyate.
237 Spk glosses kammavivaṭṭena: “By the maturation of kamma, when the kamma of plundering yields its result.” Spk-pṭ adds: “The kamma which has vanished matures when it gains an opportunity (to ripen) by meeting a condition (conducive to its ripening).”
238 Spk: He was displeased thinking, “I elevated Queen Mallikā from a poor family to the rank of queen. If she had given birth to a son she would have won great honour, but now she has lost that opportunity.”This daughter was almost certainly the Princess Vajı̄rı̄ (see MN II 110, 10-18), who was later married to King Ajātasattu of Magadha after the two kings were reconciled. Prince Viḍūḍabha, the heir to the throne, was begotten from another wife of Pasenadi, Vāsabhā-khattiyā, a Sakyan lady of mixed descent who was passed off to Pasenadi as a pure-bred Sakyan princess. Viḍūḍabha later usurped the throne and left his father to die in exile. When he learned that the Sakyans had deceived his father he massacred them and almost decimated the entire Saykan clan.
239 In pāda b, I follow Ee1 & 2 in reading posā, “than a man,” though Be and Se, as well as Spk, read posa, which Spk glosses as the imperative posehi, “nourish (her).” Spk sees the comparison with a son implicit in seyyā: “Even a woman may be better than a dull, stupid son.” In pāda d, sassudevā literally means “having (her) mother-in-law as a deva”; Spk adds father-in-law in the gloss.
240 In pāda b, it is uncertain from the text whether disampati is nominative or vocative, but I follow Spk, which glosses it with the vocative disājeṭṭhaka. With Be, Se, and Ee2, I read pāda c as tādisā subhagiyā putto and comply with Spk by translating tādisā as if it were a truncated genitive qualifying the woman. Ee1 reads tādiso in apposition to putto.
241 Spk explains appamāda as kārāpaka-appamāda, “activating diligence,” which Spk-pṭ says is diligence that motivates one to engage in the three bases of meritorious deeds (giving, virtue, and meditation). Spk: Diligence, though mundane, is still the chief even among the exalted and supramundane states (i.e., the jhānas, paths, and fruits) because it is the cause for their attainment.
242 In pāda e, atthābhisamayā is glossed by Spk with atthapaṭilābhā . The couplet is often quoted by the commentaries, when commenting on the ekaṃ samayaṃ formula, to illustrate samaya as meaning paṭilābha. I have tried to avoid the tautology of translating dhīro paṇḍito ti vuccati “the wise one is called a person of wisdom“ by rendering dhīra with its homonym, “steadfast”; see n. 72.
243 Spk: Although the Dhamma is well expounded for all, just as medicine is effective only for one who takes it so the Dhamma fulfils its purpose only for a compliant and faithful person having good friends, not for the other type.
244 The incident reported here, including the discourse on good friendship, is related at 45:2. The later version, however, does not include the line “beings subject to illness are freed from illnessʺ (vyādhidhammā sattā vyādhiyā parimuccanti), found at I 88,23. Explanatory notes to the embedded discourse will be found below V, nn. 5-7.
245 The seṭṭhi were the wealthy money lenders in the large towns and cities of northern India. Originally guild masters, in time they came to function as private bankers and often played decisive roles in political affairs. Anāthapiṇḍika was said to be a seṭṭhi. See Singh, Life in North-Eastern India, pp. 249-51. Apparently when a wealthy man died intestate, the king was entitled to his fortune.
246 A lakh is a hundred thousand. Spk explains kaṇājaka as rice with the red powder from the husk (sakuṇḍakabhatta); tipakkhavasana, as a garment made by sewing together three pieces of cloth.
247 A paccekabuddha is one who attains enlightenment independently of a perfectly enlightened Buddha (sammā sambuddha ), but unlike a perfectly enlightened Buddha does not establish a sāsana, a religious “dispensation.” They are said to arise only at times when a Buddha’s dispensation does not exist in the world. The story is elaborated in Spk and at Dhp-a IV 77-78; see BL 3:240. A version at Ja No. 390 does not mention the murder of the nephew or the rebirth in hell. A partly parallel story of abuse towards the paccekabuddha Tagarasikhı̄ is related at Ud 50,14-19.
248 See n. 93.
249 The sutta without the similes and verses is at AN II 85-86; see too Pp 51,21-52,23. Spk: One is in darkness ( tamo ) because one is conjoined with darkness by being reborn in a low family, and one is heading towards darkness (tamoparāyaṇa) because one is approaching the darkness of hell. One is in light (joti) because one is conjoined with light by being reborn in a high family, and one is heading towards light (jotiparāyaṇa) because one is approaching the light of a heavenly rebirth.
250 The caṇḍālas were the most despised of the outcasts; see Singh, Life in North-Eastern India, pp. 16-20. Spk glosses venakula as vilīvakārakula, family of basket weavers; the two occupations are listed separately at Mil 331. Rathakārakula is glossed as cammakārakula, family of leather workers [Spk-pṭ: because the straps of carts are made of leather]; and pukkusakula as pupphachaḍḍakakula, family of those who throw away wilted flowers. Perhaps the latter more generally included all sweepers and refuse removers.
251 Lit., “If by means of the elephant-gem I could have it, ‘Let my grandmother not die,’ I would have given away the elephant-gem, (thinking), ‘Let my grandmother not die.’”Spk: When his mother died his grandmother filled her place in bringing him up; hence he had such strong affection for her. The elephant-gem was an elephant worth 100,000 kahāpaṇa, decked with ornaments worth the same amount. The same explanation applies to the horse-gem and the prize village.
252 Cp. with 3:2. The verses are identical.
253 Kattha nu kho bhante dānaṃ dātabbaṃ. I have translated in accordance with the Pāli idiom, though in English we would normally say, “To whom should a gift be given?” Spk relates the background story: When the Buddha began his ministry, great gains and honour accrued to him and the Bhikkhu Saṅgha, and thus the fortunes of the rival sects declined. The rival teachers, intent on besmirching his reputation, told the householders that the ascetic Gotama was proclaiming that gifts should be given only to him and his disciples, not to other teachers and their disciples. When the king heard this he realized it was a malicious falsehood, and to convince the multitude of this he assembled the entire populace on a festival day and questioned the Buddha about the matter before the whole assembly.
254 Spk paraphrases: “One should give to whichever person one’s mind has confidence in.” When the Buddha spoke thus, the king announced to the crowd: “With one statement the sectarian teachers have been crushed.” To clear up the ambiguity he next asked: “Lord, the mind may have confidence in anyone—in the Jains, the naked ascetics, the wanderers, etc.—but where does a gift produce great fruit?” What underlies the question is a basic premise of Indian ascetic spirituality, namely, that gifts given to renunciants generate “merit” (puñña), which in turn yields fruits (phala)—mundane and spiritual benefits—in proportion to the spiritual purity of the recipients. The mechanism that governs the relationship between giving and its fruits is the law of kamma. For a full disquisition on giving and its rewards, see MN No. 142.
255 The five factors abandoned are the five hindrances (pañca nīvaraṇā); the five factors possessed are the five aggregates of one beyond training (pañca asekhakkhandhā), the asekha being the arahant.
256 Spk equates patience (khanti) with forbearance (adhivāsana) and gentleness (soracca) with arahantship [Spk-pṭ: because only the arahant is exclusively gentle (sorata)]. Dhs §1342 defines soracca as nontransgression by body, speech, and mind, and as complete restraint by virtue; but see n. 462.
257 Spk says that Pasenad
i arrived after he had just finished impaling a band of criminals that he had arrested when they tried to ambush him and usurp the kingdom. The Buddha thought, “If I reprimand him for such a terrible deed, he will feel too dismayed to associate closely with me. Instead I will instruct him by an indirect method.” I agree with C.Rh.D that the story does not fit well, and I would add that it even detracts from the solemn dignity of the Buddha’s discourse.
258 Spk explains dhammacariyā as the ten wholesome courses of kamma and says that samacariyā, righteous conduct, means the same.
259 Natthi gati natthi visayo adhivattamāne jarāmaraṇe. Spk glosses gati (= place of motion, “room”) as nipphatti, success [Spk-pṭ: “The point is that there is no success to be achieved by battle”]; visaya (“scope”), as okāsa, opportunity, or samatthabhāva, capability; “for it is not possible to ward off aging and death by these battles.”4. Mārasaṃyutta
260 Spk assigns this sutta to the first week after the Buddha’s enlightenment.
261 I translate the last sentence in accordance with the reading of Se and Ee1 & 2: sādhu ṭhito sato bodhiṃ samajjhagaṃ. Be reads: sādhu vatamhi mutto bodhiṃ samajjhagaṃ. By gruelling asceticism (dukkarakārikā) the Buddha refers to the rigorous austerities he practised for six years before he discovered the “middle way” to enlightenment.
The Connected Discourses of the Buddha Page 42