Appendix One: History · 莲华归心开放中文佛学资料库

- suttas - - evening talks - short morning talks - lectures - guided meditations - talk collections - other themes - chants - - - - à¹à¸à¸¢ - Franā§ais - Espaā±ol - - Portuguāªs - Ð ÑÑÑÐºÐ¸Ð¹ - - - Ð£ÐºÑÐ°ÑÐ½ÑÑÐºÐ° Submit Search - Home - Suttas - KN - Ud - Appendix One: History ## Browse Suttas Go to Udṅna index Ud index Show outline show outline ## Outline - (Top) - Appendix One: History Toggle subsection - On the history of the Udṅna - Appendix Two: Non-Udṅna Exclamations Toggle subsection - From MN 75: To Mṅgandiya (Mṅgandiya Sutta) - SN 22:55 Exclamation (Udṅna Sutta) - From SN 56:11 The Tathṅgata (Tathṅgata Sutta) - Appendix Three: Saṃyutta Nikṅya Passages - Appendix Four: Disciples Toggle subsection - Monks (22 out of 40) - Female lay followers (3 out of 10) const prefersTocHidden = window.sessionStorage.getItem('user-prefers-toc-hidden') ?? window.localStorage.getItem('user-prefers-toc-hidden') ?? false; if (prefersTocHidden) { const tocToggleButton = document.getElementById("tocToggle"); const bookToc = document.getElementById("bookToc"); bookToc.classList.remove("show"); tocToggleButton.setAttribute("aria-expanded", false); tocToggleButton.querySelectorAll("[data-show-text]").forEach(el => { el.setAttribute("data-hide-text", el.innerText); el.innerText = el.getAttribute("data-show-text"); }); } ## Appendix One: History ## On the history of the Udṅna Passages in the Canon mention udṅnas in a list of nine genres in which the Buddhaâs teachings and events in his life were memorized during his lifetime. There has been some speculation as to whether the Udṅna we currently have is in any way related to the udṅnas mentioned in the list. The general consensus is that most of the exclamations at the end of our current udṅnas might possibly date from the Buddhaâs time, but that the stories are obviously a much later invention. There is, however, no proof for either position. The question of how to prove through textual analysis whether the exclamations actually came from the Buddha is essentially uninteresting: There is no historical evidence to prove or disprove that anything in the Canon came from the Buddha; the only way to test the value of what the Canon contains is to put its teachings to the test. It is interesting, however, to examine the arguments for assigning a late date to the stories in the Udṅnas, for when we examine these arguments we find that they teach us more about the assumptions of the people who present them than about the Udṅna itself. The arguments fall into two main classes: those based on the form of the text, and those on the content. The first formal argument for the lateness of the stories is based on the fact that a fraction of the exclamations occur elsewhere in the major poetry anthologies of the Canon without any connection to the stories in the Udṅna. I have noted some of these parallels in the notes. Here they are as a list: 1:9 (last half) = DhpÂ 393 (last half) 2:3 = DhpÂ 131–132 3:4 = ThagÂ 14:1 (PTS v. 651); ThagÂ 17:2 (PTS v. 1000) 3:6 (first part) = SnÂ 3:4 (PTS v. 469) (first part) 4:3 = DhpÂ 42 4:4 = near equivalent, ThagÂ 2:36 (PTS vv. 191—192) 4:6 = DhpÂ 185 4:7 = ThagÂ 1:68 4:9 = SnÂ 3:12 (PTS v. 746) 5:5 = ThagÂ 6:13 (PTS v. 447) 6:3 (last half) = ThagÂ 2:30 (PTS v. 180 — last half) 6:7 (first half) = SnÂ 1:1 (PTS v. 7 — last half) 7:4 (first part) = ThagÂ 4:8 (PTS v. 297) In addition to these parallels in the Pali Canon, variants of all the exclamations also appear, again without stories, in the Udṅnavarga, a compilation of verses in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit made by a Sarvṅstivṅdin monk, Dharmatrṅta, somewhere between 75 B.C.E and 200 C.E. From these facts the argument maintains that because these verses occur without a story in some places, but with a story in the Udṅna, the stories must be later additions. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the possibility that the compilers of the other texts might have had a different purpose than the compilers of the Udṅna. They could have simply been interested in creating anthologies of verses shorn of any narrative frameworks. Whatâs ironic is that this latter point is sometimes used to "prove" the lateness of the Dhammapada as a collection: Some of the Dhammapada verses occur associated with stories in other parts of the Pali Canon, and scholars have argued that the compilers of the Dhammapada simply lifted the verses from those passages and dropped the stories. Because this argument can be used either way–to prove that collections of verses with stories are later than collections of verses without stories, and that collections of verses without stories are later than collections of verses with stories–it doesnât really prove either position. A second set of arguments for the lateness of the Udṅna is based on the fact that thirteen of the udṅnas–story and verse–also occur elsewhere in the Canon: 1:1 – Mv.I.1.1—3 (different details in the story) 1:2 – Mv.I.1.4—5 (different details in the story) 1:3 – Mv.I